Anime - coasting on emotion rollers

[HoonDing]

Saw the line "men can't get married" in City Hunter recently.

It slightly amused me thinking of the online rage it would cause today.

[LittleArmadillo0]

@Bartimaeus So far I'm really enjoying it. I'm normally not a fan of anthologies but from what I have seen each episode connects very well with one another. The editing and transitions of the show is so far is one of the biggest strengths of the series. It manages to blend reality with dust a dash of delusion. Knowing Kon's work I expect that delusion is going to get bigger as the series goes on.

 

32 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

what the actual **** lol

(also, this is not a good way to be introduced to her character, but still, lol)

unrelated, someone I know that knows I'm a sailor moon fan sent me this today:

  Reveal hidden contents

alright pal, I don't even watch this show, but sure, troll me with this smh

 

Those are some Leiji Matsumoto legs right there.

Spoiler

 

[majestic]

8 hours ago, LittleArmadillo0 said:

Those are some Leiji Matsumoto legs right there.

  Hide contents

 

Just to nitpick a bit... the proportions on the drawings are much better than the ones of the "beautiful giraffes" in Sailor Moon Crystal.

[majestic]

Managed to squeeze an episode of JoJo's in (my nephew always spends the weekends here, so there you go, can't watch JoJo's while he's around).

Spoiler

Wamuu died and Kars, to the surprise of absolutely no one, doesn't play fair. Good thing von Stroheim showed up again.

So instead we ended up watching Whisper of the Heart (1995), which @Bartimaeus mentioned just recently. Netflix apparently got the rights to Studio Ghibli films at some point (except for Grave of the Fireflies, which isn't available), and I figured with a script by Miyazaki and a director that isn't Takahata we'd be fairly safe from the soul crushing trauma that Takahata is so fond of. Turns out I was only half right.

I've seen some of Kondō's prior work (as animation director and character designer). He worked for Nippon Animation for a while, like Takahata and Miyazaki. Almost everything that was part of the 70ies and 80ies World Masterpiece Theater series aired here while I was a kid with enough time to spend watching TV all day long.

Just recently I have made my peace with how modern animation looks, or at least I thought I did. I said that Madoka looks fantastic, and it does, really. It makes good use of modern technology in a way that enhances the storytelling and while the character looks take some time to get used to (for me, anyway), they were part of that. Looking at both Perfect Blue and Whisper of the Heart, well, how can I possibly sit here and not comment on how much better traditional 2D animation looks?

Anyway, I'm not sure I need to say much about the film's plot. It is very honest and plays the coming of age and young romance archetypes as straight as they come, the story is simple (not to be confused with bad here, for the love of god) and very focused in scope... and it is told almost perfectly. Typical for much of Miyazaki's work is a certain, let's say, type of ending that isn't up there with the quality of the rest, although this is probably one of the better ones.

It's heartwarming and fun, looks gorgeous and while the runtime initially seems a little long, it never feels like it.

So what's with only being half right?
 

Spoiler

 

Shizuku's existential crisis after she finds out that Seiji wants to study lutherie in Italy (well, where else, right?), while she doesn't even know what to do with her life yet, was soul crushing for me. It wasn't truly meant to be, I guess, but with all the time I've spent navel gazing in this thread (and its predecessors) in the wake of rewatching Sailor Moon, I just wanted to yell at the TV and tell her that she's only 14 and doesn't need to figure out everything already.

Enjoy your childhood Shizuku, it doesn't come back. Reality will catch up with you sooner than later anyway. Make the best of it while you can.

 

 

[LittleArmadillo0]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

Just to nitpick a bit... the proportions on the drawings are much better than the ones of the "beautiful giraffes" in Sailor Moon Crystal.

Yeah and its one of the reasons I love his art style so much. His women are all very long and slender but they are all proportioned very nicely.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Managed to squeeze an episode of JoJo's in (my nephew always spends the weekends here, so there you go, can't watch JoJo's while he's around).

 

Sailor Moon should have taught you not to trust dudes with horns. 

And I think by now you have seen one of the weirder things in Battle Tendency, Kars air guitaring on Lisa Lisa's legs.

Edited May 9, 2021 by ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Netflix apparently got the rights to Studio Ghibli films at some point (except for Grave of the Fireflies, which isn't available)

Grave of the Fireflies has weird licensing differences from all(?) of the rest of Ghibli's stuff due to some oddities in how it was initially funded/distributed, I believe.

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Just recently I have made my peace with how modern animation looks, or at least I thought I did. I said that Madoka looks fantastic, and it does, really. It makes good use of modern technology in a way that enhances the storytelling and while the character looks take some time to get used to (for me, anyway), they were part of that. Looking at both Perfect Blue and Whisper of the Heart, well, how can I possibly sit here and not comment on how much better traditional 2D animation looks?

No kidding. While you may attempt to make your peace with it, I certainly won't - yet another reason almost everything I look into and am interested in is invariably pre-2000s, .

Spoiler

Whisper of the Heart is, IMO, the absolute height of Ghibli animation - the more realistic yet still definitely anime character designs are exactly my jam, the gorgeous and grounded backgrounds and cityscapes, the sheer level of detail and vividity on everything...while also making room for the rare and delightful fantastical scenes, oh my gosh. Actually, from what I recall reading of how people felt about this movie, apparently advertising used the small amount of fantastical stuff in this movie heavily(?), which gave a misleading impression for what this movie was about - some people ended up not liking it as much because they expected a classic Ghibli fairytale adventure, meanwhile I'm sitting here watching this thinking this is literally THE perfect movie - gorgeous, utterly grounded, simple yet perfect humanistic/life-dealing plot and themes, has some fantastic use of in-world music and singing, its very unusual and yet sublime way of being able to have some fantastical stuff going on while keeping everything utterly grounded... The main character herself is...gosh, I actually am legitimately having trouble describing all the different ways this movie is just...like it honestly feels like it was made for me, it has just about everything I'd ever ask of a film. The main character herself is the absolute perfect avatar for the viewer (or at least myself!) while still having her own fun little traits and eccentricities and...just, her desperately trying to figure out what she's doing with her life is...yeah.

I only really have two mild criticisms that I could levy at the film. One is that the ending is played as straight and predictably as it possibly could without really any even little surprises or twists and so it sort of just...ends as is completely typical for Miyazaki. It's not bad by any means, but it does feel a little bit of a letdown compared to...literally the rest of the film. It's an ending that makes sense given how straightforward the entire plot really is, but for some reason that doesn't feel like an issue for the rest of the movie. The other is that I don't think Seiji is a particularly strong character, but I kind of almost am perfectly fine with that, just because it leaves him as a perfectly realistic yet still decently likable character that serves as a sort of foil to Shizuku's own self-perceived weaknesses while also not getting in the way of her own deeply personal story. It helps that you also have the grandpa character, whose name escapes me, who kind of makes up for whatever Seiji doesn't add himself by stepping in with his own problems and worldviews to help balance and play off of Shizuku's...

It's such a simple movie, but deceivingly so - everything works together so, so well. It's as close to a perfect movie for myself as I've ever seen, and I guess that's why it's my favorite movie of all time. The only other Ghibli movie that gets close to it is Only Yesterday. Oddly, both of these movies didn't hit me as hard upon my initial viewings of them - I was more focused on the artistry and simply the literal plot that I didn't notice a lot of the character-specific elements and themes as much until a second viewing. That sort of makes sense - I'm not a big themes person as I've said before, and these two are absolutely chock-full of them that would resonate perfectly with me if I would just notice them, .

 

[majestic]

6 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

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Sailor Moon should have taught you not to trust dudes with horns. 

And I think by now you have seen one of the weirder things in Battle Tendency, Kars air guitaring on Lisa Lisa's legs.

I'm finally done with Battle Tendency. That certainly was a ride and a half, and that ending...

Spoiler

Launching Kars into space like that was hilarious. Guess being an immortal perfect being isn't so interesting any more now. Kars playing the air guitar on her legs was pretty weird indeed. Von Stroheim dying in Stalingrad was a bit of a letdown though.

Netflix also has Stardust Crusaders, but it'll be a while before I begin with that. I really need to wrap other things up that I've started, ideally before Sailor Moon Eternal hits. It's already impossible to wrap stuff up before Castlevania comes out anyway...

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

28 minutes ago, majestic said:

I'm finally done with Battle Tendency. That certainly was a ride and a half, and that ending...

  Reveal hidden contents

Launching Kars into space like that was hilarious. Guess being an immortal perfect being isn't so interesting any more now. Kars playing the air guitar on her legs was pretty weird indeed. Von Stroheim dying in Stalingrad was a bit of a letdown though.

Netflix also has Stardust Crusaders, but it'll be a while before I begin with that. I really need to wrap other things up that I've started, ideally before Sailor Moon Eternal hits. It's already impossible to wrap stuff up before Castlevania comes out anyway...

 

Stardust Crusaders is one hell of a ride you'll want to stick with, so I'd wait to clear out the other stuff on your list before starting it.

The whole ending was great, and right after they do the epilog (where even Smokey shows up lmao) we get to see Joesph as an old man beat up a guy at the air port.

"I hate the Japanese!  ....but I do like my Walkman."

Man it's great. Took you long enough lmao, when you said you wanted to launch your nephew's youtubers into space with no chance of return I almost thought you skipped ahead and saw Kars getting frozen in space.

[majestic]

  

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Grave of the Fireflies has weird licensing differences from all(?) of the rest of Ghibli's stuff due to some oddities in how it was initially funded/distributed, I believe.

That explains it. It's okay though, I have it on blu ray. My attempts to troll others into thinking it is a cute kid's film kind of failed so far, but I'll keep trying. Someone will bite, eventually!
 

Spoiler

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Whisper of the Heart is, IMO, the absolute height of Ghibli animation - the more realistic yet still definitely anime character designs are exactly my jam, the gorgeous and grounded backgrounds and cityscapes, the sheer level of detail and vividity on everything...while also making room for the rare and delightful fantastical scenes, oh my gosh.

It looks fantastic, and still in the style of earlier anime while being anime. It's animation like this that is by far and large the reason why I've always prefered Japanese over Western animation - not necessarily only in anime, there are a few French and German shows that were animated in Japan. The TV versions obviously never reached the level of detail a Ghibli film with a film budget has, of course (let alone one that was made as well as Whisper of the Heart), but it's still leap and bounds ahead of anything else than ran on TV at the time, or dare I say it, the... creations that my nephew watches, whenever he is not watching the YouTube moron brigade play games.

There's a level of artistry and dedication present in the animation of Whisper of the Heart that I don't think I've ever seen in any Western equivalent, not even in Disney movies.

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Actually, from what I recall reading of how people felt about this movie, apparently advertising used the small amount of fantastical stuff in this movie heavily(?), which gave a misleading impression for what this movie was about - some people ended up not liking it as much because they expected a classic Ghibli fairytale adventure, meanwhile I'm sitting here watching this thinking this is literally THE perfect movie - gorgeous, utterly grounded, simple yet perfect humanistic/life-dealing plot and themes, has some fantastic use of in-world music and singing, its very unusual and yet sublime way of being able to have some fantastical stuff going on while keeping everything utterly grounded...

I tried looking for trailers on YouTube, and there is one, that by far and large gives off the impression that this will be something like Alice in Wonderland, with Shizuku and Seiji running off with a white rabbit the Baron. Baffling choice, when the movie isn't fantastic - in the fantasy sense - at all, except for the parts that are there so we can see what Shizuku's story is about (and technically an animation error that might be a magic item in Shirō Nishi's shop and a cat that can ride the train).

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The main character herself is...gosh, I actually am legitimately having trouble describing all the different ways this movie is just...like it honestly feels like it was made for me, it has just about everything I'd ever ask of a film. The main character herself is the absolute perfect avatar for the viewer (or at least myself!) while still having her own fun little traits and eccentricities and...just, her desperately trying to figure out what she's doing with her life is...yeah.

The moment the film opened, her sitting there reading books and writing lyrics for a Japanese version of Country Roads... heh, I might have loudly said "Oh, I get it", felt like a Sailor Moon discussion recap after Ami's power up episode in SuperS. What an amazing choice of music too. I'm not exactly what you'd call a fan of country music. My musical tastes are somewhat narrow, and way too focused on vocalists, but Country Roads is the sort of timeless classic that is simply perfect even if it is a genre I generally don't like.

Like the German version of Roger Whittaker's Albany. My parents often listened to music like that, and I... hated all of it. Except this one.

It's funny how different the lyrics are. The English verison is a bog standard English vs. Scots story, while the German version is an incredibly melancholic story of two brothers that lost everything because they fell in love with the same woman.

Yay for tangents.

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I only really have two mild criticisms that I could levy at the film. One is that the ending is played as straight and predictably as it possibly could without really any even little surprises or twists and so it sort of just...ends as is completely typical for Miyazaki. It's not bad by any means, but it does feel a little bit of a letdown compared to...literally the rest of the film. It's an ending that makes sense given how straightforward the entire plot really is, but for some reason that doesn't feel like an issue for the rest of the movie. The other is that I don't think Seiji is a particularly strong character, but I kind of almost am perfectly fine with that, just because it leaves him as a perfectly realistic yet still decently likable character that serves as a sort of foil to Shizuku's own self-perceived weaknesses while also not getting in the way of her own deeply personal story. It helps that you also have the grandpa character, whose name escapes me, who kind of makes up for whatever Seiji doesn't add himself by stepping in with his own problems and worldviews to help balance and play off of Shizuku's...

I have to admit that I spent a chunk of the movie being afraid that Seiji's grandfather might die, potentially even before Shizuku finishes her story, or Seiji comes back from Italy.

Seiji is fine the way he is. Funny, I've been sitting here now for a while to come up with something to write about him, but I can't. I could repeat what you wrote, but that would be pointless. He works perfectly fine for what he was intended to do - just like Shizuku's sister and her parents who aren't thrilled with her choices but let her figure it out on her own. Contrast that with Usagi whose mother threw her out for similar grades (ok, that's a joke, by far and large).  

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's such a simple movie, but deceivingly so - everything works together so, so well. It's as close to a perfect movie for myself as I've ever seen, and I guess that's why it's my favorite movie of all time. The only other Ghibli movie that gets close to it is Only Yesterday. Oddly, both of these movies didn't hit me as hard upon my initial viewings of them - I was more focused on the artistry and simply the literal plot that I didn't notice a lot of the character-specific elements and themes as much until a second viewing. That sort of makes sense - I'm not a big themes person as I've said before, and these two are absolutely chock-full of them that would resonate perfectly with me if I would just notice them, .

I have yet to see Only Yesterday.

Many films that I would consider a favorite of mine are fairly simple. Simple in itself is perfectly fine, and here it is done so well. The character elements were what made me incredibly melancholic while I watched it. I've spent the film past the 20 or so minute mark half watching, half going over my own life (the navel gazing I mentioned).

Shizuku spends the first part of the film doing what any regular 14 year old should be doing, only to... find crisis by meeting someone who, apparently, has figured everything out he wants to do already. Which is what I was, at that age. I mean, not even at that age, even long before. My personal crisis came later when I realized that there's no chance in hell that I'll ever finish my studies and was unsure how to proceed. I lucked out, by far and large.

So, she did all the things I never could for various reasons, only to find something to obsess over and turn into a proto version of myself. At least at the end she realizes that she still needs more time, but that was... really uncomfortable on a meta level. It's not the film's fault, but I spent a while after watching it not being able to fall asleep, stuck in nostalgic melancholy. Hence the yelling at the TV.

Anyway, it might really be the best animated film I've seen so far. One of the best films, even. It's really impressive, but I also don't think I'll be watching this again any time soon - if at all. For entirely different reasons as Perfect Blue or Grave of the Fireflies, of course, but still.

 

 

[majestic]

1 hour ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Stardust Crusaders is one hell of a ride you'll want to stick with, so I'd wait to clear out the other stuff on your list before starting it.

 

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The whole ending was great, and right after they do the epilog (where even Smokey shows up lmao) we get to see Joesph as an old man beat up a guy at the air port.

"I hate the Japanese!  ....but I do like my Walkman."

Man it's great. Took you long enough lmao, when you said you wanted to launch your nephew's youtubers into space with no chance of return I almost thought you skipped ahead and saw Kars getting frozen in space.

 

That was apparently a happy accident. That only took me so long because of a combination of lockdowns, workload and accessibility. Wedging Steven Universe in between was much easier, I spent all my time on the computer anyway.

Although I did watch Battle Tendency a lot quicker than the fewer episodes of Phantom Blood where I paused for a while between the first, second and third episodes. Actually watched the first one before we started talking about Sailor Moon... before you mentioned it. Not sure why, it was a Netflix suggestion coming off of watching Devil Man Crybaby. 

It's also really weird in a way, I don't have much to say about it. It was a wild ride, and utterly insane, but... well, that's it? How DO you describe that?

[Bartimaeus]

Spoiler

gosh dang it took so long to get this spoiler to work - it was doing a new thing where I was highlighting my text to try to spoiler it, and then it just straight up deleted everything I had tried to spoiler by replacing it with the spoiler - good golly do I miss manual bbcode tags where I could just write [.spoiler] and [./spoiler] minus the periods exactly where I wanted them and it just worked

2 hours ago, majestic said:

The moment the film opened, her sitting there reading books and writing lyrics for a Japanese version of Country Roads... heh, I might have loudly said "Oh, I get it", felt like a Sailor Moon discussion recap after Ami's power up episode in SuperS. What an amazing choice of music too. I'm not exactly what you'd call a fan of country music. My musical tastes are somewhat narrow, and way too focused on vocalists, but Country Roads is the sort of timeless classic that is simply perfect even if it is a genre I generally don't like.

 Yeah. Plus, they used the Olivia Newton-John version, which is...well, much better than the John Denver IMO, but that might just be me. Apparently, that version was the most popular in Japan for whatever reason - more popular in Japan than anywhere else, in fact. No doubt why they used it - good fortune for me, .

2 hours ago, majestic said:

t looks fantastic, and still in the style of earlier anime while being anime. It's animation like this that is by far and large the reason why I've always prefered Japanese over Western animation - not necessarily only in anime, there are a few French and German shows that were animated in Japan. The TV versions obviously never reached the level of detail a Ghibli film with a film budget has, of course (let alone one that was made as well as Whisper of the Heart), but it's still leap and bounds ahead of anything else than ran on TV at the time, or dare I say it, the... creations that my nephew watches, whenever he is not watching the YouTube moron brigade play games.

There's a level of artistry and dedication present in the animation of Whisper of the Heart that I don't think I've ever seen in any Western equivalent, not even in Disney movies.

There are some stretches I can think of in Disney movies where I think it can get close, but on the whole? No - if you pay attention, you'll start to notice more and more blemishes as well as shortcuts that they took, whether it be character expressions and movement, static background vs. active foreground animation, inconsistency in how characters look from scene to scene...not to mention that in most of Disney's 90s titles, which is what we'd be looking at in comparison to Whisper of the Heart, they invariably have Very Bad, No Good, Terrible usage of early CGI that is like getting slapped in the face every time it rears its ugly head. Not to mention just...aesthetic differences. Disney's cartoon aesthetics are...well, they're cartoons by and large; with some of the absolute top-notch anime styles, I don't know, they just hit differently. And with a film like Whisper of the Heart, there are certainly little shortcuts and simplifications here and there, but they're only where they perfectly fit and you have to be actively looking for them to register at all. Gorgeous.

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I have to admit that I spent a chunk of the movie being afraid that Seiji's grandfather might die, potentially even before Shizuku finishes her story, or Seiji comes back from Italy.

Thankfully, what they did with him having his own sad little story was so much better than that while also being less expected, .

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Many films that I would consider a favorite of mine are fairly simple. Simple in itself is perfectly fine, and here it is done so well. The character elements were what made me incredibly melancholic while I watched it. I've spent the film past the 20 or so minute mark half watching, half going over my own life (the navel gazing I mentioned).

When I first watched it, I was like "that was great!"...but didn't spend much time thinking about the themes or characters, so even though it was obviously great, it kind of didn't occupy my mind for very long. Probably like half a year later, I ended up re-watching it with another person, and it just shattered me. I was very emotional (both happy and sad) through a lot of it for many of the same reasons as you, and finished it in a sort of an exhausted daze. It was a profound experience that disconnected from reality for a while, to say the least. I had definitely failed to realize how utterly spot-on Shizuku was as a protagonist and all the themes and struggles to go along with her on my first viewing. Magical movie. I'm incredibly thankful for the few grounded explorations of the human soul Ghibli made; the more fantastical adventure stuff can be great too, but I'll always place the stuff that really hits you where it hurts higher.

I couldn't understand the song, but it didn't sound half-bad to me for being completely outside of my tastes, .

Edited May 10, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Sailor Moon... Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!

Spoiler

"My favorite food is sandwiches" I have a picture that says otherwise, Ami:

Minako just had the worst misquote..."Love is too short, so buy some heels!". That's not even clever...and it still made me laugh. The subtitles say she said "life is short, love is a battle", which doesn't even really sound like a misquote, just something so utterly generic and senseless that it'd be pointless to say and wouldn't really seem to warrant the reaction from the other girls, so I'm glad they rewrote it to be more absurdist, haha.

Chibi-Usa didn't say anything for so long in this scene that I didn't even notice she was there until she fearfully said "okay..." to Ami turning into a Nazi.

No, really, it's Nazi!Ami:

lmao this is some of the best characterization Ami has received the entire show, if admittedly only on a funny and visual level

the animation in this special is spectacular

HOLY COW, IT'S NARU AND UMINO! I'm glad they got one last appearance where they DIDN'T look like horrid replicant monster mash versions of themselves.

Usagi's lookin' kinda different here.

Luna narrating randomly throughout this is kinda odd.

Okay, actually, I was mostly joking earlier about this being Ami's best characterization in the entire show, but now they're actually playing her crush on Mercurius as forcibly destroying her brain and capacity to learn/remember, so who knows, maybe this is really the best.

lmao, hell of a rewrite of Chibi-Usa's line here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/emrw3bjzwsfk3q1/PYNVnjiSuL.mp4

I forgot this is technically SuperS up until the credits song. Man, this episode and the movies really make me wish the entire series had been made in glorious HD. Oh well, . This means...I only have two more specials left until I've truly well and seen everything of note in Sailor Moon. Kind of wish each of the four non-Usagi characters (and maybe even Chibi-Usa) had a special like this - this was better than anything in all of SuperS, even the dentist episode, which while very fun and well-written, still kind of misses what Sailor Moon is about for as weird and wacky as it is.

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 hours ago, majestic said:

How DO you describe that?

I have watched every season of JoJo as well as the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan spinoff and honestly? I have no idea. You could summarize it as an action adventure story with a flair for the dramatic and blatant homoerotism that focuses on members of a particular family who have supernatural powers. And that would be accurate enough (if downplaying just how....suggestive the show can be).

But how does that capture even a quarter of the things that went on in the first season of the show? From that would you be able to guess about Nazi cyborgs? Chariot Duels? Thunder Cross Split Attack? It's very difficult to explain without spoiling a lot and really long explanations....and even then it's something you have to see to really get. I usually just recommend it as a very weird show that goes places, and so far everyone I've got to try it liked it.

I think you'll like Stardust Crusaders a lot, even if it departs from Battle Tendency in a lot of ways.

Spoiler

There's a World of difference between Dio and DIO (he starts calling himself DIO in part 3, and it's spelled with English characters in the manga and credits) as well, and without spoiling anything Stardust Crusaders features a final move that is a glorious meme. Even better than Space Ripper Stingy Eyes.

29 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Sailor Moon... Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!

  Hide contents

"My favorite food is sandwiches" I have a picture that says otherwise, Ami:

Minako just had the worst misquote..."Love is too short, so buy some heels!". That's not even clever...and it still made me laugh. The subtitles say she said "life is short, love is a battle", which doesn't even really sound like a misquote, just something so utterly generic and senseless that it'd be pointless to say and wouldn't really seem to warrant the reaction from the other girls, so I'm glad they rewrote it to be more absurdist, haha.

Chibi-Usa didn't say anything for so long in this scene that I didn't even notice she was there until she fearfully said "okay..." to Ami turning into a Nazi.

No, really, it's Nazi!Ami:

lmao this is some of the best characterization Ami has received the entire show, if admittedly only on a funny and visual level

the animation in this special is spectacular

HOLY COW, IT'S NARU AND UMINO! I'm glad they got one last appearance where they DIDN'T look like horrid replicant monster mash versions of themselves.

Usagi's lookin' kinda different here.

Luna narrating randomly throughout this is kinda odd.

Okay, actually, I was mostly joking earlier about this being Ami's best characterization in the entire show, but now they're actually playing her crush on Mercurius as forcibly destroying her brain and capacity to learn/remember, so who knows, maybe this is really the best.

lmao, hell of a rewrite of Chibi-Usa's line here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/emrw3bjzwsfk3q1/PYNVnjiSuL.mp4

I forgot this is technically SuperS up until the credits song. Man, this episode and the movies really make me wish the entire series had been made in glorious HD. Oh well, . This means...I only have two more specials left until I've truly well and seen everything of note in Sailor Moon.

 

The hamburger picture remains one of the funniest moments in Sailor Moon lmao. Majestic will appreciate Ami cosplaying as Von Stroheim.

Spoiler

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Spoiler

I forgot this is technically SuperS up until the credits song. Man, this episode and the movies really make me wish the entire series had been made in glorious HD. Oh well, . This means...I only have two more specials left until I've truly well and seen everything of note in Sailor Moon. Kind of wish each of the four non-Usagi characters (and maybe even Chibi-Usa) had a special like this - this was better than anything in all of SuperS, even the dentist episode, which while very fun and well-written, still kind of misses what Sailor Moon is about for as weird and wacky as it is.

 

 

Spoiler

 

I think part of the reason why the other side stories weren't turned into specials was that they don't really fit in so well with the anime characters. Rei's background sidestory features a romance with a protegé of her father that eventually drops her like a piece of hot coal the moment he finds someone better (i.e. of higher social standing and making better connections than Rei's father) to marry. This is then where her misgivings towards men come from.

Misgivings she doesn't have at all in the anime, where she's as boy-happy as the other girls (even Ami, right, Ami? Sure looked at Seiya hoping that Chibi-Chibi succeds in pulling away his towel).

Minako on the other hand goes and ruins Rei's school festival, this was already in SuperS and shifted towards Makoto. Minako and Rei butting heads every now and then in the manga makes more sense than Minako and Makoto (or any of the combinations in the anime), because they're just much more different, with Rei being super serious all the time and Minako increasingly goofy.

Makoto's side story is about the death of her parents, something that was picked up for Sailor Stars.

So Ami was the only one to get a character special because it fit in the anime and we can't ever do anything nice for Makoto.

Doesn't mean they couldn't have made an original side special, but it is what it is.

 

 

[majestic]

7 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

Spoiler

"My favorite food is sandwiches" I have a picture that says otherwise, Ami:

 

 

Spoiler

 

Because I forgot... well, Ami was seen eating sandwiches very early on, in one of the episodes where Usagi is dying of hunger and looking for Ami, and she had just eaten her last sandwich, and it's not too uncommon for hambugers to be referred to as sandwiches outside of the US (and, obviously, German speaking countries).

Giving that picture away is classic Usagi.

 

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Giving that picture away is classic Usagi.

It was perfect. Ussgi just happens to have a picture of Ami eating, and gives it to a guy that has a crush on Ami. Most other characters that'd read like sabotage but with Usagi it's just her classic combination of social awkwardness and being helpful. Lmao.

[majestic]

2 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

It was perfect. Ussgi just happens to have a picture of Ami eating, and gives it to a guy that has a crush on Ami. Most other characters that'd read like sabotage but with Usagi it's just her classic combination of social awkwardness and being helpful. Lmao.

You know, you're making me want to rewatch Sailor Moon.  

Right from the start Usagi is a kind-hearted girl that tries to help even a random cat on the street while already being too late but has absolutely no idea how to behave with any sort of social grace, let alone being capable of navigating the much stricter social norms of Japan. She even complains about Naru when she calls her out it ("You're my friend, you're supposed to understand!").

Of course she gives Ryo that picture. It doesn't even dawn on her that it might embarrass Ami. For her that's just a cute picture of her friend and there's not the slightest hint of malice in her giving it to Ryo.

I was looking for pictures of episode 27 (because that's where the hamburger munching picture shows up, and it even is one of the best episodes in the entire run) and stumbled upon blog entries and people misreading things to a point where... oh boy. More on this later. Much more!

 

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

You know, you're making me want to rewatch Sailor Moon.  

Right from the start Usagi is a kind-hearted girl that tries to help even a random cat on the street while already being too late but has absolutely no idea how to behave with any sort of social grace, let alone being capable of navigating the much stricter social norms of Japan

Just hope she stays away from squirrels.

[Bartimaeus]

when did snake become a security guard

[majestic]

I'll spoiler most of this post for the benefit of @LittleArmadillo0 , the first time should be experienced mostly unguided.

The varied subtleties of Sailor Moon's characters, or: Why it pays off to read between the lines

An examination of sights unseen, and meanings unknown.
 

Spoiler

 

Part 1: An intro to the deliberately hidden meaning(s) of Sailor Moon

Contra spem spero.

You might be thinking this is Ami at her happiest, but then you'd only do a surface reading. Do you not see the existential dread in this scene? Look at the sun and the coulds, and how Ami tries to touch them, forever out of reach. Much like she needs to come to terms with the fact that her duty as Sailor Guardian will eventually mean that she can't possibly become the doctor she aspires to be.

Collige virgo rosas.

You might think she likes Ryo. Far from it. This is only meant to hide the despair that she can't ever have love. It's a disaster, and so beautifully rendered. Who needs to shed tears when they can pretend to be happy? Really, this is so wonderful.

Concordia parvae res crescunt.

The train in this scene is departing with Ami's hopes and dreams for the future. Usagi and Makoto look the part, they already know what Ami is currently experiencing. Makoto most of all, after she realized that she can't possibly be with her senpai and left him. You don't really buy into her being dumped, right? That's just the way she copes. Ryo never comes back, not because it was impossible to give Ami a boyfriend in the show's framework. Love is the death of duty, and so even he must do his part, for the good of the world. It's heartwarming to see the dedication in these 14 year olds.

Part 2: What's in a screencap?

Cor ad cor loquitur.

It's really amazing how good this show looks when it looks good, don't you think?

One of the things that we can potentially criticize about Sailor Moon is that the meaning of scenes are hidden behind small clues. Blink once during an episode, and you might miss them. On the other hand, for us veteran viewers of one of the most influential and fun animes of all time, we get to discover new things every time we (re)watch the show. As such, a casual viewer might only experience the surface level of what is going on. The absolute beauty of the anime is that this is actually enough to make for a wonderful experience.

However, let me guide you towards a deeper understanding, so you will appreciate this even more.

Take Makoto and her relationship with rain over the course of the show. Whenever we see her standing out in the rain, on the surface, the scene looks as if she's sad, melancholic or maybe reflecting on something. However, it goes way beyond that.

Causa latet, vis est notissima.

Can you see how she cries tears of joy? Rain is important to Makoto, because it will always remind her of that time when she freed herself from the attachments to the world, and became free of worldy burdens.

Compos mentis, concilio et labore.

In this scene, she looks happy on the surface. We know this from the part of SuperS when Tiger's-Eye comes back for her, and for one brief moment Makoto believes that he actually really came back beause he's interested in her.

Much deeper hidden here, is one other thing: Makoto's anguish. She's spent the entire night outside, in the rain, trying to chastise herself for a moment of weakness, where she forsook her fellow Guardians to dance with a ginger foreigner with a lot of fangirls. It's great how almost every shot has an inverted true meaning.

Part 3: The exceptions - scenes with no surface level reading

There are, of course, exceptions. Sometimes, the anime actually shows us just what was intended in the hidden layer beneath it all, with no apparent surface reading. I'll give you a few examples.

Cor unum.

In this scene Minako and Usagi are, I think, expressing a certain attraction to someone else. It's not at all clear because it is so subtle, one is very likely to miss it. I've seen the entire anime twice now, and certain parts a few more times for essays and posts on forums, and even I am not sure what exactly is going on here. As such attraction to someone is my best guess. It might be something else, like them really wanting a cup of tea, perhaps.

On the other hand, it could also mean that their heart rate is elevate due to some physically exhausting activity, like stalking Haruka.

Credo quia absurdum est.

This perhaps demonstrates that Makoto is really strong. There's another scene in this episode that corroborates that reading a bit:

Carpe noctem.

She's lifting the monster above her head, and isn't even transformed yet. This is shortly before her awakening as Sailor Jupiter. The most credence to the hidden meaning here, namely that Makoto is super strong even in civilian form, comes from the fact that shortly after this she is revealed to be a big fan of Sailor Moon, and she is of course subconsciously aware of her duty to her princess. This duty is what gives her the power to unleash her full potential.

The problem is of course that the first scene might also just as well be her trying to stop three people from Right Said Fred's I'm too sexy music video from accidentially tripping over Usagi and failing. It looks like she's throwing them around for a bit, but that's merely beause she hasn't unlocked her potential yet. She does that later, in the monster scene, right?

Then, of course, there is this:

Condemnant quod non intellegunt.

I have, to this day, not a single idea what this is supposed to represent, other than a man in a tuxedo, in a cherry blossom tree. Cherry blossom trees, by the way, belong to the rose family. As such, it's possible that this scene means Tuxedo Mask's love for Sailor Moon is blooming like a field of flowers.

Or perhaps it's because cherry blossoms are a huge spectacle in Japan. Seeing a hidden meaning behind the hidden meaning, locked behind cultural knowledge of the creators? Wow, that's like, too deep even for me. For that, it would take Japanese scholars that studied Sailor Moon for years. Ah, what I would not give for a moment to talk with one of them.

However, for myself, I've come to the conlcusion that this scene simply does not matter.

Melius abundare quam deficere.

Cousins on the surface, lesbians underneath, I think. It's not really clear. Did you know that offspring between cousins only have a .4% higher chance of being afflicted with birth defects than the children of a regular couple? That means becoming pregnant after the age of 35 puts your unborn child at more risk than making babies with your cousin at the age of 20. Not that this is relevant for the two, they're not very liable to produce offspring on their own. I think that's why they adopt Hotaru. I mean, on the surface, that's because Hotaru is a super powerful being capable of ending existence in an instant, but we always have to look beyond what is on the surface, right?

Meliorem lapsa locavit.

Ah, look at the two. What a beautiful gay relationship between villains. Or at least that is how I interpret the two. I'm not sure, because often the voice actors for Zoisite were women. Censorship or gender fluidity? You decide, because that one is really up for interpretation!

Part 4: Why does that matter?

Becuse it is...

 

Indeed. Because only by seeing behind the veil of the surface level reading can we come to a proper conclusion from this one scene here:

Cor meum tibi offero Ami prompte et sincere.

As I lack the eloquence to properly say what this conveys, I shall paraphrase Charles Darwin:

Thus, from the war of feelings, from shared hardships and friendship, the most exalted emotion which we are capable of conceiving, namely, love, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of Sailor Moon, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this anime has gone running on in syndication, from so simple a beginning endless readings most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, interpreted.

Part 5: What the hell?

Yes, that's exactly what I thought too when I saw this picture offered as proof that Makoto loves Ami earlier today. Because, of course, Sailor Moon is incredibly subtle in expressing when people care for each other, and with the times being what they were, any form of homosexuality had to be put into the show with the utmost care, hidden in subtext. Because, of course, there's the hidden meaning behind the surface level reading: Ami is showing Makoto something while studying that she has a hard time understanding can't possibly be all there is to this, right?

There's also one other reading for this screencap. This is Makoto feeling uncomfortable whenever someone actually, unironically, ships her with Ami. Not only is there absolutely nothing, nothing in Sailor Moon that would hint at this, there isn't even any need for subtext at all. Makoto just hates you shippers because if she actually would be a lesbian, it would ruin one of the most unique and lovable  characters that were ever created.

Makoto already got the short end of the stick as the only girl of the main cast whose character arc arguably remains incomplete. It does not need your f*ckwittery to make everything worse. Pardon the language.

Thus always to shippers: In the words of my generation, up yours!

 

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by majestic
I should really proofread these things...

[Bartimaeus]

I was so confused as to what the hell you were on about until I finally got to the end. I forgot that there was an anti-shipper context to all of this until then, so it had really looked like you'd finally completely lost it. The rest of the post makes so much more sense now...

I'm surprised Darwin was a Sailor Moon fan, but I guess when you know it, you know it, and he obviously knew it.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

4 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I was so confused as to what the hell you were on about until I finally got to the end. I forgot that there was an anti-shipper context to all of this until then, so it had really looked like you'd finally completely lost it. The rest of the post makes so much more sense now...

I'm surprised Darwin was a Sailor Moon fan, but I guess when you know it, you know it, and he obviously knew it.

 I think I just woke the neighbors with my laughter.

Fun fact, this isn't the first time someone posted a comment like that. In one of the few threads I made, almost 16 years ago now, where I copied a collection of Turkish stereotype jokes that I received by e-mail, someone posted as a response:

Quote

Finally. Proof you are completely insane.

 

22 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

  Hide contents

gosh dang it took so long to get this spoiler to work - it was doing a new thing where I was highlighting my text to try to spoiler it, and then it just straight up deleted everything I had tried to spoiler by replacing it with the spoiler - good golly do I miss manual bbcode tags where I could just write [.spoiler] and [./spoiler] minus the periods exactly where I wanted them and it just worked

 Yeah. Plus, they used the Olivia Newton-John version, which is...well, much better than the John Denver IMO, but that might just be me. Apparently, that version was the most popular in Japan for whatever reason - more popular in Japan than anywhere else, in fact. No doubt why they used it - good fortune for me, .

There are some stretches I can think of in Disney movies where I think it can get close, but on the whole? No - if you pay attention, you'll start to notice more and more blemishes as well as shortcuts that they took, whether it be character expressions and movement, static background vs. active foreground animation, inconsistency in how characters look from scene to scene...not to mention that in most of Disney's 90s titles, which is what we'd be looking at in comparison to Whisper of the Heart, they invariably have Very Bad, No Good, Terrible usage of early CGI that is like getting slapped in the face every time it rears its ugly head. Not to mention just...aesthetic differences. Disney's cartoon aesthetics are...well, they're cartoons by and large; with some of the absolute top-notch anime styles, I don't know, they just hit differently. And with a film like Whisper of the Heart, there are certainly little shortcuts and simplifications here and there, but they're only where they perfectly fit and you have to be actively looking for them to register at all. Gorgeous.

Thankfully, what they did with him having his own sad little story was so much better than that while also being less expected, .

When I first watched it, I was like "that was great!"...but didn't spend much time thinking about the themes or characters, so even though it was obviously great, it kind of didn't occupy my mind for very long. Probably like half a year later, I ended up re-watching it with another person, and it just shattered me. I was very emotional (both happy and sad) through a lot of it for many of the same reasons as you, and finished it in a sort of an exhausted daze. It was a profound experience that disconnected from reality for a while, to say the least. I had definitely failed to realize how utterly spot-on Shizuku was as a protagonist and all the themes and struggles to go along with her on my first viewing. Magical movie. I'm incredibly thankful for the few grounded explorations of the human soul Ghibli made; the more fantastical adventure stuff can be great too, but I'll always place the stuff that really hits you where it hurts higher.

I couldn't understand the song, but it didn't sound half-bad to me for being completely outside of my tastes, .

 

Spoiler

 

I miss having working spoiler tags you could use in your post too, but if you try that now it messes up the spoiler blocks even harder than the WYSIWYG (like hell is this thing WYSIWYG, early FrontPage worked better than this, and FrontPage was horrible) editor does.

I don't really have any preferene over one or the other when it comes to Country Roads. There's a eurodance cover by Hermes House Band that is totallly awesome, but that's because everything is better as eurodance. Well, almost everything, there's this abomination:

Although this has a fun feminist subtext insofar as while those girls might look like strippers, can't sing if their life dependet on it and are dressed like wild west prostitutes later, they're generally seen invading traditionally manly domains. Ever heard of a stable girl? Or woman being a rancher?

Right. Plus, one of them can be seen doing some serious manspreading in the beginning. Plus they're clearly dressing like that to confront social norms of the time.

Okay, I'm joking. That song's terrible though, that wasn't a joke.

Now for the emotional impact of the film, I spent the beginning really enamored with it, up until the scene between Shizuku and Sugimira. Some things began bubbling to the surface that I kept thinking over, and then of course she has her crisis, and yeah, things... kind of fully drifted off from there.

Funny, what it made me go over in my head is a situation that happened 25 years ago. I was, out of the blue, approached by a guy in our parallel class. Outside of our shared PE classes, we never interacted with each other in any way outside the occasional stray greetings in the hallway. Huh, so he tells me there's a girl in his class that apparently has taken a liking to me. To me, of all people, as if that would ever happen (not to mention, why would she tell him, of all people, and risk social isolation herself in the process? Nope, it's not being paranoid when they really are out to get you!).

I pretty much told him that I don't need him to make fun of me too, and he just left. Funny, between Ami's special that I've already seen and the very beginning of Madoka where they talk about love letters, that never ever came up again in my mind, but that talk between Shizuku and Sugimira kind of brought that back. I still have no idea if he was serious or not, the girl in question was the type that always hovered around the really popular girls without being popular herself. I sure as hell wouldn't risk talking to her and ending up like Carrie at the prom.

The difference between the other animes and this is, I guess, the realism that really is at its core. It's a relatable experience even for me while being perfectly grounded in reality indeed, and that's saying something.

There's something else this dredged up, in a way, something that happened a lot later. I once made a post about this on the forum before, in one of the "what did you do today" threads, and I can't for the life of me find it now. There's something about the search function on this forum that just doesn't work too well with locked threads in the off topic forum. Well, it's not only the spoiler and the quote function here that's shice. Sigh.

 

 

Oh, right, the song. Not going to translate the lyrics (really, I tried once in the music thread, and the result was... not so great), but while in the English version the English show up and randomly burn down a Scottish castle becaus they can (what other reason do they need, anyway), the one I linked features a duel between the brothers where one kills the other and is then exiled for it, wandering the world, never to return again in his lifetime.

If this was set in JoJo's universe someone would call in a Cyborg and start wrecking everything. Heh.

[majestic]

Oi, and because I forgot to properly credit my source of inspiration for the above post, here's Joseph Anderson's literary analysis of T-Rex Runner.

He made that as an April fools' joke. Pay close attention to the tab names.

Edited May 10, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

The way of the househusband. The animation is ****, while it's not a cgi abomination it's very static and feels closer to a series of stills than properly animated. But it is, and I do not say this lightly, absolutely hilarious. The premise is a former yakuza is now a househusband and it follows his adventures like trying to clean the house or feuding with a crepe vendor. Each episode is less than 20 minutes and composed of several vignettes, so it doesn't take long to watch.

18 minutes ago, majestic said:

If this was set in JoJo's universe someone would call in a Cyborg and start wrecking everything.

And that would be the most normal thing to happen.