laceblade

The current week-long Black Friday sale that Sentai is holding is BANANAS, like so bananas that I am making a Dreamwidth post to alert random people to the fact that SO MANY SERIES are available for like literally $4.99 and EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT IT. Here is a link to the first page of the sale; series are in alphabetical order.

Yes, so many things are streaming & digital now, but having just watch a significant portion of my Crunchyroll queue get wiped out when Funimation broke off, I have more faith in discs that I can hold in my hand than subscriptions. (To be clear, I do still have and use subscriptions! But consider them ephemeral.)


Stuff I'm buying or already own & recommend:
Chihayafuru ($4.99 per 2-cour set)
CLAMP School Detectives ($4.99 for 2 cour)
K-On! & K-On!! ($4.99 per cour)
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi - ($4.99 for 1 cour)
Penguindrum - ($4.99 each for 2 cour)
Princess Tutu ($3.99!!!, 2 cour)
Shirobako (EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH SHIROBAKO IMO!!!) ($4.99 per cour, 2 cours)
Tari Tari ($4.99, 1 cour)
Yozakura Quartet ($4.99, 1 cour)

Stuff I'm considering buying based on what I've heard/am curious enough & it's cheap enough - lmk if you like it?!
AKB0048
Coffee Samurai / Hoshizora Kiseki [double feature] ($1.99) [Getting]
Flying Witch ($4.99, 1 cour) [Getting]
The Garden of Words ($3.99, movie) [Getting]
Glassslip ($4.99, 1 cour)
Hakukoi - various seasons & movies ($2.99-$4.99 ea) [Not getting! Watched first two eps; kind of thing I'd watch once but never again]
Maria Holic
Non Non Biyori ($4.00 per cour, 2 cour) [Getting]
Patlabor ($2.99 per movie; $10.99 for 7-ep OVA; $4.99 per cour for 4 cour, + 1 cour of 'New Files')
Sakura Wars ($2.99, 2 cour) [Getting]
Stella Women's Academy High School Division Class C3 ($4.99, 1 cour) [Getting]

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Did anyone else see the Hibike!/Sound! Euphonium movie, "Liz and the Blue Bird," in theaters? IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD, I cried and it was so great to emote in a room full of people about a show I'd only watched by myself. I miss that part of Anime Club, and it was a great way to spend a week night.

I do wish that these special anime events, where Crunchyroll/whomever the fuck teams up with a theater chain to show something niche on 1-3 specific dates around the country, would be held in normal theater seating instead of the more expensive recliner seating, BUT. If it's all that's available, I have no choice but to luxuriate, right?

Series that I wish were on sale: Sound! Euphonium; Hanasaku Iroha

I'd added this to my Crunchyroll queue within a few days of the first episode airing. The Anime News Network reviews were good, and enough of my anime friends liked it that it seemed worthwhile.

Was not expecting it to turn into the next thing that fandom, the monolith, latched on to. I'm usually not in the same places as mainstream fandom, I think. Like, I watch the MCU movies/TV shows casually, but I'm not into fic, don't really care much about the characters, etc. It was WEIRD to watch how many non-anime fandom friends got into this show! Weird in a fun way, mostly. I loved reading people's reactions on twitter, the fanart that still comes up on twitter, etc. I'm now following a number of actual ice skaters thanks to guidance from dimensionwitch.
My favorite on this show was Plisetsky, hands-down.

Part of me feels cynical that it's a show focused almost entirely on dudes that swept main fandom, and not something like, Yuri Kuma Arashi. I understand why people like it - I like it, too! - it's just that usually I'm poking around in anime and manga because I can find stories that actually focus on women, so it's disappointing that ~the show that transcended media lines~ was so dude-heavy.

I've added Fujioka's HISTORYMAKER to my iPod, and it's now in my regular rotation. I loved both the OP and ED songs, and sequences, from this show. They were so fun.
The key animation throughout the series, though, was sometimes painful to watch. It'll be interesting to see whether the bluray releases are as big of a step up from what initially aired as Sailor Moon Crystal's were.

Anyway, I am looking forward to season 2 airing, and seeing everyone's reactions along with it.

Feeling super irritated by everything. I intend to blame it on Shark Week, avoid spending more time on irritating things by writing them up, and calling it a day.


The only new anime I've had time for this season thus far has been Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū, which I really enjoy. One of my favorite Anime News Network reviewers wrote up the first two episodes. "It helps that everything in this story is rooted in character. This isn't the kind of “sports anime” that just depicts the activity for its own sake. This is a story about people, told through their relationships to rakugo. So far, every performance has had character significance."


I very much enjoyed reading Liz Henry's Liz's Every-Day Carry. As expected for something written by her, this also includes hilarity, itemized lists of what goes into each of her bags, and stories about human kindness. "It is a delight to predict what might be needed and produce it on demand, like magic, from a bag. My desire to be prepared is both for my own sake and to be impressively helpful in an unexpected way, which is no less satisfying for being loaded with gendered burdens."

In semi-related news, I recently bought a purse for myself that is not a shapeless sack, but rather a thing with internal structure, using $ from a gift card and also from returning gift-clothing that was way too small. I haven't even implemented a thoughtful "list" like Liz's, but it's already way more satisfying to carry around because I can find whatever I know is inside immediately.

I LOVED the first two episodes of Akatsuki no Yona, lovelovelove.

I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying Shirobako. This review does a good job explaining why.

I remain incredibly disappointed by Sailor Moon Crystal. This review of the latest episode explains why. It's making me nostalgic for the original anime, which is something I never thought I'd say.

In addition to these currently airing series, I've been watching the Cardcaptor Sakura anime for the first time, now that it's streaming on Crunchyroll. I like this anime more than Sailor Moon. It's making me want to reread xxxHOLiC and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle in their entirety, though. I never actually finished either series, although I own complete sets of both.

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Unrelated, & this is from a while ago, but I keep meaning to link to general_jinjur's post on capitalism and trigger warnings.

anyway. a woman in the audience asked a relatively thoughtful question that displaced fannish ethics onto a commercial capitalist setting - and that's the problem. you can't do that. i mean, that's part of why monetizing fandom doesn't work, even though people keep right on trying to package and sell us. but this was in the opposite direction. "would you consider putting trigger warnings on your work?" the answer was no. of course it was no.

So, every month I get a 48-hour guest pass to Crunchyroll that I can give to someone else if they give me their email address.

Currently, I have 4 just sitting around with nobody to gift them to, & if nobody wants them, they'll just expire!

So let me know if you're interested! The 48-hour time period begins when you activate it, not when I email it to you.


RELATED: They just added Rurouni Kenshin (both subbed and dubbed).
You can view their list of shows here, with a few different sorting options.

A while ago I said that the anime Kyousougiga is impossible to describe, but it turns out that it isn't, because meganbmoore has done so.

A few centuries ago, there was a monk named Myoue who had the power to bring anything he drew with his own blood to life. Sometimes people said "I want to see an oni!" so he made them an oni and the ungrateful people ran away screaming that he was trying to kill them. One of his creations was a black rabbit named Koto. Koto fell in love with Myoue and the Bodhisattva granted her a human body so that she could confess her love. Myoue found this a tiny but disconcerting, but didn't seem to have many issues with a pretty woman now hanging around his house. Eventually, Myoue brings home an orphaned boy named Yakushimaru, who they adopt as their son. They decide Yakushimaru needs siblings, so Myoue creates Kurama, who appears to be a normal human boy, and Yase, who appears to be a little blond Victorian girl who just happens to also be a demon. People off in the capital start getting a wee bit freaked out by all this and so the family leaves Japan and goes through a looking glass into a mirror Kyoto where no one dies and nothing changes. Eventually, Koto's deal with the Bodhisattva ends, and she and Myoue leave Kyoto, leaving their devastated children behind.

Fast forward to the present, and the children have grown up-Yasu is literally an adult version of her childhood self, Yakushimaru has become a (far less than pious) monk and renamed himself Myoue, and Kurama now looks like an old man in a child's body. Theoretically, the three rule the mirror Kyoto together, but it's mostly just Kurama running things, and all three are still missing and looking for their parents. Things have been going on forever and ever like this when a young girl named Koto accidentally stumbles into mirror kyoto with her two spirit familiars, who she calls her brothers. Koto has a ginormous (but customizable!) see-through hammer and is searching for a special rabbit that she has to find before she can return home. Except she has no idea how to get there, and so she and her brother's move into Yakushimaru's temple. Much to his consternation, they are delighted to learn that the temple repairs itself and test it's limits every five minutes. That's actually not an exaggeration. No one (including Koto) knows if the new Koto has a connection to the original Koto, though it's theorized that she's either a new child of Myoue and Koto's, or possibly the original Koto reborn. There's also a teenaged otaku mad scientist with a couple hundred white-suited goons who are utterly devoted to her. She sometimes rampages through the city when she loses things. She also has a long-suffering assistant who either really really likes her, or is a secret masochist. Or both.

This plot description, incidentally, will in no way prepare you for the pure, high octane crack that you will be engulfed in mere moments after starting the series.

The series hops all over the place to the family before going to mirror Kyoto, the children dealing with the loss of their parents, the present after the new Koto arrives, and the new Koto's own past. There are helpful little "past" and "present" notes each time the setting changes, but the series, apparently knowing that the audience will look at 80% of the plot and go "WHAT IS THIS I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S HAPPENING," chooses to focus on the dynamics of the various forms of the made family in both the past and the present and people's feeeellliiiinnnnggggssss about their parents and their siblings and the things you put up with because you secretly love your siblings and when you have grudges against them and whatnot.

It's absurd, confusing, touching, sentimental and utterly shameless[.]

I've started hate-watching Sleepy Hollow & also Agents of SHIELD.
I find them both to be pretty terrible.
Next time a member of fandom shit-talks Grey's Anatomy, I might have to lay the smack down. YAY GREAT WRITING, ILU GREY'S.

Worse than being terrible, I have 0 interest in fic for either of these fandoms, & may need to block them on Tumblr because I give zero fucks about the gifsets/etc. (VERY UNLIKE GLEE).

So, there you go, the fanworks of Glee serve a huge purpose in my life. I've articulated this before, but for me, it's the fanworks of Glee that make me feel gr9, & they're so much more important to me than the half-assed show.

I think this is how others have felt about SGA.

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SINCE I'M WRITING ABOUT WATCHING THINGS...

Silver Spoon & Attack on Titan are both finished. I still like Silver Spoon & will watch season 2.
After the first few episodes of Attack on Titan, the plot became not so interesting to me. I don't care so much about the titans or the soul-crushing feeling humanity, way more interested in logistics of how people are surviving, etc. The second half the series was much less interesting to me than the first, & I don't know if I'll watch more. I'm not totally sure why this is so beloved by fandom.

I still need to watch the last couple episodes of Free.

In these very few days of "no new episodes," I started watching some AKB0048, as well as an episode of Polar Bear Cafe when I super stressed out. PBC is good for when I'm stressed, but way too low-key for devoted watching on my part.
Also downloaded the first episode of Hyouka, b/c I keep seeing gifs that intrigue me on Tumblr. I'm way better at watching shows on my phone (no distractions!) than my laptop, though, so we'll see how long it takes me ^^;;

I'm excited for the new KyoAni show this fall season, but nothing else has caught my eye just yet. If there's something I should put on my radar... L M K

Free! - I don't have much to say about this except that I'm still watching it.
I did want to link to this post by rilina and this one by inkstone in case anyone's interested in hearing more about this show.

Servant x Service - Have seen episode 2, which is still okay-ish. Not really reccing this show, but I'll continue watching it.

Chihayafuru 2 - I finished season 2, which means I've seen all of the anime made thus far.
I'm not sure that I'm interested in catching up on the manga in this show. It might be neat to see if I prefer the art style of the manga better, but it'd be weird to read it without the music & everything else? idk.
Anyway, this series over all is great for those who like the "found family" trope. It's been a longass time since I've watched a series this long - 50 episodes!

Silver Spoon - Based on the manga by Hiromu Arakawa (manga-ka/creator of Fullmetal Alchemist). This is about a protagonist who starts attending an agricultural college in Hokkaido. It's pretty hilarious, as in I actually laughed out loud multiple times during the first episode.
While everyone around the protagonist has specific/lofty goals for using their education (starting a cheese business, taking over their parents' dairy farm, starting their own poultry farm), the protagonist basically chose this college bvecause it has dormitories, & has no specific life goal.
Compared to his peers, he's very unaccustomed to farm life, leading to hilarity.
Lots of times, anime protagonists have really specific & important goals, so I feel refreshed that this one doesn't.
OH YEAH, the first episode also inspired me to make tamago kake gohan for the first time, & now I've already had it twice ^_^


I watch all of these on Crunchyroll because I'm way too lazy to download things & keep track of shows that way.

Chihayafuru is an anime about high school kids and a game/sport called karuta.

In karuta, there are 100 cards with poems written on them in hiragana. A reader sings out the poems & whomever touches the card with the poem being read on it first gets the card.
When people get super serious about this, they have different techniques - reaching super fast with their arms, developing amazing hearing/senses so that you can intuit what the next syllable's going to be before it's even read, etc.

The first few episodes are pretty heavy on backstory for the series' OT3, and then after that it's a series of recruiting team members, and karuta matches, with some character development on the side.
This is sports anime - each match is super intense and emotional, and Chihaya & the members of her team learn their opponents' strengths/weaknesses & try to beat them.

Because Chihaya is the protagonist, this series is considered a very rare josei anime.

In addition to the main OT3, I also really like Kana, who loves classical Japan & starts playing karuta because she loves the poetry/poets. She lectures her teammates on possible interpretations of the poems (hilarious because karuta players only learn the first 5 syllables or so of each poem - enough to grab the card & be done), and makes everyone wear hakama to their tournaments.

I'd totes read fic for this series, especially Chihaya/Kana, but also the OT3 friendship of Arata, Taichi, and Chihaya.
Tragically, this is yet another tiny anime/manga fandom. There are literally 12 fics over at AO3, ff.net has 49.
This anime is also based on an ongoing manga, & I'd like to check scans out for that at some point, see what the art is like.

Here's the opening sequence, which focuses on Chihaya surrounded by swirling hiragana characters (this was a great series for me to watch immediately after learning hiragana myself!!). It also shows the other important characters, & I like the song a lot, too, ^^

[The YouTube embed isn't working for some reason, so here's a link to the OP on YouTube.]

Now on to season 2, which just finished airing in Japan yesterday!

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Speaking of anime, meganbmoore watched Tari Tari and did a way better write-up than I did over here.

So my notes on this panel are REALLY incomplete, partly because it was late & I was zoning out quite a bit, but also because I started a Twitter discussion & was then discussing it on g-chat ^^;;;

BUT. Notes on anime/manga panels at WisCon are usually few/far between, so I'm posting everything I've got. If anyone else has more, feel free to add to this or etc.

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Panel Description: Is the Boys' Love genre an appropriation of gay male sexuality, or an expression of female sexuality? Are there realistic series about gay men outside of BL that were written by/for men? What about realistic lesbian characters? Let's talk about the representation of LGB characters in anime & manga—what we've seen, and what we'd like to see.

10:30-11:45pm, Conference Room 4

Panelists: Andrea Horbinski, Emily Horner, Julie Andrews

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AH: Don't be shy in contributing!

[Panelists introduce themselves. I ignore their introductions because I am familiar with all of them!]

EH: When 17-20, I read so many BL manga that were written for women about same-sex male relationships. I read a lot of really bad ones & really good ones. There was a really big problem with the fact that relationships were totally fantasy, nothing to do with the reality of being a gay person. But at the same time, they were tremendously important to me for many reasons. It's been complicated for me to unpack.
Reading classics like "Heart of Thomas" and "Song of the Wind and Trees" was great.
You get a sense of wistfulness & teenage love. But not a realistic representation at all.

AH: Heart of Thomas is by Hagio Moto. Just released in English, finally. The translation is pretty good.
One of the things that's interesting about BL is how in the 1970s, it started in some respects by female manga writers/creators as a way to get out of the problems of representing heterosexual relationships in a very sexist society. Unless it's a fantasy, het relationships are potentially highly unequal. By having a relationship between two boys, then they don't have to deal with that inequity. They evolved afterward.
Another classic is Rose of Versailles by Ikeda Ryoko. The anime just released in English.
The manga hasn't been released in English.

Aud: Can we talk about pirated copies?

AH: YES. PIRACY IS AWESOME.

Aud: It's scanslated in English.

AH: [Rose of Versailles is] an historical fantasy manga set in France, a woman raised to fulfill a man's role in the royal guard. A really huge series in terms of starting BL. A way for female creators to explore potential different forms of relationships. As tropes developed, power differentials [and here I drifted]

EH: Idea of flexible identification between two main characters. Even if really unequal power dynamics, there's not a strong sense that you have to identify with the heroine or being loved by the male hero. You can identify with the person being rescued and with the person being chivalrous & doing the rescuing. It strikes me as an interesting thing. Sometimes you cringe.

AH: Floating identification on part of readers.

Aud: Why would relationships between men be written for women readers?

EH: What I've read is that Hagio Moto and Taki Miyakato (I think I may have misheard this manga-ka!) were introduced to German bildungsromans set at European boarding schools.
Lots of sexual tension between male characters & they were like, "This is really interesting." They reinterpreted it into a romantic relationship. There were all these manga for boys - soccer manga, team defeating supernatural evil manga.
Women would write doujinshi (self-published fan comics) where team members would be in romantic relationships with each other.
Women reappropriating a male genre by imposing female identified romance tropes on it.

[missed some points]

JA: Trying to get rid of power dynamic [between people in a relationship] but then it snuck in anyway. Seme/uke dynamic: Definitions are part of Western/American culture. Not every gay man identifies as top/bottom. It's part of a thing. In BL manga, it's a very big part.

[I picked a fight on Twitter here]

Aud: I don't know about manga or stuff like that, but in fanfic, the traits of the characters will change to fit the fic. Teen Wolf: Stiles gets a foot shorter.

Aud: Wanted to mention fan culture vs. creators is not very rigidly separated in Japan. Doujinshi artists often then become professional artists.

AH: Yoshinaga Fumi has sold doujinshi of her own work that are sexually explicit at Comiket. She started out doing doujinshi of Rose of Versailles.

[I miss more points here as I send more tweets.]

AH: The panel description includes the question about whether BL is an expression of female sexuality or expression of male sexuality. A dude wrote an essay saying it's an expression of female sexuality.

EH: I did read that essay. [Missed the rest of response]

AH: It's much less easy to be out in Japan than other countries.

JA: It's a trope in other comics. Ouran High School Host Club: club is a bunch of guys, so girls at the school can come in & fawn on the gay boys (the twins). They have types.

Aud: Do you guys know when that essay came out in relation to "Not love but delicious food makes me so happy" [a one-shot mostly autobiographical manga by Fumi Yoshinaga] when Yoshinaga finds out she has a gay friend & apologizes for fetishizing him?

AH: Feel like manga came out in Japan in 2006.

[Missed things]

AH: Lesbians more visible than gay characters - am I right?

JA: Sailor Moon. [Discussion of Zoisite, a character who was an effeminate gay man in the Japanese anime, & changed to a woman in the English dub.]

Aud: [Discussing Starlight characters in Sailor Moon] The magical girl transformation sequences clearly have male bodies. In anime and the manga, they are cross-dressing women. [I think I must have written this down incorrectly ^^;;] Why did that change?

Aud: Re-translations of the Sailor Moon manga that are coming out now in the U.S., volume 11 just came out last week & had first appearance of the Starlights, the various Starlights relationships as [my attention was pulled elsewhere].

Aud: There's a scene in the Sailor Moon anime where Rei is embarrassed about having Takarazuka magazine. That's a sign of lesbian interest/tendencies. It's totally a stereotype.

[I missed things that were said.]

Recs: Gravitation.

Aud: I found that manga really discomforting. Anime is much lighter.

EH: I read one volume & thought if anyone was that mean about my writing, I would break up with them.

AH: CLAMP. Very successfully sort of written a lot of manga that trade on BL tropes and lesbian tropes too, to some extent. But never actually write an actual BL manga.

Aud: Gouhou Drug [aka: Legal Drug] portrays a m/m relationship.

[I missed stuff]

Aud: We've discussed series w/LGB characters. Do we know of any creators who identify as LGB?

EH: It is really hard to find this information because manga-ka are really private about their lives.
Author of [?!] is a lesbian, otherwise I don't know too much.

Aud: 4-panel manga which is very short, a few streets. Lillicious has done scanlation - Happy Picture Diary. Very clearly semi-autobiographical. Woman is into yuri/etc., wishing she had gone to an all-girls school. Really reads like written from within the community.

Aud: [discussion of characters in Cardcaptor Sakura: Glimpses of the m/m relationship with Sakura's brother & his friend.

AH: It is heavily teased in Gate 7 [manga by CLAMP] that one of the characters is bisexual.

EH: There is a BL trope that this relationship [whichever relationship you're in at the present time] is the only one that counts in your whole lifetime, so being bisexual is kind of besides the point.

Aud: Why is [BL] way more prevalent in that culture?

AH: I can't make a statement about relative prevalence. It sells better [in Japan] - people there are more responsive to market research? [laughter]
I don't know. I'm on the board of the OTW. We had a survey. 5,000 is a large sample, but no way to relate that to the absolute size of whatever --

Aud: Wanted to ask people who have been Japan. How hard is it to be out in Japan?

EH: I get the impression that it's still quite hard. To be promoted, need to give impression that you're a good family person. You need a wife to do domestic tasks while you're working 100 hours a week. There's a lot of pressure to have kids and grandkids in the U.S. too. Get the impression it may be even stronger in Japan. Same-sex marriage isn't on the table.

Aud: Politicians coming out is at publicity level.

AH: There are a couple gay areas in Tokyo and Osaka, and outside of that it's --
Japanese society was very oriented toward corporate stuff & the family in early post-war period. That's not really realistic any more. There aren't enough company jobs for everyone who gets college degrees.

[I missed things!]

EH: BL takes place in a fantasy world. Often these are nominally realistic settings (high school, etc.) but things would not unfold as they do in the real world.

Aud: I'm not super familiar with BL, but from the outside, I have the impression it's more on the romance & less on the physical.

EH: There is a huge spectrum. Some very, very explicit stuff.

JA: Difference between BL and yaoi?

EH: Technically, yaoi specifically refers to doujinshi as opposed to commercially-produced work. BL is the umbrella term, and it includes yaoi.

Aud: My understanding is that stress on the corporation & nuclear family structure came with modernization, and before that, there were actually fairly flexible attitudes toward sexual orientation. Does that tie in at all to whole [anime/manga] industry?
I know it's not the same culture at all, but in Korea, system of homophobia. It's tolerated so long as you get het-married eventually. Does that tie in to duality of society not making laws and systems to counteract discrimination, but there's still an openness to seeing it [I missed the rest of the question]?

AH: I am given to understand that prior to beginning of Westernization in 1868/1880s, there was a different paradigm for understanding same-sex relationships. There's a book called Cartographies of Desires, haven't read it yet. Arc that he describes ends in 1950s with medicalization of homosexual behavior.

[I missed things!]

Discussion of the new swimming anime! Aud: The company that made it usually does moe - they did K-On!

Aud: What's moe?

AH: Moe is a style in which characters who are in high school are depicted as looking 12. Unapologetically aimed at men, although women enjoy them too.

A trailer was made of an anime swimming team. Fandom/Tumblr made relationships and etc. Last month, the company said they're making it into an anime. Their fanbase of male moe fans was not too enthusiastic about this.

[missed things]

Fujoshi means rotten women - women who like BL. [more discussion of fujoshi]

EH: I have a book about how being a fujoshi can make you succeed in the office - talk about sports & politics by shipping everyone.

Onabe - before fujoshi? Haven't heard terms in combination.

Aud: Thought "fujoshi" was specifically a fan context.