12 Days 2018

<div align='center' style='font-size: 200%;'>\ Thinking far too hard about far too little: Anime criticism, in 12 Days, at the end of 2018 </div> <div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/9n5E7b5.jpg" alt="Humbug" align="center"> </div/>\ <div align='center' style='font-size: 120%;'>\ [[Another fucking @aliveinthewired dog and pony show|Intro]]</div> \ </div> <div align='center'>[[Skip to Index|Index]]</div> </div>

14th December 2018: [[You didn't have to use the //Cutie Honey// song for the opening, but it would've been nice |Honey 1]] 15th December 2018: [[I wish Yuasa would go back to making original works so I could go back to ignoring them|Devilman 1]] 16th December 2018: [[I don't love //Gundam Wing// or anything but I don't regret watching it either|Gundam 1]] 17th December 2018: [[I'm actually not sure what //Sanrio Boys// was going for|Danshi 1]] 18th December 2018: [[//Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer// will never stop being a gut punch|Beautiful 1]] 19th December 2018: [[I had extremely low expectations for //FLCL Progressive// and it easily went beneath them|FLCL 1]] 20th December 2018: [[Is //Tonegawa: Middle Management Blues// pulling its weight or does it need to get restructured?|Katsu 1]] 21th December 2018: [[Sanrio has a long history of making stuff and most of it is pretty weird|Sanrio 1]] 22th December 2018: [[//JoJo's Bizzare Adventure Part 5: Vento Aureo// feels like my JoJo again|JoJo 1]] <Strike>23rd December 2018</Strike> 29th December 2018: [[Don't remake Cardcaptor Sakura unless you have a good fucking reason to|CCS1]] <Strike>24th December 2018</Strike> 30th December 2018: [[//Pop Team Epic// is not your epic deconstruction of anime tropes |PTE 1]] <Strike>25th December 2018</Strike> 31st December 2018: [[Mitsuboshi Colours made me feel a deep, unabated longing for 2005|Colours 1]]

[[Dear reader, not just yet|Index]]

As usual I watched more anime than I probably should have this year. I have a bad habit of feeling as though something I like could be taken from me at any second. Similarly, I have a fascination with the ephemeral. Anime is really good at capturing a splinter of time: Not just a decade or a year, but the month or week it was made, captured forever. Here's my splinter for a long year. 12 works, 12 days. Thank you for reading. [[Continue|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/6wReGnd.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Honey 2]]

Two anime came out this year that were modern adaptations of 1970s Go Nagai properties, and neither saw fit to use their established classic opening themes. And if we're being perfectly honest, not using the Cutie Honey theme is the least of //Cutie Honey Universe//'s problems. [[Forward|Honey 3]]

Produced to celebrate the 50th anniversary, it definitely falls along the “pleasant but disposable” side of the remake spectrum. It hits all the rights beats and is sufficiently horny even by the standards we've come to expect of straight up horny shows in 2018. It makes me think of the //Osomatsu-san// we didn't get, another update of a hoary Showa-era property with all the beats in the right place but does not significantly add to its legacy. [[Forward|Honey 4]]

That's not to say it's bad, even. Like a number of this year's adaptations of older source material it ticked every box that it needed to and ended up being wholly adequate. And really, if you've ever watched 1970s anime you know that they're not always the easiest watch. Even the classic stuff, //Galaxy Express 999//, //Flower Girl Runrun//, //Mazinger Z//, they can easily turn into a slog as the thankless task of producing dozens of episodes strains both the premise and production staff early in the run. Its competition also includes two definitive, all-time best works, //RE: Cutie Honey//, and the fantastic //Cutie Honey// live action film where live action Honey nearly kills Go Nagai with her arse. [[Forward|Honey 5]]

It's also not fair to want to lock things in amber and make sure they never evolve. This was a running theme this year, and will be until capitalism is wholly overthrown and making original media is again permissible. But regardless, many works thrive over decades with changes more significant than a single piece of music. By the same token, I suppose many can keep an element like that constant, too. [[Forward|Honey 6]]

It begs the question-what value do we place on any update of classic work? Should they be wholly transformative , or is it enough that they be a fun approximation of the original? This question was a lot more interesting back before most everything was a remake or reboot, and at this point the answer to the question is probably “Don't”. //Cutie Honey Universe// could have been good, great even, without the Cutie Honey song, and even though it wasn't, it still would have been nice. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/AJAfjWr.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Devilman 2]]

At this point belabouring that I have an intense dislike for Yuasa is beating a dead horse. Consequently the thought of him getting his grubby, talentless paws on the Go Nagai classic //Devilman// filled me with a deep sense of dread. Nagai's classic story was too perfect a fit for his condescending entitlement, his works about being the only sensitive soul in a cruel world that just doesn't respect individual genius. [[Forward|Devilman 3]]

As it turns out, //Devil: Crybaby// was fine. [[Forward|Devilman 4]]

Devilman: Ryo get ipad is a reasonably well executed adaptation of //Devilman//, and will probably be the definitive version of the story going forward. Yuasa works begin to approach tolerable when someone else writes the story and dictates a portion of the visual style, restraining him from many of his worst urges. //Crybaby//'s updates to the original are cohesive and work, even if they're a bit on the nose, and it hits the major narrative themes adequately. [[Forward|Devilman 5]]

And I'll say this for Yuasa, I at no point got the sense that he felt as if he was too good for the material, or was sneering and contemptuous towards his audience for having the aduacity to like cartoons. He genuinely seems like a big fan of //Devilman/ who was excited to make a strong adaptation of the source material. [[Forward|Devilman 6]]

My absolute favourite thing about it, though, is that in the year two thousand and fucking eighteen, a tits and violence Go Nagai adaptation can still shock people. The initial reaction to the show was positive, but the backlash was widespread and immediate. It's been such a long time since I saw a work genuinely, intentionally shock people and frankly it's amazing to me that it was even possible. Decades after //Harenchi Gakuen// and //Violence Jack// have passed safely into the canon, Go Nagai's work still has the potential to provoke a strong emotional reaction, which warms my heart. [[Forward|Devilman 7]]

To address the obvious criticism, being able to shock people is not, in and of itself, an absolute good. Plenty of Neo-Nazis and people like Ricky Gervais hide their bigotry behind the idea that they're just trying to “shock” you, as though taking offence at their bigot were some sort of deficient quality. Not only does //Devilman: Crybaby// mean it, it uses shock value to enhance the themes of the original as a warning against groupthink and prejudice. [[Forward|Devilman 8]]

I haven't talked much about the actual content of the show, and again, it's fine, I suppose. I don't like Yuasa and the specific flourished he brings to the story aren't to my particular taste. But for one brief moment this year, an anime tore apart an audience's expectations and made them confront something they're uncomfortable with: violence and prejudice, things that exist in the real world as surely as they do in //Devilman//. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/OOGpZ4H.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Gundam 2]]

So I finally watched //Gundam Wing// in its entirety this year. As someone who is not the biggest fan of Gundam after a handful of attempts, I actually found Wing enjoyable. Removed from Gundam's portentous surety that it is About Something, that it is Meaningful, //Gundam Wing// is able to focus on the parts that Gundam as a franchise can do well. [[Forward|Gundam 3]]

So we have a group of shitty, angry teens piloting their wonderfully chuunibyou giant robots, a vague background sprinkling of anti-war messages, and that good 90s Jpop. And I can absolutely see why this became such a big deal amongst Western fans and why it has remained popular. Like a number of its straight-from-Japan contemporaries from the decade that got big in the West, it does a type of storytelling that is even today only really exists in Japanese popular culture: A sprawling, violent adventure with episodic storytelling, more fantastic and on a larger scale than could be done in live action. [[Forward|Gundam 4]]

My first major memory of //Gundam Wing// and Gundam in general, was seeing an article in a local anime 'zine about how it was the quintessential 90s yaoi anime, and reading the author's memories of it being her and her friend's gateway into Boy's Love. Not that long ago, I suppose, these kind of things were scandalous, before 00s fandom set fire to whatever little sense of shame about their hobby anime had left. [[Forward|Gundam 5]]

Had I gone and watched it when I read the 'zine, I would've been shocked to find out that the boys barely spend any time together. Duo Maxwell, the definitive bottom of our time, is barely in it for fuck's sake. This doesn't surprise me now, of course. Fan works have been extrapolating for as long as there have been both works and fans. But even beyond its worth as a historical piece it's just a fun show about things exploding, and violence. [[Forward|Gundam 6]]

Which isn't to say I adored it, or that I'm in a hurry to watch it again. Like every other Gundam project, things just //happen//, people just make decisions, and what little narrative there is makes a sudden violent lurch forward every so often. Being scattershot and unfocused is a feature, not a bug, according to people who are more keen on Gundam than I am so clearly in this regard it did an excellent job. [[Forward|Gundam 7]]

//Gundam Wing// didn't finally kindle a a deep love of Gundam in me, but I was surprised to find I wasn't immune to what pleasures it does have. It deserves it place in the canon, and I would highly recommend it to the disaffected teenager in your life. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/Z2nYKa9.png"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Danshi 2]]

//Sanrio Boys// is a weird, misguided show. I mean, I say “misguided” but I'm not even sure if it is sincere or not, which should tell you a lot about it. It follows a group of boys who (and I do hope your constitution is sufficiently strong to deal with a transgression this disconcerting) like Sanrio products. [[Forward|Danshi 3]]

The eponymous boys deal with their own issues, things such as toxic masculinity and society's idea of their role, in ways that normally relate in some fashion to their enjoyment of Sanrio products and mascot characters in specific. The first big climax of the show actually involves the boys going to have a big shop at the Sanrio-only store, in a moment of self-actualisation for the character who has been introduced as the protagonist at the beginning. [[Forward|Danshi 4]]

This premise has... issues. Sanrio is not really strange or transgressive in any way, not in 2018 at least, and has formed a key part of Japanese “kawaiisou” culture for over twice as long as anyone watching the show has been alive. And whilst I don't have a problem with male self-actualisation being made for the consumption of the show's intended audience of young women, it can't make them unlikable either. As a result the boys are mostly doing pretty okay in life, you could even say they're having an enviable high school experience, and their flaws are never particularly terrible. [[Forward|Danshi 5]]

I don't even really have a problem with the premise of them being able to self-actualise through enjoying commercial products, we've certainly all been there. It's just limp and off-putting to keep coming back to that over and over again. If you wanted to be exceedingly generous, you could say it's telling its target audience to expect emotional maturity in their male partners. But again, this mainly comes in the form of enjoying Sanrio products. [[Forward|Danshi 6]]

The thing is, there's actually a really strong core of an idea here. Sanrio products actually were, at one point in the distant past, considered extremely transgressive. Before Cool Japan turned Kitty-chan and her friends into one of the country's main cultural export Kawaiisou was an act of rebellion. Young women embraced cuteness and the stigma of girlishness that came along with it as a way of rejecting the path laid out for them after two decades of post-war rebuilding and Westernisation. That was the 1970s but you can see it being easily be reworked, or discussed or even come up in the show, with close to three decades of post-Bubble Economy depression and the horrors of the 21st century on the minds of the young. [[Forward|Danshi 7]]

For what it's worth I enjoyed the //Sanrio Boys// and their little obsessions. It was a colourful and interesting show, it was well made for what it was. It's telling that I chose to watch this over the "Netflix Original" series actually aimed at my demographic and I'm glad I did. It's still weird. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/A5k8oBR.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Beautiful 2]]

I was well past due for an //Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer// re-watch this year. Let's take a moment to appreciate Rumiko Takahashi, who is by most any conceivable metric the most successful comics artist in human history, and all the joy she's given us over her long and fruitful career. [[Forward|Beautiful 3]]

And that's just the stuff she is personally responsible for! Modern anime, indeed modern popular culture, is hard to fathom without Takahashi at the centre, orbited by the many, many people who worked hard to adapt her creations in new and interesting ways. [[Forward|Beautiful 4]]

And, even with a forty year career of profoundly important works, some still easily stand out from the rest. So it goes with //Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer//, not the first but the first with such a perfect clarity of intent as an artist from the profoundly talented and influential animator, Mamoru Oshii, who indeed cut his teeth on the extremely popular Urusei Yatsura TV anime adaptation. [[Forward|Beautiful 5]]

Oshii's work occasionally gets criticised as opaque and self-serious, dull even, and his penchant to have characters moodily discuss metaphysics can be divisive. Personally it's never failed to work for me, perhaps because in real life I am prone to moodily discuss metaphysics whilst staring off into the distance, but also perhaps because Oshii makes very //complete// works. There's always a lot more than just metaphysics to his films, terrible violence, bizarre cityscapes, a kind of rhythm to them that always holds my attention. [[Forward|Beautiful 6]]

The same criticism has been applied to //Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer// occasionally. Where most of //Ususei Yatsura// is a fun, frothy romcom, Beautiful Dreamer has a substantially different tone. A looming sense that something is wrong pervades the entire film, even after successive reveals of what's really going on. [[Forward|Beautiful 7]]

And it's a work about sad, difficult emotions, too. Fear of loss, being unable to hold on to a moment in time: //Urusei Yatsura// was always about volatile adolescent emotion, but //Beautiful Dreamer// digs down into the most difficult and uncomfortable parts. That's why beyond being just a classic Oshii experimental navel-gaze or just a Takahashi romcom, it's the synthesis of both into a glorious whole. //Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer// is one of the few works that can truly be said to have grown up with their audience. This feeling, this time and place can't last forever. Are you okay with that? Should you be? [[Forward|Beautiful 8]]

In one of my favourite scenes in the film, the crew drive past a //chindonya// in their otherwise wholly abandoned town. Even by the 1980s the //chindonya//, a kind of small parade used to advertise a business, was something of an anachronism but is absolutely something Takahashi and Oshii would have as a memory from their childhoods in post-war Japan. [[Forward|Beautiful 9]]

There's much, much more you could say about this film and both these artists. I really love Oshii's weirder and more obtuse works like //Angel's Egg// and //Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence//. And Rumiko Takahashi will always be one of the greatest who ever was. But even if this was both artist's last work, it would still be the achievement of a lifetime. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/QmNEZde.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|FLCL 2]]

My esteem for the original //FLCL// only grows with each year and each successive viewing. When I first saw it in high school I liked it because it was cool and weird and like nothing else out there. The degree to which //FLCL// succeeds as both an experimental animation project that puts the talent of scores of animators on show, as well as making such a deeply negative assessment of the modern human condition shouldn't be possible. [[Forward|FLCL 3]]

And yet it does. One of those rare lightning in a bottle moments where everything came together, producing an ambitious and unparalleled work that truly showcases the possibilities of animation as a medium. But all the technical achievements would be meaningless if not for how it explores its themes of adult apathy, poverty, falling through the cracks of society, passivity in the face of certain doom... just a spectacular work, and all in only six 25 minute episodes! [[Forward|FLCL 4]]

//FLCL Progressive// is none of these things. //FLCL Progressive// is a ransom video, and the people wearing balaclavas and holding AK-47s are Cartoon Network. //FLCL// couldn't exist without the hard work and guts of dozens of hands trying to create something: //FLCL Progressive// is a work nobody really wanted, but Cartoon Network has shown //FLCL// on Toonami (a thing a lot of people like, but I (living in Australia) have no idea what it even is) so many times and gotten such a warm reception that it would be good marketing for them to have another one. It is not substantially different mobile game tie-in anime. [[Forward|FLCL 5]]

To reiterate, one of the major themes of //FLCL// was adult apathy. None of the adult characters in it were going out of their way to be terrible, and yet were all chasing some kind of selfish agenda that actively harmed the people around them. It's hard to see this as anything other than a prophecy come true with //Progressive//. [[Forward|FLCL 6]]

I take a lot of issues with works that exist wholly to complete a previous existing work. //Rah'Xephon//, for example, can only be read knowing the context that it is a post-//Evangelion// work attempting to comment directly on //Evangelion// and the things that happen in it. //FLCL: Progressive// also falls into this trap, relying almost entirely on your good memories of FLCL to attempt to affect the audience. [[Forward|FLCL 7]]

For example: The first big, pivotal scene involves Haruka interrupting, of all things, a boring school lesson, and immediately you can see something is fundamentally wrong. I've always considered being anti-education in general to be a really indulgent Baby Boomer obsession: Being able to take education in the abstract (instead of specific ways in which it may be flawed) is a luxury you have if you grew up before the Ronald Reagans and Elon Musks of the world decided public education was, in fact, bad and began to systematically destroy it via neoliberal policies. [[Forward|FLCL 8]]

Oh no! Being bored in class?! Fuck you, //FLCL// isn't anti-education system: Naota is much more at home with his peer group despite his understandable adolescent self-doubt, Ninamori Eri is able to find herself in both education and the school play, Mamimi's poverty and family situation means she's fell through the cracks, and her situation is portrayed as fucking heartbreaking. Even Naota's brother isn't able to be there for him was able to succeed a getting a university baseball scholarship. [[Forward|FLCL 9]]

This is already too long. I could go on and on. Just stop. Make new things. Make new bad things, instead of making old things worse. Fuck you, Cartoon Network. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/bouR1ir.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Katsu 2]]

I go back and forth on gambling obsessive and nose respecter Nobuyuki Fukumoto. When his stuff works, it's on fire: I still think the matches in //Akagi// are nail-biters, and it was instrumental in getting me and my friends into playing mahjong. On the other hand, his obsession with all-powerful criminal underworlds often ventures into the realm of //Warhammer 40k//, //Attack on Titan// levels of comical grimness which can often undercut the very real emotion he's capable of engendering through his characters. Capitalism is already hell without having to add in fictionalised human chattel, you know? [[Forward|Katsu 3]]

By contrast, //Tonegawa// embraces the inherent goofiness of Fukumoto's work, and it does so by highlighting the actual endemic issues in Japanese work culture. Christ, I get exhausted by proxy thinking about getting off work at 10:00PM, just because your boss is on a tear about some shit you don't care about: that feeling of stumbling in to work the next day, on time, bleary-eyed, exhausted, already beginning to overstimulate on the caffeine you had our of necessity. It is a much more recognisable terror than a pachinko machine, but like, a hard one, a really hard, really expensive one. [[Forward|Katsu 4]]

So if //Tonegawa// fixes what I explicitly said were my issues with Fukumoto's other works, it's perfect, right? Actually it makes me realise just how important the over-the-top nonsense is to //Kaiji// and //Akagi//. The thing is, gambling and mahjong are fun activities to partake, but watching fictionalised gambling and mahjong is kind of tedious. If anything, the show would really benefit from being set in alternate timeline, where Teiai is just a regular company with no horrifying torture or underground gulags. Tonegawa is just a guy trying to make his weird boss happy without any of the grim baggage of the series. And god, fkmt, your pacing... I have to believe it's not just an artefact of Japanese production schedules. [[Forward|Katsu 5]]

//Tonegawa// doesn't fail necessary, I would say it's enjoyable on the whole. The narrator is constantly fantastic and every episode has plenty of jokes that land. It's very... comfy, more than it is laugh-out-loud hilarious. It absolutely shouldn't be your first work of his, but I did enjoy it, and the instant classic Katsu episode lives up to the hype. Honestly it didn't really push me one way or the other as a whole on Fukumoto's work. I still like and respect his strengths and am perhaps a little too conscious of his weaknesses, but I'm glad it gives other people so much pleasure. [[Forward|Katsu 6]]

You could say I ended up in the middle. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/k11IC5M.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Sanrio 2]]

So Sanrio have a long history of film and TV output, some of which I had seen previously and some I watched this year. A lot of it is really political, too, which is... it's the Hello Kitty people, I don't know what I was expecting but not this. I'll admit //Sanrio Danshi// and the other one about the furries that came out this year made me curious as to why the big S didn't have a bigger output to capitalise on their market value. Turns out they actually made a lot, film, tv, live action, animated, but mainly before the death of the founder of Sanrio Shintarou Tsuji in 1985. [[Forward|Sanrio 3]]

It turns out Tsuji was the main driving force behind their output, and was producer, writer and director for a number of them. So in the spirit of their recent comeback I watched a bunch of them. [[Forward|Sanrio 4]]

Unico seems like a good place to start, as the Tezuka semi-classic (even a lower tier Tezuka work counts as a huge, popular success) is proto-Sanrio, cut from the same cloth kawaiisou would mutate from along with the more well known Jungle Emperor Leo, Ribbon Knight and of course, Mighty Atom. The three main Unico films //Unico//, //The Fantastic Adventures of Unico// and //Unico in the Island of Magic// are all passable children's films with some cute animation, although unlike a lot of its contemporaries such as //Galaxy Express 999// or //Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?// or previously 12 days entry //Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer// you get the feeling Tsuji really, really wanted to be Disney. Which I guess fits it's Tezuka source material perfectly. [[Forward|Sanrio 5]]

However the half-hour non-theatrical release environmentalist Unico short film //Saving Our Fragile Earth// is nothing short of amazing. The industrial capitalist destruction of nature and the oppression of workers is ruining our fragile earth, and Unico is the catalyst for a class consciousness uprising that overthrows the system and returns us to a Marxist agrarian utopia. Sanrio have a couple of awards and a general reputation of being an ethical corporation which I'm not convinced its earned (in the main because no corporation that exists in a capitalist system is ethical ) but a few more films about overthrowing the system certainly couldn't hurt. [[Forward|Sanrio 6]]

A number of people apparently remember //The Sea Prince and the Fire Child// from renting it as an English dub on VHS , and whilst I only watched it this year, it's a real treasure. A classic tragic tale of two star-crossed lovers who are destroyed in the conflict between the ocean and the sky. Yes, it's Romeo and Juliet with some Peter Pan thrown in for good measure, made of a kind of soup of Western mythological references. It made me think about how Sanrio have a certain reputaiton for being safe and sanitary, and certainly kawaiisou may be (as we've discussed) no longer radical, but the sheer hurtful tragedy of this film is a fascinating insight into their Sanrio's larger aesthetic goals. [[Forward|Sanrio 7]]

Finally, it's not an anime but apparently Sanrio made the 1980s melodrama classic //Oshin// (fucking //OSHIN//?!). A drama about a young girl's miserable life from being sold into indentured servitude as a small child in Meiji-era Japan to wealth and safety as an old woman in the 1980s. The theme of Oshin is misery, and suffering, and suffering miserably, and although it reads as very critical of Japan across the better part of a century, it ends on the stupefying note that Oshin-and by extension Japan-has “lost” something along the way. I am sympathetic to how much has been lost both during Westernisation in the Meiji period and again very aggressively in the post-War period , but looking back on the good old days is something you can say when you and your loved ones aren't at risk of (and I'm going to repeat this point as it's so important) being sold into indentured servitude. [[Forward|Sanrio 8]]

Tsuji obviously was very passionate about all these projects and to his credit there's a lot to like. It's easy to see why Sanrio barely made anything after his death, as it seems like he was key in making all of them happen. Here's to the Cause, Sanrio. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/SKvaIWP.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|JoJo 2]]

Last year I wrote extensively about how although //JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable// (and //Part 3: Stardust Crusaders//) weren't my favourite parts, I still really enjoyed the anime adaptations. //Part 4// particularly went out of its way to be visual stunning and a lot of fun, its pacing improved on the source material and Yoshikage Kira is amongst a series famous for its villains, one of the best villains. [[Forward|JoJo 3]]

This year, I have no such reservations about //Part 5//, one of the //JoJo// parts that really got under my skin and has stuck with me over the years. Giorno Giovanna and his gang of idiots fucking things up over and over again resonated with me very strongly, and continues to be a part I champion whenever //JoJo// comes up in conversation. In some ways, it's the simplest JoJo story: It has manga-ka (and immortal ageless fairy) Hirohiko Araki's most Shounen Jump style story and characters, and takes place in a kind of fantasy Napoli, where there's no begging Romani people, you can't smell the piss in the gutters and the local hyper violent organised crime syndicate take an interest in their local community in between trying to kill each other for profit. [[Forward|JoJo 4]]

In some ways it's also his most challenging: Araki's visual style never gets more busy or complicated than it does here, and whilst //JoJo// has always been pretty gory and violent Part 5 is where I would say //JoJo// takes a turn into actual body horror as anyone who has seen the now famous “torture dance” sequence can attest. The change in visual style is mirrored in the adaptation by being far more harsh than Part 4, black lines emphasising fine, pointed features like a Book Moda shoot drawn in charcoal. [[Forward|JoJo 5]]

Also unlike //Part 3// and //4//, the pacing of //Part 5// is frenetic, always moving on to the next big fight or scene, more similar to the first to arcs than //Part 3//'s slow burn or //Part 4//'s loose sketches of daily life in the town. And as any big fan of the series will tell you, part of what makes //JoJo// great as a whole is how diverse it is, and the contrast between the storytelling in the different parts only enhances the work taken as a whole. Of course, another part is watching other people react to things you know are coming, and I am looking forward to that as well. [[Forward|JoJo 6]]

In a year with a lot of middling remakes, adaptations and reboots it's great to see another really strong adaptation of a thing I absolutely love. I love Giorno and his stupid hair, I love what's more or less a cameo appearance from Koichi, I love Bruno and his team of absolute shit-for-brains dumb-arses. [[Forward| JoJo 7]]

Just like, the biggest idiots. [[Forward|JoJo 8]]

Just like, the absolute most rocks-for-brains group of losers. [[Forward|JoJo 9]]

Just like, the stupidest, most absolutely moronic pieces of shit. [[Forward|JoJo 10]]

Okay I'll stop. [[Forward|JoJo 11]]

Just like, the biggest, stupidest, dorkiest, absolute drooling fucking morons. [[Forward|JoJo 12]]

The point is I absolutely love //JJBA//, and I'm so happy it's back. Here's to many more years of //JoJo// make everybody happy. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/9AbaBfA.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|CCS 2]]

There's a lot of great works out there, and we're lucky enough that in a short time on this earth we are able to enjoy as many of them as we are able. However, only a handful will ever be truly a foundational work for you, a formative experience that sticks with you your whole life and which many other works will be judged by. The original //CardCaptor Sakura// anime is one such work for me. Never before had a work so perfectly matched an aesthetic sensibility I didn't even realise I had been looking for. It's like it had been waiting for me to find it. [[Forward|CCS 3]]

Beyond it's personal significance to me, //CardCaptor Sakura// is a fascinating time capsule of a period of transition. Through the course of the show you see the aspect ratio change, the level of technology the characters have ready access to by necessity improves and the original lush cell animation begins to get a kind of cleaner, more digital, busier look to it in the visual style of the works of contemporary mega phenomenon Key. It's also possibly the last successful magical girl show to hearken back to the genre's roots, before every show was required to ape super sentai inspired battle magical girl in the style of //Sailor Moon// or, god forbid, //Madoka Magica//, the single worst thing ever created. [[Forward|CCS 4]]

So, riding a 20 year nostalgia wave, they brought it back. //CardCaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc// can be summed up in a single word: paycheque. Which, honestly, I'm not opposed to that I suppose. We call have to eat to live, Sakura Tange has to eat to live, Iwao Junko has to eat to live, the members of CLAMP can't afford vintage kimono out of thin air. And making commercial art must needs not always be a fruitless exercise in misery. [[Forward|CCS 5]]

Except //Clear Card Arc// was, on every level a group of disinterested people churning out a rote, uninteresting version of a thing that was popular in the past. And the most damning thing of all, it's a show that is completely unsure of who it is for. That phrase gets thrown around a lot these days so let me clarify: //Clear Card Arc// tries to both update //CCS// to be relatable to children born this century, whilst also clearly riding on the nostalgia of olds like me who have strong nostalgic memories of the original. The end result is a weird, compromised product that makes neither group happy. [[Forward|CCS 6]]

The thing is, I didn't and don't like //CCS// because it is specifically aimed at my demographic. I like a lot of children's media, even regularly choosing it over stuff actually aimed at me, but more than that I want young people //to have media that is wholly theirs// and not some half-baked attempt to appeal to everyone. [[Forward|CCS 7]]

Just stop. Make kids shows for kids. Make original shows. Don't make mutant chimeras that make nobody happy, and if you absolutely must bring back a show as important as //Cardcaptor Sakura//, don't. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/4DuwIku.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|PTE 2]]

There wasn't a better adaptation of source material this year than //Pop Team Epic//, and I'm hard pressed to think of one from the past decade or so that even comes close. You would have to go back to the 2000s-era SHAFT shows like //Pani Poni Dash//, //Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei// and the show that would define the decade to come, //Bakemonogatari//. If any show this year was a successor to //FLCL//, it was the anime adaptation of //Pop Team Epic//: every week different animators more or less given a blank slate to do whatever they want, and bringing their weirdest, most fun ideas every single time. [[Forward|PTE 3]]

And that's not even touching on the original manga, an instantly iconic debut from manga-ka Ookawa Bkub, the modern success story of touhou shitpost artist to successful published author. The anime is a great adaptation but the source material is art, the unique comedy that's uproariously funny yet still manages to perfectly capture contemporary anxieties despite not overtly addressing them. I simply can't say enough good things about the manga, and the anime in turn. [[Forward|PTE 4]]

However, [[Forward|PTE 5]]

There's a certain type of person who's just disinterested in following anime any more, maybe because they're burnt out or don't have time, or developed other interests in the meantime but are still hanging around. In the main it's for shows like //Pop Team Epic//, which is to say something that confirms their idea that anime is bad and anyone who genuinely enjoys it is some way defective. And as such we get the most common take on the show: It's a parody! Finally something that's not afraid to point out how vapid and worthless anime is! Look, it's cute schoolgirls giving the finger-how transgressive, what a subversion of the expectations of anime fans. [[Forward|PTE 6]]

This interpretation of the show is wilfully ignorant. Outside of the uncomfortable racial areas it wanders into that labels Japanese popular culture as uniquely infantile and terrible, it is a wilful misinterpretation of //Pop Team Epic// as a whole. Indeed, you would be hard pressed to watch //Pop Team Epic// and come away with the idea that the people who make it are anything less than overjoyed to be involved in making anime, much less consuming it. It begins with a //Super Dimension Fortress Macross// reference, for fuck's sake, a show (and many sequels) thematically obsessed about how necessary culture is in everyday life, even referencing the code name for //Macross// when it was in production: MacBeth. [[Forward|PTE 7]]

Popuko and Pipimi might be instantly iconic but it's because they are 70 odd years of post-war Japanese popular culture distilled down into a single semiotic creation. The opening of the show leans into this and twists their physical form over, and over, until it's too fast to take in, immediately recognisable but plastic enough in interpretation to be applied to anything. That is the entirety of what //Pop Team Epic// is and aspires to be. Welcome to the 21st century, it fucking sucks. [[Forward|PTE 8]]

//Pop Team Epic// is not your epic deconstruction of anime tropes, and if you think it took until 2018 for someone to come along and make fun of something as basic as cute schoolgirls you are choosing to be wrong. It is instead a love letter to the things that get us through each and every miserable day, taking both the good and the bad with it. Anime fans proved this year that they unequivocally did not deserve//Pop Team Epic// the adaptation, and they were kind enough to give it to us anyway. [[Back?|Index]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/ovSYR8U.png"> </div/>\ [[Forward|Colours 2]]

Sometimes a work is there for you when you need it most, and one of those for me was //Strawberry Marshmallow//. It's hard to put into words the extreme positive effect had on my life, there was a particular period where I was watching the anime adaptation every day. Not only is it clearly the direct antecedent of //Mitsuboshi Colours// (the manga-ka is a big fan), but it's almost something of a retro revival. A throwback to the height of the moe boom, a simpler sort of show with smaller ambitions-this kind of anime has never gone away, obviously, but it has lost the all-encompassing relevance it used to have and in many instances mutated far beyond the original constraints of the genre. If you've gone back and watched //Azumanga Daioh// recently, it's almost quaint what a simple little gag comedy it is. [[Forward|Colours 3]]

There's another, slightly less obvious parallel. //Strawberry Marshmallow// was made out of a desperate need for comfort following the long miserable dark of the “Lost Decade” after the bubble economy burst in the early 90s. //Colours// is similar, but much more explicit about, arising out of and as a reaction to early 21st century misery. The opening provides a convenient means of understanding the ideological underpinnings of the show as a whole: adults wallow in apathy, that it's the vivacious commitment of young people that must needs be a solution permeates the show. Similarly the implied loss of innocence, in this case losing their youthful lack of responsibility, in assuming the obligations of protecting the town and their loved ones it reflects the consciousness of growing up in the 21st century. And for people who might not understand this sort of show it also demonstrates why someone might find a show about idealised childhood soothing. [[Forward|Colours 4]]

To distinguish and not compare it, one of //Colours// main concessions to changing trends is being a little softer and more cartoony than //Strawberry Marshmallow// with a more 2010s colour palette, giving the characters bright primary coloured hair. It also has some really strong narrative beat (outside of the depressing themes most of the show is built around) as a result of being more character and storyline focused. I particularly liked, for example, episode 6 where we learn that Sacchan the mischievous troublemaker (the Miu if you're an //Ichimashi// fan) is actually the most emotionally intelligent of the group. She's a fan of harmless mischief but far from merely being a mindless cure for boredom, Sacchan is the negotiator, the one who keeps everyone in her immediate vicinity cohesive and entertained. We also see it's something of a learned behaviour: As a contrast to the anime trope of parents being a negative space in //Marshmallow//, Sacchan's mum is also kind of cheeky, prone to acts that seem selfish on the surface but are designed modulate and structure the moods of others. [[Forward|Colours 5]]

So we have the main dynamic of the show that puts the three girls at odds with the world around them. Their constant references to the end of the world aren't made funnier by repetition so much as they reinforce that for anyone who grew up past the year 2000 that's just a constant reality. Their conflict with the world around them extends to all the adults in the show. This ranges from mild condescension to outright malice: Saitou, an adult, is a comically inept cop, and the only character not content to let the colours live their childhoods running around with secret plans. Why can't Saitou simply enjoy his cushy job at the koban and let the girls enjoy their youth, and if he's not prepared or inclined to indulge them then at least shoo them along with a kind word? As a symbol of the worthlessness of the institutions meant to guide and protect the colours, he finds them a nuisance, an impediment to whatever goals it is he seeks to achieve, goals that are of vastly superior importance to nurturing young hearts. [[Forward|Colours 6]]

I liked //Mitsuboshi Colours// a lot but compared against the peerless work of art that is “Strawberry Marshmallow”, however, it can't help but come up a little short. The characters are less interesting and memorable, the gags aren't quite as consistent, and despite a more interesting whole narrative structure around the action //colours// just feels a bit more flat. I compared the feeling of watching Strawberry Marshmallow to the nourishing calm of morphine on twitter, and if that's true then //Mitsuboshi Colours// is like a fistful of ibuprofen and a glass of wine to soothe a migraine. Of all the works I experienced this year, it was the one that most deeply got under my skin, unstuck me in time and place and made me look at the past 20 years of my life. It made me place Japanese popular culture and my relationship to it, provoked introspection in a way almost nothing else did. It's the one I am most thankful I was able to have. And so it ends. Fuck this year. Fuck next year, too. Don't give in to adult apathy. [[Back?|Index]]