Despite the interviews with interesting people, like Lea Hernandez:
Daniel Robert Epstein: Manga and anime focuses a lot on switching genders. Why is that?Lea Hernandez: If I was going to guess, based on what very little I know about Japan, I would say gender switching has a lot to do with the fact that they have a really regimented culture and society. That idea of getting to do something that’s not normally socially acceptable. For instance in Ranma one of the gags was that Ranma really liked these parfaits which is a very girly dessert. That was one of the times he liked being the girl because he could eat them without embarrassing himself and looking like a sissy.
DRE: What appeals to you about gender switching?
LH: I don’t know how guys feel about it but I like the way Margaret Cho put it “You’re in a drag all the time even when you think you are not.” That idea of being someone else and you can’t get more else than being the opposite gender of the way you are born. In the context of the story the gender switching wasn’t so much a statement about gender roles except that the engineered people are made to be either/or because they would have an easier time socially depending on what the occasion demanded. They could play for both teams. We have so much vanity in our culture that I thought that would be the ultimate vanity design to pay for your kid to have every advantage including gender. Taking it one step beyond wanting a boy or a girl.
Links added here and there.
This doesn't detract from SG's evil, and no, no particular reason for linking Nala, why do you ask?
Any road up, go read Rumble Girls after you finish the interview. And you do want to finish it.
But do I think our culture has an unhealthy focus on people who are built like 12 year olds with Pamela Anderson tits? Yes I do. I am very uncomfortable and distressed with our current standard of beauty. Its really depressing which is why whenever I go anywhere for an appearance I chant to myself “Margaret Cho, Kathy Bates, Camryn Manheim.” I have three role models.
Because the best bits are towards the end.
Are you familar with Shoujo Kakumei Utena? If not, you should be. Best. Anime. Ever.
I'll second that.
Well, this place was at one point named A Shoujo Kakumei Utena-La Fillette Révolutionaire Utena Fansite.
Then again, it was once called A Sailor Uranus Fansite.
Saw a few episodes of the Utena anime with Neogrammarian a few months back, and have two (I think) of the manga collections. Along with a few stories from when I was getting Animerica Extra monthly, back before they lost X/1999.
Sorry, babbling. Yes, I've seen Utena. Dunno about best, but damn good fun.
Very cool! Sorry I missed those years. So what, pray tell, is the Best. Anime. Ever. in your opinion. Please don't say Eva. I'll cry if you do.
The Vision of Escaflowne.
Not the film. Not the edited-for-boys Fox Kids! version. The tv series, which Anime Village hooked me on by selling me the first tape for, like, $5.
We won't talk about what the rest of the box set cost. . .
Which I'll gladly lend you, if you've never seen the series.
And I used to change the name of this place much more frequently.
Did you ever see Toastyfrog's Evangelion Thumbnail Theater? And what did you not like about the series?
I will remain diplomatically silent on this. Mostly because it's been years since I saw it, and I think I've blocked out most of the really traumatic bits.
I saw the Escaflowne movie, and liked it well enough. I'd be curious to see the unedited series though, since the bad dubbing/editing of the Fox Kids version turned me off.
I've seen the Toastyfrog site, and it's too funny! Admittedly, I still haven't seen all of Eva. It's just everyone raves about it, and just seemed like just another mecha show to me *ducks* Also, Shinji annoyed the hell out of me. But my tastes tend to run more towards stuff like Fruits Basket, so I am not a fair judge.
EVA took much to long to tease about going somewhere it never ended up getting to. --Escaflowne is gorgeous, and has some of the best world design going; it's a great example in anime of the sort of world-building Dylan Horrocks goes on about here. Plus: cool soundtracks. Too self-consciously cinematic in bits, and not nearly so cool as Cowboy Bebop, but there's some great moments in there.
But Utena: it's probably the single most unified piece of work I can think of coming out of a collaborative, industrial-art-type process, in the sense that it's 39 episodes, 3 seasons' worth, of a popular half-hour animated TV series that knows where it's going from moment one and by God gets there. So you have to watch the whole 39 episodes start to finish to see it--not all at once, God no, it's almost 20 hours long. But a couple episodes a night or something, which will take you just under 3 weeks--less, probably, since you'll be watching the last few episodes in huge can't-stop chunks. The extent to which the animators work within the limitations of low-budget grindhouse anime to create such an overwhelming sense of mystery and ritual--eh. I'm starting to ramble. It's a Genuine Work of Pop Art, is all, and one of these days I'll do up the exegesis I keep vaguely threatening to do.
Oh, man. Excellent description of Utena. To me, it's like anime-as-epic poetry, it's so expertly crafted. Just, guh...
K., the unedited/subtitled Escaflowne is a a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Realize this is hard to believe, if you saw the Fox Kids version.
I understand what they were trying to do, and the limitations they were working under, but taking a show with a female protagonist/main character that was created for an older audience, and editing it into a show with a male protagonist aimed at children. . . well, they did the best they could with what they had to work with, and the goal they had in mind.
They just shouldn't have bothered at all, is the problem.
Aaron, I miss you. So much.