Some time last year, I made a bold declaration to give some older anime series a rewatch, namely Giant Pirate Adventure and Space Monkey Mafia. I was able to watch Dragon Ball Z’s Kai dub on the Internet Archive from start to finish, at first before leaving for the Army, and again while in. For One Piece though, I made mention of its pacing problem before which kept me from watching it as consistently at first. Following that, I looked for the One Pace recut to do away with all the half-isode runtime that was standard practice at the time, if you’ve ever watched orignal Naruto, Bleach or the original cut of Dragon Ball Z.
I’m still in the process of completing One Pace after getting back into it from the insistence of a fellow soldier whose exposure to the series is more personal. So far, I’m on the Drum Island arc. Yeah, yeah, snails pace and all that.
But I am rediscovering what appeals to so many about Luffy’s adventures. The core of the series is merely to search for the legendary treasure of the legendary Gol D. Roger: a posthumous character who took the location of his treasure with him to the grave.
There was something about Luffy seeing the execution platform that evoked several images and emotions. The most powerful pirate in history was caught and killed by the Marines, never revealing the location of his treasure, but sprinkling breadcrumbs for other ambitious pirates to follow. The risk of capture and execution is still present, but let’s think critically about what the pirates and the Marines means in this world.
To some of you reading, this may bring up things Hasan Piker has said about One Piece before being “pro-socialist, anti-imperialist” in design. I do see that talking point, but I personally don’t agree with it, since you can be anti-imperialist without being pro-socialist. Getting away from that, though, One Piece does have a slant against an oppressive government as seen in this clip:
As I’ve stated, I’m not that far into the anime, but so far, looking at what Gol D. Roger did to get himself executed by the Marines is a question worth asking. This isn’t me saying he was a good guy. Going by his design, and just from what I can extrapolate from the openings, he doesn’t seem to be very different from Blackbeard or Henry Every or, one of the worst pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy, Black Bart Roberts.
Still following along, albeit, much less closely. It’s a monster series that’s still being released and even repackaged in 3-in-1 omnibus volumes after 28 years in serialization and counting. Not as massive as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, but it’s a contender for longest-running series next to Sazae-san and any soap opera/telenovela still on the air.
Maybe because of how long it is, I can make this a yearly thing. Perhaps by September next year, I’ll be nearly done with the Fishman Island arc.
Actually, since I talked more critically about One Piece this time, I think I can put my analysis of Dragon Ball Z in for next week.
There have been numerous non-Japanese animations that have aped the art-style and, at times, tropes of the medium over the years. Sometimes a single episode is dedicated to taking the piss outta anime, other times it’s the framework of the entire show. You can pick some of your favorites, and while some of mine come from French-producedanimations that Nicktoons Network was able to air in the US, one particular show jumped on the same bandwagon and in a more crude manner than its contemporaries in Europe. Enter Kappa Mikey:
Created by Larry Schwarz and his production company Animation Collective, it was given a home on Nicktoons Network, Nickelodeon’s redhaired step-child channel, from February 25, 2006 to September 20, 2008. The premise of the show is 19-year-old Ohioan fumbles an audition to become an actor in Cleveland and gets shunted by the auditioner for his inability to act. Elsewhere, the cast and crew of a Japanese tokusatsu children’s show called LilyMu are eyeing up the wall where the kanji for “financial ruin” (財政破綻) is being written. Their boss notices and demands the director come up with a solution to fix it or they’ll be jobless in no time. After a series of stellar auditions that go nowhere, the crew resorts to a contest on a series of scratch cards, some of which blow in the wind and find themselves in the failed actor’s hands in America.
As luck would have it, it’s the winning ticket, and since becoming even a B-list celebrity in the US is a bust, it’s time to see if the Japanese populace can be won over on this struggling TV series. Sure enough, the fish out of water wins over Japanese fans and breathes new air into the show.
The format of the show is like most comedy anime and even a few western cartoons. Rather than separate the A and B subplots of the episode, they tend to blend into each other, first being introduced as separated entities until they converge roughly 3/4 or 4/5 into the episode’s run time. As for the animation style, it’s a mix of eastern and western animation styles with the American having his distinct art style separate from his Japanese and other non-American counterparts.
The cast of the Kappa Mikey series consists of LilyMu actors Michael “Mikey” Simon, Gonard, Lily, Mitsuki, and the director-producer, Guano. Above them are the literal suits, their boss, Ozu and his Yes-Man named as such. Mikey is the orange-haired, blue-shirted American who does silly and ridiculous things when not acting as the new addition to the LilyMu team. On the set of the show, he’s the star and main hero, a position that would’ve gone to his co-worker, Lily, if it wasn’t for his introduction into the show and is the main reason for her off-screen aloofness towards him.
For Lily, her character design is across between Inuyasha’s Kagome Higurashi and Sailor Moon’s Usagi Tsukino, but personality-wise she exudes a type of tsundere exhibited by Tora Dora’s Taiga Aisaka and Lucky Star’s Kagami Hiiragi. Her language may not carry the same weight after 20 years, but at the time, she was so liberal with the use of the word “spaz” that a concerned British parent may as well investigate further before muting the telly because of how dangerously close that is to the word “spastic.” Sidenote: If you’re curious why that’s a taboo word in the UK, in the Americas it carries the same connotation as the word “retarded.”
Gonard is built like an off-brand Raditz sans scouter, armor, and death by Kakarot, but has the same role as Raditz and just because he isn’t plenty dead enough, lots more screentime. His role in the LilyMu TV show is that of the villain with all the gadgets and gizmos that either inspired Heinz Doofenshmirtz in Danville to build his own or inspired him to take on a lawsuit because that Japanese show took all of his ideas!
But the Tokyo Metropolis is well outside the tri-state area and Doof’s mission is to be a doofus.
When off the show, Gonard is simply the good-natured dimwit who eats everything that is known to edible while also experimenting like that one episode of Teen Titans when Cyborg’s module malfunctioned and he saw food everywhere. Gonard is essentially Patrick Star from the ridiculous ideas, to the green shorts, even to the body type, though instead of hefty, Gonard has noticeable muscle mass. As a result of being the villain on the show, one episode hints at him being feared by those with a surface level knowledge of the show he plays in. And this is a real phenomenon where kind actors are too heavily associated with a great villain they have or currently portray. See Sir Anthony Hopkins and Hannibal Lecter for more details.
Mitsuki is the polar opposite and foil of sorts to Lily. If Lily was like Kagami from Lucky Star, Mitsuki is a bit like her sister, Tsukasa. Furthermore, Mitsuki instantly took a liking to Mikey once he landed at Haneda Airport and has an immediate crush on him at first glance, despite his general idiocy and whatnot. Sadly, it’s not very reciprocal as Mikey himself has a one-way crush on Lily. The reason given in a Season 2 episode being that she has a competitive, risky edge to her, compared to Mitsuki who could best be described as what Jotaro Kujo considers a traditional Japanese woman, or “yamato nadeshiko”. Quiet, demure, considerate, but also smart and unflinching. I don’t know if the “blue haired loser girl” trope is this old, but if it’s not then that means Mitsuki is either the progenitor or an early source of the trope. On the show, she’s fiercer and tougher than she is off screen
Guano is the purple-dyed Pikachu reject and nervous trainwreck that manages to keep the show held together with homegrown gorilla glue and 20-year-old Flex Tape, and it’s fairly obvious why he’d be that. He’s the director and Ozu and Yes-Man breathing down his neck put him on edge, especially when things go diagonally. On the show, he lives up to the rip-off Pikachu by merely repeating his name with each action or attack he pulls, especially with the large gemstone in his chest. Although the gemstone functions and shoots lasers, its reserved for other emergencies both on the set and on the Kappa Mikey show as a whole, merely having the same function as the gem or laser eyes on Frylock’s back in Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
For Ozu and Yes-man, Ozu is the man who can feed or starve his actors, pay or withhold pay, pull the plug or keep life support on. Long before Benson the gumball machine on Regular Show would threaten to fire Mordecai and Rigby, Ozu did it several years prior and normally did it to Mikey, but sometimes he extended it to the rest of the cast if the screw up was that egregious. Opposite the iron footprint on the floor, he’s consistently shown to butter up Mikey and consider him the prized piece that makes the show whole. As an inseparable addition to the show, keeping Mikey in good graces is his main priority. He doesn’t always do this to him out of genuine kindness, but it hints at one aspect of Japanese and, by extension, East Asian face culture. Maintaining an image of grace and harmony keeps the tabloids and journos from slandering you every minute. As a contrast, the employees are societally obligated to also make the boss and the company look at its absolute best 100 percent of the time. And this is all a satire as the reality on the ground still exposes even East Asian companies to scandals and controversies of their own. Nintendo, Konami, most Korean chaebols (itself a different snake pit), Alibaba; being based in East Asia doesn’t save these kind of companies from human error, negligence, or even malice.
Finally, there’s Yes-man who’s more of a caricature than an actual character. He’s a parodical gag of an existing character in other media and at times in real life. A cheerleader in a suit for Ozu himself, he’s not exactly meant to have any development whatsoever, merely an exaggerated side-character to point and laugh at. A jester of sorts.
This video by Jordan Fringe explains the production side of things:
Channel: Jordan Fringe
For two seasons, Kappa Mikey ran largely unimpeded by any outside forces. It was pitched by Schwarz as an “American-style anime series” and considering what I’ve grown up on, it’s been preceded and surpassed many times depending on what you consider an American cartoon whose art-style is heavily influenced by Japanimation. The Boondocks and Avatar: The Last Airbender for instance but neither are very well-loved in Japan in particular or East Asia very widely. The former was made by Aaron McGruder as a reflection of black American culture which will get lost in translation, literally, when exported abroad and the latter does its best with its source material of wider Asian folklore and mythology, but without the core tenets of Buddhist, Taoist, or Confucian beliefs, the face culture, or the courtship, it would at best be limited to a cult following outside of the west.
I haven’t even the slightest idea if this show has popularity in the country it takes the piss out of. On the one hand, it’s theme song is sung by a J-Rock band called Beat Crusaders, but on the other hand, Nickelodeon’s practice of hiding mid-tier TV series on Nicktoons Network and praying no one would notice when iCarly and Drake and Josh and SpongeBob were on the air left it to its fate of obscurity, at least for those who couldn’t afford cable.
Damn, I miss this logo…
Now that’s pretty much the show and its lifespan, how did it end? Or more to the point, why did it end? It had the energy to get at least another season or two. Perhaps even a made-for-TV movie. In that same video by Jordan Fringe, no clear reason was given except for speculation over budget constraints and a low viewership. Considering it was on an affiliate channel at the time and not likely not a major priority for the likes of Nick and Viacom, I can’t help but feel some sabotage was at play and as biased as it may sound to say about a studio over one show, there were a lot of shows that got shunted and only found wider success of sorts on the smaller channel. Some of the shows being legacy series that were given a modern reboot, though the results were far more mixed.
For a rather primitive though mid-2000s charmed show about an American becoming a Japanese audience darling, the entire series can be found on the Internet Archive for your viewing pleasure. Not to mention one I’m watching out of order since the callbacks to earlier episodes are few and far between.
After over 150+ chapters of this manga, and years of fanart, I’ve come to the conclusion that its existence was used as an excuse for artists try and draw its title character in various outfits and hairstyles. Except by “artists,” I mean “creator” Yanbaru, though countless other artists have aped his art style in order to draw Takizawa-san.
Oops, I’m jumping the gun. Let’s properly introduce the series. Created by mangaka Yanbaru, Bijin Onna Joushi Takizawa-san (rough translation: My Beautiful Female Superior, Miss Takizawa), is a yonkoma/4-panel manga about office workers. A slice of life that cheekily takes the piss out of Japanese work culture, at least on the mild end where the bosses aren’t evil. You’d need Japan’s answer to Trey Parker and Matt Stone if you wanna take the piss out of Japanese black company culture, and biting satire, though honest, requires an above average number of braincells before the powers that be realize that it’s a plea for change masquerading as a comedy act.
But I digress, it’s primarily a comedy with romantic elements thrown in later into the manga, and quite late I might add, at least 50 or 60 chapters. Sounds like a dissuasion, but the benefit of a yonkoma format is that you can blaze through the first 20 chapters in under five minutes. It would surely explain Azumanga’s popularity back in the day.
Lovely Boss Takizawa starts off with baby-faced new hire, Kota Takeda, starting his job at a company under which he’s accepted into Takizawa’s department as her underling. The first few chapters show Takeda getting accustomed to the office life at this place and his slow introduction to some other characters. The unnamed Section Chief is meant to be written as a comic relief character, but with the gag being that he makes off hand comments about Takizawa’s extra large bust size, very much to her chagrin. This adds him to the shortlist of manga characters with a sexual harassment case as thick as a Yellow Pages. A step above Minoru “Grape Juice” Mineta of MHA fame, but somewhat below Minoru Kobayakawa who’s a lolicon at best, and pedophile at worst.
Mingling with his contemporaries, Takeda meets Shimizu who can best be described as a slacker, but not necessarily harmful to his own or Takeda’s personal development. A middling bro who means well but if given a character to bounce off of with a similar personality comes across as a Rigby to that character’s Mordecai. Wait, that’s pretty much Takeda’s role when I think about it, but the Regular Show comparison ends there since there aren’t any supernatural elements that damn near explode a local park every day.
By the time Takeda’s largely embedded into the company, another newcomer joins up in the form of Aya Miyamoto, a nervous young woman whose exposure to men her age was so severely limited as a consequence of graduating from an all-girls’ school. She has a bit of an anxiety towards men and thanks to her being introduced to Shimizu and the Chief of all people, her anxieties are realized. Thankfully, she makes contact with Miss Takizawa who metaphorically slaps them into gear and helps reintroduce Miyamoto to Takeda whom she regards as more trustworthy and less “dangerous” than the other two.
Away from the 9 to 5, Takizawa and Takeda grow closer and closer to the point where Everybody Knows but Them rears its ugly head, but more to the viewer than towards the other characters. Some, like Shimizu have their suspicions, but no one knows better than Takeda’s sisters, imouto Yuki…
…not that one.
And anee-san, Kaoru. I jest about Yuki Takeda and Yuki Suou right here, but the comparison isn’t as apt as I teased. They both read manga, though Yuki Takeda favors Shojo romance then Suou’s outright smut. I’m still catching up to the manga, but from what I’ve seen of Yuki, she shows her love for her brother in a funny way. Practically screaming at him to be a gentleman when around Takizawa, even though he was already doing that on and off work. Aggressive wingwoman box ticked.
For the more passive wingwoman, Kota’s older sister, Kaori, is more foxy in a manner of speaking. Being the first born, she teases her siblings left and right, and seems to do so indiscriminately every time she hangs out with Takizawa. In one such instance at an arcade, they’re playing all the games, and Kaori ends the trip getting more than a little invasive. Poor Takizawa. She’s already playing dodge harassment at work and Takeda’s older sister shows that she’s not safe from the same treatment around Kaori. Still, she exemplifies the opposite end of the spectrum where she seems to be pushing Takizawa towards Kota while Yuki does the same for Kota, pushing him towards Takizawa. I say passive in the sense that Kaori’s intensity shines less in how she accomplishes her mission compared to Yuki, but going by my description she’s still aggressive towards Takizawa. In that category, we may have to hold off on that tick or at least add an asterisk.
Does their hard work finally pay off? Well, after over 100 chapters of “will they, won’t they” teasing, I’m pleased to report that they do become an item, and some of the reactions around the office are funny. Most of the time, it’s generally seen as a bad idea to date a coworker, least of all someone in a managerial position, but in reality it’ll still happen and under ideal conditions, with a relationship that grows organically, this can blossom into something beautiful. So that’s the romantic aspect, the comedy aspect zeroes in on Takizawa’s F-cups… or G-cups or larger.
For an easily lewded character, I’ve yet to see someone even try to get her measurements. Even Yanbaru himself hasn’t bothered with this, AFAIK. I’ll just leave it at G-cup and call it a day. If that’s the case than most of her bras would either be special order (not too hard considering her position and its regular salary) or she’d have to look online for bras normally marketed to heavy-set women in Britain and America.
Do I give this series a recommendation? Depends on what you’re looking for honestly. If you’re looking for boob jokes or commentary, most of them come from the Chief or Shimizu and they’re not good parameters for comedy. If you’re looking for something akin to Kiyohiko Azuma, then you’ll find that in spades. The later chapters do still have visual gags like Takizawa’s boobs bouncing every which way, but I figure when your chest is big enough to shake your table if you plop them on the top, that mostly comes with the territory. And if you want to see a romance develop in a yonkoma, well you’re in for the long haul. Slice of life stories tend to have to fight to be seen or heard when every animanga these days is about balletic, bombastic fights and pseudo-kung fu mysticism, but this works in Great Boss Takizawa’s favor seeing as it can be break from the Jujutsu Kaisens and Solo Levelings getting all the praise these days.
For as much as I like this manga, pacing can summon the Sandman in some areas and the Azumanga Daioh is strong in the story structure seeing as this kind of format favors nonlinear storytelling. There is progression in the story, but with each chapter being written the way it is (usually apropos of nothing until a prior plot point is connected), it can be something of a chore in some areas. But the announcement of Takeda and Takizawa’s relationship developing is something to look forward to at least. For now, all the chapters are available on MangaDex with regular updates, but if you wanna find a pirate site to read it, then by all means. Beware the sidebar and pop-up ads.
Artist: yan-baru
Yanbaru may be having fun with putting Takizawa in outfits like this, but reading the manga shows why she’d never wear something so provocative.
Hollywood has a century and change with a wealth of films and genres to back it up, but it’s obviously far from the only producer of groundbreaking films. On the other side of the world on the Pearl River Delta, there’s a city in Guangdong Province that’s been a part of the British Empire longer than it’s been Chinese, and a look through city streets and select-people’s names shows this.
Hong Kong! One of Britain’s prizes in East Asia, to summarize the history of the area, 19th Century European powers sought foreign markets for trade. Britain, for instance, was making inroads in Asia and one of their stops was a fishing village in Southern China. China didn’t want the Brits to sell opium to their people due to the adverse effects on health and in doing so, ignited a war that they lost to Britain.
Although Hong Kong Island was the prize, it did nothing to satisfy British interests and they’d try to renegotiate the existing treaty. China said no again and this time more of Europe and even America had something to gain from an even more vulnerable China, or at least their neighbors. Sticking with Hong Kong, Britain’s near-peer rivals could and have sacked similar-sized territories thus necessitating a formation of the British military to keep the territory safe, though this stronghold of sorts was also witness and participating in further engagements for the rest of the 19th century.
By 1899 and the start of the Boxer rebellion, China had ceded so much territory that it was derisively known as the “Sick Man of East Asia.” Russia, Germany, France, Britain, and Japan all took some of their land and/or influence, further European powers split Shanghai amongst themselves, and Japan was making it crystal clear that this would be their backyard, largely solidified when they won out in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. British-appointed Hong Kong leaders largely sat back while this corner of the globe kept adjusting lines on maps one ink-dipped fountain pen at a time… at least until Japanese ambitions brought the chaos to the governor’s mansion following Pearl Harbor.
Part of Japanese expansionist ambitions, the great lie told to the colonies of East Asia was that the answer to western imperialism was Japanese imperialism. They lost their opportunity when the US and UK shot down a racial equality clause at Versailles, so Japan’s next move was to dislodge western influence in the area through blood.
The 1920s and 30s gave Japan multiple opportunities to gradually expand in China and Mongolia, but their endeavors were somewhat halted by the US oil embargo after vile reports of, for lack of a better term, Olympic-level rapes and murders being committed in Nanjing.
This book has the details, and predictably none of them are for the faint of heart. Read at your own discretion.
After Pearl Harbor, American, British, Dutch, and commonwealth possessions were eaten and absorbed into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, including Hong Kong, who wasn’t safe from Japanese atrocities across the Pacific. As we know, the combined forces of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and resistance fighters in Japanese-occupied territories worked tirelessly to send the Japanese back to Tokyo and finish it off with a pair of bangs in 1945.
The Cold War saw roughly every part of the world violently or peacefully throw off the yoke of colonial influence and the last two in China were Hong Kong and Macau in 1997 and 1999 respectively from British and Portuguese hands to a two-systems situation, with full reintegration of the territories into China by 2047 and ’49, on the 50th anniversaries of their return to China, but recent news particularly in Hong Kong leaves the fate of the region uncertain.
Suffice it to say, Hong Kong’s history is one to preserve and retell for eternity. So, why bring up geopolitical history in a post hinting at their cinematic history? Well, I felt that the outside world would certainly have an influence on the region and Hong Kong would have something to give back to the world. Notably, it’s film industry.
Before Hong Kong, Shanghai was China’s moviemaking capital, but very few films of that era are available for wide viewing. Conversely, Hong Kong under British ownership had more room to flex its artistic muscle and it did, compared to mainland China and Japanese Taiwan. Since the end of World War II, the Hong Kong movie industry enjoyed an approach to movie making that wouldn’t be seen until the late civil rights era in the US where more and more independent films would rise to challenge Hollywood.
As a matter of fact, Hong Kong-born cinema was free from subsidies and government influence as a consequence of British ownership, so there weren’t any efforts at the time to scrutinize their films for any anti-British sentiment, like the Shanghainese film industry or the colonial Taiwanese film industry, both of which would be heavily vetted for dissent or used as propaganda tools for the empires. Still, the British empire would likely have something of a propagandist industry, especially in the Cold War. But the filmmakers in London would be doing that anyway, and they wouldn’t need the crown or MI6 to influence their slant seeing as the alliance with the US and NATO membership status would guarantee anti-Soviet hostility even in British media.
The Brits wouldn’t be outdone at this time.
But enough about the pillow where the crown rests, time to continue on about one of its overseas territories. In retrospect, each time the UK tried to put a thumb on their territories, it declared independence with the worst lesson learned. Conversely, when London leaves the colony alone, it learns to develop on its own, coming out better as an independent state. For Hong Kong’s sake, freedom plus location equals a prime source of inspiration. A millennia of Chinese stories ripe for the adapting was set to follow, and with Hollywood pumping out British and American works (at times distributing continental European cinema over the years), the world was Hong Kong’s oyster.
Most of the time, HK filmmakers stuck with the stories they knew best, though by the 1960s and 70s, some of Hong Kong’s best movies would be bolstered by legendary actors and directors, to include but are not limited to Stephen Chow, Jackie Chan, John Woo, Donnie Yen, Chow Yun-fat, and one of the biggest in martial arts cinema, arguably the biggest in his lifetime, Bruce Lee.
Personal story, where I grew up in the Bronx, there were at least ten different Chinese restaurants within walking distance or a short bus or train ride away. One of them had a mural of Bruce Lee in his trademark stance from the Enter the Dragon series.
Millennia of martial arts disciplines and practices led to filmmakers incorporating the concepts into many of their films. The aforementioned Enter the Dragon, Drunken Master, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Rumble in the Bronx, Kung Fu Hustle; hallmarks of Hong Kong cinema and complete with martial arts action and uniquely comedy. Several of these tend to be based on folktales from the mainland or at least the Guangdong Province, sort of like how kids in the US learn about Paul Bunyan or John Henry. Larger than life folk heroes giving the audience a window into their world at that point in time. For Hong Kong’s film industry, it’s had lots of time to reach perfection over the years, even rivaling foreign competitors, taking in as much cash flow as the US, UK, India, the mainland, Japan, and France.
Sadly, the fun had to end at some point. Domestic competition initially benefitted individual studios and filmmakers to found some of their own, like Golden Harvest, for instance, but when the competition collapsed in the early 1970s, only one studio, Shaw Bros., was left to carry the weight of the industry on its shoulders. The studios in Hong Kong felt this pressure and was compelled to get as many films in theaters as possible in a short amount of time. The problem with rushing movies out the door like that is the same for rushing video games out of the door: quality control. Few rushed movies come out perfectly and the ones that do have to compete with the rest of the dreck they release with or rely on rapidly aging tropes which was the case for Hong Kong. Trope bloat was killing the industry and filmmakers didn’t understand why.
Another, more indirect, cause of the industry’s downfall came with an increase in affordable housing. More tenants move in and start families and/or get jobs, other things take priority, and entertainment becomes a luxury that only a few can afford. Speaking of which, job creation eventually grew the middle class who increasingly became critical of low budget indie films, so good luck getting an honest answer out of Brian Chang when you ask him about the Blair Witch Project.
Or at least the Cantonese answer to The Blair Witch, I suppose.
The final two death throes had to do with piracy and Hollywood making in-roads in East Asia. If you think companies are overblowing the concern for piracy, in some parts of the world, piracy was still necessary if you wanted to watch movies, and going back to East Asian politics, some countries were severely restricting distribution in their territories at the time. Some still do and lobby draconian retaliation for even having the film in their soil. The final straw was Hollywood’s push into the East Asian market and all the aforementioned factors would mean that the Einstein of Cinema would need to breathe new life if Hong Kong was going to rebound. As of 2025, it still hasn’t.
All things considered, all that time rising, shining, and fading was arguably more than enough for Hong Kong cinema to make an impact on media, even to the point that countless classics get referenced to this day. The most recent example that comes to mind would be the gacha game Zenless Zone Zero where the developers at Hoyoverse released an animated promotional music video for their limited S-rank character Ju Fufu, with numerous homages to Hong Kong cinema.
Channel: Zenless Zone Zero
The thumbnail alone is a movie reference. Quick! Guess which one!
And predictably, the Hong Kong films of old would find their way into video games. Of these, I’ve played two unconnected video games, one of which has an interesting story. Starting off:
Sleeping Dogs (2012):
Released by Deep Silver in 2012, it’s more than a Hong Kong GTA clone. It’s cast consists of big name actors on both sides of the Pacific, one of them–Will Yun Lee–taking the visage of the protagonist, Hong Kong-born Wei Shen, a troubled youth who set himself right after he moves with his mother and sister to San Fran. Sadly, the move hardly changed the life of his sister Mimi who was ultimately defeated by a heroin addiction. For Wei, he still had connections to old friends back in Hong Kong, a not insignificant number of them being Triads from adolescence.
In the game, the SFPD imbeds him into the Hong Kong Police Force deep undercover to nab a high ranking Triad in the Sun On Yee, based on the real life Sun Yee On. The gameplay infuses eastern and western tropes and even some concepts, as a result of Hong Kong’s outside influences. The East Asian concept of face culture is implemented in both the plot and in gameplay where an underling, regardless of skill, makes the boss look more capable than they really are. Company-suck up culture with an East Asian flare.
Since he’s playing both sides in this, there are missions where Wei is a detective and story missions where he continues to embed himself in the Triads. Contrary to the game’s description, there’s really no conflict between these that can’t be solved relatively easily. The Triad characters suspect Wei of being a rat three times at most before he Academy Award acts his way out of it–a skill I expect undercover cops to have but it’s stretched to comedic levels until the end. Meanwhile, the HKPF hardly warn that his cover is under serious threat. Maybe they think he can handle it or not, but that’s not a unanimous view. Some of Wei’s handlers express doubt over his ability to stay on the straight and narrow once this is over… even though you the player can probably balance out the criminal activities with the cop work for the duration of the game. The game doesn’t even punish you very harshly for screwing up, merely awarding less upgrade points at the end.
Still worth experiencing, as the DLCs make up for it, each with unique mechanics.
Hard Boiled (1992)
I’d been looking for this one for a few months before I had found it on the Internet Archive sight. John Woo’s blowout success before embarking to Hollywood, like Sleeping Dogs, it’s another cop story, but with arguably more guns than a US gun show.
A pair of Hong Kong cops, Inspector Tequila Yuen, runs into an undercover cop and agrees to help him shut down a gunrunning ring. Tequila is a loose cannon who skirts past the rules to get results, which works in the long run but leaves him subject to reprimand each time. The movie itself has loads of action with some downtime sprinkled for a total of at least 10-15 minutes of breathing room combined. Paying close attention to the cinematography, it’s rare to find a contemporary gun-fu flick without shaky camera effects and I forever praise John Woo for omitting a maligned practice.
The camera stays afar and runs up close during pivotal moments so the fear of missing anything during the action scenes is highly reduced. By the film’s end, the loose ends had been largely tied up leaving for a bittersweet ending.
I didn’t know it at the time, but a video game I played was marketed as a sequel to this very movie. After watching Hard Boiled, I see how that came to be.
Stranglehold (2007)
Speaking of bittersweet, the sweet part is knowing that this is a surprisingly well-done Max Payne clone. The bitter part is knowing this came out with Midway staring bankruptcy from the business end of a rifle.
A follow-up to Hard Boiled set 15 years later, Triads kill a cop and kidnap Tequila’s family and he goes on a one-man mission to get his loved ones home. Sound familiar?
Well, it actually precedes Taken by a year at most, meaning it was probably in development as early as 2004 or 05. Taken likely had been in production since at least late 2005 to mid-2006. Coincidence, nothing more. For John Woo’s sake, Hard Boiled and it’s video game sequel were at least well-received even if the latter is a Max Payne clone and the former helped to influence, interestingly, not just Max Payne but also The Matrix. Funny how it all ties in together, isn’t it?
I’m not yet done with Stranglehold, but I did finish and download Hard Boiled from the Archive site for preservation’s (and private viewings} sake. So once I’m done with the game at least, I hope to give it a review and how well it compares to Max Payne whilst doing its own thing.
Hong Kong used to be a giant in the film world. Someone has to bring it back to its former glory… or s[guns]t, I don’t know. Start a video game company there.
Enough people doing this in Hong Kong should revive it’s anemic industries.
Speak, penis, for you have the floor… and the p[nyan]y.
My reluctant review of F[crash]k You! Actually F[horn]ks You Into the Harem ended with a mention of another series that was pushing the envelope, so much so that it took Funimation three episodes to realize it might as well have been hentai. And looking at it’s content, I really wanna go back in time to Funimation’s as of yet unclaimed office, stare the big boss/manager/whatever in the face and say, “With a premise like this, what were you expecting? Raunchier KonoSuba?”
No matter the intention, learning about this led to a Streisand effect in the animanga community, whereby, those who weren’t watching it yet, checked it out to see why Funimation would choose not to continue airing a current anime series. Once they saw why, it made sense.
If I was in charge of a streaming service, I’d put this behind an older teen or 18+ section. Simply change your user settings to be able to view hentai and ecchi freely and voila! Enjoy your culture, ladies and gentlemen.
The premise is simple: a fantasy world where every monster girl is available and about 90% of them work in a legalized sex industry, Stunk the human and his bestie Zel the elf embark on an adventure to f[crumble]k every monster girl they can find. Shortly after their quest begins, they meet an angel named Crimvael who has both sets of genitalia, but defaults male to lessen the confusion when being addressed by others. And wouldn’t you have it, the little angel is the most well-endowed of the three. It’s like Team Four Star’s take on Krillin, smacking him around all throughout the Abridged Dragon Ball run until finally giving him the golden ticket in Android 18.
A typical episode begins with the trio heading to a brothel under the ownership of a type of monster girl, they ask for the services and perhaps through power of Post Nut Enlightenment, their reviews of the girls read like Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy at times. Aiding your prostate apparently brings out the poet when describing how well (or poorly) these girls use their bodies to help the reviewer reach a satisfying climax. Not the first or last time such an observation would be made, as PornHub comments and the Zenless Zone Zero community can attest.
D[clank]ks out, tits out, spurt like a faucet and cover in baby batter, rate us on Yelp, hope to clean your fluids off our floors again… but would you believe me if there was more than an absurd number of fetishes in this series? The culture of individual monster girls plays a significant role to some degree. For instance, minotaur/cow-girls have the biggest breasts and their speech patterns are cattle-influenced; the succubi are so extremely depraved that they can f[pop!]k you to death; fairy girls are predictably Tinker Bell-sized, so good look trying something remotely kinky; elf girls are all GILFs by default due their aging process compared to human beings, etc. etc. etc.
This also leads to a few dark moments in the series. Away from the brothels where penises get played with like any other toy, sometimes venues make a strip show of things. Venturing into even more inappropriate territory sheds light on a certain episode involving egg-laying. And that’s the most I’ll reveal about that episode. Another moment involves them making a sex doll in the shape of their bird girl friend and tavern waitstaff, Meidri. After the men take their turns, word gets around and let’s just say arms and legs don’t bend in three places for a reason.
Yeah, it begins on a funny note and evolves into WTF?! over the course of its twelve episodes. The manga is apparently still going on and it has two light novels. Competitive Harem Rapist still outmatches it by it’s sheer gratuitous sex and sexual assault scenes (everyone sins in that goddamn anime!!), but an animanga based around sex work and the various girls that can be found in the Red Light district… outclassed or not, I’d give it a watch. I saw it through to the end in 2021, and it’s worth a rewatch, especially for the opening:
Channel: mediafactory
Knowing what ecchi is now, it’s nice to see the ones that helped push the envelope, no matter how they age.
I’ve made it a point several times that I don’t default to isekai, but I don’t remember clarifying what that means. I make a beeline for shows I find interesting, that some of them are isekai is pure coincidence. I’m not an isekai junkie like Gigguk or an isekai avoider like The Anime Man. I’m in the middle of it, all things considered. Of course, I’ve made it clear that I don’t always find contemporary anime to watch, but the subject of this week’s blog was all the rage when it was airing.
Alternatively titled Okaasan Online, Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target attacks began life as yet another light novel but from the late 2010s rather than the early 2010s, complete with a manga adaptation as a companion piece running concurrently with the light novel. Shame it was subject to a simple 13-episode series, though this might be par for the course for series that only run for the same length of time as a single US presidential term. The unofficial name for this series is called MILF-sekai and the reasons below explain it better than the cover for the light novel:
The MMORPG parody is strong with this one.
The gist of the story is an ungrateful, angsty teenage boy named Masato Osuki tries to push his clingy mother, Mamako, away. Both of them are suckered into an isekai video game and go on an adventure together, interacting with other characters who have fallen for the same trap. The best joke this series tells is that it plays coy with the incestuous, MILF-y tropes that accompany the genres without exploring them on purpose. The most the anime will do is strip Mamako naked and have her son comedically fall on top of her in the second episode. Damn, I’ve read NTR doujins and felt less cucked there than in this series. That’s pretty much the height of the MILF antics, but the OVA has more to show in that regard.
As far as actual plot goes, Masato’s relatability comes in the form of wishing he were someone else with a doting mother whom he wishes was a different person, at the outset. Then he meets the future members of his party and their mothers and annoying as it may be to have a mom, let alone parents, who embarass you at every turn, it’s better than one with godly expectations or one who can’t help but let their vices enslave them. In the former example, one party member, Medhi, has a mother who’ll chastise her in private for not being perfect like a Cell after losing a competition, leading to feelings of doubt and self-loathing in the poor girl. For the latter example, party member Wise and her own mother, had a frought relationship in real life and used the game as a means to better bond, but when Wise’s mother learned that she could make a harem of men at her beck and call, she made a beeline for that and never went back. At least it beats what this girl was going through:
I’m almost tempted to catalogue some of the worst mother’s in media, but I don’t wanna abandon my faith in humanity just yet.
The show’s ecchi-leaning comedy make it the butt of a few jokes, but it’s not like it doesn’t know what its talking about. It’s different from a thinking man’s anime, but has a lot of the same story beats as one. Between the JRPG satire and the ecchi satire, it tries its best to split them evenly, though lacks in some other areas. I want to blame this on the anime for cramming so much into so little time, but on the whole that does nothing to specify which anime I’m talking about, for this series specifically, that’s an inaccurate and misleading conclusion to draw seeing as the light novel and manga were still running when the anime was airing in 2019, putting it in the category of yet another anime promoting the source material. And as a manga reader, I’d rather explore manga naturally than be given homework. At least not every series does that to me:
I’ll put this one in the timeline somewhere.
So how does Okaasan Online work as a series? Fine… it knocks out the important points like Kazuma at the batting cages, and generally speeds through them in about one or two episodes. But it also doesn’t really explore anything in much detail beyond “here’s a trope, give me my laughs.” Funny enough, the anime doesn’t do this as perfectly as presented. Two characters’ origins with their own mothers are explored, but one such character, Porta, is a one-off. No such relationship status between her and her own mother are revealed in the source material or the anime; she’s simply the little mage that behaves the most like a little sister to Masato and young daughter to Mamako.
Now that I’ve written that, Porta behaves the most like a little puppy or a kitten. The party leader status is shared between mother and son and awkward as it seems to point this out, they’re like the parents to the other three girls even though Masato and Mamako are mother and son. F[Nyan]k, even I couldn’t avoid the incest trope. Again, not explicit or even acted upon in any media, but it’s there.
So, Tiberius, do you recommend it? Eh, I’m indifferent. I watched it all the way through and 20-year-old me felt naughty things thanks in no small part to the visuals. Fast-forward five-and-a-half years later and looking back, it may have served as a gateway to lewder and racier things without meaning to. Basically, what I’m saying is, before, during, and after its run, the series has been outdone. I won’t persuade you to watch it or dissuade you from doing so, just know that while you could sit down and spare some time to give this one a watch, it co-exists with better shows, so don’t expect me to show up at your door at 3AM like this:
Add it to your isekai library if you feel like it.
Gonna have to be entirely honest here, the timeline I gave myself to fully watch Genshiken couldn’t be adhered to. Life got in the way. C’est la vie. But now that I think about it, having covered series before only partly, halfway, or most of the way through, it got me thinking that I don’t necessarily have to complete a series to review it. I think I get more mileage if I watch enough to understand without necessarily having to complete the series. Completion does help, but to quote Jack Torrance, “All work and no play makes [Tiberius] a dull boy.” Now to the review.
It wasn’t long ago that I caught this anime by way of one of the anime subreddits and in that clip, four otaku speak wildly to a normie about the beauties of a niche Japanese rape game.
Not necessarily a turn off for weebs, if the Redo of Healer’s overwhelmingly female fanbase is any indicator and certainly not one for me as I ventured into this anime expecting more off-the-cuff conversations and it’s a lot more mellow than that clip would lead anyone to believe. As I’ve said before, it’s an anime about a quartet of otaku, sometimes joined by the sometimes Y otaku who has himself a girlfriend hellbent on shaming them into being normal. As a weeb, I take offense, but knowing what I know about the internet when this anime was on air in 2004, she wasn’t the only one yelling this from the heavens.
Further, even I have my limits on my own hobbies, though limit doesn’t necessarily mean quit. Moderation is the key. So as I watched more of Genshiken, the more I saw of the slice of life aspects, similar to shows like Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, and K-On!, but instead of a multitude of cute girls doing cute things cutely, it’s a bunch of college dudes taking half the share of the oppression shared by gamers because they were brave enough to say no to the rat race by engaging in their hobbies. But it does share a similarity with the aforementioned series, namely progression. Azumanga follows the girls throughout high school; Lucky Star does the same even if it’s famous for talking about nothing, and K-On! adds to the roster in the form of Azunyan, weak to the power of the headpat.
Credit: r/HeadPats, u/BTN099
The slice of life genre has its detractors who balk at the idea of a show about f[pages flipping]k and all, but as someone who enjoys many genres SoL being one of them, it’s a nice break from all the methamphetamine fueled action found in Shonen or the isekai singularity. I like beating up ghosts or searching for the One Piece or defeating space Hitler as much as the next guy, but I don’t always want to see that. Something something variety, something something slice of life.
Besides, Genshiken is a series that speaks to weebs because it’s about weebs. You definitely have nerd friends and may yourself be a nerd in some aspect, especially if you’re subscribed to this blog or check in every week. We all have that circle of friends who geeks out over the same things. I had mine in middle and high school and I met mine both times I was in basic training and when I was in AIT, and that passion turned from video games to anime (but of course, games are still a major part of my life; I’m currently building a gaming PC).
Credit: Naumovski
The passion is what speaks to me, this collection of nerds coming together to discuss the important things in life, such as Oppai, Medium or Flat — which is a trick debate because all size makes the wood rise, especially when paired with thicc thighs that save lives. I do recall that rant on the character of Saki Kasukabe and her intense criticism of the medium of animanga as a whole. Watching further was the right choice and I do recommend continuing the series in whichever form you find best as further episodes see her eating her own words every time she gets humbled.
No one can be this dedicated to animanga, you say? Well, conventions beg to differ. Childish, you say? Well, yesterday’s weebs are parents now — see Latin America’s love of Dragon Ball for more details. Women are definitely not interested, you say? Well, not only does my comment about Redo of Healer having a massive female fanbase stand tall, but so does a new character introduced in Season 1: Kanako Ono:
Makes me think of Tomoko Kuroki from WataMote.
Beyond that, Genshiken is a chronicle of passionate animanga geeks whose love of the medium is not tempered by naysayers and is surprisingly large to newcomers and tourists. Once again, for those who wish to view the series, I implore you to find whatever piracy site works best for you. Most anime streaming sites (read: Crunchyroll) aren’t guaranteed to have the full series.
Yonks ago, I mentioned an upcoming post that was initially meant to be just another double bill, but it occurred to me that there was a third series that I felt was appropriate to lump in with the other two. These are the three anime that I watched all through college:
Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
High School DxD, and;
Monster Musume
And we’ll go through them one-by-one. The titles of each should be a giveaway but just in case: each of these series contains sexually suggestive themes, language and imagery. Reader discretion is advised.
Shimoneta (2015):
Another anime to get its start in the world of early 2010s light novels, Shimoneta’s concept is exactly as it says on the tin. All language of a sexually suggestive or provocative nature is illegal and if uttered, the speaker(s) is/are arrested by the Decency Squad, a specialized morality police unit whose purpose is to track down and subdue anyone who dares utter such obscene words.
How do they know people are saying s[poop]t, f[moans]k, and ass? By the collars around their necks. They’re designed (read: programmed) to monitor different trigger words, I suspect, by way of detecting the movements of the mouth when certain words are spoken, sort of like how most YouTubers, TikTokers, etc. have to censor/monitor their own speech to keep from the Demon of Demonitization at bay. (Side note: f[plastic wrap]k the algorithm for doing that to our favorite creators.)
One such character is the protagonist, Tanukichi Okuma. He’s a brand new student to Tokioka Academy and a witness to the indecency of another character he meets later: Blue Snow, real name Ayame Kajou. Ayame takes the alias of Blue Snow whilst on a crusade to dismantle the shackles of this dystopian system of policing speech by way of challenging the response time of the Decency Squad. Under normal circumstances, suggestive language is how you get slapped on the dick (or in Ayame’s case, the tits), but she evades that by dialing a number on her cellphone that deactivates the collar on her neck for three minutes a day, letting her unleash a bevy of inappropriate sayings.
Based on her appearance here, Ayame adopts a Clark Kent persona when around others only to don a mask (a pair of panties, yes, really) when it’s time for her 180 seconds of lewd infamy.
The series isn’t just a man vs society conflict at play, there’s an actual antagonist in the series and she starts off as innocent and pure until the following happens to her:
Channe: Khánh Senseii Anime Kiss
The birth of the villainess of this series. Anna Nishikinomiya begins the series as the class president of Tokioka, but after a mishap in one of the episodes, Okuma plants a kiss on her by accident. If she had any knowledge of even romance, she’d probably have a normal reaction, but this unleashes metaphorical and literal floodgates. She conflates love with lust and 85% of the scenes that she’s in is a display of female-on-male sexual assault/rape. I’m not kidding.
Obviously, it’s played for laughs in the series and there’s a lot to be said about societal discourse surrounding male victims and their female perpetrators (a discussion I’m not qualified to talk about on a blog based on entertainment, but would have no problem entertaining in mixed company), but without getting too dark and focusing mainly on the central theme of the series, Shimoneta is a display of the consequences of policing morality and human behavior. If you’ve been on the internet for quite some time, you may recall an era when cancel culture went haywire and a small fraction of forum posters chastised trolls online to hell and back for a few racy comments here and there. Not that it was unwarranted, the internet around the time of the GamerGate controversy was an interesting time to be on the internet, but interspersed with genuine policing were impromptu witch hunts conflating ignorance with curiosity, and this went beyond just suggestive or provocative commentary, lest we forget the cultural appropriation vs appreciation argument that was prevalent at the time. Though these days, the conversation has moved towards intentionally ignoring sex organs, due to a variety of factors that have massively influenced the internet. Sorry, digressing.
In Shimoneta’s case, it proves how difficult at the least; Sisyphean at the most such a task of policing even speech can be. Not to mention a shortfall that accompanies the series from start to finish about how to go about this. You’ll notice that speech patterns themselves are the main crime, not the physical aspect itself. Now, there would still be procreation which this world would likely allow for survival’s sake, but another conversation can be had about how conspiracy to commit is addressed more seriously than an actual crime in this world.
This blog from 2018 has more to say about Anna herself and with a finer brush than the broadstrokes I employed here.
Having said all that, I still recommend this anime for anyone wanting a closer look at an example of how bad overpolicing behavior can get or if you just wanna see the most athletic Japanese school girl in the world hunt down the object of her “affection.” Beware her homemade cookies, IYKYK. Now onto:
High School DxD (2012-2018)
My personal favorite for being R-rated and uncensored, the light novel ran from 2008 to 2018, ending around the same time as the anime’s fourth season. Whereas Shimoneta’s content is light on explicit nudity and fan service, High School DxD throws the censorship to the wind. Back during the Funimation days, the English dub played up both the nudity and the jiggle physics. From threatening to get naked to actually getting naked; I like the progression so far.
In High School DxD, Kuoh Academy recently transitions into a co-ed school for the new schoolyear. A few male students enroll, likely taking advantage of the 8 to 1 ratio of girls to boys in the hopes of scoring big before Kuoh fully integrates. One of these boys is a massive pervert and otaku named Issei Hyoudo. He initially fits the bill of a stereotypical otaku in all but appearance. Body pillows, an alarm clock with different anime girl archetypes waking him up every morning, an extensive hentai and porn collection shared with his two other friends, and a MIGHTY NEED to get some titty.
It just so happens that one particular set of breasts happens to belong to this devilishly gorgeous redhead, Rias Gremory. More than just a sight for sore eyes, Lady Rias is a fierce fighter and one to defend those she cherishes to her dying breath. Outside of battle, she’s a kindhearted young woman, compassionate, and reliable. She’s the head of Kuoh’s occult club, thinly masking her connection to the paranormal as a devil herself and making great use of the common tropes associated with angels and demons/devils: angels are depicted as bone ugly to ward off evil while demons are depicted as drop dead gorgeous to tempt mankind into following their id. In an ironic twist, the series depicts devils as more heroic than the beings they fight against.
As much as I make that sound like an engagement wearing the clothes of praise, there’s an actual plot behind the plot here. It takes a lot of cues and tropes from the Christian bible with the concept of angels, devils, and fallen angels. Following the devils, their depiction seems more sympathetic in the series as the factions do have a fair share of shady and unscrupulous characters. The overall plot plays up the biblical angle with the fan service going into overdrive, so Rias, Issei, and the Occult club are all (knights) in service of Satan, or in this case, in service of one of those appointed as a satan. To quote Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, “if you’re gonna be a sinner, be the best sinner on the block,” and it seems that Issei is guaranteed to live up to those ideals.
The juxtaposition of magical action and theological babble with T and A and convenient panty shots is what kept me going until about halfway through the fourth season. When it comes to censorship, normally I’m an opponent depending on the company I’m with. Throwing out f[crunch]ks, s[footsteps]ts, damns, asses, and other such forbidden words in a room full of bureaucrats allergic to the sun makes you seem immature compared to a gathering of mobsters, gangsters, or even servicemembers, all things considered. I censor swearing and nudity here for presentability and professionalism, but seeing as I’m writing about a trio of anime that joke or outright show you uncensored boobs, if it wasn’t for the presentation, this whole blog would have no reins. Before we move on to the third and final series I want to talk about, let this ending convince you to watch High School DxD if the above hasn’t already:
Channel: SE NPAI
And last but certainly not least:
Monster Musume (2015):
A harem series like High School DxD but appealing to even more fetishes while also putting the protagonist in a tricky situation like Shimoneta, though with a different context. The plot of this horny adjacent series is that monster girls of various mythical origins are enrolled in a program not dissimilar from foreign exchange student programs in real life and one of the people who is accidented/voluntold into the program is regular human person No. 4986 Kimihito Kurusu.
One of the coordinators, Agent Smith, mistakenly sends a lamia (snake girl) Miia to his house to take care of her under the the circumstances that they refrain from conflict or copulation. Easy rules for Kurusu to follow considering the consequences, but as the series goes on and more and more monster girls share a roof with the man, his physical restraints are put to the test seeing as these women are physically capable of bending him like straw. More than once, he’s been grievously injured through accidents as none of the girls are even remotely aware of their gap in human endurance and their own strength.
Basically, it’s the equivalent of swapping Kratos, a character of pure strength and raw anger with Lester the Unlikely from his titular game. Kurusu exists in a world where monster girls damage him even without the promise or threat of snu snu, and yet, he’s not that kind of guy to engage in his temptations. Using Okuma and Issei as a scale of unfortunate to pervy, Kurusu is definitely closer to Okuma, yet we can put in a different category for him specifically seeing as how he doesn’t exactly live to fulfill is silly desires. He’s a blank slate of sorts that the viewer may put themselves in the shoes of.
Monster Musume has the makings of a horror show without the horror. It’s a harem romcom slice of life with horror elements featuring a protagonist who simply wants to live the most normal life allowed by this society, but is forced to share not only this world, but his dwelling with a harem of monster girls he’s forbidden from touching intimately because the agent that f[piano]ked him is functionally identical to Aqua from KonoSuba.
Don’t let the Matrix reference fool you, she’s not as efficient as those clones. But she does look good in a suit.
Another thing worth mentioning is that while the other two series in this post began as light novels, Monster Musume is a manga first, with a spin off light novel series that also got an anime adaptation: Monster Girl Doctor.
Take these three as my recommendations for when you think there’s too much wholesomeness to go around and not enough lewdness. There’s the possibility of getting muscled by the thirstiest girl in the world whilst on a crusade to curtail censorship; a harem of lovely ladies whose tits shake even when still; and a harem of lovely mythical monster ladies who’d each be wife material all their own if it wasn’t for the rules.
Whatever pirate site you watch your anime on (don’t worry, your secret is safe with me), give these all a watch if you haven’t done so already. And if you’ve seen them, see them again! Do it!!
Calling back to a recent post, I once again searched for anime to watch on a whim and with how easy it is to pirate and upload on YouTube (for a time at least), my search led me to another series that needs no introduction: Azumanga Daioh.
A four-panel manga series running from 1999 to 2002, Kiyohiko Azuma’s famous series is about a group of girls navigating their high school and personal lives, with occasional peeks into the lives of two of their teachers. Its anime adaptation follows the manga nearly beat for beat in the sense that every episode is split into different segments. Four-panel manga all have the same layout and are most commonly found in comedy manga series like Azumanga, and are not limited only to Japan. Western comics also have the formula down pat if you’ve ever read the comic strips in newspapers.
As far as plot is concerned, Azumanga is a slice of life series under the “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” umbrella, a legacy of its era in the moe blob of the 90s going into the 2000s. From start to finish, the manga panels have the star characters and their friends doing really uninteresting stuff, but often in a comedic way. The anime is the same, and having seen it from start to finish the anime translates the humor quite well to the small screen.
Channel: DarkDecietNarcissu
But it still requires a working knowledge of Japanese culture and comedy to understand why it’s like this. Going in blind may not leave as much of an impression compared to going in with this knowledge. The cultural barrier was still standing strong in 2002, and a problem one can see at least with the dub is an old bugbear that only exists when trying to view older anime dubbed in English: poor translations.
One of the strongest concerns in the dub vs sub debate online is whether the translators/localizers, etc. can correctly interpret the scenes and localize them for western audiences without doing away with the original context and humor. Numerous examples of poor translations in the early days exist, but one that makes the rounds regularly online is the Pokémon scene where Brock shares his onigiri rice balls.
By now, everyone has seen onigiri. When it comes to cultural boundaries breaking apart, food also plays a role in that–not just language or history. The faulty dubbing issue isn’t as persistent as it was back in the day, but the concern still exists for many anime fans in the form of internet/video game slang showing up in the subtitles. Personally, I see why this specifically can ruffle some feathers since more and more people watch anime these days and may not always be the same people browsing social media regularly.
From my perspective, Azumanga has a few of these issues here and there, but they didn’t stop me from watching it all the way to the end. As a matter of fact, this series and Azuma’s other series, Yotsuba to!, are a pair of internet darlings. The off-color humor in both series is a source of numerous memes and no-context compilations of the funniest moments from the Azumanga anime due to the style of surreal comedy employed.
Channel: Brolita
Humor like this can show the author’s attention to detail, especially when a seemingly unimportant gag or detail returns in a later episode or two.
Of course, the series isn’t just a barrel of laughs from start to finish. The characters all share intimate moments between each other and in their own personal lives. The character, Yomi, for example is featured in the opening weighing herself, highlighting an insecurity that gets light in the series. Chiyo, being the youngest character, has big shoes to fill with being gifted enough to attend high school at the age of 10. Osaka, real name Ayumu Kasuga, is the outsider, the awkward round peg outnumbered by a bunch of square holes. Her nickname is based on her home city of Osaka and the general perception non-Osakans have of the locals in that prefecture, sorta like how in the U.S. everyone has perceptions of everyone else based on what state they’re from.
Little moments like these help to flesh the characters out and with a small cast to work with, Azuma wasn’t as bogged down trying to give everyone the time of day. This doesn’t necessarily mean that smaller casts are better, but that it takes real care to ensure everyone in a work of fiction is given a piece of the pie. It isn’t always perfect and it doesn’t always need to be as long as all loose ends are tied up. Thankfully, the details in the series are all easy to keep track of through easy-to-remember clauses: one likes animals and tries to pet a finnicky alley cat; one is extra hyper and loaded with energy; one is prone to zoning out at random; one is a sports fanatic; and the list goes on.
Azumanga Daioh is the type of series that one can sit down and relax and have a few laughs while watching these girls go through high school. Its last episode is a neat and tidy conclusion that offers thanks to the viewers as a final goodbye, though I see myself going back for little things in the show.
If the playlist was still available in the English dub I’d provide a link but sadly, the channel that had all 26 episodes dubbed has been removed as of writing this. There still exists the subbed versions on YouTube and the good old-fashioned eyepatch wearing, peg legged, hook hand approach to viewing this series.
With any luck I’ll finally get done with the Undead Unluck anime and provide my thoughts. I’ll do what I can to have it out before the end of the month.
…and I can’t wait to do it on a whim again. I’m not apologizing for that Willie Nelson reference.
Date A Live honestly needs no introduction. It’s a series that I’d heard of for a couple years prior to actually watching it only to hear of a fourth season planned last year while I was already six episodes into the series.
It began life as a light novel with a run from March 2011 to March 2020, exactly nine years of writing from author Koshi Tachibana. A sci-fi fantasy romcom whose anime adaptation was released in 2013 and whose fifth season debuted in April of this year. Funny that light novels from the last decade are going strong in the 2020s.
So what’s Date A Live really about? Breaking it down by its genres, the sci-fi aspect comes from the world itself. It’s somewhat set in the future though no specifics are given so you the reader/viewer may fill in the blanks how you see fit. Spatial quakes or tremors in the solar system start affecting earth in a very negative manner, by way of leaving behind giant craters in the earth, one of the most notable being somewhere along the Eurasian steppe. Bad day to be wandering around Kazakhstan that day.
The in-universe explanation for this is that the space tremors follow the arrival of beings known as Spirits who all appear in the form of girls around the same age as the main character, Shido Itsuka–and protagonist powers aside he does have a crucial role that I’ll get to later.
Further, these Spirits possess abnormal powers, not the least of which involves the likes superhuman strength and devastating abilities the likes of which would make Babidi from Dragon Ball very, very jealous–and also ties in with the fantasy aspect of the series. There are two ways to combat these Spirits: one is by way of actual combat; and the other adds in the romance aspect and our main protagonist, Shido Itsuka.
Now that we’re putting two and two to get to four, you may have predicted that Shido’s task in this series is to romance the Spirits and prevent utter bedlam with the power of love, and you’d be right. The harem aspect is well advertised and if you know a few things about the harem genre in animanga, then you’re probably also aware of the main selling point: fanservice. Flash a boob once or twice, get some cheeky panty shots in, throw in an accidental pervert with multiple different -dere types and voila! you’re cooking a mean beef stew.
However, what I think separates Date A Live from contemporaries of this type would have to be the individual girls themselves. Even as I’ve only just wrapped up the second season of the anime, I’m seeing more than just comedically sexy eye candy. And I’ll even throw a bone to Shido himself. Rather than be just the generic harem protagonist who behaves as a stand-in for the audience, there is a personality to the boy for once. He’s shown to be persuasive and caring, especially since his position in the series is that of nonviolence. He’s basically playing the pacifist route in Undertale.
Meanwhile, the other main adversary present aside from rogue Spirits yet to be wooed by our hunk Shido is the Anti-Spirit Team. Similar to Japanese Special Forces, their purpose is to find and contain the damage the Spirits cause, a lot of the time through lethal force.
Then there’s the girls that Shido romances to the good, less destructive side. A lot of the time they fit well into the typical archetypes we’ve seen in other romance anime, but the backstories and personalities do make them intriguing. Some of them do genuinely want to live quietly and comfortably with Shido, but others answer the question “Violence?” with an enthusiastic “Yes!” Case in point: one of the most iconic characters in the series:
You can’t fix her, nor will she fix you or even try to make you worse. She’ll just leave a massive stain where you standing three seconds ago.
The series explains that the Spirits themselves come from different dimensions, but (minor spoiler) it’s possible for a human from this dimension to become a Spirit as well as what happened to some of the characters in the series. The AST is another display of the sci-fi within the series. With the Spirits being what they are–superpowered high school girls–the members of this elite team have to take the “fight fire with fire” approach to combating them with hi-tech battle suits. Not on par with what has been depicted all over the Gundam genre, but impressive all the same. It’s more like stripped down Iron Man armor in appearance.
Depending on your investment in the series overall and how you feel about the genres explained, you might get a kick out of it, or it might just be another harem series to add to the pile. Neither of these assessments are right or wrong, but it shows that it’s a product of its time. Does that mean the series hasn’t aged well? No. As I said, I got into it weeks before a fourth season was greenlit, not to mention a fifth season debuted a few months ago which suggests a determination to see it through to the end.
I know I’m not the first person to talk about this series and I will not be the last to do so. What I can do is simply point you in the direction of the series and however you choose to consume it. If possible for you, I say finish all five seasons of the anime and while you’re waiting on confirmation of a sixth, beat them to the punch with the light novels.
Before I sign off, since there’s a certain demographic that loves the type of character that I put further above, I feel the video below best describes that mindset:
Channel: Gianni Matragano
But hey, I like kickass ladies too.
For Saturday, June 8, 2024, I recommend the YouTube channel Christopher Chaos.
Run by a retired Army Sergeant and Motor Transport Operator (Military Truck Driver), Christopher Chaos is a military explanation channel dedicated to detailing the possibilities and benefits that come with enlisting in the Army along with the occasional anecdote about his own personal service. Each servicemember’s/veteran’s story is unique due to how big the U.S. military is and how fast changes can be made while serving. Christopher himself explains that he served from 1999 to 2010, so most of his stories show the culture of the Army during his service. That being said, he does still keep up with Army and military news for the purpose of educating would-be recruit candidates.
And if you’re concerned about it, he’s not endorsed or sponsored by the U.S. Army. That chapter in his life is behind him.
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