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Sound of cicadas make me remember my childhood when I was obsessed about becoming either a Super Sentai mecha, triceratops, or Nue Ziel from Gundam 0083.  That's also when my deviant desires were forming now I think back.

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Sorry for getting my goat up, guys. I just spend a lot of time watching anime and enjoy extracting some greater meaning from it, at least when it's worthy of it. I know that a lot of anime is creatively compromised, most often through commercial considerations, and I find that a frustrating obstacle to useful analysis, but I don't think it's a particularly Japanese thing. I have a raft of TV shows like Sons of Anarchy that I've quit because the script was done and the arcs were complete, but the show was still slated for two more seasons after that. That's not even counting stuff like Hell on Wheels, which was a mess from the beginning and made no effort to cohere more than being a tone piece about angry men workin' on the railroad. So yeah, when an anime strikes me right, I usually dig deeper and, if I find something that doesn't work for me, I do my best to research the context, to see if it's something for which I'm just not carrying the appropriate baggage. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's hard to tell, like it is with KILL la KILL, because it's a little bit of both? I don't know, moving on.

 

Also, I want to talk to you about how think FLCL is coherent. The last time I watched it, I concluded that it's a sort of tone-poem about the way childhood feels, but didn't really have a point.
 
Speaking of FLCL, there's a good example from FLCL (along with so many other sources) with regards to the cultural context that Blambo mentioned above: How do you feel about the sound of cicadas?

 
I used to agree about FLCL, personally, but recently I was reading an article that I can't seem to find it my browser history, which pointed out a lot of the ways that each episode is tightly clustered around a central theme, which together attack a lived experience of childhood in a holistic way. Reading through some of the character profiles and episode summaries again, I was impressed by how deeply FLCL is about the desire for children to be adults and the tendency for adults to be children, as well as how those desires both come from similar but not the same places. I feel pretty strongly right now, although probably not always, that FLCL only appears scatterbrained because it suits its themes to be that way.
 
Also, cicadas make me think of summer nights, but then I grew up in Texas, where annual cicadas are pretty common in July and August. After over a decade of watching anime, it hasn't been hard to extend that association to summer days. I honestly think it's a masterstroke in Evangelion that the cicadas are ubiquitous, as a way of conveying the heat and that the world has been ruined in a very specific way.

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Cicadas make me nostalgic for the Japanese childhood I never had.

 

Sometimes I think I might be the mythical weeaboo come to life.

 

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not actually joking. It's a strange and bizarre thing that I experience frequently: this nostalgia for a place that was never mine. It doesn't only happen with Japan/anime, but because Japan's probably the place I experience the most through fiction besides America, it definitely occurs most frequently for Japan. Whenever I realize what's happening in my brain it's like a slight shock and then I wake up.

 

Without anime, cicadas would literally mean nothing to me. I very vaguely recall them existing when I was a kid but I was pretty much always an indoors nerd during the summertime so it never really stuck with me.

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Yeah, cicadas have specific associations of childhood and summer. As you note, it isn't hard to learn that association even simply by watching anime, but to Blambo's comments above, really feeling it on a personal level can be give it a real gut-punch force.

 

I was impressed by how deeply FLCL is about the desire for children to be adults and the tendency for adults to be children, as well as how those desires both come from similar but not the same places. I feel pretty strongly right now, although probably not always, that FLCL only appears scatterbrained because it suits its themes to be that way.

 

While I agree about about the general thematic content, there are a lot of individual elements in FLCL that I find very difficult for me to tie into those themes. I'd be interested to read that article if you can manage to find it.

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Also, cicadas make me think of summer nights, but then I grew up in Texas, where annual cicadas are pretty common in July and August. After over a decade of watching anime, it hasn't been hard to extend that association to summer days. I honestly think it's a masterstroke in Evangelion that the cicadas are ubiquitous, as a way of conveying the heat and that the world has been ruined in a very specific way.

 

For me, it was the buzzing of cicadas during the summer season in Harvest Moon 64 that built that association for me and ever since playing that game in high school, I get super nostalgic whenever I hear it. That was one of my favorite things about Steins;Gate. The constant buzzing of cicadas throughout the series had a very nice calming effect that was such a nice complement to everything else that was going on.

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Sorry for getting my goat up, guys. I just spend a lot of time watching anime and enjoy extracting some greater meaning from it, at least when it's worthy of it. I know that a lot of anime is creatively compromised, most often through commercial considerations, and I find that a frustrating obstacle to useful analysis, but I don't think it's a particularly Japanese thing. I have a raft of TV shows like Sons of Anarchy that I've quit because the script was done and the arcs were complete, but the show was still slated for two more seasons after that. That's not even counting stuff like Hell on Wheels, which was a mess from the beginning and made no effort to cohere more than being a tone piece about angry men workin' on the railroad. So yeah, when an anime strikes me right, I usually dig deeper and, if I find something that doesn't work for me, I do my best to research the context, to see if it's something for which I'm just not carrying the appropriate baggage. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's hard to tell, like it is with KILL la KILL, because it's a little bit of both? I don't know, moving on.

I used to agree about FLCL, personally, but recently I was reading an article that I can't seem to find it my browser history, which pointed out a lot of the ways that each episode is tightly clustered around a central theme, which together attack a lived experience of childhood in a holistic way. Reading through some of the character profiles and episode summaries again, I was impressed by how deeply FLCL is about the desire for children to be adults and the tendency for adults to be children, as well as how those desires both come from similar but not the same places. I feel pretty strongly right now, although probably not always, that FLCL only appears scatterbrained because it suits its themes to be that way.

Also, cicadas make me think of summer nights, but then I grew up in Texas, where annual cicadas are pretty common in July and August. After over a decade of watching anime, it hasn't been hard to extend that association to summer days. I honestly think it's a masterstroke in Evangelion that the cicadas are ubiquitous, as a way of conveying the heat and that the world has been ruined in a very specific way.

Again I feel like I'm not communicating enough that analysis isn't impossible and that it is worthwhile, especially since I can't imagine that every sigle aspect of Japanese art is incomprehensible to anyone else. If you have eyes and ears, you can appreciate and analyze any anime to the fullest extent that you can and in your specific way.

Things are getting kind of muddy since I kind of just popped in the middle of the conversation after reading CLWheeljack's post, and it feels like it's turning into me attacking the art status of anime or making fun of people who enjoy it/analyze it, which I'm not or at least trying not to do.

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While I agree about about the general thematic content, there are a lot of individual elements in FLCL that I find very difficult for me to tie into those themes. I'd be interested to read that article if you can manage to find it.

 

I'll keep looking for it! I remember the crux of its argument being that the manga version is important for knowing how to tie a lot of stuff into a coherent whole, which is not the biggest recommendation but something that warrants a close rewatching in the near future.

 

 

Again I feel like I'm not communicating enough that analysis isn't impossible and that it is worthwhile, especially since I can't imagine that every sigle aspect of Japanese art is incomprehensible to anyone else. If you have eyes and ears, you can appreciate and analyze any anime to the fullest extent that you can and in your specific way.

 

Things are getting kind of muddy since I kind of just popped in the middle of the conversation after reading CLWheeljack's post, and it feels like it's turning into me attacking the art status of anime or making fun of people who enjoy it/analyze it, which I'm not or at least trying not to do.

 

Nah, I'm just having trouble addressing two people simultaneously. I probably shouldn't have tried it.

 

I guess I'm a bit more blase about the fundamental accessibility of other cultures' works in totality because I'm a medieval historian and spend nine days out of ten reading charters and chronicles, written in a foreign language by people whose mindset is almost entirely unrecoverable to me. I'm not saying that it makes me an expert in obscure stuff, just that I've had nearly a decade to get used to the idea that most interesting things are impossible to understand entirely in the way that they were intended, and it's up to me to derive my own understanding that is functional and meaningful, not authoritative by any means.

 

If I've talked past your point and missed it entirely, I'm sorry. I've really just not been on my game the past few days. All I've been watching lately is that awful travesty of a show, The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, which might be the first show I've hate-watched since college. I need to finish Patlabor. I always need to finish Patlabor.

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really feeling it on a personal level can be give it a real gut-punch force.

 

That's mostly cause those of us who heard it haven't heard it all that much recently?  If I were still in SK and heard it yearly, I'm sure my gut reaction to it wouldn't be anything big, rather just sense of "oh it's that time of the year"

 

Kind of like how distant lawnmowers can have different effects... I know some people are calmed by it while it may annoy others.

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Christ, Japanese cicadas are fucking obnoxious. I guess I don't mind the ones that I grew up with since they just make one constant white noise, like a loud fridge, but my attention goes directly to the cicada sound effect in any animation/video game.

 

Also summers in some Harvest Moon games, the cicada is turned up so fucking loud and so frequent that I have to leave the room if my wife is playing that season.

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That's mostly cause those of us who heard it haven't heard it all that much recently?  If I were still in SK and heard it yearly, I'm sure my gut reaction to it wouldn't be anything big, rather just sense of "oh it's that time of the year"

 

Kind of like how distant lawnmowers can have different effects... I know some people are calmed by it while it may annoy others.

 

Ugh, you just made me realize that I hate living in the city a little bit because I don't get to hear lawnmowers in the summer.

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That's mostly cause those of us who heard it haven't heard it all that much recently?  If I were still in SK and heard it yearly, I'm sure my gut reaction to it wouldn't be anything big, rather just sense of "oh it's that time of the year"

 

Kind of like how distant lawnmowers can have different effects... I know some people are calmed by it while it may annoy others.

 

Yeah, I'm sure everybody has their own little list of those childhood sounds.

is a noise I miss in the mornings. I lived a block away from a mosque for a while as a kid, and find a distant call to prayer pretty lovely, too.

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Hearing those "tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tsthsththsthsthtthshthsthshtshtshth" sprinklers at twilight makes me nostalgic for summer. 

 

Cicadas just make me nostalgic for Neon Genesis Evangelion. Also those train crossing warning bells. 

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I just noticed that, in their massive site redesign, MyAnimeList.net removed the subheading of fansub and scanlation listings for anime and manga titles. You can't search their site by fansub groups anymore, either. That's a whole lot of information gone from the internet, probably because they got a C&D letter simply for acknowledging the existence of such groups and their output. At least AniDB is still around, but their interface sucks and is not as information-rich.

 

Seriously, fuck capitalism. I know it's a tiny little thing to get pissed about, but someday, someone's dissertation is going to be on fansub culture and it's going to be hard going for them (and for any digital humanities initiatives in media culture) because modern corporations have such a slash-and-burn mentality about everything.

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So against my better judgment, I watched the first episode of Punch Line last night. And then I watched the following four available episodes. I don't know if I'm just back in that space where I can tolerate bullshit again or if it's actually good enough elsewise to overcome the bullshit, ala Kill la Kill. Someone please tell me how to feel.

 

I've also caught up with Kekkai Sensen (or Blood Blockade Battlefront). Surprisingly good? I expected it to be my junk food anime for the season, but I'm enjoying it on a higher level than that. The story isn't super fascinating, but the characters are great, and I love the world, and it looks really nice. I super love the design on some of the monsters. Definitely a very otherworldly feel to a lot of things happening in this connection to the... other world.

 

Out of morbid curiosity, I watched the first half of the first episode of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? and I went from "huh, this could be something, nice twist on the guy being rescued and falling in love with his rescuer" to "god i hate hestia" in ten minutes and then went to bed. Maybe it gets better. I have no faith.

 

Also FWIW I'm enjoying the Crunchyroll podcast more and more. I think it's not bad! They also actually dive into industry talk from time to time (though mostly from a licensing perspective, obviously), which is kinda cool.

 

also NEW DRAGON BALL NEXT SEASON I'M STILL EXCITED i can't believe it's happening for real i should watch the new movie soon-ish

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Damn, I've been meaning to write about Punch Line for a while now. I loved the first episode, I found it really funny, but then it swiftly went down hill so fast. The second episode was a mess. And now it seems that the main protagonist doesn't even care about getting his body back. I'm still watching it, because I have some blind faith that noitaminA knows what they're doing.

 

Yeah, Dan-Machi (the shortened version of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?) isn't good at all. I hate pretty much everyone there. They're all so annoying. I really, really, hate the main protagonist's view that 'the only way he can get a girl is to be strong'. It really irks me, because that's a really horrible attitude to have. ugh. And then Hestia is annoying as eggs, pretty much all the way through. I kinda want to watch more, but only to see how bad it gets.

 

The best thing this season is still My Love story. Fucking hell it's so sweet, and lovely, and it's amazing.

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I actually thought it got better after the first episode, and definitely funnier, 'cause it just kept adding more and more layers of insanity, while continuing to embrace the absolute absurdity and perverseness of a guy who goes Super Saiyan at the sight of a girl's panties. I like that it's not taking itself seriously at all, but still has a hint of maybe one day going there (kind of like, dare I say it, Kill la Kill).

 

(not saying i want it to turn into a kill-la-kill-esque affair, or even that it even will, but i can't help to compare because i was similarly put off and then enamored by both series within a few episodes)

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Haha after saying that, today's episode of Punch Line was almost entirely serious, and also weird, and also twisty in ways I wouldn't have expected (not sure how I should feel about it), and then the other twist, too.

 

hmm HMMMM

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Just finished reading this article on how much Cowboy Bebop's soundtrack cemented and helped form the show. It's probably about time to revisit Bebop. I was wondering what soundtracks y'all thought were stellar.

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For sure, that's a major draw for the show. It's very unique for cartoons. I also really like the stuff Kanno did for the concert scenes in Macross Plus. Those were the only good part of all of that drivel. Also those scenes were directed by the amazing Koji Morimoto.

 

It sucks though that Kanno is guilty of plagiarizing a lot of music, some blatant, some dubious. I lost some respect for her there.

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Oh I suppose I should have just posted it:


I really like the song on this part and I like that Kanno can just switch to different genres of music at will.

 

Hah, the character design for Sharon apple really doesn't fit with the ugly pointy characters in the rest of the OVA/movie. I guess they just kind of let Morimoto draw the key frames however he felt like.

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Susumu Hirasawa's soundtracks (Millennium Actress, Paranoia Agent, Paprika) always add something for me, but I'm also a huge fan of Susumu Hirasawa in general.

The .hack//sign soundtrack added a lot to that anime for me, too. It was really video gamey but also kind of not and added a lot of atmosphere? I don't know, I haven't watched the series in forever but the soundtrack has stuck in my head ever since.

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Have I mentioned Kacho O-ji (Legend of Black Heaven) here before? Its an anime that I have affection for, but objectively probably isn't very good.

Its built around music, but aside from two key songs, I don't remember any of the background soundtrack stuff.

I should probably re-watch it, but I'm afraid it will be terrible. Also, the music is only good if you like a particular kind of 80s metal.

Uhhh...so its not really a recommendation.

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