Revolutionary Girl Utena 2: Private lifts, Demian, and Gnosticism.

(I finally got this done. I’ve been quite busy with moving lately and must apologize for neglecting the blog. Beyond that, I have no internet set up yet in the home, so I have to work Starbucks into my schedule.)

In addition to the usual commentary, in this post I examine the mythological and literary references in Revolutionary Girl Utena and their deeper implications about the plot. If you don’t get what “break the world’s shell” is about, you will definitely want to read this to understand what the hell is going on in this hypnotically eccentric story.

Canaan 12: Going Off The Rails On A Crazy Train

“Crazy, but that’s how it goes.

Millions of people living as foes.

Maybe it’s not to late

To learn how to love,

And forget how to hate.

Mental wounds not healing,

Life’s a bitter shame.

I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.”

Canaan 12. I got words. Read them.

Revolutionary Girl Utena 1: The sugary pink birthday cake of kickass fantasy anime.

SCREENCAP MEGAPOST.

It’s what I do. If you want a wall of text, you’re in the wrong place. In other news, former President Bush declared last week that Betsuni is his preferred aniblog for heavy use of visual-aids.

(I must apologize if my screencaps for Utena look more like screencraps. This is for various reasons, and does not reflect the glory of the remastered episodes.)

A short while ago, DigitalBoy invited anyone who was interested to participate in a community-wide project of blogging Revolutionary Girl Utena. The show is (supposedly) famous among anime fans for being funny, badass, and all-around awesome in general.

Before reading DigitalBoy’s post, I had zero knowledge of Utena other than hearing the name occasionally on various websites, and had never heard anything that would encourage me to pursue it. Normally I wouldn’t be open-minded enough to pick this show up when more recent series are waiting to be caught up on. However, I feel this is an opportunity to introduce myself to the ‘sphere members who are following DigitalBoy’s call to arms, and so have taken up the cause alongside him.

Together, we shall embark upon an epic journey along with the readers to meet this girl, Utena, and follow her as she revolutionizes the world with the power of friendship, roses, and good old-fashioned ass-kicking. Anibloggers, if you haven’t seen this yet, hop onboard the bandwagon and join us for the ride as DigitalBoy remembers love and I discover it for the first time.

Now without further introduction: Revolutionary Girl Utena: Episode 1 – The Rose Bride.

Canaan 1: I Remember Love (Of Babes And Bullets)

^A little shout-out to ghostlightning there and his love of Macross. I find it very easy to participate in the discussions on his blog, and find his writing style intelligent and easy to digest, without feeling pretentious or assaulting the reader with walls of text. You should check him out.

Before we begin, I’d like to point out that I’m a heavy tvtropes.org addict, and so make regular use of relevant trope references as often as I can remember them. You will recognize trope titles throughout my entries by All Uppercase First Letters. However, since that site has a reputation for sucking you in for hours at a time, I will only hyperlink to actual trope pages when I feel it’s beneficial for your knowledge in regard to the work being discussed.

Since Haruhi‘s degradation I’ve been looking for a new dealer to supply my anime fix. Unfortunately, being an anime fan with an aversion to idiotic premises can be a quandary when your only options are like something out of a 14 year-old’s trash bin of rejected fanfic ideas (let’s face it, 98% of anime fall into this category, including the good ones). On top of that, most of the shows this season look like they missed the memo that Haruhi raised the bar for animation standards. Of those that look sharp, there are only two that I would consider, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Canaan.

I’ve personally seen one-too-many Sci-fi Channel original movies about natural disasters to be remotely interested in Magnitude just now, so the only logical choice left is Canaan. The synopsis gives me hope for a good multiple-perspective mystery thriller. I just hope it’s more Indigo Prophecy and less Vantage Point.

Before jumping into the first episode, let’s establish some historical context for the title.

“Canaan,” in the sense of etymology, can mean low, humbled, merchant, or purple. In the Bible, Canaan the man was cursed by his father (for a stupid reason) and made the slave of his brothers. For this reason the house of Canaan was looked down upon by other Israelite tribes and they were ultimately subjugated. The land of Canaan was also the promised land for the Israelites, which God gave to them since he didn’t give a crap about the people already living there, having been descended from the cursed Canaan. (Old Testament God really is an a**hole. There’s a reason Gnostic Christians think he’s an impostor deity.) Here is a particularly dramatic Biblical quote in which Canaan is mentioned:

“Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.”

Psalm 106:37-38

Time will tell if there is any genuine meaning to Canaan’s title, or if it falls into What Do You Mean It’s Not Symbolic territory. Now for the episode.

Promote This Meme #1: Bullets Too Slow

Source: Half-Life: Full Life Consequences 3 – Free Man

Image: Code Geass R2, Episode 25

District 9: A Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

District 9 was hailed to be one of the premiere titles of the year, and rightly so. With the combined talents of Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson this movie was practically guaranteed to be a dynamic and unique experience well worth that $8 ticket. After all, these are the same two people who are going to explode our minds with the Halo movie. In what way could District 9 possibly fail? Apparently, a lot of ways.

District 9 is the biggest letdown of 2009, having promised much in the way of an intellectually and morally stimulating plot and then squandering its potential with a mindless montage of racism and violence that ultimately goes nowhere. The trailers may have huffed and puffed but when it came time to deliver the goods it failed to blow me away.

The Sighs Of Haruhi Suzumiya 2

Since my last post was a bandwidth-nightmare of screencaps, I have endeavored to keep the number of images in this post and all future posts under 20.

This episode picks up exactly where the last left off, and it’s apparent the screenwriters are going line-by-line from the novel, even if it means splitting a scene awkwardly in half to fit episode time-constraints. Normally, I’d praise the faithful adherence to the script, but now I’m thinking this is going to take forever to get interesting. I hate to say it, but my praise for Tanigawa’s story is dangerously slipping into Lost Potential territory as I start to grasp just how much filler there is.

One improvement in season 2: Despite the K-ONified character expressions, the animation is paying noticeably closer attention to characters’ subconscious movements, a la Sky Crawlers, and it’s doing a great job of bringing them to life on the screen. However, unlike with Sky Crawlers, the character subtleties are hardly enough to keep me hooked while waiting for plot development. It is a terrible thing when you can sit through two hours of speculating about the deal with Jinrou and why Kusanagi killed him without once getting bored, and yet be totally uninterested in what’s happening with Haruhi Suzumiya. These days, I find myself struggling not to go back to my Banner Of The Stars reruns mid-episode.

The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya 1

Now that Kadokawa’s Re8quiem is over, I can pick up the desecrated pieces of my fanhood and try to forget about Endless 8. It’s bad enough the last two months of my life have been depressing without an endless recursion of time adding to my list of wangst.

Nothing really happens in this episode. Haruhi unveils her plan to make a movie for the school culture festival, Kyon gets owned, Itsuki obfuscates stupidity, Mikuru fears for her dignity, and Nagato reads a book. The usual. I suppose what makes Haruhi a good show is that it keeps you constantly amused by the character interactions even when nothing happens, much like Seinfeld. Both are like a bag of potato chips in that there is nothing profound about them but they leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling regardless. Truthfully, I was barely containing my fanboy squees during much of the episode, but from an objective standpoint, that is probably only because IT’S NOT ENDLESS FRACKING EIGHT. That being said, let’s get to it, shall we?

The End of Endless Eight: As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in nerd rage

Everytime I watch another Endless eight, I die a little bit on the inside. On the bright side, my withdrawals from having new material were so great that I finally got off my ass and read the novels from baka-tsuki. After finding out how E8 ended, I only hated it more. I much prefer this version. If the ending was really that over-the-top, I could have forgiven Kadokawa for rickrolling me for the last two months.