Of life, the universe and anime blogging : the carnival

My big boss said I should do it, and so I am. I'm listenning to my big boss way too much lately and here I am writing my modest constribution to the Blog Carnival. That was actually pretty welcome because I was a bit stuck in the swamp of writer's block. Hell, I couldn't even do my usual WonFest pictures party. Which doesn't require much writing though. Anyway.

So, Blog Carnival here I come!

Why not get to reflect on what we like to read and for what reasons?

What I like to read is simple, it's editorials. Or things that catch my attention (that can be a lot of things, trust me). They make me think, they challenge my views of anime, that's why I like them.
Episodics are great, only if they bring something more to the show that I didn't realize or notice, if someone's writing an episode review just to say "this and that happened", then it's useless and not interesting. As for reviews, I may write them myself but I only read the ones written by people whom I trust the tastes. Which is, not many people at all.

What do we do when we stumble across a new blog?


You may find this strange but I start by reading the first post. Then I look at their categories, I don't like blogs that don't have categories, or tags, or anything like that. (Actually, my favorite thing to read on Tumblr are the tags), then I look at the writer(s) Twitter and if I can find which country they're from I like that too.
By then, I usually know if the blog will interest me or not.

What must a good animanga blog have and do?

I read so little blogs that I can't even answer, I guess a good animanga blog, and a good blog in general, must have a voice, a writer, or several writers that you can instantly recognize and remember, and somehow start to know by their posts. I like a blog to have categories, and see interactions between the writer of the post and the commenters. And I like a blog that doesn't kill my eyes. And a writer who's respectful, and a decent person. (Mainly, mindless fujoshi bashing turns me off, I haven't seen it often in the anime blogosphere, if at all, but I have had bad experiences on French part of the fandom and I wasn't even a fujoshi myself at the time)

What blogging behaviors annoy us?

As I said, mindless bashing, generally disrespectful attitude. Now I think about it, it mostly has to do with the attitude of the writer than of the blogging itself. You might write the best posts ever and have a blog that's nearing perfection, if you're an ass, I won't read. 

When anime meets litterature

Just so you know, the idea from this post comes from the book Ikebukuro West Gate Park because, as normal it is that the first 2 volumes made me think about Durarara!! (I'm still convinced Narita read it), the last one made me think about Tiger&Bunny, which is a little less normal. Unless there really is an evil organization that tattoos its mark on their members called Ouroboros in Japan but I highly doubt it.

Then I started to be convinced that everyone involved in pop culture in Japan somehow has read IWGP (which actually you should do too) and wondered what other influence I could maybe spot.

Sadly, my knowledge in litterature is primarily focused on European authors, but it doesn't mean you can't find any influence from them. Actually, these have been adapted a lot or at least a lot of Japanese anime have been influenced by those books.
Also, not counting light novels.

#1 The actual adaptations

Actually, there are a lot of those, even more in manga than in anime (Hell, they even made a manga version of Marx's The Capital).
I actually haven't seen a lot of those for which I have seen both the anime and read the original version. The only anime I can think of right now is Genji Monogatari which was a pretty good though really shortenned, adaptation of the book.
There's Howl's Moving Castle too and a lot of Ghibli works. Howl is a pretty good adaptation with Ghibli's defining style added to it.
Some others : Aoi Bungaku (pretty good initiation to Japanese "classical" litterature), The Count of Monte Christo, The Three Musketeers, etc etc

Please by all means add to this list.

#2 The influences

Again, those are everywhere because authors are always somehow influenced by something they have read or seen or whatever.
The one that comes immediately to my mind at this is actually a manga called Tsumi to Batsu that's been loosely based on Fyodor Dostoyevski's Crimes and Punishment, but set in modern times.
Some of those include works like Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (excuse me while I cringe at the French), Kuroshitsuji (no matter how you look at it, it's Faust), RomeoxJuliet (which is self explanatory, though I have actually never seen it so I assume it's only loosely based on Shakespeare's original), the Fate series (because some of the heroes are from books), Code Geass (because to me it looks like the whole thing is, loosely, based on the Bible) and probably a lot of others.

#3 And everything else ...

Actually this shouldn't really exist, I just can't really consider names a legit influence on a story.
But if you think about it, character names are often based on already existing characters.
Like, in Katekyo Hitman Reborn you have a whole team of characters whose names are based on demons, in Ao no Exorcist you have Mephisto which is from Faust.

There must be some more but I forgot.

In the end I guess that post wanted to summarize once again how amazed I am at how fluid Japanese are with categories. I am not saying French don't do it, we too have our "anime" loosely based on the Three Musketeers, but it's such a rare occurence that I can't help but admire how Japanese do it.  

Brain vs. Heart. Which is the one having the most impact on your enjoyment of anime?

I was thinking, letting my brain randomly wander through the maze of my imagination (which is pretty much always a bad thing), and it wandered toward anime. I started thinking about my two favorites (which are Durarara!! and Tiger&Bunny) and why I liked them and if I could only choose one which one would I choose.

Turns out I couldn't choose and I started to wonder why.
Leaving technicalities aside (everyone knows I generally have a thing for good voice acting and both of those anime made me start to fangirl over a lot of "new" voice actors) I quickly realized I liked them both equally because they each appeal to different things I like.

Durarara!! is a fest for my brain. Tiger&Bunny made me cry so many times I stopped counting.
Unfortunately things aren't that easy because if you think about it, I wouldn't have liked Durarara!! as much if I wasn't that invested in the characters and didn't want them to be happy, and it's not like it didn't emotionally affect me either. I can say the same for Tiger&Bunny, sure it made me cry but it's not all there is to it, I/we have easily spent countless hours talking about damn theories about this. We still do.

So now what? Is it all about a good balance? It should be about a good balance but on the other hand it isn't really.

Why? Because we each have different emotions and each react to different things. We don't always like to think while watching anime because after all it's entertainment.

If I take Tiger&Bunny as an example, I liked it that much and it is and will stay one of my favorite anime of all time because I could relate to the characters and their story to a point I didn't know was possible (too much if you want my opinion), it's pretty much the reason why I could get into it so much.
The characters in Durarara!!, well, it was much harder to relate but the story is what drew me in.

That being said, I can't possibly answer the question I titled my post with, because to be honest with you, most of the time, it's my brain who's enjoying anime the most, because, most of the time, the things that are supposed to get me emotionnal don't, for various reasons.
Not to mention it usually feels so artificial that it pisses me off more than anything else.

So I guess that for me enjoyment of the brain comes first, I'd much rather just have fun than being touched if it feels forced.
Probably why I don't usually like romance anime.

Dying in Another

(This post is brought to you by my frustration the guy in the last episode didn't commit ritual seppuku)

Maybe I should have had titled this post as such : "How death grows old pretty fast in Another" but the pun was really bad and I didn't really want you to have a bad impression of me from the start. (Though now you do but that's beside the point.)

The real point is, people die in anime, that much is obvious and each and every one of them has its own way of dealing with death. Take Death Note or any kind of post-apocalyptic anime or manga, death is just there, it doesn't get any special treatment, it's just there as a tool to make the plot advance. Now take a Gundam, or Code Geass, people die and their death is treated as an example a tool of emulation to created heroism, in short, propaganda. Unless they're villains. Obviously. Because villains only get what they deserve.
Only rarely do we see anime (or manga) dealing with everything that surrounds death, be it ante-mortem (like in Ikigami or Bokurano) or post-mortem (like in Ghost Hound, or even Tiger&Bunny). I like this kind of anime because it makes its characters more human.

Now, what's the matter with Another you ask? First, let's go over my reaction to the four deaths we've seen so far and I'll explain what really bothers me.

Remember, episode 3, the first person dies.

My reaction : FUCKING AWESOME. So much blood and so ridiculous yet so dramatic I'm totally in love.

Now, the next one.

My reaction : Damn they're imaginative, I am definitely going to pay more attention to elevators now but damn was it awesome and all the details and *insert random fangirlish noises here*

Here comes the less impressive.

My reaction : Well, a heart stroke, it was needed to keep up the realism.

And the last.

My reaction : The first one was to complain he didn't commit proper seppuku.
And then I started to think and it started to bother me.
Putting the curse aside and the fear of dying that happens to pretty much everyone when someone close to them dies, why do they care so little?
They don't seem sad, they barely seem to keep thinking about it once the initial shock has passed. Damn it, the people who died were all people they knew. Classmates, parents, friends.

For convenience I'll say that it's the survival instinct kicking in, and I guess that in the end the thing that really bothers me is that I really, really liked Another as an horror anime.
And now I'm disappointed.

I'm disappointed because dying in Another isn't dealt with as something that really matters. All that matters is survival of the greatest number. The ones who died are just unlucky cursed people. Why bother with those you can't save anymore?
In the end, it doesn't scare me at all anymore because I'm not made to care about the dead people, because I'm not attached to the alive characters.

Dying doesn't matter I just want to solve the mystery.

Black Rock Shooter or the salvation through imagination

When you're hurt, someone else suffers for you. 

I am not going to try and make a summary of something that doesn't really have one, it's not really my point anynway. I am not going to go into the so called symbolism of the series, not because I think there's none but because others have done it already and also because I think it's a bit pointless. I won't try to make sense of it because I don't think it's even supposed to make sense. Why you ask? Because I think that, ironically enough, the answer can be found in psychology and the adventures of BRS are a cooping mechanism.

Let me explain why I think that way and then decide for yourself.

Here is what I think happened, starting with the beginning, Mato is a normal student, sadly, what often happens with normal students, they're very weak to stress. So, obviously, when going to a new school where she knows nearly no one and everything is new, Mato is suffering from stress.
And there comes Black Rock Shooter.

In my theory, Black Rock Shooter is Mato's badass persona, the strong one she ultimately wants to be but knows she never will. Kind of her heroine, the one she imagines the adventures of before sleeping, or whenever she has a free moment, at school or wherever.

Everything can be linked to that. Absolutely everything. Remember the evil macarons?

If you think about it, these macarons were used as a weapon in her dream because they have been in reality. But in reality they're harmless, a treat, that's why Mato justify the fact she's been shocked and actually hurt by those and how Kagari gave them by using macarons as a weapon in the awesome realm of BRS awesome adventures.

In that realm she saves Yomi from Kagari and from herself, because I think she feels bad for intruding so much on their lives, she justify her somewhat bad actions by beliving she saves them. And really, didn't Yomi want to be saved? Didn't Kagari want to be saved? Didn't they scream for help?
Thinking about it like that, Mato becomes a heroine and everyone forgets she was nearly a stalker.
That's where Mato's saviour complex really starts to develop, it's exactly as they say, when you're helping people you forget about your own self, technically and even if it will backfire, someone else is suffering at your place.

I know what you're going to ask, what about Saya/Black Gold Saw?
Easy, Saya is a psychologist, Mato did tell her about BRS, then, wouldn't it be logical that she knew what was going on?
Whether or not she realizes it Mato knows that Saya knows, Mato knows what Saya does, she knows how she can control the students by saying exactly what's needed.

They want to be saved from despair. They're desperately looking at the light to be saved, to be helped by a person they're trusting. What does that person do? Make them cry, betray them.
That's where the saviour complex kicks in. What kind of heroine would BRS be if she doesn't help them? How can she save herself if she doesn't help them?

And this, my friends, is what I think is BRS all about, a simple metaphor born from Mato's brain, not necessarily only in her dreams, a transformation of her everyday life in a much more exciting and bearable adventure because, in the end, even if it's only in her imagination, someone suffers at her place.

(See how the rest of the anime will prove me wrong XD)

What is the best anime of all time?

Nopy talked about the best anime of all time and obviously I had to jump on the bandwagon and post about it too. Because it made me think, what is the anime I consider as the best of all time?

I'll start by telling you flat out that the best anime of all time doesn't exist since, after all, nothing is perfect, actually it would be really strange if everyone recognized the same thing as the best of all time. I'd totally be freaked out and think that something is fishy. And we all have different lives, we all have lived different things and as such we react differently to the same things.

That question made me think because I have honestly no idea on which criteria I should base my selection. What should I consider first? The entertainment value? The feelings? The plot? The characters? The writing? Animation? Music? Voices?
You can't even separate these, anime is a whole and deciding on a "best" anime of all time is obviously subjective.

Worse of it all? It changes. Everything changes. You'd have asked me a year ago what the best anime of all time was I'd have said : Durarara!!

Because Durarara!! has amazing plot and amazing character development and well, a really, really, really amazing plot, good music, awesome voice actors, very entertaining and not too hard to understand either. Yeah, but.

But something different came out. Not better, just different. Something with easy plot, predictable but not so much it became boring plot, good music, awesome voice actors, awesome writing, awesome character development and feelings. Lots of feelings. Well it's not that much a matter of feeling as a matter of how I identify with said feelings.

More than anything else it gave me hope. And I think that any work that manages to give that to its viewers/readers/whatever completely deserves the title of "best anime of all time" at least in one person's heart.

Now I'm pretty sure you're all wondering what I'm talking about aren't you? If you know me well enough you should have guessed I was talking about Tiger&Bunny. If you don't know me well enough then now is the perfect moment to learn something about me. (But you can forget it if you want ^^)

Why do I blog?

I was checking my emails after more than 12 hours spent away from my laptop (isn't it something to be proud of?) and I stumbled upon a post by Nopy about his reasons for blogging and thus I read, because I'm a very curious person, and when I had finished reading I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and write my own post about the reasons behind the blog Kuuki no Puraido. (One day I'll explain why the title too. Maybe.)

Reason 1 : Everyone does it. 

Let me tell you the story of my first blog, back in the days, roughly 8 years ago, when I started to discover the Internet and its magic, I made my first friends and the girls all had blogs. They told me having a blog was fun and that I should make one too. So I did and indeed it was fun and challenging.
Among that group of friends I'm the only one who still blogs and I have changed platforms a lot over the years. Even so, I'm glad they told me to do it, even though that first blog was a bunch of crap.

Reason 2 : It's not RL

I don't know anyone in real life who blogs. Not a single soul. The only thing they did was post pics on a popular pre-Facebook French blog platform and since then they just stopped. It was the kind of blogging I was interested to anyway.
That makes it completely different from RL, just like another world on my own, mostly free of obligations.
And the truth is that I never had any friend IRL with whom I could actually speak about all the things I like. To me, blogging, and not only this blog, is another way to exist, a place where I can speak freely without the fear of being judged and the fear of bothering people, because people are free to read me or not.
It's actually pretty liberating.

Reason 3 : I'm an attention-whore

Of course I am, I blog, I have a Twitter account, I am ranting weekly on LJ about all the stuff that happens to me. I love to receive comments, I love to be noticed, I love praise, who doesn't?
But blogging is a bit different, it seems different in the way that blogging is essentially creating something.
When you blog you write, you have to interest people or else they won't read you, they won't notice you.
I don't like attention-whores, I suppose they all have their reasons and that they're all valid reasons, but I don't like them anyway because I can't stand the fact they actually receive that attention for nothing.
As such I blog, so I can at least justify the attention I'm getting (when and if I'm getting any)

Reason 4 : I just love it.

I love the feeling of accomplishment when I finish typing a post.
I love the little fluttery feeling I get whenever someone comment on something I wrote, or even better, quote or link to one of my post.
I love writing on there. I love to watch anime. I love to write about what I love.

And seriously, what other reason do you need?

Japan, Europe and Thermae Romae

First, sorry for the sudden disappearance, since I started to work, life obviously decided it was just the right moment to start throwing things at me, now it's calmed down a bit (until the next time at least), I can blog again!

Second, today's subject is Thermae Romae, as a French who's studied Latin and (reluctantly) roman history as well, I had to watch it. If only because, for once, the title is proper Latin (unlike Madoka, because yeah the full title was supposed to be "Latin").
Truth is, I really like seeing anime set in Europe, no matter it's a fictional Europe (like in Gosick for example) or a real one (like in Ikoku Meiro no Croisée, to a certain extent), because I find it incredibly interesting to see the representations Japanese have of my continent.

Thermae Romae is a bit special in that aspect.

First, its subject is a theme common to both Roman and Japanese cultures, mainly, baths, and I can only admire the researches that have been made to accurately present the differences between them.

Second, as you probably noticed, the animation style is special. Want to know where it comes from? Then, let's take a look at Alix, hero of a French comic set in Ancient Rome.

Now look at Lucius :

See the similarity? 

But these two points are not what make Thermae Romae that special, the thing that striked me when compared to other Europe-inspired anime is that it is always implied that Japan is superior, at least when it comes to baths. 

Lucius says it at every episode. 

Every episode has Lucius improving Roman baths with Japanese inventions. 

From an historical point of view, that isn't true, I am pretty sure that at the time of Ancient Rome, Japanese culture of baths wasn't near as technologically advanced as Rome's. 

And so, not only did I find Thermae Romae somewhat funny, but also sociologically interesting because for once, an Europe-inspired anime didn't cater to exotism but to nationalism to attract viewers.