I Said, I Love You like the Stars Above, I Love You till I Die · 5:21pm Jul 20th, 2021
Now and then I'll be working on something that's a little more intellectual in nature than my usual clownish bullshit, and whenever I do that? I always wonder aloud if I should write it serious, or try to make it funny.
And this not a vapid thing to wonder, mind. Humor improves readability and makes it easier for the reader to stay engaged, to absorb information. On the other hand, people tend to turn their brain off a little when humor enters the picture? You can just say shit and people will believe you [1]. You can get away with murder, honestly.
[1] I literally got my Law degree by being funny in my essays. I just fucking clowned my way to the top. My Labour Law teacher would openly tell the class he read my essays first, because they were funny, and he had to grade 20+ essays twice a week, every week, for the whole year--so he seized the chance to have fun.
One extremely embarrassing week, I misread the law I was referencing, so I spent seven pages arguing the opposite of what I was supposed to say. I got a perfect score. The teacher was just so dang entertained he didn't notice. He would quote his favorite jokes back at me during tutoring sessions, it was great. I am genuinely surprised my classmates didn't burn me at the stake.
And this is good? Convincing people with little effort is good? But it also turns your work into propaganda, rather than a discussion piece. If you want folks to engage with your work critically you need to keep it somewhat serious; too much humor implies intellectual dishonesty, or at least a lack of desire to talk about the matter at hand.
So, anyway. Whenever I wonder aloud -- god, should I make this funny, or do I go full Lawyer Mode at it? MrNumbers gives me the same advice. Every time he says the same, and every time he's completely right:
He's a good editor.
Not as good as me, though. Ho ho HOH.
So anyway. The Attack on Titan reviews were fun as all hell to write, which you can absolutely tell, because I went full Lawyer mode up till it got so stupid I started cracking jokes. Very good sign when that happens. So I wanna do it again! If possible, about something that's moderately better, and something I might even like myself!
I don't quite know what to review next, though, so that's why this blog exists. Here's a list of candidates:
- My Hero Academia -- An ongoing series about superheroes. I've got what I call "the MHA rant", which is when I tell people in full detail just how complex my feeling on the series are (mostly I don't like it) because what it does well it does really well, but dear fucking god, what it does wrong it does it so wrong. That said, I'd re-read the whole thing from scratch for the review, and who knows, maybe my feelings on the matter will change! They probably wont. But they might! MHA does a lot of very good character work, and just as a study on how to do incredibly strong visual iconography, as well as incredibly shitty paneling -- reviewing MHA would be very cool.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure -- This one is great because either I really dislike it, in which case half the website will hate me, or I will REALLY like it, in which case my friends will want to murder me. Win-win. I watched the first two episodes of the anime with my little brother, and at the start I was like, huh, I like this, this is like a distillation of a very dickensian sorta tale, just showing you heightened character-establishing moments so that you get the idea of who these larger-than-life characters are, I dig what they're doing. And then episode three or something happens, and a dude went I CAN USE SUNLIGHT WITCHCRAFT WATCH ME PUNCH THIS FROG and I was like yeh I'll drop this. Still, I've always been curious, and just, structure-wise an analysis of JoJo sounds unironically genuinly fascinating.
- Evangelion -- God, this one's daunting. I fall on the right side of history when it comes to Eva; I watched it in highschool, utterly loved it, and I've been a deadset fan ever since. But I haven't rewatched the full series in ages, and I think actually sitting down to pick it apart with a critical perspective would be great, even if I'm scared I might not like it as much as I remembered. Since a lot of people smarter than me have written on Evangelion before, I'd try to write about stuff I think I can make interesting points about. Structure! Character! Foreshadowing! Etcetera! I don't know, this one would be very cool but also very fucking hard. SOMEONE out there must've thought "god I wonder what Aragón thinks about Evangelion" before, c'mon.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann -- Another highschool darling of mine! Scarlet once called it The Last True Anarchist show, and last time I watched it I was a dumb kid and didn't think critically about stories. I wonder if it holds water on re-watch; from what I remember, it probably does? TTGL is a very strongly thematic series, where abstract concepts are made physical and literal by way of technomagic. It's the kind of dumb bullshit that I'm all about; TTGL is something like mecha magical realism, and I don't like mecha, but I'm working out so I can be buff enough to tattoo the entirety of One Hundred Years of Solitude on my back. So I mean. C'mon.
- Rick and Morty -- Fuck it, why not. Seasons one to three were great. I literally can't hate season four harder even if I try to. I have zero hopes left for season five. This would be an exploration of honesty and messaging and theming in storytelling, and I guess a deep dive into comedy and the density of writing or whatever?
Anyway -- you can sorta see the pattern here, right? Some of these I really love, others, not so much. Mostly stuff that's meaty enough that I have something to say on the matter, but also stuff that's relevant enough people will give a shit about. Like, don't get me wrong, I could write a fucking manifesto on Iruma, but like, four people would care about it. Gotta make it fun for you too.
So! That's the deal. Which one you think I should tackle, here? If left to my own devices I guess I'll just roll a dice or something, because I truly can't decide -- but since I'll be posting it here, I figured you folks would like to offer suggestions. Likewise, if you've got anything you feel I could look at and analyze, it'd be fun to hear it!
Please keep in mind this is not about me hating a story, or tearing it into pieces, though. The Attack on Titan reviews were very critical because I didn't like the show, but I do intend to do a genuine review of these things -- or, well, more like an analysis. I'm interested in the technical aspects of storytelling, see what works and what doesn't. This ain't a cynical Rage Review-like teardown of something I hate; I'm not into that. I was once, yes, but then I stopped being fifteen, y'see. Happens to us all.
Anyway. Back to work. Reviewing is fun cause I can just read the comic or watch the show in my off-time, and then writing it is putting my thoughts in order and slamming it out in two days; these days that's pretty much all I get to do, my schedule is crazy. Maybe I'll write a blog about it one of those days -- it'll be really funny, but like, in a Kafka, I-get-PMs-of-concerned-readers sorta way.
So my usual kind of humor, let's not gonna lie. I might also get an Amazon wishlist! Cause a friend keeps bullying me to get one already! But I probably won't! We'll see, we'll see.
For the time being, though, just tell me which series you'd like to see me review next time -- and see you around. And I really need to start posting these somewhere else so people can link em without linking to Fimfic.
I nominate my hero Academia first, because the superheroes in it. It does have more in common with a sports shower then normal superhero stuff, but it's still really good
Normally I would say JoJo, because I love JoJo. However, there's a good bit of it, and I personally think the really interesting story stuff that you'd actually want to sink your teeth into doesn't start to happen until part 4? So I'll say Eva instead, but if you do end up doing Jojo, maybe keep that in mind.
Takes a lot more than a year, for some people.
Gurren Lagann, no contest. It has the thematic depth of Evangelion while also actually being incredibly fun to watch due to having the same level of batshit insanity as Jojo. MHA and Rick and Morty would both work if you want to roast something less good, but after AoT, I'm guessing you'd rather re-experience something genuinely amazing. Then again, I might be a bit biased, considering I still think Gurren Lagann is one of the greatest single works mankind has ever produced.
Your takes on My Hero Academia are incredibly good and interesting, but I think trying to read it again from the beginning, knowing the direction it ends up this time, might actually frustrate you to death.
Jojos is like - it's Anime Axe Cop, essentially. I don't think you'd like it, but I also think you'd dislike it in a really boring way.
On the totally other hand, Evangelion has so much worth writing about and discussing, and rewatching it would be fantastic, but it's also got the most to say about it. Imagine how much you'd have to say about it. Then multiply it by at least four, because that's usually how much you're off by. Might be a problem.
My votes on Gurren Lagann or Rick and Morty. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how well Gurren Lagann aged, especially its visual composition, and I think Rick and Morty is extremely fun to dunk on for where it ended up, and Dan Harmon's a really interesting creator to go into. It's not often you can see a showrunner's slow descent into madness on a weekly podcast.
My top three to see from you would be:
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I think the first couple of episodes/seasons/chapters has a lot to do with sports, but it diverts hard into more Western super hero tropes hard in the recent stuff. I think if it just jumped hard into the themes of the series, which at its core is about I individuals wanting to do whatever they want versus those who don't, and a lot of stuff about the id, ego, and super ego, it could be really good, but it has to stop diddling around.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - my vote.
Eva! Mostly because I'm about to do my own rewatch and it'd be like comparing notes!
Guess that makes me number 5.
JoJo is practically a genre unto itself at this point. Possibly more than one. Seeing you tackle that would be like watching a man try to eat Mount Everest. As such, I'm going to have to vote for TTGL. It is so very endearingly ridiculous.
MHA would probs be best
it's wrapping up into a Naruto-esque shit show of a finale.
Really down for whatever you put out, but you might want to throw out a strawpoll in another blogpost to get some hard numbers you can stare at, instead of trolling the comments counting them up by hand, or going 'by feel'. Alternative suggestions notwithstanding, this should help a little bit.
My vote is for Rick and Morty because the show and the circumstances around it has got to be some sort of cautionary tale about how your own creation can turn on you and poison your whole life.
Otherwise, dealer's choice. Anything you chose should be illuminating (as well as entertaining.)
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Oh holy carp, you listened to Harmontown? Yeah... I went to the live show back when it was at the Castle a couple of times (when they were still playing D&D regularly (One of my sheep is named Patchins)), and the cringy power dynamic between the regulars fascinated me. I kept listening to the podcast as everything went down the Toilet of Emotions for anthropological reasons. Did Dan not listen to himself? Or...? You couldn't write that sort of thing as fiction; nobody would believe you.
Oh, what a difficult choice.
If I only have one (1) vote, it goes to Rick and Morty. I personally love reading analyses of works that people loved until something happened, since there is both a reason why people loved it in the first place, and a reason why people absolutely despise it now. Those things are just incredible for deep dives.
However, if this is a progressive voting system, here's my ranking:
1. Rick and Morty
Already talked about why I want this.
2. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Very similar reasoning, but also since I finally want to figure out why the fuck it had this ridiculous impact on internet culture that not even Rick and Morty had, and I do not want to watch it myself because to be completely honest it sounds like the complete opposite of what I'm into (sci-fi/slice-of-life).
3. Evangelion
I'm dead certain that you'll write more than 20k words if this one wins, and I do not know whether I should consider this a good thing or a bad thing. Also, I should probably finish it at some point. I've been stuck at episode 14(?) for about three years now, so I'd appreciate a heads-up if NGE wins.
4. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
This sounds so much like a thing I'd be into, but before this day I had never really heard of it.
5. My Hero Academia
Honestly, I have no idea why I'm so incredibly apathetic towards this choice. Judging purely from what you've said, I should love the thought of a critical analysis/rant on it. I've never seen or read AoT either, and yet I really liked your blog(s) about that one. Literally no idea.
Still, looking forward to this project no matter how it'll turn out in the end.
Ranked choice:
MHA
Rick
TTGL
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I experienced it the best possible way: By not listening to it personally, but listening to a friend who did enthusiastically summarize it for me in realtime and finding highlight clips. Before the Toilet, Harmon was their favourite working writer.
Felt like having someone else be my polarized lenses to watch the Trinity test through.
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Huh. That does sound like a much better way to do it!
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Number 6 here. I never really got into it but my relative adores that show.
I'd love to see TTGL (Would give me a great reason to re-watch this myself). Eva was one of the very first anime I ever watched and some friends and I do a yearly "impact" watch party where we marathon the entire show, so I'm pretty much a sucker for this option. MHA would be another good one as I've been reading that weekly since it came out.
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Bogleech described it as running on Kid Logic, which is saying pretty much the same thing. Jojo's is a bit better about having overarching plots as a result of not being written by an actual child, but it's otherwise exactly what you'd expect from a series that Japan considered worthy of having "bizarre" in the title.
I'm one of those 4. More specifically, number 3.
I haven’t watched any of those except from Eva as a teen. I hated the ending. I tried to watch GL, but the first episode was so bereft of anything interesting other than tits that I never bothered with the following episodes. So I’d love to see if you think it’s still worthwhile as an adult(?).
Jojo or #5, mostly because I haven't seen them.
No, seriously, I've already seen good discussion of TTGL and Evangelion (I mean, it'd be entertaining, no doubt, but I'd also like to be informed), and I want to watch MHA so I'd rather not be spoiled or have my opinions clouded if one day I ever do. :B
By the sound of it, I think MHA is your best bet. There's a lot of room to dig into the juxtaposition between a Japanese take on American-style comic book superheroes. Sounds like you've already watched it (or at least some of it), so that saves you some time, too.
Jojo is great, and it does some interesting stuff. Especially since it manages to avoid a lot of 'standard' shonen pitfalls, despite being one of the foundational fight mangas. It's worth watching, even if you're not gonna hammer out several thousand words ranting about it.
Gurren Lagann, of course, is RAD SHOUTY MAYHEM. And a direct response to Evangelion. Which ... I haven't finished watching yet, but eh. The weird thing about Eva is that a lot of the audience took away the EXACT WRONG MESSAGE from a lot of it, which is why you can buy Rei body pillows. Which, uh, has some similar parallels to brony fandom, which is why you can buy Rainbow Dash body pillows.
I've never really seen critical analysis of JJBA attempted (though maybe for lack of looking?)--I vote that one.
(And if we're being fancy, I'll follow up with TTGL and then NGE.)
My top vote is MHA. I feel like most critical analysis of the show is focused on Minetta and the sexualization of teenagers, which are obviously bad but almost feel tangential to the work itself. I only watched the first 3 seasons, but I don't see my issues with season 3 mentioned a whole lot and I'm curious to see what you think about that part of the manga and the parts I haven't seen.
I find Rick and Morty 2-4 to all be hit or miss, so I'm interested in why you hate 4 more than the previous two (and if that hatred extends to the vat of acid) and I'm always down to read more about the themes of Eva. I'm personally not that interested in the other 2 but I would read them anyway.
Opinions are fairly divided here about which of the five would be the best. I think each show would result in you producing blogs with different vibes and that if you can't spot a definite favorite across all of the comments then writing the vibe you're feeling may work out the best.
Evangelion - a drier, more serious analysis, probably.
TTGL - a fun analysis about how the show accomplishes things that excite you about it.
MHA - if you don't temper yourself, this could turn into the most ranty piece - certainly a fun, love/hate rant, but one where you might be challenged as a writer not technically but emotionally if you really want to make a serious analysis out of it rather than something where you're exploding with too much Ara Ara energy throughout the piece.
Jojo - I think this could result in you needing a whole 5 or 6 or 8 blogs to cover. It's fun! It's really long, though, at over 100 anime episodes, with at least 200 parts spanning some 100+ years of events. It could be interesting to tackle the paradigm shifts in genre that occur each part - part one wasn't my favorite, but then part two came in, kicking down the door as if iisaw himself had yelled "LET'S DO THIS" and took us on an incredibly fun, incredibly satisfying stupidly badass adventure for 16 some episodes and I absolutely adore how the straightlacing of Part One played into my absolute love for Part Two's opening and finale. I can't endorse the later parts as heavily, but the first 26 episodes of that show are glorious. It may be fun to watch (even on a second monitor and dubbed) rather than watch just for the sake of reviewing.
R&M - I think the question isn't, how interested in seriously reviewing Rick and Morty are you, its, how interested are you in reviewing Dan Harmon? A character study of how he went from totally disbelieving in the system as an author to totally embracing it. Could the same ever happen to you? Is there a number out there, of views and public sightings of your own work that would make you go, "huh, you know, my prose is actually pretty good, actually. It's really fantastic, people should have caught on to it earlier."
+1 vote to Eva for a serious review,
+1 vote to Jojo because its fun. Jojo is jokes.
I am unironically delighted to see that the comments of this blog are all over the place. Means I picked a strong selection of series! And ngl, feeling kinda vindicated to see that it wasn't just me being unable to decide -- it really is like, anything goes.
Anyway, I've seen a couple comments that seem to think I'm going to watch these series? I'm really not. I mean, Rick and Morty and TTGL and Eva, yes, since those are anime only -- but JoJo and MHA I would read instead, because I don't have the time nor the inclination to watch an entire series like that.
(I also just, can't stand anime. The anime voices drive me insane. I watch dubs, and even then I'll only manage Eva and TTGL cause nostalgia and I'm already used to them).
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Okay, to be fair, if I end up doing MHA I'm absolutely dedicating an entire section to Mineta, because Mineta fucking sucks and one has to point it out. That said, I definitely have other issues with MHA -- the paneling drives me insane, for example. I wouldn't just rant about Mineta for the entirety of the blog, but I would absolutely just bring it up and talk about it extensively. Hopefully saying stuff that's not utterly obvious, though -- "Mineta Bad" ain't exactly a hot take, or one deserving of much discussion. It's just true. Why Mineta Bad, though, there's meat there.
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Nah I honestly don't wanna do a strawpoll. It would give me harder numbers to look up? But I'm much more interested in the arguments of why people are voting for this or that. I honestly would rather go by vibe than by raw amount of votes. It's also more fun this way.
Part of me thinks that the MHA rant would lose something from people not being able to see the hand movements and tone of voice, but it is a fun one.
JoJo would be fun, but I'd only vote that one if you went through at least the first 5-6 (or more) arcs, which is a lot. Just seeing your reaction to how different things are as it changes between each arc could be real interesting.
R&M would be interesting just because I know absolutely nothing about the series and actually having someone take it apart and explain to me what it's about and why it is good/bad would be quite educational.
As far as the giant robot shows, already pretty much know the broad strokes so less interested in your take on those. Of course, that's a fairly privileged position and a blog post on the site would reach a lot more people than people who have heard your opinions several times before.
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Why does the sexualization of the teen characters in MHA stand out when a lot of other anime series do that also?
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It jumps out in those series too, and I'd point it out if I were reviewing something else (and if any of the series in here have that, that's indeed what I'll do).
Thing with MHA that makes it egregious though is that the entire concept and trend of sexualizing its characters tends to happen through Mineta. That character's entire deal is to sexually harass his classmates, which makes him incredibly annoying, he won't go away, and the author directly quoted Mineta as his self insert.
So it's not that MHA is the worst example of this, its just an incredibly uncomfortable case of it, and a good springboard to talk about the general issue of sexualizing minors that makes manga fucking unbearable at times. It's just explicit enough with Mineta that it makes it easy to talk about.
ayy romeo and juliet by dire straits, good song
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Good point, Master Roshi becomes a side character in Dragon Ball Z, and Jiriaya actually har an arc and some characterization beyond the gag. Now that I think about it Mineta has the tendency to pop up in the worse way possible in non-humorous scenes and ad pervert jokes.
My Hero Acadamia, please. I don't know any of the others, and your reviews are funny
I will nominate Evangelion. I watched it sometime in... college, I thing. It's beautifully drawn, has a ton of lore not shoved into the viewer's face, with metaphors and symbolism deep as the ocean. But the direction it takes at the end, besides really feeling like a left turn, also feels completely wrong from a morale standpoint. Like logically, it doesn't work at all with the nature of sentience or sensory input.
In fact, there's a ton about human nature I don't think the show understands. Like how pairing Shinji up with a verbally abusive partner is suppose to help him come out of his shell. In fact there's a ton about Asuka that screws up the entire story. Like the huge shift in tone from when she first shows up, or how Gendo is so mercantile with the other two pilots, but lets Asuka treat the whole operation like a high school soccer team.
And even I know a huge theme for the show is a teenage boy coming of age, it really feels like there's too much sexual shit going on with the underage girls.
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It's annoying and standout in it's own way because for one of the characters (Momo Yaoyorozu), the manga & anime try to spin her super-titilating swimsuit costume as being necessary for how her powers work. She's like a Star Trek replicator, and can make physical objects pop out of her skin as needed. But they give her no neckline whatsoever, her costume fitting her torso like a hotdog bun, with massive side-boob. She's totally pantsless, even though she never pulls anything out of her legs; certainly not so close to her butt. Also for some reason, she has a cargo shelf built right on top of her buttocks. (This same kind of deconstruction with basic logic also applies to Midnight, another heroine with skin-based powers who dresses and acts like a literal dominatrix).
The story even demonstrates the given reasoning is bull, and whatever she makes DOESN'T have to match the surface area of her skin. In one of her exams with Todoroki, she makes a catapult wider than her entire body. Going by the false logic presented at the start, even if she'd been 100% nude, she wouldn't have been able to do that.
It's like when Metal Gear made that sniper character, Quiet, dress like a stripper. Hideo Kojima tried to make up some sci-fi thing about her having plant DNA, and needing to breath through her skin.
Regardless of anything to do with Momo's powers, her boobs didn't need to be as thick as her skull. In fact, most all the female students have way bigger-than average breasts that can't be forced down with any bra, shirt, or any superhero costume (even though these costumes are presumably built with material meant to be stab-resistant). Manga is still carrying on the tradition of drawing boobs like water balloons that have been frozen solid, and stapled to a cork board.
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I was really surprised to hear that anyone was actually angry at Rick and Morty. Some people don't like think different seasons are way less better than others, and some people hate individual episodes (I use to have a chip on my shoulder about the Vindicators one). But I still enjoyed Season 3, and thought 4 was a step up. I've only seen the first 3 episodes of season 5 (my roommate and I have been recording them to watch together), but they've been cool.
I literally just started watched Neon Genesis Evangelion last week and finished it this week, so I'd be all for your review for it! Past that, I'd love to know what you think of Rick and Morty, with the new season coming out right now.
You have to have a very high IQ to fully appreciate the themes of Neon Genesis Evangeli--gunshot
Okay but seriously I'd love to see a critique of TTGL. I've seen a bit of it, I love what I've seen, I wanna know just how crazy metaphorical it all gets.
I really like MHA! That said, I would absolutely love to see it torn apart. Even the stuff about it you've hit on here in the comments is stuff I noticed and hated as well, and I would love to see your deeper critiques about the whole thing. Just because the show makes me dumb happy doesn't mean I don't want to see it dissected!
My second vote would be TTGL though. I have heard like five hour midnight conversations with multiple people about the themes of that show, and seeing your takes on it would be cool. A show that over-the-top is a bit hard to parse for me sometimes despite how absolutely wildly obvious it makes itself, and I like seeing others talk about what they took away from it.
Darn. I want to offer an opinion but it's actually really hard for me to choose.
I think I personally would be fascinated by your opinion of Jojo, though if you hate it I will have to disagree with you as respectfully as possible. It's... a series that, even taking the title into account, keeps surprising me with weird shit. That said, while the powers do get super weird, I love that there's a decent selection of them where the deal is "Your power does X. That's all it does. Now, figure out how to use X effectively", and it doesn't necessarily just degenerate into DBZ "oh look at this new badass power that's stronger than everything you've seen before" nonsense. (Which to be fair I also enjoy, just slightly less).
Might not necessarily be helpful to you, but I find it useful to look at Part 1 as "The Rise of DIO" rather than "Tale of the First Jojo". It's still the part I've rewatched/reread least, but... *shrug* Part 3 is where you start getting Stands which is when the really fun powers start happening, but... honestly, Part 2 is very fun to watch. I've been mostly watching the anime, and reading the manga afterward, so I can't really say much about anything after early Part 6.
If at all possible, try to find a colored version of the manga. It's way easier to parse what's happening with color. (At least for me.)
As for the other options... Rick and Morty is the only one I have effectively no familiarity with, and thus is the one I'm least interested in. TTGL is something I'm vaguely familiar with, from my husband putting it on in the background while doing other things, and it seemed reasonably entertaining. Didn't pay enough attention at the time to know much of the plot but I have faith in your ability to say intelligent and/or interesting things about it. Evangelion - actually, I'd love to see your take on it. Not too much for me to say, but the husband and I both actually like the original ending, and I think the angels are very cool, especially the particularly abstract ones. MHA I used to watch and then kind of stopped watching between seasons... don't really have much comment on it except to note that it also is sometimes a "Your power is X and only X. Figure out how to use that well" show.
I think you should write the Iruma manifesto, since I'm pretty confident you could make most anything fun for most people to read about, and we gotta bump them numbers.
But TTGL would be pretty cool to read about too, I suppose
I really want to read that Iruma manifesto though. There’s so much to talk about in this series, and it’s honestly one of my favorite mangas of all time.