Assuming you haven’t been living under a rock for the last few decades, you’ve probably heard of It’s a Wonderful Life. Having been made and screened in the 1940’s, having aired every Christmas Season since NBC managed to obtain the rights to it, and having been mercilessly parodied by everything else, you can’t escape it unless you *really* try.

The movie’s alright. It has a very satisfying third act, the actors do a very good job, and there’s some clever dialogue patching up the story. If it weren’t for the terrible job done with the first act, I’d even go so far as to suggest that it deserves its status as a Christmas Classic. I’d go into detail as to what went wrong with the First Act, but since that’s not what this post is about, I’ll abbreviate:

• Basically, while I *get* that the movie completely depends on the hour-and-a-half first act to properly convey to the audience how things have changed in the third Act as Bailey runs confusedly though the city, it doesn’t change the fact that you leave an audience sitting there for the entire time, wondering what the point of any of this is, and you can’t justify that by simply pointing out how it comes together in the end.

But you know, it’s funny. As much as I rag on about Wonderful Life, the plot, setting, and indeed even the overriding themes are very similar to my favorite movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the Anime movie that aired in early February in 2010, with its English release having been managed to come out late that year.

How similar?

Well, let’s go through a rundown….

• Plot: Wonderful Life: A man named George Bailey, having grown despondent and suicidal by a life that continually tries to make him suffer, suddenly finds himself in a world where he never existed, and realizes that such a world is infinitely worse without him. Having found the meaning to his life, he is given the resolve to keep on living.
  Disappearance: A High School student named Kyon, having grown tired and embittered by a girl that continually makes him suffer, suddenly finds himself in a world where they never met, and realizes that he’s not sure what his life means when she’s not around. Eventually, he’s forced to reevaluate his place in the world, and ultimately, decide whether he prefers the old world or this new one he’s found himself in.
  The Deviations: Well, the obvious difference is in the focus. WL spends most of its story in its first act, showing the normal world with George in it, and then eventually showing us a world without him. Disp., on the other hand, spends only a 1/3 of the movie in the normal world (1/6 at the beginning, 1/6 at the end) and the rest is spent with Kyon trying to understand his place in this new world. The other big difference is in the fact that in WL, George himself is the one that gets displaced, whereas in Disp., Haruhi is the one removed.
• Setting: WL: At Christmas, in and around a town comprised of colorful characters who all have been affected by Bailey in various ways for having known him. Every scene takes place in memorable locales, with evidence provided to show us how they’ve changed.
  Disp: At Christmas, in and around a High School comprised of colorful characters who all have been affected by Haruhi in various ways for having known her. Every scene takes place in memorable locales, with evidence provided to show us how they’ve changed.
  Deviations: One comprises a whole town. The other a High School. There’s also some Time Travel in Disappearance.
• Themes: WL: George Bailey is forced to reevaluate the value of his life after being thrust into a world drastically different from the one he knows. He’s also reminded how important his friends are to him, and indeed, how important he is to them.
  Disp: Kyon is forced to reevaluate the value of the world after being thrust into a world drastically different from the one he knows. He’s also reminded how important his friends are to him, and indeed, how much he depends on them.
  Deviations: Unfortunately, explaining the big deviation in Themes requires spoiling the big reveal towards the end of Disappearance, which I don’t intend to do here. Even still, though, the other big difference involves the main characters. In WL, there’s no doubt that the world without George is worse off than the world with him, but in Disp., Kyon ends up having a serious crisis based solely around wondering whether the world he’s found himself in is actually better than the world he came from.

I’m not sure I could convince myself that Wonderful Life is better for these comparisons, but it does present an interesting thought. 

I’m not sure what’s going on, but apparently I’m dealing with “Site maintenance” right now, and my mother told me that my profile has vanished. No idea what’s going on, but I’ve sent some Customer Support info to FB to see what’s going on.

But yeah. I didn’t delete my account.

*UPDATE*: So apparently it’s part of routine maintenance that Facebook does. Okay. Fine. Just wish they could have informed me ahead of time.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/FullmetalAlchemist

Now of course I have to lead with the caveats: I have not read the manga, and only watched 8 episodes from the original 2003 Anime, so my review of the series boils down to my impressions of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (which I’m given to understand is intended as a direct adaptation of the manga, moreso than the original series which used the characters settings and a few of the plots as a springboard for its own plot). And while I’m going to spend most of this post bitching about this show, one should probably know that this show has officially unseated Ouran as my second favorite series, Anime or otherwise, and it also marks the first Action Anime to make my list (CL isn’t anime, it’s French) which says a lot about how much I liked it.

Anyways.

The series, for those of you unfortunate enough to be unaware, is primarily focused on two characters, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who live in a world bound by a magic-science called Alchemy, constituted primarily of the ability to take one thing, and “transmute” it into something else. They would be canonically 15 years old at the point where the series begins, except that during a botched attempt to bring their mother back to life, Alphonse loses his body and Edward loses his leg, and in saving his brother’s life, he binds Alphonse’s soul to a suit of armor at the cost of his arm. The series is ostensibly about these two characters and their quest to restore their bodies, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that malevolent forces and their schemes are going to bring a fast halt to those plans. Explaining the 

While the series does enjoy a considerable amount of emotional investment in the plights of its characters, there seems to have been some fumbling with regards to the intra-character relationships. Ed and Al have a good chemistry with each other, even if it tends to be predictable brotherly-stuff, but understanding the other characters proves very difficult. Nowhere is this more evident than with Colonel Mustang and his Lieutenant Hawkeye. Mustang is supposed to have a really deep relationship with Hawkeye, and supposedly having once been in a physical relationship with her, but nearly every opportunity the Anime might have to try to reinforce our understanding of their relationship is ignored until the very last second, and even then, the most we get out of *any* of these characters is a brief embrace. I mean, come on Mustang, you nearly flip out when she’s spilling liters of blood onto the ground, but once you manage to save her, the most she gets is a tepid hug? That was NOT how we raised you action heroes!

Early on in the series, the storyline does a good job managing to keep awareness of the big plot events happening around the outskirts without sacrificing investment in the Elric brothers, but about halfway through the second act, the narrative begins to crumble as the scope of events simply ends up dwarfing the conflicts previously established as being integral to the characters. Describing exactly what happens would constitute pretty heavy spoilers, but big plot devices from the beginning of the story end up being buried under all the insanity.

The acting, overall, is pretty goddamn good (I watched the english dub). I’m still not convinced Mignogna was the best choice for Edward, but he’s definitely acting his ass off, and it’s become clear that his interactions with Caitlin Glass as Winry ended up paying off when the two of them found themselves working against each other in Ouran. As for the other characters, one thing I appreciated was the fact that the quality stays pretty consistent throughout. And the villains, save for a few unmemorable characters, are all brought to life excellently.

The soundtrack is a mixed bag. A few of the OP’s are stunning, and you can bet I’ll be checking out the associated artists (after all, that’s the main reason they use J-Pop songs for these kinds of titles), but others are very forgettable, and the original soundtrack doesn’t really contribute anything other than appropriately moody music when things are tense, and appropriately calm music when things are more relaxed.

Endemic to this genre is the tendency to have very sloppy transitions between comedy and drama, but FMA actually does a reasonably good job patching up those transitions. It’s not perfect, but at least it avoids “Bleach Syndrome” most of the time.

What I found most interesting about this series though was the (possibly unintentional?) commentary on the world. I like to think that the naming of the “king” title in this series as “Fuhrer” is intentionally invoking memories of Nazi Germany, and that’s before we learn about his orders to systematically slaughter every last of a race of misunderstood people in a genocide that marks one of this series more brutal moments. Before the epic plot ends up crushing it, one of the primary themes of this series is the dangers of unchecked militarism, and also some lessons about racism that are still relevant in today’s world.

Ultimately, if you’re wondering whether you should check this series out, then the answer is a resounding “yes”, but you shouldn’t have needed me to tell you that. This is an extremely well made series, and while the profoundness of it slips up towards the end, it still has a lot to say about the human condition.

… Somehow, I’m doubting that will happen.

Recently I decided to re-watch the series seasons 1-4. While my overall assessment of the series remains unchanged, I’m suddenly feeling a little bit inclined to be charitable towards the series, in spite of the nonsense that came naturally to the series. If nothing else, I guess I’d rather have a series that aims high and fails spectacularly, than a series that aims low and succeeds.

If there’s one comparison to be made that ought to stick, it’s my comparison of the material to Tron and it’s remake, and not just because both series center around protagonists fighting in a virtual world that threatens not only their existence, but the safety of the real world too. Tron is one of those franchises that has pretty much been built on a mentality of these high-concept genre fiction stories that, while possessing the potential to be grand and spectacular, tend to fall flat because of poor execution on the part of one or more aspects of the production, and Code Lyoko is no different. 

Including the critical flaw. In Code Lyoko’s case, the big problem holding the series back is the writing team, who lack both the willingness to really “carry to the hilt” the psychological implications of a story where five (pre)teenagers have to fight for their lives on a daily basis, or the narrative stitching necessary to ensure any sort of episode-to-episode coherence.

Part of my newly allocated charity towards the series comes in the form of considering that the frequently-groaner dialogue might be a product of the localization. It’s not just the fact that the french writers had to make sure the dialogue matched the frequently reused video footage—Seriously, go back and reexamine the CG scenes, and identify the total number of unique scenes they used in season 1, or look at the number of times a specific 2d scene gets reused verbatim with only a change of music or dialogue— but that the English VA’s would then have to match to that already-poorly-matched scene.

But then there’s the plot contrivances used to drive events. Where characters will refuse to explain really important issues just because they’re pissed off at them for something they brought on themselves. Or where the story refuses to execute any genuine sense of subtlety. Honestly, there’s dozens of scenes that I can recall where a simple remix of the order of dialogue, or omission of a certain scene would have improved the episode vastly.

And the characters never learn from their mistakes. The only character who ever seems to work out his psychosis is Jeremy, and the others always ignore his advice, even though 95% of the time, he’s the only one who really knows what’s happening. And there’s never an explanation given, except for the one we infer as an audience, that the story wouldn’t have any drama at all if they weren’t making one stupid mistake after another.

———-

If Moonscoop have learned anything from the four years the series has been on hiatus, I really hope it will have been to fix those issues. My personal hope is that, whatever style they use for the new series (there’s been contradictory information as to whether the series will be Live Action/CG or Traditional Cel Shaded/CG), they they decide to make this a remake, rather than a sequel. I imagine this might disappoint a lot of fans, but making it a remake would be to acknowledge a desire to fix what went wrong the first time around, and maybe perhaps create something that stands up on its own better than the original series did. It would also allow them to cut out the useless padding in the middle of seasons and focus on the important, overarching plot information, the episodes concerning which having consistently been higher quality than the rest of the series.

I don’t consider this likely, but rather, my interpretation of what they *should* do.

As I’ve alluded to in the past, the current functionality of the US government, and the perception of the current functionality of the US government are not precisely as in tune as I would like. Some of the broad strokes issues, like the amount of money in government (far too much) are generally agreed upon, vis-a-vis the actual problem and the perception of the problem.

But from time to time, I hear complaints that congressmen are too divisive. That gridlock is strangling our democracy. And I’m not particularly convinced. I hear the argument that “both parties are essentially the same” but that particular rhetoric has never really held up to scrutiny, so I’m going to continue ignoring that particular idiom.

Ostensibly, the argument is correct: Both side of the aisle are fighting against each other, meaning that little legislation gets passed, and the ones that do are corrupted/watered down beyond belief. But the supposed solution begs some examination.

“Compromise” is the word I’m circling around. And what couldn’t be better, right? The Democrats want one thing, the Republicans want something else, so the best solution is one that offers some of both, appeasing both parties. Thus is the golden mean fallacy: That when two opposing viewpoints are offered up, the superior and therefore optimal solution is the viewpoint that equivalently considers both sides and incorporates in equal portions the ideas from both.

Or at least, it would be, if that was how logic works.

People seem to operate under the delusion that controlling government is a matter of thermostat control. Dems want it hot, Reps want it cold, so let’s set the temperature to warm-cool, such that both sides kind of get what they want. The problem starts right about the point where we realize that the big issues of government are considerably more complex, and not measurable using a contiguous numeric metric.

Whatever else can be said about the two parties, I don’t think it’s unfair to categorize the Democrats as believing in a strong central government that protects its people from the tyranny of unregulated capitalism, and the Republicans as believing in a strong Free-Market that rewards success and punishes stagnation.

I believe that, if the Democrats were given complete control over our government, we’d be in a good shape today. In the past I’d have been inclined to argue the same about the Republicans, but their anti-abortion, pro-war, anti-gay, anti-religious-freedom political stances have, for lack of a better phrase, rubbed me the wrong way lately, and Ron Paul isn’t going to be the one who will fix that, nor will the economic policies that the Reps favor be enough to justify the hatred and bigotry that seems to run as the party’s mainstream stance.

But in my mind, the attempts from either party to compromise to the opposing side’s viewpoints are doing more damage to the legislative process, and are causing the gridlock. And here’s why:

1. Both Partys’ Ideals are at Odds with the Others’.
   IF my original premise holds up, then this is a no-brainer. If Democrats want a bigger government, and Republicans want a smaller government, then the compromise, by it’s very definition, must be a government that’s the same as what we have, and I dunno if you’ve been paying attention, but that isn’t precisely working out for us.
2. “Compromise” in this Case, actually yields neither of what both sides want.
   Remember the healthcare bill that’s set to start taking effect over the next few years? Remember how long it took for the bill to get passed? Surprising noone at all, the reason it took so long is that the Republicans in congress filibustered the bill, preventing progress from being made. And when the final bill was passed, it did so with much of the supposed benefits having been watered down or else redacted, leaving a bill that neither solved the problems it set out to resolve, nor was eliminated entirely. Neither party got what they wanted, and the resulting bill will have only a very reduced impact on the state of healthcare.

I could go on.

I get why people like the idea of politicians working together, and certainly there’s lots of images of politicians getting together from yonder past, but those are fabrications. The politicians who get along perfectly do so because they agree on their most fundamental principles. But do you really think an someone like Rick Santorum has anything in common with Obama, on the level of principles? What about Ron Paul? You think he gets along with most people in Washington? I doubt it, because his ideals (noble or otherwise) are at odds with mainstream opinions.

What’s important to remember is that the merits of an idea isn’t in how many people accept it and praise it, but in the logical deduction and interpretation of it. If we want to advance society, we have to adhere to that principle, and honestly? I don’t think our society is ready for that yet.

Which I guess is disappointing, but not really surprising.

Despite my provocative title, it should be made very clear that SOPA and PIPA are not dead, or at the very least, the twisted ideals that spawned them are not dead. What we’re currently witnessing is, essentially, congress bumping into a hornets nest, and now, having realized that you DON’T FUCKING MESS WITH A HORNETS NEST are trying desperately to convince the hornets that they’re not sneaking past anymore such that they’ll be more careful when trying to sneak past *next* time not to let the Hornets figure it out.

Unravel this metaphor at your own peril.

But this is nonetheless a major victory, and the consequences of this victory are not obvious to everyone, nor immediately visible. 

I’m always hesitant when people start going on about how corrupt our political system is, or how politicians only care about the money they get, and how partisan politics is ruining the country. Certainly there’s great amounts of truth to these arguments, and I guess I’ll have to write up a blog post eventually consolidating my feelings on this topic, but I’ll provide the abbreviated version here in two important points:

1. Much of the bitterness towards congress does boil down to a sort of “I’m not the problem, everyone else is the problem” mentality, that, whether justified or not, is part/entirely the reason undeserving senators still hold seats in the house/senate.
2. The fact that, within 3 months we completely shut down support for SOPA and PIPA through nothing more extraordinary than the 21st century incarnations of the sit-in protests and marches of yore is evidence, at least to me, that underneath the grime there is yet a working government.

Certainly that last one boils down to a “glass half-full” kind of mentality, and one could just as easily point out the efforts to pass that legislation in the first place as evidence of a corrupt government, and that’s a fair point, but also not really the point (Like I said, I really need to do a proper segment on the functionality of our government)

What is the point is that we’re almost certainly going to witness a very interesting shift in our politics. I don’t know the precise time frame when this happens, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens before we close this decade.

The biggest thing that’s going to change, and almost certainly the earliest will be perception. The fact that the internet got so riled up, and rippled so strongly throughout the mainstream atmosphere, means this medium is going to take on a very different meaning in political debates. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Senators/Congresspeople who just now are seeing reddit for the first time, and realizing just what kind of insight these people have, intelligent or otherwise (certainly there’s a lot of “otherwise” on reddit), into their inner workings. People in the political field are going to have to acknowledge that they can’t discount the impact/opinions of the technology sector, especially as we gain greater footing in the world.

But what’s also going to change is a little more mundane, and that’s in the terms of legislation that will be put before congress.

The MPAA, RIAA, etc., are not stupid. And the worst thing you can do is make the assumption that they are stupid. They knew that the internet was going to throw a fit the moment we caught wind of this legislation. What they probably didn’t anticipate was that it would get this drastic, this quickly, and with so much gusto.

But they’re not going to make that mistake again. When they begin drafting SOPA/PIPA 2.0, the tactics are going to change.

For starters, it’s much clearer now what is standing in the way of legislation such as this is social media like Reddit or Twitter. So if/when they introduce new legislation, it will be targeted towards crippling these websites, probably with some additional smear campaigns targeted against these websites. The Pirate Bay was an easy target because they pretty obviously are founded on anti-copyright principles, and whether you agree with them or not, they’re breaking established laws and can be prosecuted on those terms.

The biggest thing, though, is the matter of public understanding of these issues. What we’ve just seen is the first real glimpse the uninformed public has gotten into these laws and the stuff that is being pushed through congress. We need to maintain momentum such that we don’t neglect to inform the public about these issues.

Recently there was a bill introduced called OPEN, which has the same goals as SOPA, but without most of the draconian overreach that made SOPA so toxic. The verdict is still out on whether it’s a suitable alternative, or just another bill that needs to die, but you can read about it here.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/PuniPuniPoemi

Ended up checking this out with some spare time I had. Not sure what I was expecting from it, but I’ll say this: it’s an interesting specimen. That it is.

The two-part OVA is, ostensibly, a parody of the “Magical Girl” genre. It features a girl by the name of Poemi Watanabe, and her reckless energy ends up getting put to use in the form of a pink-haired warrior that is supposed to defend the earth from evil, under the moniker Puni Puni Poemi.

At least, I think that’s what it was about.

Puni Puni Poemi comes from the same studio that produced Excel Saga, and if those words aren’t giving you spine shivers, then you are probably the sort of person who would have their brain melted by either of these Anime. What Excel Saga was know for: Didactic, insane premise with even more insane characters, all behaving as though they’ve been fed an amphetamine drip… Puni Puni Poemi recreates in much the same fashion. The plot doesn’t so much take a back seat as it does shoot itself up in the back of a shady alleyway while getting punted back and forth midst a gang-fight. PPP is all about the surreal, over-the-top acting, whether it’s the lead character who seems unable or else unwilling to acknowledge that she’s even a fictional character in an anime, or the blatant [director]-self-insert character who shows up just in time to fix and/or break whatever plot device is currently being mocked.

It also loves its fan-service. When it isn’t trying to come up with excuses to make something inert explode, it takes its entire female cast and strips them naked, only barely concealing their genitalia. The shamelessness with which this OVA does this would be insulting if it weren’t so over-the-top, and there’s at least a few scenes that would not look out of place in any random Hentai vehicle. At one point early on, I actually suspected that this abomination was just that, but PPP manages to stop just short of Hentai.

I can’t say with any real certainty that this is a good Anime, or worth watching. Excel Saga, while clearly the inspiring entity, holds up better as an enterprise, mostly due to the variety the individual episodes afforded. PPP ratchets the Dadaism up to extreme levels, and the constant lampshade-hanging of every trope that gets abused (And I do mean abused) makes for an entertaining watch, but it also ends up sacrificing the character identity that Excel Saga managed to maintain, even at its silliest, and while having one off-the-walls character makes for an interesting premise, the fact that nearly every character in this Anime is just a different shade of insane/stupid means that characters just end up fighting for screen time.

The only real saving grace to this Anime is the runtime, at a solid 61 minutes, which means that right about when the Anime starts to get stale, it has the courtesy to wrap itself up. And if you liked Excel Saga, or are just a random Otaku, then you’ll probably have a good time with this. It’s just not going to make anyone’s favorites list anytime soon.

Conclusion: Fans of Excel Saga will enjoy it, and anyone willing to keep up with the schizophrenic plot will probably enjoy it, but otherwise it’s probably not worth checking out.