Pause and Select was my favourite anime channel, but he got busy irl and doesn’t make that much content anymore

Zeria and Pedantic Romantic were also good but they kinda disappeared. Short rule of thumb, if a Youtuber makes a video about Revolutionary Girl Utena (and “gets” it) they’re usually cool and good.

Dungeon Meshi is good because it’s Dune for DnD nerds.

You go in expecting a light-hearted fantasy cooking show and then it slams you with a masterclasss in worldbuilding, and soon you’re knee deep in ecology, politics and culture; and thinking about how all these things intersect and affect each other. It’s catnip for communists.

I like it better than Frieren just because it’s a more coherent/focused story- Frieren can get a bit monster-of-the-week/shonen tournament arc at times, which I guess some people would consider a strength in its variety but that’s kinda not for me. (Also I have some qualms with the way the demons are portrayed in Frieren).

Ah ep 1. of the anime is the start of the manga, ep 0. of the anime adapts some later chapters for some reason

Show is basically about imperialism, and the vibes of waiting for the end of the world. So far so good. Don’t watch ep 0 tho because it’s a flash-forward that kinda spoils a lot of things, imo ep 1 is a better start to the story.

And the only way to stop Hatsune Miku was to get into a F-22 and blow her up, because she hacked the MIC’s drone network

Only seen the first episode but

Jellyfish > Girls Band Cry

I’ve kinda kept clear of Oyasumi Punpun because I, uh, think that the subject matter might be a bit too intense for me, but I’ve always heard good things about Inio Asano’s work, and I’ve been really curious about DeDeDeDe for being his most political, with all the really pointed commentary on Japan/US relations that’s kinda baked into the text as an alien invasion story

The girls fantasizing about Collapse is straight out of Hexbear’s general megathread lmao

It’s not overt racism that’s the problem (in fact, I would say Gibson as a author is someone who is very careful to avoid racist caricature in his work, unlike say Neal Stephenson); rather, the orientalism comes from who is being written about, and who is left out. Like, this blog post puts it really succinctly:

But in a setting that draws so heavily on East Asian culture, why are all the characters white?

Here’s a polygon article that’ll do the topic more justice than I ever could, but to summarize the crux of the problem: that picture of “The Future” that’s “Cool Japan”… that was never real in the first place. That’s the tourist brochure version- reality is that the other side of the world’s covered in The Sprawl too.

And it’s hard to really blame Gibson- as far as he was concerned he’s just writing some silly sci-fi story, he didn’t ask to define an entire sub-genre- but the fact of the matter is that without really doing the necessary research to accurately portray things from the perspectives of those he’s accidentally othering with his aesthetics, he just left the doors open for a kinda “Yellow Peril 2.0” to remain embedded within.

The second last line about teaming up with other worker’s to “demonstrate that we understand the full value of our labor” gives it away. No chud would ever suggest anything close to unionization.

Edit: I just realized another point to that last bit, that when Cyberpunk as a genre was forming all the mixing in of Japanese aesthetics and language was meant to be alienating and reflected/played off American fears of Japanese tech industry surpassing American industry, whereas now it’s like just more comfy/pretty aesthetics for generations that have grown up consuming anime.

I mean, a lot of the visual identity of modern cyberpunk has been heavily influenced by anime (Akira, GiTS).

It’s sorta come full circle as a visual shorthand for the kind of cultural flattening effect neoliberalism has, although I’d wish they’d kinda move past some of the orientalist connotations into something more interesting.

We had an anime crash. In the 90’s. During the Lost Decade.

The entire reason we’re flooded with low quality otaku facing garbage is because it’s the only stuff that remains profitable during an economic crisis, because the only people spending money on non-essentials like dvds and merchandise are people whose entire identity is centered around that specific type of product consumption, and if the industry doesn’t cater to them you go out of business because no one else is buying.

BBI did Deserts of Kharak and that game wasn’t bad at all.

HW3 is ok. Presentation-wise, it’s great. Visually it’s amazing, audio is amazing. Story-wise, the campaign is a bit better than 2 but not as good as HW1, Cataclysm or DoK. It feels really rushed and you don’t really get a chance to get to know the new characters well, and imo the campaign is waaaay too short. Also, the cgi cutscenes are pretty bad compared to the storyboard animatics of the previous games. Gameplay-wise, it’s… ok? Balance feels off (some units like Assault frigates feel overtuned), strike craft are too fragile, the production queue is a bit too generous in letting you queue up multiple unit types and maybe most egregiously unit-pathing is prone to bugging out and doing weird stuff, but it’s fine most of the time. If you like how combat feels in HW1, 3 actually returns to that and mostly feels similar (minus the fragile fighters) so personally I appreciate that at least.

Imo give it a few months for QoL and balance patches and mods (mod support is built in) and this game will be a sleeper hit. Hard to recommend it right now unless you’re a diehard homeworld fanatic though.

God dammit that got me good

The post before that was amazing too

Just think of it as enforced day

stock villain stuff

I’m not gonna claim that TTGL addresses it’s criticisms of structures on the level of Utena, but the way it focuses on the psychology of rebellion/oppression always stuck with me- with how it tied finding a reason to live with resisting oppression and wanting to live with dignity, in a way beyond most other shows.

”nuh-uh!”

Right, but I’ve been trying to point out that the underlying read of the metaphor for “ hot blooded shonen spirit” seems to be different between the two shows: for Getter by your description it seems to be “life’s insatiable ability to propagate and consume”, and for TTGL I’ve been trying to make the case that it’s “life’s struggle to live in a harsh universe with dignity”, and that those two things aren’t the same, because one is much simpler than the other.

Like, to me the main concern that TTGL has is “Do you have the willpower to live and to resist oppression? Yes or no? Everything else is a matter of scale” which, I think is more a philosophical question than a material one. It’s a “in order to build a better world, one must first be able to imagine it” kinda deal.

Obviously reckoning with humanity’s desire for consumption would require more nuance and depth to the work, but I suspect that if TTGL is a response to Getter the same way it is to Evangelion it would be something like: “You’re overcomplicating things. This is a matter of psychology. Do you have the willpower to rise to the challenge? That’s the first step to overcoming it.”

disagreement

Yeah, I was kinda worried you’d just check out haha, so I’m glad you were having fun too. I do think we’ve kinda exhausted where the conversation can go until I read Getter tho, so I’ll get right on that after Yokohama Kidou Kaishi

Ahhhhhhhhhh I had a whole reply typed out but Hexbear ate it.

Ok 5 min summary:

TTGL does go into the way actual structures work, it’s talking about the psychology of rebellion and existentialism. The way the show discusses despair and terror as tools of oppression is a lot like how Fanon describes them in Wretched of the Earth.

that’s still just them solving the problems the exact same way without any changes.

Resistance to oppression is resistance to oppression, all that changed was scale. Rossiu’s entire arc is to point out that survival isn’t the same as fighting back.

the anti-spiral say the universe will be destroyed. if the show wants to say “actually they were lying” then ok, but it doesn’t

Lordgenome points out in the same scene that the Anti-Spiral is only saying that to paralyze Simon with despair, and Simon’s response that he can’t let a possible future prevent him from acting to correct an injustice in the present is imo the correct one. We only have the Anti-Spirals word that the problem is intractable, so I’m going to bet on the guy who went from a miner to saving the Earth by making the impossible possible. That’s also why I’m satisfied with the ending, because anything after would be kinda redundant.

human spirit is not inherently good, if it was people wouldn’t do bad things.

This is on me, when I said human spirit I should have specified revolutionary spirit or the will of the oppressed to overthrow their oppressor. Sorry for moving the goalpost, I swear it wasn’t intentional

and again, i want to repeat that i am not saying gurren lagann is a bad show or that you are wrong to take away the things you take away from it, just that i was thinking about it after seeing a story deal with the same ideas and the exact same plot and i feel like gurren lagann deals with those themes in a way that is profoundly unsatisfying

Don’t worry about it I’m only discussing this with you because I find it fun

but it fundamentally does not have any interest in how anything works, you know?

I strongly disagree with this: it is deeply concerned with how human beings view the world and think about the future. TTGL is making the case for Revolutionary Optimism.

i think the thing that breaks the whole story apart is the bit where simon fights that anti-spiral mech and blows up the entire city?

So like, I went back and rewatched these episodes: 1) First of all, they’re attacked. It’s not Simon’s hot bloodedness that’s the problem here because how the heck would he have known that the Anti-Spiral mecha are walking warcrimes made out of cluster bombs and 2) They develop countermeasures in the next fight! When Simon kills the next one he orders the Grapearl squadron to shoot down the cluster bombs. And the fight after that, they come up with a shield weapon to neutralize and contain the explosions. It isn’t a mindless hotblooded spirit that drives them, they learn from past mistakes!

but if you bring in people saying “hot blooded willpower will not solve this problem, in fact hot blooded willpower is CAUSING the problem” and the heroes just go “no! we will use hot blooded willpower to fix everything forever and forever grow and get stronger! and it simply will not be a problem for us, don’t worry about it!” that is supremely unsatisfying to me. engage with the problems you set up!

The show does! They have to struggle and adapt! They don’t overcome all the obstacles without problem. Characters die just to get them that far!

Like, Anti-Spiral Nia says this in episode 18:

Having passed one million, human numbers and civilization will advance explosively. They will become a power that will be a threat to our own. And so, we will destroy you before that can happen.

The issue isn’t that stubborn hot-blooded willpower will break shit, it’s that there’s a genocidal hegemony hell bent on maintaining power that will break shit and we’re going to need all the hot-blooded determination we can get to overcome it. The people saying that hot blooded willpower is causing problems (in the show) are full of shit and just using that as justification to keep everyone else down, because they don’t know for sure that it will cause problems. They’re just afraid of the future, so afraid that they literally froze themselves in time.

Like, again, the crux of the matter comes down to “Do you believe that the human spirit is a force for good?” and imo TTGL gives that question all the weight it deserves, with an unequivocal and enthusiastic “YES!”.

In the epilogue, Rossiu organizes the Galactic Spiral Peace Conference, presumably to preemptively organize and plan for a peaceful solution to the Spiral Nemesis.

on your other disconnect

Yeah, that’s the other metaphor for the drill. While the show did help me navigate towards a less toxic masculinity, obviously that’s not going to apply to everyone and y’know what? That’s ok. Trans rights are human rights.

Yes

Damn those panels do go hard.

the story can just as easily be read as about capitalism being good, some facile anti-communist screed where the anti-spiral want to make everyone conform but team gurren is all about rugged individuality. in fact team gurren IS at least a little about rugged individuality.

I dunno, that reading is the kind that we make fun of chuds for having. “Don’t believe in yourself! Believe in the me who believes in you!” is the total opposite mantra of a rugged individualist, and everything only happens due to the collective effort of everyone on the cast because they combine (more of Imaishi’s stupidly sincere puns) their efforts together.

it doesn’t have to be perfect as a political test for you to like it, you know?

I know, because TTGL is really special to me. I was a really depressed young liberal when I watched it, and it helped me a lot with getting through that rough patch, and I liked it enough back then. But it was this show’s really dumb “Drill revolves = Revolution” pun in the movie that started getting enough stones rolling in my head to get me to question my thinking at the time.

What I’m saying is that this reading isn’t a post-hoc justification to retrofit my politics into a piece of media I like. This is me saying that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was that piece of media that hit me at the exact right time of my life to completely change my worldview, and that coming up with this reading was formative in shaping my current politics by giving voice to a lot of ideas I couldn’t articulate for myself back then.

(And honestly it’s kinda embarrassing to admit that. Just how fucking privileged do I have to be to say that a Japanese cartoon had a huge impact in making me a leftist? )

yes! because the position isn’t just “a better world isn’t possible,” it’s “a better world isn’t possible because you won’t stop doing the giga drill break!!!” it’s like people saying “we can just use fossil fuels forever and constantly grow and expand and nothing bad will happen” in the face of criticism of capitalism or climate change.

Ok, say for the sake of argument we reject any Marxist reading of the text (which I’m gonna put my foot down and say it’s just not possible, but anyway)- TTGL is still an extremely Humanist story. It would be one thing if the show presented the Anti-Spiral as having a point, like if Spiral Power visibly corrupted or the universe got worse every time a Giga Drill Break was used or if Simon started abusing his power- but those things never happen inside the story and aren’t implied at all in the epilogue. (And also, Simon in the show never pursues power for it’s own sake, it’s in order to protect his loved ones and liberate them.)

So what the Anti-Spiral’s arguments end up being in the show is a fear of a possible future. Like, maybe Imaishi is just straight up ripping off Getter to create a visual/narrative shorthand, but within the text of TTGL that still only represents a possible future, not a certainty. Just because things played out that way in Getter Robo doesn’t mean it’ll play out that way in TTGL.

The result of the Anti-Spiral’s fear of a possible future is an endless now, a status quo oppressively enforced from above, where people are reduced to digging through dirt looking for scraps just to get by- the state of the cast at the start of the show. It’s police states and sanctions and, when the Spiral races finally break though that first struggle, it’s genocide. Even if Spiral power was the analogue for capitalism (or the productive forces) and unlimited growth, the Anti-Spirals answer isn’t sustainability, it’s Malthusianism. They don’t plan to ever actually tackle the problem, just to kill enough people to kick the can down the road. It’s pessimism and nihilism and the shuttering of the human spirit.

The Anti-Spiral are letting the fear of a possible future paralyze everything into an endless now, but you can’t overcome those fears and create lasting solutions by freezing in place and not allowing yourself/life to grow. The only path forward is in believing in people’s ability to work together to chip away at the problem, one turn of the drill bit at a time.

“Mark my words. This drill will open a hole in the universe. And that hole will become a path for those that follow after us. The dreams of those who have fallen. The hopes of those who will follow. Those two sets of dreams weave together into a double helix; drilling a path towards tomorrow. That’s Tengen Toppa! That’s Gurren Lagann! My drill is the drill that creates the heavens!”

“You struggle in vain!”

“That may be, but I still believe. In the me that I believe in. In humanity. In the future. I believe. My drill is my soul!”

-Anti-Spiral dies

“If it has to be this way, protect the universe at all costs…”

“Oh course we will. Believe in us, too. Have faith in us humans.”

To me, in the face of nihilism and utter annihilation, the only rational response kinda is to punch it in the face screaming “Nuh-Uh!”. After all, we’ve overcome so much hardship just to get here in the first place, it’s more irrational not to have faith in humanity. That’s why I can’t separate a Marxist reading from this show, because the inherent humanist optimism of “A better world is possible” is foundational to leftist politics- why can’t Simon the Digger and Team Gurren overcome the Getter Emperor?

but i would definitely recommend reading it, it’s cool as hell. i make it sound kinda downbeat and depressing here but it’s got so many sick things going on

You should have just lead with the Dinosaurs, I’ll read anything with Dinosaurs in it.

(But also if it has a downer ending like Devilman Crybaby or Mawaru Penguindrum I’ll probably bounce of it, for reasons articulated here hahahaha)