Just as predicted, the next season of Sword Art Online was announced today. The details are currently scanty, but here's what we know so far --
The same voice cast and studio are reprising their roles, which is always good, plus Miyuki Sawashiro, a very talented seiyuu, is playing Shinon.
So far, the only arc being previewed is Phantom Bullet. Gust Gale is of course a great story, but what I really wanted to see animated was Mother's Rosario, the heart and soul of what makes this series so great. Without Mother's Rosario, I'm unwilling to raise my SAO ranking any higher than it currently stands. After Gust Gale maybe they'll start advertising the subsequent stories, so who knows, my hopes are still high for this eventuality.
Thank God. It sure took them long enough to announce this season. And now it's finally coming, some time in 2014, so we won't have to wait much longer.
In other news, Haganai NEXT is finally available in blu-ray, thanks to the wonderful people over at Coalgirls.
In other news, Da Capo III is the most beautiful anime ever drawn. When viewed in blu-ray form, it just boggles the mind. Not only are all the characters ridiculously attractive on screen, but the environment even surpasses them. The sakura trees and blossoms always floating in the wind, the beautiful beaches, the overlooks that gaze out into the sea, it truly is a magical island. Da Capo III makes sense as a prologue. It uses the first nine episodes to just introduce everyone, going through the cast one by one with all the side characters given one episode for themselves. This makes a lot of intuitive sense. Then it uses flashbacks to explain how Da Capo III fits into the previous seasons, which is also intuitive. The only problem is the story ending with Sakura disappearing without ever explaining her adventure in the London Magic academy with Cattelya. You know there's actually quite a lot of meat to the story in there, and it's very sad to see it left unused. It would be like Little Busters without Refrain.
But look at it this way. The role of the visual novel is to tell the story properly and fully. The role of an anime is to be as beautiful as possible. If we just wanted story content, we could just read the visual novel. The value added of anime is precisely all the extra art we get when something is animated. As such, the Da Capo III anime added all the value it possibly could to the visual novel, while leaving nothing out because there's still the visual novel for everything else. This would be the perfect combination if D.C. III were translated into English. It hasn't been yet, but there should be a release eventually by Manga Gamer. When that time comes, the choice to make this anime fixated solely on visuals rather than plot progression will look ingenious.
If you're looking for the hidden treasure of 2013, it's most definitely Da Capo III. I already think anime style drawings are superior to classical art, so when I say D.C. III has the best anime art, I'm just plain saying it has the best art ever. Even if this were the only series that had come out this year, it still would have made 2013 memorable. As just one of 56 good series that came out this year, 2013 is most decidedly the best year in anime history.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Another Anime Update:
This spring's anime lineup is looking fantastic. Jojo's, Love Live, Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, Mekaku City Actors (Kagerou Days), No Game No Life and the resumption of Fairy Tail lead a lineup that is bound to grow yet further as time passes and more projects get finalized. If winter turns out to be the biggest flop in history, as it's looking to be, spring is likely to be the greatest success in history, so overall 2014 anime is in a good place for now.
One Piece is currently filler so another watchable series has been lost to the void. It was inevitable, given how many weeks the manga had taken off recently, so it's not like I resent the presence of filler or anything. I'm just saddened that the world will no longer have new One Piece anime for the foreseeable future. This is why I love Pretty Cure. Since it's anime original content, every week is as solid an episode as the previous week, and it can have as fast a pace as it likes without ever 'catching up with the source.' No filler and fast pacing make for much better stories, lemme tell ya.
Little Busters Refrain has thoroughly impressed me, such that now I've moved it up in the rankings to #9. Even that may be selling the series short, we'll have to see based on how good the Ecstasy OAV's are. Refrain just makes you cry non-stop for the entire second half of the season. It's as bad as Da Capo II, or Clannad After Story. But anything that can move you emotionally that much is a great work of art, far beyond normal fare, so even when the experience isn't exactly pleasant it's still astoundingly admirable. Considering how much the anime left out from the visual novel, the fact that it's still the 9th best anime ever, makes you wonder just how good the visual novel might be. But the EX version of the story still hasn't been translated into English, so there's just no way to know.
Meanwhile, Segawa Onpu has saved Ojamajo Doremi. What was previously a chore to watch has become a delight, all because of this one new Pretty Witch. She starts as a sort of 'dark Ojamajo' who serves as a foil and antagonist to the original cast, but by the end of the season ends up being their best friend who sacrifices everything for them, after which they in turn sacrifice everything for her. That's a good story. And it's only the first season! Who knows what awesome plot developments await in the remaining hundreds of eps. From being a borderline good series, I've completely changed my opinion of this series and shot it up to #69 best ever. It may be even better than that, but only time will tell.
I couldn't finish Daa Daa Daa, it's so bad, so I'm just waiting for something to replace it this winter season. Oh well, you can't win them all.
Monogatari's ending is in an awful place. I dearly hope they will continue the series to its proper ending (the showdown with Ougi) at some point. Perhaps 2015, after the light novels are done. Boy this season sure was good while it lasted though. Wow.
Outbreak Company and Valvrave had pretty rushed endings. Too bad. Non Non Biyori and Noucome didn't resolve anything with their endings too. Both could use some more eps, and luckily both are getting some additional OAV's so that's something.
Now to wait with anxious breath to find out if SAO's second season will be announced on New Year's Eve or not.
One Piece is currently filler so another watchable series has been lost to the void. It was inevitable, given how many weeks the manga had taken off recently, so it's not like I resent the presence of filler or anything. I'm just saddened that the world will no longer have new One Piece anime for the foreseeable future. This is why I love Pretty Cure. Since it's anime original content, every week is as solid an episode as the previous week, and it can have as fast a pace as it likes without ever 'catching up with the source.' No filler and fast pacing make for much better stories, lemme tell ya.
Little Busters Refrain has thoroughly impressed me, such that now I've moved it up in the rankings to #9. Even that may be selling the series short, we'll have to see based on how good the Ecstasy OAV's are. Refrain just makes you cry non-stop for the entire second half of the season. It's as bad as Da Capo II, or Clannad After Story. But anything that can move you emotionally that much is a great work of art, far beyond normal fare, so even when the experience isn't exactly pleasant it's still astoundingly admirable. Considering how much the anime left out from the visual novel, the fact that it's still the 9th best anime ever, makes you wonder just how good the visual novel might be. But the EX version of the story still hasn't been translated into English, so there's just no way to know.
Meanwhile, Segawa Onpu has saved Ojamajo Doremi. What was previously a chore to watch has become a delight, all because of this one new Pretty Witch. She starts as a sort of 'dark Ojamajo' who serves as a foil and antagonist to the original cast, but by the end of the season ends up being their best friend who sacrifices everything for them, after which they in turn sacrifice everything for her. That's a good story. And it's only the first season! Who knows what awesome plot developments await in the remaining hundreds of eps. From being a borderline good series, I've completely changed my opinion of this series and shot it up to #69 best ever. It may be even better than that, but only time will tell.
I couldn't finish Daa Daa Daa, it's so bad, so I'm just waiting for something to replace it this winter season. Oh well, you can't win them all.
Monogatari's ending is in an awful place. I dearly hope they will continue the series to its proper ending (the showdown with Ougi) at some point. Perhaps 2015, after the light novels are done. Boy this season sure was good while it lasted though. Wow.
Outbreak Company and Valvrave had pretty rushed endings. Too bad. Non Non Biyori and Noucome didn't resolve anything with their endings too. Both could use some more eps, and luckily both are getting some additional OAV's so that's something.
Now to wait with anxious breath to find out if SAO's second season will be announced on New Year's Eve or not.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa wo Hirogete:
*Warning, massive spoilers ahead*
As a subject of much controversy, the 2012 visual novel of the year was translated (very poorly, I might add) into English by a company called Moenovel. They renamed the game "If My Heart Had Wings," (which, by the way, is again not the correct translation. The correct translation would be, "Throughout this wide sky, spread your wings," or something similar.), cut all the sexual content in the game, and censored vast portions of even 'dubious' content that they found dislikable for whatever reason. This butchered version of the game was then released for sale, and a fan group took it from there to patch the game back into its original state, with all the cut and censored content restored. Unfortunately, it still doesn't fix the terrible translation which is rife with ridiculous errors, or the times when the translation intentionally lies about what is being said on screen in order to make the content of the game more 'foreigner friendly'. There's also a bug in the restored game that means many of the game's images are just plain missing in the image gallery, so if you want to see something again your only choice is to save while the game is at that exact point. This bug wouldn't have existed if only Moenovel had left the game alone in the first place, and is just one more annoyance on top of all the others.
Nevertheless, the game is available to play in English, which is more than can be said of many other visual novels, and given its reputation as the best game of 2012 it was an obvious necessity to try out, of course in the fan restored form.
The moment I started playing the game, I couldn't put it down again for hours. Every line made me desirous to see the next line and wouldn't let go of my attention for even a second. The music was remarkably beautiful, the game starting with almost an unearthly hymn. The art was fantastic, perhaps the best any visual novel has ever produced. In terms of a 'hook,' you couldn't have asked for more:
The story continues on rails, with choices that don't even seem to matter whenever they come along, as the story moves in the same direction regardless each time, as you get to know your starting cast and work together to build a glider to sail through the sky. Your initial flight with Amane in a failed attempt to reach the Morning Glory is absolutely thrilling, with the music and graphics giving all the emotional push you could ask for. Up until this point, the game should have made you laugh, cry, and marvel at it over and over again. But after this, sadly, the common route comes to an end, and your choices come back to haunt you from the beginning.
After the common route, much of the game is just sex. Lots and lots of sex, with every conceivable fetish entertained. Choosing your route is more just choosing which girl to have sex with. The art involved in this is still great, to be sure, but there isn't much emotional or intellectual appeal from here on. Furthermore, the story content is rather frustrating on the majority of the routes.
For Kotori's route, you discover that her family is unreasonably annoying and meddlesome, demanding she not ride on the glider because it's dangerous (when it's really not that dangerous at all, compared to many other activities many other people do for fun.) To take the one fun and challenging activity a handicapped girl can do away from her is cruel beyond belief. She had finally found something she was good at and something she could do, and they take it away from her because, apparently, handicapped girls should never be allowed to do anything again for the rest of their lives except wait to die. When faced with such atrocious people, you just throw up your hands in disbelief. Artificially evil people create artificial drama where there should have been none, and drag the story artificially beyond the length it should have ended at with a happily ever after.
And it's not just Kotori's route that does this. Ageha's has the exact same problem, only this time it's a meddlesome and obnoxious teacher who is trying to shut down the soaring club because it's dangerous. Somehow it's okay for sports clubs to exist even though there are constant injuries to athletes, but God forbid if you get injured flying gliders, somehow that's an unacceptable risk. Yet again it's foreigners meddling in something that isn't any of their business. If people want to risk their own lives flying a glider, they're the only ones who know in their hearts whether the risk is worth it or not. No one has any say in the issue at all, because it doesn't impact anyone else but the glider-riders themselves. This is just basic morality 101. Ageha eventually overcomes the evil meddling teacher after a long and ridiculous adventure, but the whole situation is so infuriating that it would have been better if the story had never been told at all.
Amane's route is somewhat better, in that the meddling teacher is less of a presence. However, as Amane can't even be played until after you clear Kotori's route, a lot of the Amane route is repeat content you've already seen elsewhere in your playthroughs of other characters. When you take out all those repeat scenes, plus all the sex scenes, you get some nice comedic portions at the beginning of the route, plus a very short flashback storyline between Amane and Isuka which resolves in a satisfactory manner at the very end of the route. That's a lot of nonsense to wade through for little reward.
Which brings us to Asa and Yoru, surprisingly, the best characters and the best routes in the story. Yoru's route can't be played until you clear the Asa route, and this is definitely a case of saving the best for last.
These identical twin girls are both beautiful beyond belief:
And it isn't just their looks. Their personalities are captivating as well. Even their voice actors are way better than the rest of the cast. In addition, they seem to be the most fitting heroines for the story as a whole. Kotori's disability makes her pretty much ineligible for romantic feelings (who would want to take care of her for the rest of their lives?), so her wish to fly in the sky only covers 1/2 of the theme of this visual novel. Asa and Yoru, however, fulfill the criteria of strongly wanting to fly and being girls anyone can and should fall in love with.
Asa's story is that of being an ordinary girl surrounded by extraordinary people. Even her identical twin little sister, Yoru, is a genius who's the head of her class and can do anything she wants with ease. This makes Asa feel suffocated by the weight of everyone's disapproval, to the point that she runs away from home, even though no one ever specifically says or does anything mean to her. She is just so effective at reading atmospheres that she can't stand to even be around those disapproving faces a moment longer. Despite only receiving negative emotions from others, she is kind, open, and admiring of the people around her. Her enthusiasm to fly comes from the understandable desire to finally be above all the people who used to think so lowly of her. Out in the sky, doing something none of the others could even dream of doing, she can finally find her own identity, not just as a worse version of someone else.
Accompanying her, however, is her worst nemesis, her twin sister Yoru, who loves Asa more than anyone else in the world, and whose sole desire is to stay close to the one thing in this world that makes her happy. The distance Yoru goes to stay with Asa is heroic, and it really shows just how important her twin is to her. In Yoru's route, unlike all the other routes in the game, the two seated glider doesn't seat the male protagonist who enviously gets to have sex with all of these heroines, but instead fulfills Yoru's greatest desire, to stay by Asa's side forever, as the two fly through the Morning Glory together. And in this route, all the built up tension that comes from Asa's inferiority complex, and Yoru's cynicism and detachment from life and other people, are worked through together, as twins should work things out, in a bond that transforms them both and leaves them both better off and stronger than before.
The story also head-on challenges one of the most common assumptions in romance, that monogamy is the only true or pure love. In Asa's route, this works out just fine, as Yoru always puts her sister ahead of herself. But it's impossible to love Yoru alone. She won't accept it. She loves Asa far more than you could ever love her, and would rather be with her than anyone else. In other words, if you want to love Yoru, you must love Asa too, and just as much, enough that the three of you are always together and always happy forever. And when it's put this way, at the behest of the girls themselves, and when you look at the alternative of these identical twins being forcibly separated along any other timeline, you realize how absurd the idea of monogamy can be.
Commonly, polygamy is viewed as a tyrannical male collecting more and more wives as he tires of each older one, in a completely unequal relationship between the patriarch and his virtual slaves, usually compelled by force to obey his will. Obviously this sort of relationship is inferior to monogamy. But when two girls love each other, and both of them love you, and you love both of them, and you honestly accept all of their feelings from the very beginning, so neither is 'dissed' or 'spurned' as not being good enough halfway through life's journey, what objection can be brought? If the three of you want to share your love together, while never even thinking of straying to anyone else, because no one else could possibly be equally loved by all as this select group of three is, then why would you be better off cutting these twins in half and only loving one of them? Why would the twins be better off hanging out with only 1/2 of the special people in their lives for the rest of their life? Who is better off? Why would they be better off? Yet again, we find outdated laws stomping all over the precious feelings of the parties involved, forcefully tearing apart what was written in the stars as meant to be together. Whether it's gays, miscegenation, incest or polygamy it's all the same -- it's no one's business but the lovers themselves what they want to do, and no one knows what is right for them except the parties concerned. A story which makes this point is desperately needed in the world today, which still is trampling over the hearts of millions of people every day just because they don't fit into some traditional box of what love should be. Like Oreimo before it, Oozora is another stand for the civil rights of lovers everywhere, a principled stance far stronger than most gay marriage advocates are willing to make, that love is love is love, and it's nobody's business if you do.
Yoru's refusal to compromise and insistence on a polygamous relationship with Aoi is one of the reasons she's the best character in this game. Another reason is her biting sense of humor that's always ready to mock the relatively stupid people around her. A third is her completely unabashed, accurate self-appraisal that declares early and often that she's rich, beautiful, a genius, and the chosen heir of a powerful family that can achieve anything she desires at the snap of her fingers. A fourth is her admiration, nonetheless, of her older twin sister Asa who she finds to be even better than she is. In fact, she's jealous of Asa, who foolishly is jealous of her, because Asa can fit into society, unlike her, because Asa is easy to please, unlike her, and because Asa can take courageous steps to change her situation and work incredibly hard to improve her life, neither of which Yoru has attempted much less succeeded at. When you realize that Yoru isn't condescendingly following after Asa in order to take care of her and make up for her weaknesses, but instead is doing it out of the wish to not be separated from her guiding light, whether emotionally or morally, a whole new avenue of respect and understanding opens up for this wonderful imouto.
There's so much to love about Asa and Yoru, but in the end it just comes down to scenes like this:
When Asa and Yoru realize they've both fallen in love with Aoi around the same time, Asa is the first to catch wind of this, because she can 'read the atmosphere' better than anyone. But not only is she sensitive about such things, she's also fragile to them. The idea of competing with her infinitely superior twin is impossible for her, and it instantly makes her just want to fold and run away. To make matters worse, it's so hard to even broach the subject that suddenly the twins who always talked about everything and were always together since birth can't even look each other in the face anymore while sharing their shared room at night together. Yet again, Asa finds herself unable to breathe, and only Kanako's quick thinking of having the two twins switch places with each other to find out what Aoi truly thinks of them saves the day. When Asa finds herself playing the role of Yoru, she summons the courage (something Yoru never has) to ask Aoi what he thinks of 'her' (really Yoru), and what he thinks of 'Asa,' (really her). There's just so much depth of characterization in this scene, about how similar and yet how different identical twins can be, and just so much subtlety to how the story is weaved, that it makes the rest of the visual novel look cheap and flimsy.
If I had to explain it in numerical terms, it would be something like this: 60% of the worth of this visual novel comes from the common route, up until the point where Amane graduates from school and the garage is destroyed. It's a fantastic story of victory and defeat, gains and losses, where you meet a lot of people you care about a lot who find happiness in what had been a pretty sad world. 35% of the worth of this visual novel is the continuation of this tale, down the Asa and Yoru routes. They lead to the eventual happy ending where you in fact reach the Morning Glory. They give you the romantic closure that the story promised in spades. They have little to no silly opposition from outsiders, with the story wholly driven by dynamics between only the main parties themselves. They take the opportunity of their routes to give much fuller and deeper character development than anyone else. The remaining 5% quality of the story comes from the other three routes combined, which I suppose are better than nothing.
The story is definitely better with all the sexual content added back in. Without the sex, the polygamous relationship of Asa, Yoru and Aoi could never have even been depicted, with all of its emotional depth and strength. The other routes also have important moments related to sex, like Kotori being soothed that even a disabled girl like her is attractive to men and can find satisfaction in bed like any other girl dreams of having with her beloved. Or Hotaru trying to seduce you away from Ageha and failing on the beach. Or Amane agreeing to have sex with you as the only way she can find as a way to confess her feelings, being too clumsy to take any other approach. In the end, sex is part of communication in a relationship, so it's weird for a romance story to not have any. Furthermore, female nudity is a natural work of art of overwhelming aesthetic value, God's gift to mankind, so not including it when you have such gorgeous female subjects to draw upon is just a terrible waste. In fact, some of the best artwork that Moenovel excluded wasn't even the sex scenes in the game, but just innocent bathing scenes where the girls simply happened to be nude. It would have been criminal to not at least have these artworks in the game, because there's nothing but reverence for the female form embedded in them.
My suggestion is for people who don't like sex scenes to simply self-censor the material they find objectionable (and believe me, squeamish folk will find a lot of objectionable sexual material in this game) by holding down control and just zooming through to the other side. There's no need, just to suit prudes, to butcher the story or artwork for everyone else. If you're going to play Oozora, be sure to play Oozora, and not 'If My Heart Had Wings.'
But what about the story overall? Did it live up to its reputation as the best game of 2012? Can it compete with other visual novel classics? My answer is yes, if you stick to the common route, Asa, and Yoru. No, if you dilute your experience with all of the others. If you read the whole visual novel cover to cover, you'll probably be thoroughly sick of it by the end and relieved it's finally over. If you choose the correct route, though, you'll have everything you could ask for from a game and more. With the art, music, and story along this route, it could well have been the best game of 2012. It makes me wish the sequel to this game, Flight Diary, were also translated into English. If it were I definitely would have picked it up and played that one too.
Out of my limited experience with visual novels, Key is obviously the best, followed by Circus' Da Capo. The only three visual novels I've read in full outside these two companies are Oozora, Daitouryou, and Shuffle! (I only read visual novels extremely slowly because I play them all the way through to the last drop of content, or else I feel like I've somehow lost the game, and that gets pretty hard when you're already thoroughly tired of the game and playing down routes and characters you hate) Out of these three, all of which I enjoyed, Oozora is the best by a good margin. Does that qualify as a masterpiece? Who knows. Really, I would need to read many more visual novels before I can accurately place just how good Oozora is in comparison to all the others. And with Oozora finally finished, that's just what I intend to do.
As a subject of much controversy, the 2012 visual novel of the year was translated (very poorly, I might add) into English by a company called Moenovel. They renamed the game "If My Heart Had Wings," (which, by the way, is again not the correct translation. The correct translation would be, "Throughout this wide sky, spread your wings," or something similar.), cut all the sexual content in the game, and censored vast portions of even 'dubious' content that they found dislikable for whatever reason. This butchered version of the game was then released for sale, and a fan group took it from there to patch the game back into its original state, with all the cut and censored content restored. Unfortunately, it still doesn't fix the terrible translation which is rife with ridiculous errors, or the times when the translation intentionally lies about what is being said on screen in order to make the content of the game more 'foreigner friendly'. There's also a bug in the restored game that means many of the game's images are just plain missing in the image gallery, so if you want to see something again your only choice is to save while the game is at that exact point. This bug wouldn't have existed if only Moenovel had left the game alone in the first place, and is just one more annoyance on top of all the others.
Nevertheless, the game is available to play in English, which is more than can be said of many other visual novels, and given its reputation as the best game of 2012 it was an obvious necessity to try out, of course in the fan restored form.
The moment I started playing the game, I couldn't put it down again for hours. Every line made me desirous to see the next line and wouldn't let go of my attention for even a second. The music was remarkably beautiful, the game starting with almost an unearthly hymn. The art was fantastic, perhaps the best any visual novel has ever produced. In terms of a 'hook,' you couldn't have asked for more:
The story continues on rails, with choices that don't even seem to matter whenever they come along, as the story moves in the same direction regardless each time, as you get to know your starting cast and work together to build a glider to sail through the sky. Your initial flight with Amane in a failed attempt to reach the Morning Glory is absolutely thrilling, with the music and graphics giving all the emotional push you could ask for. Up until this point, the game should have made you laugh, cry, and marvel at it over and over again. But after this, sadly, the common route comes to an end, and your choices come back to haunt you from the beginning.
After the common route, much of the game is just sex. Lots and lots of sex, with every conceivable fetish entertained. Choosing your route is more just choosing which girl to have sex with. The art involved in this is still great, to be sure, but there isn't much emotional or intellectual appeal from here on. Furthermore, the story content is rather frustrating on the majority of the routes.
For Kotori's route, you discover that her family is unreasonably annoying and meddlesome, demanding she not ride on the glider because it's dangerous (when it's really not that dangerous at all, compared to many other activities many other people do for fun.) To take the one fun and challenging activity a handicapped girl can do away from her is cruel beyond belief. She had finally found something she was good at and something she could do, and they take it away from her because, apparently, handicapped girls should never be allowed to do anything again for the rest of their lives except wait to die. When faced with such atrocious people, you just throw up your hands in disbelief. Artificially evil people create artificial drama where there should have been none, and drag the story artificially beyond the length it should have ended at with a happily ever after.
And it's not just Kotori's route that does this. Ageha's has the exact same problem, only this time it's a meddlesome and obnoxious teacher who is trying to shut down the soaring club because it's dangerous. Somehow it's okay for sports clubs to exist even though there are constant injuries to athletes, but God forbid if you get injured flying gliders, somehow that's an unacceptable risk. Yet again it's foreigners meddling in something that isn't any of their business. If people want to risk their own lives flying a glider, they're the only ones who know in their hearts whether the risk is worth it or not. No one has any say in the issue at all, because it doesn't impact anyone else but the glider-riders themselves. This is just basic morality 101. Ageha eventually overcomes the evil meddling teacher after a long and ridiculous adventure, but the whole situation is so infuriating that it would have been better if the story had never been told at all.
Amane's route is somewhat better, in that the meddling teacher is less of a presence. However, as Amane can't even be played until after you clear Kotori's route, a lot of the Amane route is repeat content you've already seen elsewhere in your playthroughs of other characters. When you take out all those repeat scenes, plus all the sex scenes, you get some nice comedic portions at the beginning of the route, plus a very short flashback storyline between Amane and Isuka which resolves in a satisfactory manner at the very end of the route. That's a lot of nonsense to wade through for little reward.
Which brings us to Asa and Yoru, surprisingly, the best characters and the best routes in the story. Yoru's route can't be played until you clear the Asa route, and this is definitely a case of saving the best for last.
These identical twin girls are both beautiful beyond belief:
And it isn't just their looks. Their personalities are captivating as well. Even their voice actors are way better than the rest of the cast. In addition, they seem to be the most fitting heroines for the story as a whole. Kotori's disability makes her pretty much ineligible for romantic feelings (who would want to take care of her for the rest of their lives?), so her wish to fly in the sky only covers 1/2 of the theme of this visual novel. Asa and Yoru, however, fulfill the criteria of strongly wanting to fly and being girls anyone can and should fall in love with.
Asa's story is that of being an ordinary girl surrounded by extraordinary people. Even her identical twin little sister, Yoru, is a genius who's the head of her class and can do anything she wants with ease. This makes Asa feel suffocated by the weight of everyone's disapproval, to the point that she runs away from home, even though no one ever specifically says or does anything mean to her. She is just so effective at reading atmospheres that she can't stand to even be around those disapproving faces a moment longer. Despite only receiving negative emotions from others, she is kind, open, and admiring of the people around her. Her enthusiasm to fly comes from the understandable desire to finally be above all the people who used to think so lowly of her. Out in the sky, doing something none of the others could even dream of doing, she can finally find her own identity, not just as a worse version of someone else.
Accompanying her, however, is her worst nemesis, her twin sister Yoru, who loves Asa more than anyone else in the world, and whose sole desire is to stay close to the one thing in this world that makes her happy. The distance Yoru goes to stay with Asa is heroic, and it really shows just how important her twin is to her. In Yoru's route, unlike all the other routes in the game, the two seated glider doesn't seat the male protagonist who enviously gets to have sex with all of these heroines, but instead fulfills Yoru's greatest desire, to stay by Asa's side forever, as the two fly through the Morning Glory together. And in this route, all the built up tension that comes from Asa's inferiority complex, and Yoru's cynicism and detachment from life and other people, are worked through together, as twins should work things out, in a bond that transforms them both and leaves them both better off and stronger than before.
The story also head-on challenges one of the most common assumptions in romance, that monogamy is the only true or pure love. In Asa's route, this works out just fine, as Yoru always puts her sister ahead of herself. But it's impossible to love Yoru alone. She won't accept it. She loves Asa far more than you could ever love her, and would rather be with her than anyone else. In other words, if you want to love Yoru, you must love Asa too, and just as much, enough that the three of you are always together and always happy forever. And when it's put this way, at the behest of the girls themselves, and when you look at the alternative of these identical twins being forcibly separated along any other timeline, you realize how absurd the idea of monogamy can be.
Commonly, polygamy is viewed as a tyrannical male collecting more and more wives as he tires of each older one, in a completely unequal relationship between the patriarch and his virtual slaves, usually compelled by force to obey his will. Obviously this sort of relationship is inferior to monogamy. But when two girls love each other, and both of them love you, and you love both of them, and you honestly accept all of their feelings from the very beginning, so neither is 'dissed' or 'spurned' as not being good enough halfway through life's journey, what objection can be brought? If the three of you want to share your love together, while never even thinking of straying to anyone else, because no one else could possibly be equally loved by all as this select group of three is, then why would you be better off cutting these twins in half and only loving one of them? Why would the twins be better off hanging out with only 1/2 of the special people in their lives for the rest of their life? Who is better off? Why would they be better off? Yet again, we find outdated laws stomping all over the precious feelings of the parties involved, forcefully tearing apart what was written in the stars as meant to be together. Whether it's gays, miscegenation, incest or polygamy it's all the same -- it's no one's business but the lovers themselves what they want to do, and no one knows what is right for them except the parties concerned. A story which makes this point is desperately needed in the world today, which still is trampling over the hearts of millions of people every day just because they don't fit into some traditional box of what love should be. Like Oreimo before it, Oozora is another stand for the civil rights of lovers everywhere, a principled stance far stronger than most gay marriage advocates are willing to make, that love is love is love, and it's nobody's business if you do.
Yoru's refusal to compromise and insistence on a polygamous relationship with Aoi is one of the reasons she's the best character in this game. Another reason is her biting sense of humor that's always ready to mock the relatively stupid people around her. A third is her completely unabashed, accurate self-appraisal that declares early and often that she's rich, beautiful, a genius, and the chosen heir of a powerful family that can achieve anything she desires at the snap of her fingers. A fourth is her admiration, nonetheless, of her older twin sister Asa who she finds to be even better than she is. In fact, she's jealous of Asa, who foolishly is jealous of her, because Asa can fit into society, unlike her, because Asa is easy to please, unlike her, and because Asa can take courageous steps to change her situation and work incredibly hard to improve her life, neither of which Yoru has attempted much less succeeded at. When you realize that Yoru isn't condescendingly following after Asa in order to take care of her and make up for her weaknesses, but instead is doing it out of the wish to not be separated from her guiding light, whether emotionally or morally, a whole new avenue of respect and understanding opens up for this wonderful imouto.
There's so much to love about Asa and Yoru, but in the end it just comes down to scenes like this:
When Asa and Yoru realize they've both fallen in love with Aoi around the same time, Asa is the first to catch wind of this, because she can 'read the atmosphere' better than anyone. But not only is she sensitive about such things, she's also fragile to them. The idea of competing with her infinitely superior twin is impossible for her, and it instantly makes her just want to fold and run away. To make matters worse, it's so hard to even broach the subject that suddenly the twins who always talked about everything and were always together since birth can't even look each other in the face anymore while sharing their shared room at night together. Yet again, Asa finds herself unable to breathe, and only Kanako's quick thinking of having the two twins switch places with each other to find out what Aoi truly thinks of them saves the day. When Asa finds herself playing the role of Yoru, she summons the courage (something Yoru never has) to ask Aoi what he thinks of 'her' (really Yoru), and what he thinks of 'Asa,' (really her). There's just so much depth of characterization in this scene, about how similar and yet how different identical twins can be, and just so much subtlety to how the story is weaved, that it makes the rest of the visual novel look cheap and flimsy.
If I had to explain it in numerical terms, it would be something like this: 60% of the worth of this visual novel comes from the common route, up until the point where Amane graduates from school and the garage is destroyed. It's a fantastic story of victory and defeat, gains and losses, where you meet a lot of people you care about a lot who find happiness in what had been a pretty sad world. 35% of the worth of this visual novel is the continuation of this tale, down the Asa and Yoru routes. They lead to the eventual happy ending where you in fact reach the Morning Glory. They give you the romantic closure that the story promised in spades. They have little to no silly opposition from outsiders, with the story wholly driven by dynamics between only the main parties themselves. They take the opportunity of their routes to give much fuller and deeper character development than anyone else. The remaining 5% quality of the story comes from the other three routes combined, which I suppose are better than nothing.
The story is definitely better with all the sexual content added back in. Without the sex, the polygamous relationship of Asa, Yoru and Aoi could never have even been depicted, with all of its emotional depth and strength. The other routes also have important moments related to sex, like Kotori being soothed that even a disabled girl like her is attractive to men and can find satisfaction in bed like any other girl dreams of having with her beloved. Or Hotaru trying to seduce you away from Ageha and failing on the beach. Or Amane agreeing to have sex with you as the only way she can find as a way to confess her feelings, being too clumsy to take any other approach. In the end, sex is part of communication in a relationship, so it's weird for a romance story to not have any. Furthermore, female nudity is a natural work of art of overwhelming aesthetic value, God's gift to mankind, so not including it when you have such gorgeous female subjects to draw upon is just a terrible waste. In fact, some of the best artwork that Moenovel excluded wasn't even the sex scenes in the game, but just innocent bathing scenes where the girls simply happened to be nude. It would have been criminal to not at least have these artworks in the game, because there's nothing but reverence for the female form embedded in them.
My suggestion is for people who don't like sex scenes to simply self-censor the material they find objectionable (and believe me, squeamish folk will find a lot of objectionable sexual material in this game) by holding down control and just zooming through to the other side. There's no need, just to suit prudes, to butcher the story or artwork for everyone else. If you're going to play Oozora, be sure to play Oozora, and not 'If My Heart Had Wings.'
But what about the story overall? Did it live up to its reputation as the best game of 2012? Can it compete with other visual novel classics? My answer is yes, if you stick to the common route, Asa, and Yoru. No, if you dilute your experience with all of the others. If you read the whole visual novel cover to cover, you'll probably be thoroughly sick of it by the end and relieved it's finally over. If you choose the correct route, though, you'll have everything you could ask for from a game and more. With the art, music, and story along this route, it could well have been the best game of 2012. It makes me wish the sequel to this game, Flight Diary, were also translated into English. If it were I definitely would have picked it up and played that one too.
Out of my limited experience with visual novels, Key is obviously the best, followed by Circus' Da Capo. The only three visual novels I've read in full outside these two companies are Oozora, Daitouryou, and Shuffle! (I only read visual novels extremely slowly because I play them all the way through to the last drop of content, or else I feel like I've somehow lost the game, and that gets pretty hard when you're already thoroughly tired of the game and playing down routes and characters you hate) Out of these three, all of which I enjoyed, Oozora is the best by a good margin. Does that qualify as a masterpiece? Who knows. Really, I would need to read many more visual novels before I can accurately place just how good Oozora is in comparison to all the others. And with Oozora finally finished, that's just what I intend to do.
Monday, December 16, 2013
'A Formula for Happiness' Proves the Citizen's Dividend is Ideal:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/a-formula-for-happiness.html?_r=0
Happiness research couldn't have said it more simply. Happiness is improved by the citizen's dividend, with zero negative side effects.
The two traditional objections to a citizen's dividend is that a) this would take money from the ones who earned it, which would make them sad, and b) this would eliminate people's incentive to work, and laziness is bad. However, according to the latest research, both of these 'negatives' do not actually exist and would not actually happen.
In other words, while giving money to the poor makes them deliriously happier, taking money from the well to do, even the middle class, does not harm them whatsoever. Aside from the number in their banking account going down, they do not actually suffer any changes to their daily life as experienced, it is a completely phantom taxation, or in utility terms, a win - no loss. This completely disproves the first objection to the citizen's dividend. While people have every right to object to a government which harms them, if they can't actually point to any harm being done, they have no reason to object to the government helping others. That's just sadism for sadism's sake.
This proves that objection B is also fallacious. 75% of people, even when financially secure, say they still wouldn't quit their jobs, and the poor actually say this at a higher percentage than 75%, or in other words, the people most incentivized by the citizen's dividend to quit their jobs are the people least likely to quit their jobs. Or in other words, what people imagine is an incentive for laziness, or a driver of unemployment, does not actually have either effect, it's all just in their heads. Sort of like how rich people imagine being taxed will make them less happy, but when we look at the actual data, it doesn't have any such effect. Since this world should be governed based on fact and not wild fantasies, sticking to an objection not supported by the data is completely unacceptable. So again, we have a 'win-no loss' scenario. People are happier if they are financially secure, so we should make everyone financially secure. No one is hurt in any way, shape, or form, whether society at large or the receivers of the public's largesse, by the giving of this money, so it's simply manna from heaven, a miraculous gift from God which no one can complain about.
It is a rare event in human history when you can make everyone's lives better without making even a single other person's life worse. Such moments are the most low-lying fruit in utility history. It is such an obvious choice, even an imbecile can calculate right from wrong. The citizen's dividend is just that basic and obvious a solution. The best way to make people happier in this world is to pass the citizen's dividend. The best way to prolong the suffering of mankind is to not pass the citizen's dividend. It's just that simple.
Happiness research couldn't have said it more simply. Happiness is improved by the citizen's dividend, with zero negative side effects.
The two traditional objections to a citizen's dividend is that a) this would take money from the ones who earned it, which would make them sad, and b) this would eliminate people's incentive to work, and laziness is bad. However, according to the latest research, both of these 'negatives' do not actually exist and would not actually happen.
Economists find that money makes truly poor people happier insofar as it relieves pressure from everyday life — getting enough to eat, having a place to live, taking your kid to the doctor. But scholars like the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman have found that once people reach a little beyond the average middle-class income level, even big financial gains don’t yield much, if any, increases in happiness.
In other words, while giving money to the poor makes them deliriously happier, taking money from the well to do, even the middle class, does not harm them whatsoever. Aside from the number in their banking account going down, they do not actually suffer any changes to their daily life as experienced, it is a completely phantom taxation, or in utility terms, a win - no loss. This completely disproves the first objection to the citizen's dividend. While people have every right to object to a government which harms them, if they can't actually point to any harm being done, they have no reason to object to the government helping others. That's just sadism for sadism's sake.
And according to the General Social Survey, nearly three-quarters of Americans wouldn’t quit their jobs even if a financial windfall enabled them to live in luxury for the rest of their lives. Those with the least education, the lowest incomes and the least prestigious jobs were actually most likely to say they would keep working, while elites were more likely to say they would take the money and run.
This proves that objection B is also fallacious. 75% of people, even when financially secure, say they still wouldn't quit their jobs, and the poor actually say this at a higher percentage than 75%, or in other words, the people most incentivized by the citizen's dividend to quit their jobs are the people least likely to quit their jobs. Or in other words, what people imagine is an incentive for laziness, or a driver of unemployment, does not actually have either effect, it's all just in their heads. Sort of like how rich people imagine being taxed will make them less happy, but when we look at the actual data, it doesn't have any such effect. Since this world should be governed based on fact and not wild fantasies, sticking to an objection not supported by the data is completely unacceptable. So again, we have a 'win-no loss' scenario. People are happier if they are financially secure, so we should make everyone financially secure. No one is hurt in any way, shape, or form, whether society at large or the receivers of the public's largesse, by the giving of this money, so it's simply manna from heaven, a miraculous gift from God which no one can complain about.
It is a rare event in human history when you can make everyone's lives better without making even a single other person's life worse. Such moments are the most low-lying fruit in utility history. It is such an obvious choice, even an imbecile can calculate right from wrong. The citizen's dividend is just that basic and obvious a solution. The best way to make people happier in this world is to pass the citizen's dividend. The best way to prolong the suffering of mankind is to not pass the citizen's dividend. It's just that simple.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Some Good News:
Doremi has released episodes 41-48 in higher quality as a collaboration with Dreaming Roses, who had previously subtitled this region of the series. As a result, Doremi now has a full version of GoGo that it alone is responsible for having created. It may just be a footnote, but now we can truly say that Precure is fully subbed in its premiere quality for the first time in its 10 year history.
In other good news, the SEC gets a chance to compete for the national championship in college football for the 8th straight time. Florida State will be a serious challenge this time, unlike that joke of a fight Notre Dame put up last year against one loss Alabama. But Auburn should be up to the challenge. It's hard to imagine the SEC losing to anyone, after winning for 7 years straight. I said Ohio State was overrated and I was vindicated by Michigan State's victory later that week. People should listen to me more often.
In other good news, a massive twin study, with over 11,000 people being studied, proved yet again what we already knew, that intelligence is largely hereditary, ie, due to genes, and therefore the quality of individuals and groups is predetermined before birth. This conclusion was posted in a major, mainstream British newspaper, which is extraordinary, since supposedly any such conclusion was supposed to be 'pseudo-science' by 'extremists.'
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/11/genetics-variation-exam-results1?commentpage=2
This finding obviously necessitates eugenics, as we are morally culpable for allowing anyone with bad genes to be born when we know it will directly impact their own quality of life, and the quality of life of their neighbors downwardly the stupider they happen to be. As our own supreme court justice once said, three generations of imbeciles is enough.
In the future, we'll know the specific genes for intelligence and be able to screen babies ahead of time for what their eventual IQ will be, and thus choose to implant the fertilized egg into the womb or not depending on the results. But for now an easy rule of thumb is that children should only be born to intelligent parents, since intelligence is hereditary and it's more likely than not that smart kids will emerge from the genes of smart parents, whereas it's about as likely as winning the lottery that a smart kid will emerge from a pair of dumb parents. For starters, no one with an IQ below 120 should be allowed to reproduce, because that is the IQ required to master college level material and thus succeed in the technology driven economy of today. Popping children into the world with no hope of success in their future is just child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, or whatever you want to call it. In any case it's morally wrong.
Since the environment is suffering from overpopulation anyway, this massive culling had to take place sooner or later regardless. This takes care of two birds with one stone.
In other good news, a poll of expert scientists was taken showing that genes were generally credited with 50% of the difference between black and white intelligence, that greater intelligence was always a good thing, and that twin studies were already sufficient evidence of heritability in intelligence. IE, the science is already in.
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/2013/12/isir-what-do-intelligence-researchers.html
This means black are irretrievably inferior to whites. Or in other words, the vast majority of expert scientists related to the field of intelligence, (Researchers were invited to participate only if they had recent intelligence-related publications in Intelligence, Cognitive Psychology, Biological Psychology, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of School-Psychology, New Ideas in Psychology, and Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology ), were 'racists' by the definition that they believed one race was inherently superior to another. In other words, the vast majority of expert scientists who know what they are talking about agree with me.
Which means that two extremely bad things are happening in the world today -- our most intelligent, honorable, honest, courageous, and overall good people are being demonized by society and made into social and economic pariahs. People who believe and tell the truth, the most virtuous people in the world, are being persecuted precisely for their virtue. It is the nightmarish scenario that Plato/Aristotle condemned, where the worst possible evil imaginable is the day when evil is taken to be good and good is taken to be evil. Now like Socrates, every single person who mentions the truth about intelligence, heritability, and race is forced to drink hemlock by a demented society insisting the Sun orbits the Earth, the world is flat and intelligence is due to the environment.
The other negative consequence of this issue, besides the ultimate injustice that truth tellers are demonized by the public as bad people while liars are lionized as heroes, is that public policy that takes these facts into account cannot move forward. There are trillions of public policy measures that become obvious the second you learn that intelligence is hereditary and varies between groups. First, immigration policy could be changed. Second, birth rates could be encouraged among some groups while being discouraged among others. Third, all disparate impact/equal opportunity lawsuits could be abolished. Fourth, affirmative action could be abolished. Fifth, history could be rewritten to reflect what we now know about the races and why things happened the way they did, instead of just being a long-winded account about how whites are evil and everyone else on Earth was just an oppressed victim. Sixth, hiring could be made on the basis of IQ tests, so the entire education system could be abolished as a pointless waste of time, money, and energy. Seventh, compassion would stop blaming the victims and admit that poor or unemployed people are not necessarily lazy, because they were never given an equal chance in life to begin with, and therefore a citizen's dividend could be passed for those who never had the earning power to make a living on their own in the first place. Eighth, we could give up trying to rehabilitate criminals and instead crack down on them so hard that crime was effectively abolished, no matter how disparate the impact of this crackdown was on a certain race. Ninth, we could restrict the franchise to only those people intelligent enough to deserve it. Tenth, massive investments could be made in scientific research for the purpose of genetically engineering super babies with all sorts of genetic enhancements, from health to beauty to intelligence to good moral character, paving the way for the next stage of human evolution.
If we, as a society, as the masses, would just accept the same truths that the expert scientists who know the most in this field have already accepted, not only would a great injustice be undone against the modern day martyrs for the truth like poor Richwine at the heritage foundation, but innumerable public policy changes could be made, all of which would inestimably improve humanity's well being. These changes could be made tomorrow and are not dependent on any further scientific innovations or findings to be made. We could be living in a utopia today if we just recognized this one, tiny little truth. How much longer do we have to wait on the press, and the governments of the world, to catch on to what their own scientists are telling them? How many more generations must we suffer when the solution to all our problems is already at hand?
In other good news, the SEC gets a chance to compete for the national championship in college football for the 8th straight time. Florida State will be a serious challenge this time, unlike that joke of a fight Notre Dame put up last year against one loss Alabama. But Auburn should be up to the challenge. It's hard to imagine the SEC losing to anyone, after winning for 7 years straight. I said Ohio State was overrated and I was vindicated by Michigan State's victory later that week. People should listen to me more often.
In other good news, a massive twin study, with over 11,000 people being studied, proved yet again what we already knew, that intelligence is largely hereditary, ie, due to genes, and therefore the quality of individuals and groups is predetermined before birth. This conclusion was posted in a major, mainstream British newspaper, which is extraordinary, since supposedly any such conclusion was supposed to be 'pseudo-science' by 'extremists.'
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/11/genetics-variation-exam-results1?commentpage=2
This finding obviously necessitates eugenics, as we are morally culpable for allowing anyone with bad genes to be born when we know it will directly impact their own quality of life, and the quality of life of their neighbors downwardly the stupider they happen to be. As our own supreme court justice once said, three generations of imbeciles is enough.
In the future, we'll know the specific genes for intelligence and be able to screen babies ahead of time for what their eventual IQ will be, and thus choose to implant the fertilized egg into the womb or not depending on the results. But for now an easy rule of thumb is that children should only be born to intelligent parents, since intelligence is hereditary and it's more likely than not that smart kids will emerge from the genes of smart parents, whereas it's about as likely as winning the lottery that a smart kid will emerge from a pair of dumb parents. For starters, no one with an IQ below 120 should be allowed to reproduce, because that is the IQ required to master college level material and thus succeed in the technology driven economy of today. Popping children into the world with no hope of success in their future is just child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, or whatever you want to call it. In any case it's morally wrong.
Since the environment is suffering from overpopulation anyway, this massive culling had to take place sooner or later regardless. This takes care of two birds with one stone.
In other good news, a poll of expert scientists was taken showing that genes were generally credited with 50% of the difference between black and white intelligence, that greater intelligence was always a good thing, and that twin studies were already sufficient evidence of heritability in intelligence. IE, the science is already in.
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/2013/12/isir-what-do-intelligence-researchers.html
This means black are irretrievably inferior to whites. Or in other words, the vast majority of expert scientists related to the field of intelligence, (Researchers were invited to participate only if they had recent intelligence-related publications in Intelligence, Cognitive Psychology, Biological Psychology, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of School-Psychology, New Ideas in Psychology, and Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology ), were 'racists' by the definition that they believed one race was inherently superior to another. In other words, the vast majority of expert scientists who know what they are talking about agree with me.
Which means that two extremely bad things are happening in the world today -- our most intelligent, honorable, honest, courageous, and overall good people are being demonized by society and made into social and economic pariahs. People who believe and tell the truth, the most virtuous people in the world, are being persecuted precisely for their virtue. It is the nightmarish scenario that Plato/Aristotle condemned, where the worst possible evil imaginable is the day when evil is taken to be good and good is taken to be evil. Now like Socrates, every single person who mentions the truth about intelligence, heritability, and race is forced to drink hemlock by a demented society insisting the Sun orbits the Earth, the world is flat and intelligence is due to the environment.
The other negative consequence of this issue, besides the ultimate injustice that truth tellers are demonized by the public as bad people while liars are lionized as heroes, is that public policy that takes these facts into account cannot move forward. There are trillions of public policy measures that become obvious the second you learn that intelligence is hereditary and varies between groups. First, immigration policy could be changed. Second, birth rates could be encouraged among some groups while being discouraged among others. Third, all disparate impact/equal opportunity lawsuits could be abolished. Fourth, affirmative action could be abolished. Fifth, history could be rewritten to reflect what we now know about the races and why things happened the way they did, instead of just being a long-winded account about how whites are evil and everyone else on Earth was just an oppressed victim. Sixth, hiring could be made on the basis of IQ tests, so the entire education system could be abolished as a pointless waste of time, money, and energy. Seventh, compassion would stop blaming the victims and admit that poor or unemployed people are not necessarily lazy, because they were never given an equal chance in life to begin with, and therefore a citizen's dividend could be passed for those who never had the earning power to make a living on their own in the first place. Eighth, we could give up trying to rehabilitate criminals and instead crack down on them so hard that crime was effectively abolished, no matter how disparate the impact of this crackdown was on a certain race. Ninth, we could restrict the franchise to only those people intelligent enough to deserve it. Tenth, massive investments could be made in scientific research for the purpose of genetically engineering super babies with all sorts of genetic enhancements, from health to beauty to intelligence to good moral character, paving the way for the next stage of human evolution.
If we, as a society, as the masses, would just accept the same truths that the expert scientists who know the most in this field have already accepted, not only would a great injustice be undone against the modern day martyrs for the truth like poor Richwine at the heritage foundation, but innumerable public policy changes could be made, all of which would inestimably improve humanity's well being. These changes could be made tomorrow and are not dependent on any further scientific innovations or findings to be made. We could be living in a utopia today if we just recognized this one, tiny little truth. How much longer do we have to wait on the press, and the governments of the world, to catch on to what their own scientists are telling them? How many more generations must we suffer when the solution to all our problems is already at hand?
Friday, December 13, 2013
2013, Best Year in Anime Ever:
Looking back on 2013, it has pretty good credentials as the best year in anime ever:
55 of the top 160 shows in anime history had some portion of them air during this year. On December 31st, Sword Art Online's OAV will make that 56. Another way of looking at it is that 14 of the top 20 shows in anime history got additional content this year, an overwhelming majority. But if you don't want to look at borrowed success, another stat that conveys how amazing anime was this year is the number of good shows which originated during this year alone:
#68, Outbreak Company.
#79, Kiniro Mosaic.
#97, Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku.
#122, Hataraku Maou-sama!
#123, Zettai Bouei Leviathan.
#130, Vividred Operation.
#131, Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru!
#133, Kakumeiki Valvrave
#135, Shingeki no Kyojin
#150, Ore no Nōnai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Come o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru
#151, Non Non Biyori
In total, eleven new shows never before seen. That's near a record amount if not the record number of new good shows to air in a year.
It's difficult for a show that has just begun this year to be in the top ranks of anime, because most good anime is long and thus physically requires many years to build. But if you want to consider series that have had major contributions this year to their quality, look no further than:
#1, Pretty Cure. Doki Doki Precure is a really solid entry to this franchise. If I wanted to rank the Precure seasons individually, it would look like this:
1. Smile Precure
2. Fresh Precure
3. Yes Precure 5
4. Doki Doki Precure
5. Suite Precure
6. Yes Precure 5 Go Go
7. Futari wa Precure
8. Heartcatch Precure
9. Futari wa Precure Splash Star
10. Futari wa Precure Max Heart
2013 gave us the 4th best entry to the best anime of all time. And most of that is due to Regina. And most of that is due to Regina falling into the volcano. That moment is one of the most emotional scenes in all anime, not just Precure. I also think the theme of selfishness being the root of all evil is really insightful, and something that's never really been brought up before in any other work of art. Nor does the show have a bunch of brutes who selfishly going around raping in order to make its point. Just the selfishness of someone wanting kids to quiet down at a public park is enough. Just the selfishness of wanting to cut in line is brought to the fore. Basically, the importance of being considerate towards others, of seeing things from their perspective instead of just yours, of having respect and balancing the needs of others alongside your own, is something unique to Doki Doki Precure, which is extremely strange, because you would think that such a vital idea would have already been discussed a million times before. But nope, until 2013, there wasn't a single argument made against selfishness or for decency in human history. It was all just romances, action flicks, and other mindless personal stories with no universal moral theme whatsoever. It actually makes you feel pity for all the people who came before us. How could they possibly be good, when no one had ever even bothered to tell them what they were doing was wrong? Is it any wonder the chief job of men up until the second half of the 20th century was to kill their neighbors and take their stuff? What do you expect when they haven't even watched Doki Doki Precure yet?
#13, Index/Railgun. Railgun S is the best season of this franchise, by miles and away. Railgun S is so perfect it's just breathtaking. Sisters has everything. Laughter, tears, action, philosophy, strength and weakness. This series is so beautiful, musically, visually, and rhetorically. It's like every line of dialogue in this season was written in fire instead of a normal pen. The season that aired this year is the main reason this entire franchise is ranked where it is.
#14, Bake-(etc)-monogatari. Monogatari 2nd Season is the best season of this franchise, by miles and away. Monogatari 2nd Season revolutionizes everything about this series, time and again, providing a completely fresh look on everything we took for granted, in terms of plot, setting, characters, and words. The whipsaw of this season, that goes from one story to another, all seemingly completely different and unrelated to each other, but all actually tying back into each other through a subtle web of fate, is just an intellectual masterpiece. To think that if Mayoi Hachikuji didn't die in a car accident ten years ago, that the whole world would have turned into a zombie apocalypse, for the simple reason that she wouldn't have been there during the events of Tsubasa Cat to casually mention where Shinobu was hanging out when Araragi passed by her, is just boggling. If he hadn't befriended her before then by leading her home when he found her lost in a park, zombie apocalypse. And because he led her home and thus destroyed the basis of her ghost-hood, the Darkness came to hunt her down, and so he failed to protect the one girl who was vital to the protection of the entire rest of the world, all due to his own choices. And this is just one part of the story, with the other half being the amazing contortions Nadeko and Senjogahara are going through in their duel for Araragi all born from the same overwhelming power of love. How do you describe it all? How can you describe a story like this? Only those who watch it can understand the magnificence that was put into it. The voice acting, the choreography, the choice of colors, words used like razors they cut distinctions so fine between one meaning and the next, and the amazing ability to sympathize with everyone on all sides simultaneously -- this is Monogatari. When you look back at the rather simplistic stories in the first two seasons, how low stakes every contest was, it's hard to imagine how far the series has come during this year.
#19, Fate/etc. Prism Ilya is the reason this series is rated where it is. Fate/Stay Night is virtually worthless (which is probably why they intend to renovate it with a remake in 2014). Fate/Zero was okay. But Prism Illya was fantastic. You finally actually felt attached to the characters who were fighting with their lives on the line, because you finally had a reason to care about them. No longer were they just a bunch of unscrupulous mages fighting in a death game out of overweening greed. In Prism Illya, that's all thrown out, and instead magical girls are fighting for the safety of their town, and for simply a chance to belong, to be recognized, to be cared for by someone, anyone in this world. Illya wants Miyu's recognition as a capable girl who can stand at her side. Miyu wants the world's recognition that she has a right to live and shouldn't just die friendless, alone, and homeless due to an absolutely apathetic society. The two of them fight so hard for these things, more precious to them than life itself, even though they're terrified. Even though they're just little girls. Even though their opponents are way stronger than them every time. If you can't sympathize with the girls in this show, you're just a heartless monster. And once you've started to sympathize with them, the show's magic begins, because now you're rooting for them every step of the way during some of the greatest action sequences ever animated. Archer-Illya's fight with Saber is jaw dropping. Saber-Miyu's fight with Berserker is awe inspiring. It simply doesn't get any better than this. Prism Illya is the birth of one of the greatest stories ever told -- and there's a lot more to tell coming.
#30, Oreimo S2. I've already said more about Oreimo S2 than any other anime on this blog. Suffice to say Oreimo S2 is one of the most important anime series ever made. It's one of the best romance stories ever told, with just the right number of twists and turns, ups and downs, and victories and defeats that leaves your soul stirred. Kyousuke realizing he was falling for Kirino even as she tried to fetch back his happiness by tracking down Kuroneko and getting them back together again is an epic moment. And then to see Kirino falling for Kyousuke in turn at crucial moments throughout the season and flashbacks to the first season and even back when they were still children is so utterly satisfying. Her gratitude, after all he did for her, not a single portion of it was forgotten, nor was any of it done in vain. Every time she noticed, and every time she fell a little bit more in love with him, until by the end she would do anything for him and defy the whole world in the process. And then to have that heart rending ending, where they put their love in a spiritual box, to never be affirmed physically, in order not to offend a prejudiced and cruel world which hates them for no reason more than that they happened to fall in love with each other, puts one of the strongest moral messages ever conveyed in anime front and center. How dare you rip these two apart? Did you see how much effort, how much time it took to put them together? Do you see how precious, how hard, how rare true love is? And you just ruined it for nothing. For no reason at all. Just out of blind, prejudiced, uncaring hate. If you think this message is only about incest, you're wrong. It applies to anyone who has cruelly destroyed anything that others had to build as a life work -- it applies to anyone who has ever trampled over anyone's feelings. It's a universal message of tolerance and forgiveness and love towards mankind which counsels us not to harm others based on any arbitrary rule or system, but to only judge someone once you truly know them and know their hearts, from the inside out. If you can know them that well, if you can experience what they have experienced and seen through their eyes from childhood on up, and you still hate them for who they are, and not just because they crossed some random taboo that was written in some dusty thousand year old book, that's fine. But if you are going to hurt someone, you should at least go this far seeing just what exactly you are destroying first. Otherwise, the pain you're causing is absolutely unforgivable.
#31, Little Busters! Most of Little Busters! has aired during 2013, including the all-important refrain arc where we learn the secret of the world. Rin and Riki's romance is really good, as are the wonderful missions they go on, like running a puppet show. But perhaps the high point of this series was Kudryavka's arc, which also aired in 2013, where she escaped a literal cave of darkness and made it all the way back to her ii-basho (good place, the place where she belongs, her home), the baseball diamond at school where her nakama were practicing like always. With that one line, "Kudryavka Strikes Back," nothing but tears can erupt from hearts of pure stone. The amount of effort it took for her to get to that point, the vast gap in possibilities between that happy ending and what could have otherwise been, the relief of seeing her smile after so many painful and dread-inducing before, the sheer contrast of heaven and hell all encompassed in that single line. . . This is Key, and it's why Key is the most important existence in the world today, or any day in the history of mankind. Key's works are the greatest treasure mankind has to offer. Just like how in the past, we included Mozart on our Voyager probes to show aliens just what we're made out of, today we would include the collected works of Key. Clannad, Planetarian, Kanon, Air and Rewrite, yes. But also Little Busters! Little Busters! has nothing to be ashamed of standing in the company of those other greats.
#39, Haganai. The second season of Haganai was nigh perfect. It was as good or better than the original season, in that it brought out a lot more character in its supporting cast -- especially the mad scientist Rika. While generating interest in everyone else, it still delivered on more progress concerning both Sena and Kobato, the stars of this show. (to the jealous frustration of Yozora, who made no progress this season). The episode where Sena, Kobato, and Kodaka are mistaken for mother, father and daughter, with Sena taking the suggestion flatteringly, is a hnnnng inducing moment that simply cannot be beat. But Rika's plea on the rooftop that, in the end, all she wants is friends, just like the damn poster said she could have, and Kodaka's promise to somehow make this seemingly easy but ridiculously hard dream come true, is just a fantastic season finale. Even if the anime never goes forward from there, the value of friendship has already been proven, as has been the difficulty of men and women being 'just friends' in the first place. But if you could just overcome that hump, the paradise that lies beyond, where everyone in the club gets along happily and excitedly, just like they did all those months until now, is so alluring that it makes you want to try anything to win. Shows like Haganai, while having extremely sexy girls and being extremely romantic, simultaneously makes one wish that there were no sexes to begin with, nor any such thing as sex or sexual jealousy to worry about. It's such a conflicting feeling, such a dramatic Hegelian moment of thesis and antithesis, the series feels like it could be the birth of a new universe or something.
#40, Hunter x Hunter. Up until now, Hunter x Hunter has just been repeating what was already animated a decade ago. But in 2013, Hunter x Hunter entered the chimera ant arc, which is all new to the anime world. Not only is this arc new, and thus more valuable than all the series that came before it, but the arc is just plain better than all the arcs that came before it. By a great deal. This is the first arc our protagonists are actually fighting with their lives on the line. This is also the first arc they've ever been strong enough to actually be useful in a fight. This is also the first time what they were doing with their lives has been significant to the rest of the world, instead of just themselves. In other words, this is the culmination of the entire series, what they've been training for all their lives, the very meaning of their belonging to the Hunter organization. It was for catastrophes like this that Hunters are made to fight against them and trained so hard to be ready for them. This is the moment they'll always be remembered for, for the rest of their lives, like that picture of the marines lifting their flag on Iwo Jima. Not only are Gon and Killua given their finest chance to shine during this arc, but other characters are also written extremely well -- the King and Komugi, the Phantom Troupe, Morel and Knov, Knuckle and Palm, Kite and Neferpitou, the number of really fun or interesting characters shoots up exponentially during this arc compared to everything that has come before it.
Supposedly, the manga is just on hiatus, and will start again some day. But there's really no need for it. With the closure of the Chimera Ant arc, and the short 'heal Gon' arc that stems from it, we're at a perfect stopping point where nothing more need really be said. Gon and Killua became heroes and saved the world. What more do you really need? It's the best ending possible for these two, whose friendship is already on a legendary level no other story has ever managed to match on a platonic scale.
#44, Love Live! A lot of value of Love Live comes from the short dance oav's that have been airing for years now. But surely a measure of praise can be reserved for the actual TV season, that brought to life these characters as people instead of just singers and dancers for the first time. There's a lot of great drama, of relationship building, of friendship strengthening, of starting from scratch and working your way up to the top, in this short but poignant season. Love Live is set to continue in 2014, and I'm sure it will be fantastic then too, but this first season has been the best idol story yet told in a market already full of great idol based anime series. Love Live is also just flat out gorgeous, both musically and visually. They even put the girls of Idolm@ster to shame.
#134, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Yes, there were some random oav's in the 90's concerning Jojo's. But essentially, the Jojo anime started in 2012, and actually became awesome in 2013. The pillar man fight was much better than the original fight with Dio. Plus the favorable treatment of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany is a breath of fresh air in a world that likes to paint every villain in every story as either the Nazis straight-out or a vaguely similar group to the Nazis in terms of ideology or aesthetics. To give a fair-minded account of Germany that shows some of its virtues as well as its fatal flaws, many of which were inseparably intertwined, when everyone else just vilifies it as being terrible in every way makes for a uniquely good show. In other words, Stroheim rules.
In other words, no matter what metric you measure 2013 anime by, it comes out on top. The number of good shows, the number of good new shows, or the number of great shows at the very top of the rankings, it all comes out the same, 2013 is on top regardless. 2013 was just that splendid. Because anime was so good this year, nothing else had much of a chance to compete. Video games had DW8 and Tales of Xillia. Visual novels had the Oozora fansub and the Rewrite fansub. Light novels had a little Baka to Test, Sword Art Online and Zero no Tsukaima translated. College football had the Auburn-Alabama game. Hollywood had Ender's Game. But in each of these cases, only one or two good things happened all year long. Meanwhile anime kept publishing, every week, multiple things to be delighted and excited about, all four seasons long. It makes the world outside of anime seem so very small, like the moons of Jupiter helplessly orbiting around a massive supergiant. Looking back, will anyone really care about any political or economic development in 2013? Aside from Croatia joining the EU, nothing happened of note whatsoever. Cancer still isn't cured. We still haven't made up the ground we lost during the recession. Syria still isn't free of its brutal dictator. Egypt is still a mess. There wasn't any meaningful progress in computers or software. (We're still stuck with that awful Windows 8). The PS4 came out, but it still doesn't have any games, so right now it's only good as a doorstop. While I can quickly point to Railgun and Monogatari as things that we will remember 2013 for forever, no one will care about 2013 concerning any other aspect in five years. It will all be forgotten, because not a single thing of note happened all year long.
Life, death, anime in between. Nothing proved this better than 2013.
55 of the top 160 shows in anime history had some portion of them air during this year. On December 31st, Sword Art Online's OAV will make that 56. Another way of looking at it is that 14 of the top 20 shows in anime history got additional content this year, an overwhelming majority. But if you don't want to look at borrowed success, another stat that conveys how amazing anime was this year is the number of good shows which originated during this year alone:
#68, Outbreak Company.
#79, Kiniro Mosaic.
#97, Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku.
#122, Hataraku Maou-sama!
#123, Zettai Bouei Leviathan.
#130, Vividred Operation.
#131, Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru!
#133, Kakumeiki Valvrave
#135, Shingeki no Kyojin
#150, Ore no Nōnai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Come o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru
#151, Non Non Biyori
In total, eleven new shows never before seen. That's near a record amount if not the record number of new good shows to air in a year.
It's difficult for a show that has just begun this year to be in the top ranks of anime, because most good anime is long and thus physically requires many years to build. But if you want to consider series that have had major contributions this year to their quality, look no further than:
#1, Pretty Cure. Doki Doki Precure is a really solid entry to this franchise. If I wanted to rank the Precure seasons individually, it would look like this:
1. Smile Precure
2. Fresh Precure
3. Yes Precure 5
4. Doki Doki Precure
5. Suite Precure
6. Yes Precure 5 Go Go
7. Futari wa Precure
8. Heartcatch Precure
9. Futari wa Precure Splash Star
10. Futari wa Precure Max Heart
2013 gave us the 4th best entry to the best anime of all time. And most of that is due to Regina. And most of that is due to Regina falling into the volcano. That moment is one of the most emotional scenes in all anime, not just Precure. I also think the theme of selfishness being the root of all evil is really insightful, and something that's never really been brought up before in any other work of art. Nor does the show have a bunch of brutes who selfishly going around raping in order to make its point. Just the selfishness of someone wanting kids to quiet down at a public park is enough. Just the selfishness of wanting to cut in line is brought to the fore. Basically, the importance of being considerate towards others, of seeing things from their perspective instead of just yours, of having respect and balancing the needs of others alongside your own, is something unique to Doki Doki Precure, which is extremely strange, because you would think that such a vital idea would have already been discussed a million times before. But nope, until 2013, there wasn't a single argument made against selfishness or for decency in human history. It was all just romances, action flicks, and other mindless personal stories with no universal moral theme whatsoever. It actually makes you feel pity for all the people who came before us. How could they possibly be good, when no one had ever even bothered to tell them what they were doing was wrong? Is it any wonder the chief job of men up until the second half of the 20th century was to kill their neighbors and take their stuff? What do you expect when they haven't even watched Doki Doki Precure yet?
#13, Index/Railgun. Railgun S is the best season of this franchise, by miles and away. Railgun S is so perfect it's just breathtaking. Sisters has everything. Laughter, tears, action, philosophy, strength and weakness. This series is so beautiful, musically, visually, and rhetorically. It's like every line of dialogue in this season was written in fire instead of a normal pen. The season that aired this year is the main reason this entire franchise is ranked where it is.
#14, Bake-(etc)-monogatari. Monogatari 2nd Season is the best season of this franchise, by miles and away. Monogatari 2nd Season revolutionizes everything about this series, time and again, providing a completely fresh look on everything we took for granted, in terms of plot, setting, characters, and words. The whipsaw of this season, that goes from one story to another, all seemingly completely different and unrelated to each other, but all actually tying back into each other through a subtle web of fate, is just an intellectual masterpiece. To think that if Mayoi Hachikuji didn't die in a car accident ten years ago, that the whole world would have turned into a zombie apocalypse, for the simple reason that she wouldn't have been there during the events of Tsubasa Cat to casually mention where Shinobu was hanging out when Araragi passed by her, is just boggling. If he hadn't befriended her before then by leading her home when he found her lost in a park, zombie apocalypse. And because he led her home and thus destroyed the basis of her ghost-hood, the Darkness came to hunt her down, and so he failed to protect the one girl who was vital to the protection of the entire rest of the world, all due to his own choices. And this is just one part of the story, with the other half being the amazing contortions Nadeko and Senjogahara are going through in their duel for Araragi all born from the same overwhelming power of love. How do you describe it all? How can you describe a story like this? Only those who watch it can understand the magnificence that was put into it. The voice acting, the choreography, the choice of colors, words used like razors they cut distinctions so fine between one meaning and the next, and the amazing ability to sympathize with everyone on all sides simultaneously -- this is Monogatari. When you look back at the rather simplistic stories in the first two seasons, how low stakes every contest was, it's hard to imagine how far the series has come during this year.
#19, Fate/etc. Prism Ilya is the reason this series is rated where it is. Fate/Stay Night is virtually worthless (which is probably why they intend to renovate it with a remake in 2014). Fate/Zero was okay. But Prism Illya was fantastic. You finally actually felt attached to the characters who were fighting with their lives on the line, because you finally had a reason to care about them. No longer were they just a bunch of unscrupulous mages fighting in a death game out of overweening greed. In Prism Illya, that's all thrown out, and instead magical girls are fighting for the safety of their town, and for simply a chance to belong, to be recognized, to be cared for by someone, anyone in this world. Illya wants Miyu's recognition as a capable girl who can stand at her side. Miyu wants the world's recognition that she has a right to live and shouldn't just die friendless, alone, and homeless due to an absolutely apathetic society. The two of them fight so hard for these things, more precious to them than life itself, even though they're terrified. Even though they're just little girls. Even though their opponents are way stronger than them every time. If you can't sympathize with the girls in this show, you're just a heartless monster. And once you've started to sympathize with them, the show's magic begins, because now you're rooting for them every step of the way during some of the greatest action sequences ever animated. Archer-Illya's fight with Saber is jaw dropping. Saber-Miyu's fight with Berserker is awe inspiring. It simply doesn't get any better than this. Prism Illya is the birth of one of the greatest stories ever told -- and there's a lot more to tell coming.
#30, Oreimo S2. I've already said more about Oreimo S2 than any other anime on this blog. Suffice to say Oreimo S2 is one of the most important anime series ever made. It's one of the best romance stories ever told, with just the right number of twists and turns, ups and downs, and victories and defeats that leaves your soul stirred. Kyousuke realizing he was falling for Kirino even as she tried to fetch back his happiness by tracking down Kuroneko and getting them back together again is an epic moment. And then to see Kirino falling for Kyousuke in turn at crucial moments throughout the season and flashbacks to the first season and even back when they were still children is so utterly satisfying. Her gratitude, after all he did for her, not a single portion of it was forgotten, nor was any of it done in vain. Every time she noticed, and every time she fell a little bit more in love with him, until by the end she would do anything for him and defy the whole world in the process. And then to have that heart rending ending, where they put their love in a spiritual box, to never be affirmed physically, in order not to offend a prejudiced and cruel world which hates them for no reason more than that they happened to fall in love with each other, puts one of the strongest moral messages ever conveyed in anime front and center. How dare you rip these two apart? Did you see how much effort, how much time it took to put them together? Do you see how precious, how hard, how rare true love is? And you just ruined it for nothing. For no reason at all. Just out of blind, prejudiced, uncaring hate. If you think this message is only about incest, you're wrong. It applies to anyone who has cruelly destroyed anything that others had to build as a life work -- it applies to anyone who has ever trampled over anyone's feelings. It's a universal message of tolerance and forgiveness and love towards mankind which counsels us not to harm others based on any arbitrary rule or system, but to only judge someone once you truly know them and know their hearts, from the inside out. If you can know them that well, if you can experience what they have experienced and seen through their eyes from childhood on up, and you still hate them for who they are, and not just because they crossed some random taboo that was written in some dusty thousand year old book, that's fine. But if you are going to hurt someone, you should at least go this far seeing just what exactly you are destroying first. Otherwise, the pain you're causing is absolutely unforgivable.
#31, Little Busters! Most of Little Busters! has aired during 2013, including the all-important refrain arc where we learn the secret of the world. Rin and Riki's romance is really good, as are the wonderful missions they go on, like running a puppet show. But perhaps the high point of this series was Kudryavka's arc, which also aired in 2013, where she escaped a literal cave of darkness and made it all the way back to her ii-basho (good place, the place where she belongs, her home), the baseball diamond at school where her nakama were practicing like always. With that one line, "Kudryavka Strikes Back," nothing but tears can erupt from hearts of pure stone. The amount of effort it took for her to get to that point, the vast gap in possibilities between that happy ending and what could have otherwise been, the relief of seeing her smile after so many painful and dread-inducing before, the sheer contrast of heaven and hell all encompassed in that single line. . . This is Key, and it's why Key is the most important existence in the world today, or any day in the history of mankind. Key's works are the greatest treasure mankind has to offer. Just like how in the past, we included Mozart on our Voyager probes to show aliens just what we're made out of, today we would include the collected works of Key. Clannad, Planetarian, Kanon, Air and Rewrite, yes. But also Little Busters! Little Busters! has nothing to be ashamed of standing in the company of those other greats.
#39, Haganai. The second season of Haganai was nigh perfect. It was as good or better than the original season, in that it brought out a lot more character in its supporting cast -- especially the mad scientist Rika. While generating interest in everyone else, it still delivered on more progress concerning both Sena and Kobato, the stars of this show. (to the jealous frustration of Yozora, who made no progress this season). The episode where Sena, Kobato, and Kodaka are mistaken for mother, father and daughter, with Sena taking the suggestion flatteringly, is a hnnnng inducing moment that simply cannot be beat. But Rika's plea on the rooftop that, in the end, all she wants is friends, just like the damn poster said she could have, and Kodaka's promise to somehow make this seemingly easy but ridiculously hard dream come true, is just a fantastic season finale. Even if the anime never goes forward from there, the value of friendship has already been proven, as has been the difficulty of men and women being 'just friends' in the first place. But if you could just overcome that hump, the paradise that lies beyond, where everyone in the club gets along happily and excitedly, just like they did all those months until now, is so alluring that it makes you want to try anything to win. Shows like Haganai, while having extremely sexy girls and being extremely romantic, simultaneously makes one wish that there were no sexes to begin with, nor any such thing as sex or sexual jealousy to worry about. It's such a conflicting feeling, such a dramatic Hegelian moment of thesis and antithesis, the series feels like it could be the birth of a new universe or something.
#40, Hunter x Hunter. Up until now, Hunter x Hunter has just been repeating what was already animated a decade ago. But in 2013, Hunter x Hunter entered the chimera ant arc, which is all new to the anime world. Not only is this arc new, and thus more valuable than all the series that came before it, but the arc is just plain better than all the arcs that came before it. By a great deal. This is the first arc our protagonists are actually fighting with their lives on the line. This is also the first arc they've ever been strong enough to actually be useful in a fight. This is also the first time what they were doing with their lives has been significant to the rest of the world, instead of just themselves. In other words, this is the culmination of the entire series, what they've been training for all their lives, the very meaning of their belonging to the Hunter organization. It was for catastrophes like this that Hunters are made to fight against them and trained so hard to be ready for them. This is the moment they'll always be remembered for, for the rest of their lives, like that picture of the marines lifting their flag on Iwo Jima. Not only are Gon and Killua given their finest chance to shine during this arc, but other characters are also written extremely well -- the King and Komugi, the Phantom Troupe, Morel and Knov, Knuckle and Palm, Kite and Neferpitou, the number of really fun or interesting characters shoots up exponentially during this arc compared to everything that has come before it.
Supposedly, the manga is just on hiatus, and will start again some day. But there's really no need for it. With the closure of the Chimera Ant arc, and the short 'heal Gon' arc that stems from it, we're at a perfect stopping point where nothing more need really be said. Gon and Killua became heroes and saved the world. What more do you really need? It's the best ending possible for these two, whose friendship is already on a legendary level no other story has ever managed to match on a platonic scale.
#44, Love Live! A lot of value of Love Live comes from the short dance oav's that have been airing for years now. But surely a measure of praise can be reserved for the actual TV season, that brought to life these characters as people instead of just singers and dancers for the first time. There's a lot of great drama, of relationship building, of friendship strengthening, of starting from scratch and working your way up to the top, in this short but poignant season. Love Live is set to continue in 2014, and I'm sure it will be fantastic then too, but this first season has been the best idol story yet told in a market already full of great idol based anime series. Love Live is also just flat out gorgeous, both musically and visually. They even put the girls of Idolm@ster to shame.
#134, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Yes, there were some random oav's in the 90's concerning Jojo's. But essentially, the Jojo anime started in 2012, and actually became awesome in 2013. The pillar man fight was much better than the original fight with Dio. Plus the favorable treatment of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany is a breath of fresh air in a world that likes to paint every villain in every story as either the Nazis straight-out or a vaguely similar group to the Nazis in terms of ideology or aesthetics. To give a fair-minded account of Germany that shows some of its virtues as well as its fatal flaws, many of which were inseparably intertwined, when everyone else just vilifies it as being terrible in every way makes for a uniquely good show. In other words, Stroheim rules.
In other words, no matter what metric you measure 2013 anime by, it comes out on top. The number of good shows, the number of good new shows, or the number of great shows at the very top of the rankings, it all comes out the same, 2013 is on top regardless. 2013 was just that splendid. Because anime was so good this year, nothing else had much of a chance to compete. Video games had DW8 and Tales of Xillia. Visual novels had the Oozora fansub and the Rewrite fansub. Light novels had a little Baka to Test, Sword Art Online and Zero no Tsukaima translated. College football had the Auburn-Alabama game. Hollywood had Ender's Game. But in each of these cases, only one or two good things happened all year long. Meanwhile anime kept publishing, every week, multiple things to be delighted and excited about, all four seasons long. It makes the world outside of anime seem so very small, like the moons of Jupiter helplessly orbiting around a massive supergiant. Looking back, will anyone really care about any political or economic development in 2013? Aside from Croatia joining the EU, nothing happened of note whatsoever. Cancer still isn't cured. We still haven't made up the ground we lost during the recession. Syria still isn't free of its brutal dictator. Egypt is still a mess. There wasn't any meaningful progress in computers or software. (We're still stuck with that awful Windows 8). The PS4 came out, but it still doesn't have any games, so right now it's only good as a doorstop. While I can quickly point to Railgun and Monogatari as things that we will remember 2013 for forever, no one will care about 2013 concerning any other aspect in five years. It will all be forgotten, because not a single thing of note happened all year long.
Life, death, anime in between. Nothing proved this better than 2013.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
'Lost World' anime Update:
The problem with Daa! Daa! Daa! is that it is too long. The manga the anime is sourced from is only 46 chapters long, and yet the anime is 78 episodes. Yes, these chapters are twice as large as normal, but even then you're talking a maximum of 46 episodes of anime. An anime should cover at least two chapters of manga per episode, like Dragon Ball Kai which covered 2.3 chapters per episode in its filler-less remake. Daa Daa Daa didn't get a remake, so it's full of useless filler. To be precise, the last three episodes of the anime are filler, but on top of that, random time-wasting segments are inserted into the entire rest of the series just to slow things down, to the equivalent of 19 additional episodes of filler. These time wasting segments are probably the dull, repetitive jokes concerning dull, one-dimensional side characters with annoying personalities. It gets so bad that sometimes you just want to skip ahead during the episode until the side characters are gone again.
It's difficult for a comedy to remain interesting or funny for a long duration. Eventually it feels like every possible joke concerning said characters has already been told and there's nothing funny left to say. This same problem afflicts every good comedy series, whether it's Seitokai no Ichizon, Ika Musume or Kitakubu. Even Noucome is suffering from its reliance on repeat gags and it's only 9 episodes long so far. When it comes to comedy series, less is more. The shorter your series, the fresher your jokes, the better the overall product will be. Daa! Daa! Daa!, at 78 episodes, is just way too long for any possible comedy to survive. 26 episodes is already ambitious enough, and is the average for all these other good comedy shows. Nor is it any use to mix in romance with the comedy -- if it had been primarily a romance story with a dash of comedy, the story could go on for quite a while. But a comedy with a silly romance on the side is simply enveloped by the overwhelming comic portions and you can't take the romance aspect seriously in the end either. For instance, Noucome has romantic developments, but you can't take any of them seriously or get very invested in them, because the silliness is just an overwhelming portion of every character involved. Haganai, on the other hand, is primarily a romance, or at least a show built around human relationships, and the comedy keeps itself to a smaller role that only adds to the spice of the developing characters' feelings.
Haganai can be as long as it likes and I'll always love it, but comedy-only shows don't have that luxury, because there is nothing appealing about them except the very next gag line. If too many gags fail in a row it just becomes a boring waste of time.
Without the filler, the anime would have been 46 episodes long. But on top of that, to stay a good comedy, it would have had to condense that material down into just a 26 episode series. If it covered 2 chapters of manga per episode, with each of these chapters being double length, it could have had enough developments per episode in terms of characters and romance to keep our attention. As it is, it's just like eating water soup because there's no more gruel left to stave off starvation. No matter how much Daa Daa Daa you watch, you didn't receive any additional informational content than you already had before.
In contrast, H2 is a very slow anime. At 41 episodes, it only covers 76 chapters of manga. But at least the action keeps moving along and the story keeps developing from one episode to the next. Nothing ever stands still in H2. Things are happenings. Things are changing every day. Actions have meaning. Words have meaning. What happened before affects what happens next. And the story is so enthralling I read all the remaining chapters after chapter 76 to the end, chapter 338, in just two days. That's when you have a good story. That's when you know you aren't just wasting your audience's time.
At 101 episodes, Touch is an extremely long anime, but that's okay because it covers 257 chapters of manga, from the very beginning to the very end of the story. Each episode actually has a ton of content in it which moves the story forward. There's something to get excited about, an important line of dialogue that actually changes how people feel, delivered in each and every episode. Both H2 and Touch have humor in them, but they are really about human relationships, which is far more gripping for a far longer duration. If you want a long show, create a sophisticated situation and deep characters like Adachi does with his stories. Don't just keep repeating the same jokes and have a baby fly around. 78 episodes of flying babies is just too many.
Hopefully I can finish watching the rest of Daa! Daa! Daa! Since the last three episodes of the anime that haven't been subbed yet are filler anyway, it's now possible to watch the series in full. If I do finish watching it, it can stay in my rankings, because I really did love the first twenty episodes or so. If I don't I'll kick it out in favor of some new winter show.
Futakoi is another story. The original season of Futakoi was charming. The guy had a few too many love interests by the end, but the girls were so cute anything can be forgiven. Futakoi Alternative though, is absolute garbage. The plot is basically non-existent, the art style is just some director going on acid trips and doing whatever he feels like, the animation is totally random just for the sake of randomness, and the relationships between the characters are abysmal. Just watching Renji with the Shirogane sisters makes you want to strangle all three of them to death, they're so infuriating. Futakoi is in a situation similar to Lodoss War -- the oav series was fantastic, but the TV series after that were all garbage. If you averaged the quality together Lodoss War would be worthless -- but if you take the original story as a self-contained story with a good beginning and a good end, the show still has a lot of merit. When I rank Futakoi, I mean solely Futakoi -- as far as I'm concerned Futakoi Alternative never existed and I never saw it. If I look at it that way, Futakoi is still a good series. But no thanks to that awful, unrelated, spinoff sequel. Never confuse the two.
Ojamajo Doremi is terrible compared to Precure, but you can still see the common ancestry between them. I'm still on the fence concerning this series. It's tremendously long, but at least they are gradually leveling up towards becoming full fledged mages, so the story isn't just episodically sitting in place. It can stay in my rankings for now.
Tales of 'x' doesn't get much support from Abyss, which just does not have appealing characters or a comprehensible plot. Eternia is much better, but its low budget and short duration cuts down its appeal. Symphonia is probably the gem of this franchise, with the Vesperia movie being a close second. The Phantasia oav's are both old and short, so there's not much to gain there. Only by combining them all together can you possibly say this series deserves a ranking, but that's okay because that's how franchises are judged.
Jigoku Shoujo's second and third seasons are better than the first season. They have interesting sub-plots that help close out their respective seasons with good characters. The art and voice acting are just top notch. However, the show is still episodic and feels like it just wanders around aimlessly from scene to scene. 111 is probably the right ranking overall.
Gakuen Alice is cute, with great art and voice acting and a charming romance aspect. However, it's way too short and doesn't accurately follow its source. You feel like the anime really fell short of its potential, so a spot like 153 is about right.
Myself;Yourself is short but powerful. It deals with serious themes in a deft and believable manner. You come out really liking the male leads in this show even though you normally don't in these 'harem like' story scenarios. The voice acting is also tremendous in this show, featuring a ton of top talent.
Kokoro Toshokan is basically overly sweet. It relies on magic and people being way nicer than is natural to keep the story upbeat. Kokoro is cute, and cute is justice, so the show is still good. It's just not very filling, in terms of depth of content, so 110 is about right for it.
Maria-sama ga Miteru is a classic and a masterpiece. Now they just need to make the next season already.
Rocket Girls, on the other hand, is just fine ending as a short series. In that short space of time, a lot happens, and all of it is extremely memorable. I pretty much adore everything about this series and dislike nothing.
Binbou Shimai Monogatari has some strong episodes and some weak episodes, but the better episodes are good enough to excuse the worse ones. Overall it's a touching, sweet journey through the ups and downs of life.
Aishiteru ze Baby is like Usagi Drop, except longer and better. I have zero complaints with this show. It was funny, touching, and exciting from start to finish.
So far, canvassing the entirety of anime's past has netted me 14 new ranked shows. But of those 14, 2, Ojamajo Doremi and Daa! Daa! Daa!, are still suspect. Out of hundreds of possibly good series, it really is impressive how few diamonds remained. Still, the ones that did remain were wonderful experiences, from Rocket Girls to H2, so I don't regret the project at all.
It appears the #2 and #3 best selling light novel series, Kagerou Days and Mahouka Rettosai, will both have their anime adaptions airing this coming April. As a result, the spring 2014 anime season is looking great. The winter season looks so awful that all I can do is ignore it and look forward to next spring. But that's okay, that's why we have the Sochi 2014 Olympics, right?
It's difficult for a comedy to remain interesting or funny for a long duration. Eventually it feels like every possible joke concerning said characters has already been told and there's nothing funny left to say. This same problem afflicts every good comedy series, whether it's Seitokai no Ichizon, Ika Musume or Kitakubu. Even Noucome is suffering from its reliance on repeat gags and it's only 9 episodes long so far. When it comes to comedy series, less is more. The shorter your series, the fresher your jokes, the better the overall product will be. Daa! Daa! Daa!, at 78 episodes, is just way too long for any possible comedy to survive. 26 episodes is already ambitious enough, and is the average for all these other good comedy shows. Nor is it any use to mix in romance with the comedy -- if it had been primarily a romance story with a dash of comedy, the story could go on for quite a while. But a comedy with a silly romance on the side is simply enveloped by the overwhelming comic portions and you can't take the romance aspect seriously in the end either. For instance, Noucome has romantic developments, but you can't take any of them seriously or get very invested in them, because the silliness is just an overwhelming portion of every character involved. Haganai, on the other hand, is primarily a romance, or at least a show built around human relationships, and the comedy keeps itself to a smaller role that only adds to the spice of the developing characters' feelings.
Haganai can be as long as it likes and I'll always love it, but comedy-only shows don't have that luxury, because there is nothing appealing about them except the very next gag line. If too many gags fail in a row it just becomes a boring waste of time.
Without the filler, the anime would have been 46 episodes long. But on top of that, to stay a good comedy, it would have had to condense that material down into just a 26 episode series. If it covered 2 chapters of manga per episode, with each of these chapters being double length, it could have had enough developments per episode in terms of characters and romance to keep our attention. As it is, it's just like eating water soup because there's no more gruel left to stave off starvation. No matter how much Daa Daa Daa you watch, you didn't receive any additional informational content than you already had before.
In contrast, H2 is a very slow anime. At 41 episodes, it only covers 76 chapters of manga. But at least the action keeps moving along and the story keeps developing from one episode to the next. Nothing ever stands still in H2. Things are happenings. Things are changing every day. Actions have meaning. Words have meaning. What happened before affects what happens next. And the story is so enthralling I read all the remaining chapters after chapter 76 to the end, chapter 338, in just two days. That's when you have a good story. That's when you know you aren't just wasting your audience's time.
At 101 episodes, Touch is an extremely long anime, but that's okay because it covers 257 chapters of manga, from the very beginning to the very end of the story. Each episode actually has a ton of content in it which moves the story forward. There's something to get excited about, an important line of dialogue that actually changes how people feel, delivered in each and every episode. Both H2 and Touch have humor in them, but they are really about human relationships, which is far more gripping for a far longer duration. If you want a long show, create a sophisticated situation and deep characters like Adachi does with his stories. Don't just keep repeating the same jokes and have a baby fly around. 78 episodes of flying babies is just too many.
Hopefully I can finish watching the rest of Daa! Daa! Daa! Since the last three episodes of the anime that haven't been subbed yet are filler anyway, it's now possible to watch the series in full. If I do finish watching it, it can stay in my rankings, because I really did love the first twenty episodes or so. If I don't I'll kick it out in favor of some new winter show.
Futakoi is another story. The original season of Futakoi was charming. The guy had a few too many love interests by the end, but the girls were so cute anything can be forgiven. Futakoi Alternative though, is absolute garbage. The plot is basically non-existent, the art style is just some director going on acid trips and doing whatever he feels like, the animation is totally random just for the sake of randomness, and the relationships between the characters are abysmal. Just watching Renji with the Shirogane sisters makes you want to strangle all three of them to death, they're so infuriating. Futakoi is in a situation similar to Lodoss War -- the oav series was fantastic, but the TV series after that were all garbage. If you averaged the quality together Lodoss War would be worthless -- but if you take the original story as a self-contained story with a good beginning and a good end, the show still has a lot of merit. When I rank Futakoi, I mean solely Futakoi -- as far as I'm concerned Futakoi Alternative never existed and I never saw it. If I look at it that way, Futakoi is still a good series. But no thanks to that awful, unrelated, spinoff sequel. Never confuse the two.
Ojamajo Doremi is terrible compared to Precure, but you can still see the common ancestry between them. I'm still on the fence concerning this series. It's tremendously long, but at least they are gradually leveling up towards becoming full fledged mages, so the story isn't just episodically sitting in place. It can stay in my rankings for now.
Tales of 'x' doesn't get much support from Abyss, which just does not have appealing characters or a comprehensible plot. Eternia is much better, but its low budget and short duration cuts down its appeal. Symphonia is probably the gem of this franchise, with the Vesperia movie being a close second. The Phantasia oav's are both old and short, so there's not much to gain there. Only by combining them all together can you possibly say this series deserves a ranking, but that's okay because that's how franchises are judged.
Jigoku Shoujo's second and third seasons are better than the first season. They have interesting sub-plots that help close out their respective seasons with good characters. The art and voice acting are just top notch. However, the show is still episodic and feels like it just wanders around aimlessly from scene to scene. 111 is probably the right ranking overall.
Gakuen Alice is cute, with great art and voice acting and a charming romance aspect. However, it's way too short and doesn't accurately follow its source. You feel like the anime really fell short of its potential, so a spot like 153 is about right.
Myself;Yourself is short but powerful. It deals with serious themes in a deft and believable manner. You come out really liking the male leads in this show even though you normally don't in these 'harem like' story scenarios. The voice acting is also tremendous in this show, featuring a ton of top talent.
Kokoro Toshokan is basically overly sweet. It relies on magic and people being way nicer than is natural to keep the story upbeat. Kokoro is cute, and cute is justice, so the show is still good. It's just not very filling, in terms of depth of content, so 110 is about right for it.
Maria-sama ga Miteru is a classic and a masterpiece. Now they just need to make the next season already.
Rocket Girls, on the other hand, is just fine ending as a short series. In that short space of time, a lot happens, and all of it is extremely memorable. I pretty much adore everything about this series and dislike nothing.
Binbou Shimai Monogatari has some strong episodes and some weak episodes, but the better episodes are good enough to excuse the worse ones. Overall it's a touching, sweet journey through the ups and downs of life.
Aishiteru ze Baby is like Usagi Drop, except longer and better. I have zero complaints with this show. It was funny, touching, and exciting from start to finish.
So far, canvassing the entirety of anime's past has netted me 14 new ranked shows. But of those 14, 2, Ojamajo Doremi and Daa! Daa! Daa!, are still suspect. Out of hundreds of possibly good series, it really is impressive how few diamonds remained. Still, the ones that did remain were wonderful experiences, from Rocket Girls to H2, so I don't regret the project at all.
It appears the #2 and #3 best selling light novel series, Kagerou Days and Mahouka Rettosai, will both have their anime adaptions airing this coming April. As a result, the spring 2014 anime season is looking great. The winter season looks so awful that all I can do is ignore it and look forward to next spring. But that's okay, that's why we have the Sochi 2014 Olympics, right?
Monday, December 2, 2013
What Do Sales Figures Tell Us About 2013?:
Anime News Network has some valuable new data for us concerning manga and light novel sales. From last November to this November, what series are the most popular in Japan? The answer is pretty predictable, but it's fun to rub in people's faces anyway:
#1 light novel = Sword Art Online
#1 manga = One Piece.
Now officially for the whole year, instead of just the first half of the year, Sword Art Online is the best book series around. No matter how many idiots criticize it, the franchise continues to completely dominate all its competition, outselling by a 2:1 margin the 2nd place winner.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-12-01/top-selling-light-novels-in-japan-by-series/2013
#2, Kagerou Days, already has an anime adaption in the works. So does #3, the irregular at magic high school. The rest already have an anime adaption or are getting one, so basically all of Japan's most popular literature has been plumbed and there's nothing left to give on this front.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-12-01/top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-series/2013
Similarly, every manga in the top rankings already has an anime adaption, except for #7 Assassination Classroom and #10 Terra Formers. #7 already has an anime OAV, but that's hardly an adaption, more like just an advertisement. If we get an anime announcement for these two series, anime will have fully exhausted all the best manga available as well.
We still only have the first half year of 2013 rankings for visual novels, but #1 and #3, Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai and Grisaia, have already been announced for an anime adaption. Prism Recollection is sitting at #2 and may need some looking into, but basically anime is doing a good job of covering its bases with this medium as well.
In other words, there's only around three 'hit' series that haven't been capitalized upon by an anime adaption. Of course, anime could always adapt a relatively obscure series and succeed brilliantly, but the odds are much lower than betting on a sure thing like the titles listed above.
Considering this data, may I now make a polite suggestion to the anime industry in Japan? Stop adapting new series and stick to the ones that have already succeeded. It's true that there's an anime adaption of virtually every popular work in Japan. That's great. But each and every one of these adaptions stops before the full source is exhausted. We can start with Ranma 1/2, a Sailor Moon remake that follows the manga, more Bleach anime, more Rurouni Kenshin, more Berserk, more Baka to Test, more Papa no Iukoto, more Berserk, more Guyver, more Flame of Recca, more Kenichi, etc.
Then we can adapt more Da Capo III, Kud Waffe, and Rewrite + Harvest Festa. Actually, you could go ahead and adapt a truer version of Da Capo II and Da Capo while you're at it -- there's plenty of unused content in all of those games. How about more Haruhi Suzumiya? More Full Metal Panic? More Index and more Railgun? More Umineko. Nanoha Vivid. More Monogatari. More Working! More Hayate and more The World God Only Knows. More Maria-sama. More Claymore. More Yuru Yuri. More Chihayafuru. More High School of the Dead. More Hataraku Maou. More H2?
The number of old great series without proper endings keeps piling up. You could even animate Clannad - Tomoyo After Story. Even the 2nd best anime of all time isn't done yet. There's a lot of new Angel Beats visual novels on the way -- that's great. Why not animate them while we're at it? And the new Tears to Tiara game and the new Utawarerumono game too? How about some more Tales of 'x' anime seasons? Graces and Xillia I know would be great, but it would be even more fun if it were concerning some of their more obscure titles like Hearts, Innocence, or Vesperia too. If you dip into the giant pool of talent that has already been dipped into before, it turns out there's enough fuel for good anime fires for years to come.
Anime doesn't have to start desperately adapting totally obscure series in the hopes of finding a hit. Nor does it have to come up with anime original content like Suisei no Gargantia. Right there in front of it is a treasure trove of known good shows. Rather than desperately flailing around with obviously boring ideas like that awful Gingitsune, anime could return to form by airing only the best of the best sequels from the past and being nothing but hits from start to finish. Prism Ilya Drei! Fate/Ataraxia, where? Make it happen, studios! The fans are waiting, yen in hand, begging to give you more money for the series they've already grown to love. There's no reason to create such an atrocity as this coming winter anime season is fixing to be, with 0 hits outside of Saki National-hen. The content is there. The fans are there. The profits are there. Just waiting to be scooped up like goldfish from a summer matsuri stall.
I fully expect Sword Art Online's 2nd season will be announced on New Year's Eve. There's also more Jojo's coming, more Love Live and more Strike Witches. The situation isn't completely hopeless. But we need more of this and less nonsense like Sekai Seifuku. Why on Earth would you try out totally new ideas when so many old ideas still haven't been finished yet? It's just like throwing food away after taking one bite from a gourmet chef's prized filet mignon. Anime needs to finish what it's started. There is nothing good left for it to adapt. If it doesn't go back to the source material that made it popular in the first place, it's simply going to run out of business. Backwards is the new forwards.
#1 light novel = Sword Art Online
#1 manga = One Piece.
Now officially for the whole year, instead of just the first half of the year, Sword Art Online is the best book series around. No matter how many idiots criticize it, the franchise continues to completely dominate all its competition, outselling by a 2:1 margin the 2nd place winner.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-12-01/top-selling-light-novels-in-japan-by-series/2013
#2, Kagerou Days, already has an anime adaption in the works. So does #3, the irregular at magic high school. The rest already have an anime adaption or are getting one, so basically all of Japan's most popular literature has been plumbed and there's nothing left to give on this front.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-12-01/top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-series/2013
Similarly, every manga in the top rankings already has an anime adaption, except for #7 Assassination Classroom and #10 Terra Formers. #7 already has an anime OAV, but that's hardly an adaption, more like just an advertisement. If we get an anime announcement for these two series, anime will have fully exhausted all the best manga available as well.
We still only have the first half year of 2013 rankings for visual novels, but #1 and #3, Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai and Grisaia, have already been announced for an anime adaption. Prism Recollection is sitting at #2 and may need some looking into, but basically anime is doing a good job of covering its bases with this medium as well.
In other words, there's only around three 'hit' series that haven't been capitalized upon by an anime adaption. Of course, anime could always adapt a relatively obscure series and succeed brilliantly, but the odds are much lower than betting on a sure thing like the titles listed above.
Considering this data, may I now make a polite suggestion to the anime industry in Japan? Stop adapting new series and stick to the ones that have already succeeded. It's true that there's an anime adaption of virtually every popular work in Japan. That's great. But each and every one of these adaptions stops before the full source is exhausted. We can start with Ranma 1/2, a Sailor Moon remake that follows the manga, more Bleach anime, more Rurouni Kenshin, more Berserk, more Baka to Test, more Papa no Iukoto, more Berserk, more Guyver, more Flame of Recca, more Kenichi, etc.
Then we can adapt more Da Capo III, Kud Waffe, and Rewrite + Harvest Festa. Actually, you could go ahead and adapt a truer version of Da Capo II and Da Capo while you're at it -- there's plenty of unused content in all of those games. How about more Haruhi Suzumiya? More Full Metal Panic? More Index and more Railgun? More Umineko. Nanoha Vivid. More Monogatari. More Working! More Hayate and more The World God Only Knows. More Maria-sama. More Claymore. More Yuru Yuri. More Chihayafuru. More High School of the Dead. More Hataraku Maou. More H2?
The number of old great series without proper endings keeps piling up. You could even animate Clannad - Tomoyo After Story. Even the 2nd best anime of all time isn't done yet. There's a lot of new Angel Beats visual novels on the way -- that's great. Why not animate them while we're at it? And the new Tears to Tiara game and the new Utawarerumono game too? How about some more Tales of 'x' anime seasons? Graces and Xillia I know would be great, but it would be even more fun if it were concerning some of their more obscure titles like Hearts, Innocence, or Vesperia too. If you dip into the giant pool of talent that has already been dipped into before, it turns out there's enough fuel for good anime fires for years to come.
Anime doesn't have to start desperately adapting totally obscure series in the hopes of finding a hit. Nor does it have to come up with anime original content like Suisei no Gargantia. Right there in front of it is a treasure trove of known good shows. Rather than desperately flailing around with obviously boring ideas like that awful Gingitsune, anime could return to form by airing only the best of the best sequels from the past and being nothing but hits from start to finish. Prism Ilya Drei! Fate/Ataraxia, where? Make it happen, studios! The fans are waiting, yen in hand, begging to give you more money for the series they've already grown to love. There's no reason to create such an atrocity as this coming winter anime season is fixing to be, with 0 hits outside of Saki National-hen. The content is there. The fans are there. The profits are there. Just waiting to be scooped up like goldfish from a summer matsuri stall.
I fully expect Sword Art Online's 2nd season will be announced on New Year's Eve. There's also more Jojo's coming, more Love Live and more Strike Witches. The situation isn't completely hopeless. But we need more of this and less nonsense like Sekai Seifuku. Why on Earth would you try out totally new ideas when so many old ideas still haven't been finished yet? It's just like throwing food away after taking one bite from a gourmet chef's prized filet mignon. Anime needs to finish what it's started. There is nothing good left for it to adapt. If it doesn't go back to the source material that made it popular in the first place, it's simply going to run out of business. Backwards is the new forwards.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
The Parent's Dividend, an Alternative to the Citizen's Dividend:
For people who do not wish to redistribute money to random strangers, because they do not feel they are responsible for their plight, I offer a completely fair and voluntary alternative to the citizen's dividend:
Call it the 'parent's dividend.' The rules are simple. For a child to be born, parents must first make sure said child is financially secure. This is their duty as the beings that brought this new life form, totally unprepared to deal with life itself, into existence, against its own will. For a child to be completely financially secure today, it is not enough for parents to give them 'good educations' or 'sound morals.' 57% of the youth in Spain can't find a job. Technology and globalism have made a secure income, even for college graduates, an illusory myth in the modern age. In fact, I would abolish all educational spending in the first place under this program, as education was meant to be the program to ensure financial security for future generations, but has already proven itself to be a complete failure. No matter how educated one becomes, their financial future is never secure. Job insecurity is the new norm, for PhD's on down, and the people who most need help, the poor, rarely graduate from high school and never graduate from college anyway, which means all that money that ostensibly went to helping them ended up not helping them one bit. The money saved from not having to pay taxes for education expenses or tuition for college can then be saved up to pay a new tax instead:
To make sure parents don't recklessly bring life into the world they are incapable of supporting, a new tax will be levied by the government. If you are thinking of having a child, you must first make a $300,000 down payment to the government, after which point you will be given a license to give birth to one child. If you have twins or triplets or octuplets, then you must abort all the way back down to one child, or provide an additional $300,000 down payment for each additional child. If a parent is found to be harboring an unlicensed child the parents will a) be fined $300,000 per child or, if they can't pay, be executed for their crime against humanity.
Now that the government has this money in hand, it can use it to buy US treasury bonds. The interest income until the age of 18 accumulates in the child's personal account. Upon reaching 18, the interest income of this new total, whatever it may be, is available for the child's personal consumption every month. The nest egg never decreases, but the interest can be siphoned off continuously to continuously meet the child's daily upkeep needs. Let's assume the government is paying 3.4% interest on its long term treasury bond, which is what children will be cashing in on at age 18. First, we must find out how much money was made during those 18 silent years at 3.4% compound interest -- which gets us $547,634.69. We now take 3.4% interest from this new total every year to meet the child's every need for life, via the 'parent's dividend.' 3.4% of $547,634.69 = $18,619.58. Naturally, if the child doesn't wish to spend this much money every year, he can allow the interest to accumulate in his personal savings account, which would make his next year's payment all the higher. However, the child is never allowed to withdraw the principal upon which this interest income is drawn. It continues to support the adult all through seniority (as a replacement for social security, another tax and spending program we can now safely drop) until death, at which point the money belongs to the government (as a replacement for the estate tax, another tax we can now safely drop) to spend on whatever priorities it sees fit.
Through this 'parent's dividend,' a parent is made responsible for his own actions, bringing life into this world, throughout the course of that child's life. No one else is made responsible, because no one else chose to bring that life into being, so everyone is perfectly free and everything is perfectly fair. The child is taken care of from a humanitarian point of view, and the adult is made to take responsibility for his own choices from a libertarian point of view. If you do not want to pay $300,000, the answer is simple, don't have children. No one has the right to bring life into this world they can't support, this is just offloading your negative externalities onto others. Nor can you offload your child's support onto your own child, in a 'sink or swim' manner where you simply shrug if your child can't find employment. The child did not put himself into this position, you did. The child is not responsible for being born in a planet without solid job prospects, you are. Therefore, it isn't the chid's responsibility to support himself, it's yours. Children are a luxury product, and it's going to cost you to buy one. Not the government. Not other people. And not your own children. You bought it, you pay for it.
Overall, this program would take less in taxes and pay out less in spending than the current system does. This could replace all the food stamps, HUD, etc that currently goes into welfare spending. It can also replace medicare, medicaid, social security, and education as government expenses. Since the parent's dividend is sufficient, on its own, to fully support a child for life, the one time tax of $300,000 is a cheap solution to supporting our citizens compared to our present level of spending -- which currently spends $20,196.40 per capita per year.
This will have other positive effects, in that only those people forward looking and responsible enough to save up $300,000 will be reproducing. These people are likely to be wealthier, smarter, healthier, and more moral than the average reproducer in the country today. It is also more likely that the child will be born into an intact home, because wealthier couples are far more likely to be intact couples than the relationship chaos of the lower classes. Therefore, this parent's dividend will pay out two fold -- not only will it give children money for life, but it will give them a loving home environment, a good genetic makeup, and a moral upbringing as a 'spiritual dividend' to go with their monetary one. Only successful people can save up this amount of money per child, and as a result, only successful children will ever be born. The price of the license may even encourage higher birth rates among the wealthy as competing status symbols -- a much healthier ostentation than fancy cars or big houses or luxury watches. The amount of secondary benefits to this program are practically uncountable.
No money will be redistributed, and nothing will be taken against anyone's will. If you don't want to pay the tax, just don't have any children, problem solved. The parent's dividend is a perfectly valid compromise that should please all parties. I can already hear the whining of conservatives that children should have to be thrown naked into the wilderness and support themselves without any help from anyone else, but this is just absurd. 57% of youth in Spain can't find a job. You cannot ask the impossible of the world's young anymore. When you leave zero opportunity left on Earth for people to succeed, you cannot demand that everyone succeed on their own like we're still living in a frontier society with free land available for all. Times have changed, and morality must change accordingly. Kids cannot support themselves. They did not ask to be brought into this hopeless world of financial despair. They cannot be held responsible for living in it. The only ones who made these children 'be', knowing full well what their job prospects were and how desperate a situation you have created for them, are the parents who gave these children life. The buck stops with the parents. Rationally, morally, it cannot stop anywhere else.
Call it the 'parent's dividend.' The rules are simple. For a child to be born, parents must first make sure said child is financially secure. This is their duty as the beings that brought this new life form, totally unprepared to deal with life itself, into existence, against its own will. For a child to be completely financially secure today, it is not enough for parents to give them 'good educations' or 'sound morals.' 57% of the youth in Spain can't find a job. Technology and globalism have made a secure income, even for college graduates, an illusory myth in the modern age. In fact, I would abolish all educational spending in the first place under this program, as education was meant to be the program to ensure financial security for future generations, but has already proven itself to be a complete failure. No matter how educated one becomes, their financial future is never secure. Job insecurity is the new norm, for PhD's on down, and the people who most need help, the poor, rarely graduate from high school and never graduate from college anyway, which means all that money that ostensibly went to helping them ended up not helping them one bit. The money saved from not having to pay taxes for education expenses or tuition for college can then be saved up to pay a new tax instead:
To make sure parents don't recklessly bring life into the world they are incapable of supporting, a new tax will be levied by the government. If you are thinking of having a child, you must first make a $300,000 down payment to the government, after which point you will be given a license to give birth to one child. If you have twins or triplets or octuplets, then you must abort all the way back down to one child, or provide an additional $300,000 down payment for each additional child. If a parent is found to be harboring an unlicensed child the parents will a) be fined $300,000 per child or, if they can't pay, be executed for their crime against humanity.
Now that the government has this money in hand, it can use it to buy US treasury bonds. The interest income until the age of 18 accumulates in the child's personal account. Upon reaching 18, the interest income of this new total, whatever it may be, is available for the child's personal consumption every month. The nest egg never decreases, but the interest can be siphoned off continuously to continuously meet the child's daily upkeep needs. Let's assume the government is paying 3.4% interest on its long term treasury bond, which is what children will be cashing in on at age 18. First, we must find out how much money was made during those 18 silent years at 3.4% compound interest -- which gets us $547,634.69. We now take 3.4% interest from this new total every year to meet the child's every need for life, via the 'parent's dividend.' 3.4% of $547,634.69 = $18,619.58. Naturally, if the child doesn't wish to spend this much money every year, he can allow the interest to accumulate in his personal savings account, which would make his next year's payment all the higher. However, the child is never allowed to withdraw the principal upon which this interest income is drawn. It continues to support the adult all through seniority (as a replacement for social security, another tax and spending program we can now safely drop) until death, at which point the money belongs to the government (as a replacement for the estate tax, another tax we can now safely drop) to spend on whatever priorities it sees fit.
Through this 'parent's dividend,' a parent is made responsible for his own actions, bringing life into this world, throughout the course of that child's life. No one else is made responsible, because no one else chose to bring that life into being, so everyone is perfectly free and everything is perfectly fair. The child is taken care of from a humanitarian point of view, and the adult is made to take responsibility for his own choices from a libertarian point of view. If you do not want to pay $300,000, the answer is simple, don't have children. No one has the right to bring life into this world they can't support, this is just offloading your negative externalities onto others. Nor can you offload your child's support onto your own child, in a 'sink or swim' manner where you simply shrug if your child can't find employment. The child did not put himself into this position, you did. The child is not responsible for being born in a planet without solid job prospects, you are. Therefore, it isn't the chid's responsibility to support himself, it's yours. Children are a luxury product, and it's going to cost you to buy one. Not the government. Not other people. And not your own children. You bought it, you pay for it.
Overall, this program would take less in taxes and pay out less in spending than the current system does. This could replace all the food stamps, HUD, etc that currently goes into welfare spending. It can also replace medicare, medicaid, social security, and education as government expenses. Since the parent's dividend is sufficient, on its own, to fully support a child for life, the one time tax of $300,000 is a cheap solution to supporting our citizens compared to our present level of spending -- which currently spends $20,196.40 per capita per year.
This will have other positive effects, in that only those people forward looking and responsible enough to save up $300,000 will be reproducing. These people are likely to be wealthier, smarter, healthier, and more moral than the average reproducer in the country today. It is also more likely that the child will be born into an intact home, because wealthier couples are far more likely to be intact couples than the relationship chaos of the lower classes. Therefore, this parent's dividend will pay out two fold -- not only will it give children money for life, but it will give them a loving home environment, a good genetic makeup, and a moral upbringing as a 'spiritual dividend' to go with their monetary one. Only successful people can save up this amount of money per child, and as a result, only successful children will ever be born. The price of the license may even encourage higher birth rates among the wealthy as competing status symbols -- a much healthier ostentation than fancy cars or big houses or luxury watches. The amount of secondary benefits to this program are practically uncountable.
No money will be redistributed, and nothing will be taken against anyone's will. If you don't want to pay the tax, just don't have any children, problem solved. The parent's dividend is a perfectly valid compromise that should please all parties. I can already hear the whining of conservatives that children should have to be thrown naked into the wilderness and support themselves without any help from anyone else, but this is just absurd. 57% of youth in Spain can't find a job. You cannot ask the impossible of the world's young anymore. When you leave zero opportunity left on Earth for people to succeed, you cannot demand that everyone succeed on their own like we're still living in a frontier society with free land available for all. Times have changed, and morality must change accordingly. Kids cannot support themselves. They did not ask to be brought into this hopeless world of financial despair. They cannot be held responsible for living in it. The only ones who made these children 'be', knowing full well what their job prospects were and how desperate a situation you have created for them, are the parents who gave these children life. The buck stops with the parents. Rationally, morally, it cannot stop anywhere else.
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