2020 Reflection: Magic Knight Rayearth

 

Magic Knight Rayearth was written in November 1993 by Mangaka group CLAMP. The series is a magical girl swords and sorcery fantasy starring three normal girls (Hikaru, Umi and Fuu) from our world being called to the magical other world of Cephiro by the distressed princess of Cephiro, Emeraude. There they must learn the usage of weapons and magic to become Magic Knights capable of defeating the dark Lord Zagato who has taken Emeraude captive. Despite the fact that there are series I like more then MKR, even from around the same time period, MKR is probably the series I would most describe as nostalgic because, and this is something I think both fans and critics of MKR would agree on, this series is absolutely innundated with 90s tropes. Despite the fact that it takes place almost entirely in other worlds then Earth, the plot elements and character tropes used in the series are very 90s. The series is a hybrid of a Japanese Medieval Fantasy RPG and a 90s Magical Girl Anime, which makes it very distinctly familiar feeling, at least for someone like me.

3 Reasons I love it: 

I have liked MKR for a very long time, and I am not sure how much nostalgia is talking through me when talking about it's high points, but in an attempt to look at it objectively, there are parts of MKR I think are the best parts of it.

1: Magic Knight Rayearth is one of, if not the, most "archetypal" magical girl series I've seen. I don't mean it's an "archetypal magical girl", as in it is what thinks about when one thinks "magical girl series", I mean it is magical girl series where everything in it is archetypal. The characters, the plots, the very designs of things are designed to be clear, distinctive and immediatly evocative. If you look at the designs and personalities of the three Magic Knights for instance, their personalities lack much complexities but in exchange are highly potent and feel extremely concentrated for both serious and comedic purposes. The designs of the warships of Autozam, Chizeta, and Fahren are all modeled after real cultures and are made to be highly evocative of them to give a strong immediate impression. Everything in the series feels very direct and concentrated, as if all unneccesary details were stripped away to make every character, plot point, and aesthetic feel in their purest and most clear state, whether they are extraneous to the story or not. Unlike almost every other series I like, the greatest moments of MKR are simple; they are not great because of the internal paradox of a character or a large amount of plot elements coming together; but because a character's archetype is taken to it's extreme. Hikaru is the heroic frontline soldier, so she will take every blow of the mighty Zagato for her friends. Umi is willfull and an elegant swordstress so she will slice through every summon of Ascot and force him to be humble. Fuu is the kind intellectual, so she will find a way to save both her brainwashed violent friends with her brain. The Magic Knights are noble, which leads them inevitably to act for the greater good, no matter how the tragedy hurts them as it does. 

2: When Magic Knight Rayearth was first being made, it was fairly clear CLAMP made it as a more child-friendly and light-hearted alternative to it's other big work at the time Tokyo Babylon. As such it would have been very easy to justify a very simple moral conflict, however Magic Knight Rayearth actually incorporates several ethical quandries not common for the genre, or I would dare so, not common for works aimed at the demographic in general including such things as survivor's guilt or the purpose of diversity of thought. Works for a younger audience often focus on characterization above thematic depth and can be described as complex characters encountering a simple conflict. MKR is instead the more intriguing simple characters encountering a complex conflict.

3: The world of MKR is a fun world to escape too. This could obviously be said about most fictional series one likes but I think no series embodies it better to me then MKR. The series literally involves an escape to a differenet world, but the overarching world presented in MKR is both strange and familiar. MKR has a general theme that "things aren't what they seem", and the world of MKR is filled with surprises and fun little quirks or knick-nacks that give it a feeling of naturalness and lack of artifice generally associated with works much longer then it (at least manga-wise as it's anime is fairly extensive for a Shojo at 49 eps). Despite this, for someone like me especially the work feels instantly familiar drawing on 90s shojo anime tropes and fantasy rpg tropes. This makes it very easy and pleasent to read and watch or reread and rewatch due to being both comfortable yet at the same time being, if not surprising on any reread or rewatch, then at least outside what I would normally experience.

3 Flaws:

1: As I've already alluded to, characters in Magic Knight Rayearth very often lack depth. This may be a surprisng statement as most characters in Magic Knight Rayearth will surprise the viewer in what they will do and who they are, as one of the themes of the series is that things are not what they appear. For instance early on the Magic Knights meet Guru Clef who looks like a child but is actually the greatest mage in Cephiro and centuries old. However once you know that, he doesn't act with more depth then a character who both looks and is a centuries old archmage would act. Every character in Magic Knight Rayearth's personality and motivation can be described in a sentence or two, they just might not be the sentences you would use when you first meet them. To create the potency and sheer archetypal-ness of each character, the characters must be as concentrated towards a singular concept, making the work feel like a very action-oriented fairy tale.

2: The series relies heavily on tropes. Now there is definitely surprise as to which trope they are using, as the series likes to have little plot twists everywhere, however there's a lot of standard RPG and Shojo tropes that are used here such as gaining sudden powerup from friendship, sending bad guys at the heroines one at a time, leveling up for defeating enemies that if they bother you for being unrealistic, sappy, or overused, then they'll definitely annoy you here.

3: This last one depends on whether it's the manga the anime. The manga is really short. It's six chapters, and while these are oversized long chapters, the series is comfortably two volumes long, and as such many of the cool worldbuilding remains unexplored. The 49 episode anime adaptation expands on them but in exchange is much slower and has some real pacing issues (like flashbacks to the PRIOR EPISODE), so it's a bit of a tradeoff depending on what you prefer.

Favorite Part:

The climax of the manga is my favorite part. Hikaru is back on Earth and trying to return to Cephiro to save Eagle Vision and her friends but the rules of the god of Cephiro are dissolvering her as she does so. However her friendship with Umi and Fuu are so strong that their transcend the dimensional barriers and God's law, and they pull her through, their three rune gods combining into Full Rayearth. It's a moment that uses the series' biggest strength to it's maximum, taking something pure and archetypal and bringing it to the extreme, transcending every barrier the series could put before it. 

2020 Reflection: Sailor Moon

Sailor Moon was written in December 1991 by Naoko Takeuchi. Sailor Moon is a magical girl series, the most famous magical girl series, whose plot is as follows: in the ancient past known as the Silver Millennium, the solar system was guarded by a set of magical cosmic guardians known as the Sailor Senshi. After they died protecting the solar system they were reincarnated in then contemporary 1990s Japan and resume their battle to protect the worlds from the forces of Chaos. This is about the manga of Sailor Moon, not the 90s anime adaptation. While I like the 90s anime adaptations, and if it was a seperate series it would probably be on my list of my favorite series, it is the Sailor Moon Manga that is my favorite series I've ever seen. How does one properly talk about one's favorite series? How can one possibly be expected to translate the innumerable hours one have thought of the series, how it's changed the course of one's life?

3 Reasons I love it:

How can I explain all the great things Sailor Moon has to offer? If I was to list my favorite x in fiction, half of them would be from this one series. Where do I even start with explaining all the greatness I see in Sailor Moon? I don't know, but I'll do my best to give 3 of the biggest points I love about it. Understand though that I could just keep listing things I love about Sailor Moon on and on.

1: The perfect integretation of the symbolic with the literal. This is hard for me to express normally but Sailor Moon captures the thing that I want most in fiction, the thing that the brief glimpses of it in other series are my favorite parts of those series. Sailor Moon takes thematic conflicts and integrates it into the literal and emotional parts of the scene, such that the spiritual and conceptual backdrop of the story are aligned with the immediate textuality. And these are themes that mean a lot to me, and I feel them stronger then I've felt with any other series. When Sailor Moon unites her identity at the end of the first arc, coming to terms that she may be the tragic princess but she can also be the champion of justice for her loved ones because love allows her to become greater then she was and proudly declades that she is Sailor Moon and Princess Serenity, I FEEL that. When in the fifth arc, Sailor Moon declares that we are all lonely stars wishing to gather as one and jumps into Chaos, which had fused with the source of all things, both literally and metaphorically embracing the chaos of being, the potential for any negative manifestation of darkness that she would have to face, willing to face any future because of her infinite love for the world no matter what face she shows...I wanted to be that! I wanted to live my life by that! That's a code I wanted to change how I am to reflect that. Sailor Moon is a story about how anyone, even someone seemingly unreliable and cowardly can rise up to be a hero for the ones they love and how they can save the world as one comes to love this world of joys and sorrows and like...that's been the influence for me, that has been the story of my life, a lifetime of being down on myself and finding myself despite that rising above where I thought was to help the people I care about.

2: Naoko Takeuchi is, in my humble opinion, the master of tone and pace. I can see a page of Sailor Moon and before even conciously registering what's on the page, I'll know what arc it's from and generally what part of the arc, because the series has such a good ability to create atmosphere and invoke abstract or emotional atmospheres. The series has no filler chapters whatsoever and tells it's stories with a serious tone and a fantastical ability to invoke the often eldritch and otherworldly elements that make up the plot. It does this via abstract or exaggerated artwork, ethereal artwork that emphasizes a watery feeling, and by using astronomical imagery and plotlines, derived from the alien-ness of space.

3: I alluded to this in point 1, but so many of the elements of Sailor Moon from it's themes to it's subject matter correspond exactly to my interests. Sailor Moon is interested in themes of identity, meaning, chaos, predestination, emotional realities, temporality vs eternal-ness. It's subject matters it uses to tell that through include an astronomical and mythological themed science-urban fantasy, superhero magical girls fighting eldritch horrors and their occult minions with an epic cosmic romance at it's heart. 

3 Flaws:

Surprisingly, I actually think it's not that hard for me to critisize this series. There's a big difference to me between "favorite" or "most good" series and "least bad" series, or series with least flaws. A series is good not because of it's lack of flaws, but in amount equal to how well it can get you to forgive those flaws. Obviously that means a series with less flaws is easier to be good because there's less to forgive but there's more to it then that. Sailor Moon is not the least bad series I know, that would be good. It's not the least bad magical girl series I know, that would probably be Princess Tutu. It's arguable which is less bad between it and Cardcaptor Sakura in my opinion. While Sailor Moon is without a doubt the most good series for me, it's fairly easy for me to list some flaws for it.

1: The problem of Sailor Moon that is the biggest problem in my eyes is it's tendency towards deus ex machina or being generous things that are very convenient for the plot. There's a rule in writing that if you have serious (as in non-comedic) magic in your story either the magic has to have very clearly defined rules or it can't be used to solve problems and if Sailor Moon doesn't break the rule then it skirts very close to the line. So much in Sailor Moon makes beautiful symbolic or emotional sense but is basically unexplained from a literal standpoint. There's a point near the end of the first arc where Metaria blinds Mamoru with her presence and less then half a chapter later Sailor Moon restores his sight. Symbolically this is to show how Metaria is the goddess of night who blinds people to those who love them and how Sailor Moon is the soldier of the moon whose light shines through the night and restores us to our sense of self. Literally however it comes out of nowhere and doesn't seem to have much point. There's a point in the third arc where the senshi's power gather in Sailor Moon and she becomes Super Sailor Moon because "their hearts are gathered as one". Emotionally this is to show that while the Outer Senshi protest that they don't believe in Sailor Moon's beliefs, that their hearts are truly with her regardless. Literally however it's never explained, it just happens.

2: Naoko Takeuchi includes way too many characters. Naoko Takeuchi was clearly heavily inspired by sentai when making Sailor Moon, however sentai seasons regularly have ~several dozen episodes each to expand on a cast of 5-6 protagonists and a similar number of villains. An arc of Sailor Moon is on average a dozen chapters and Naoko tries to introduce as many as characters. In the Dream Arc we very quickly learn that the villains including Nelehenia, her subordinate Zirconia, and their 4 minions the Amazoness Quartet. Already that's a lot for an 11 chapter arc, but then the Quartet immediately create 3 more minions called the Amazon Trio and we later learn their group also has Xenotime and Zeolite.... Naoko can't seem to help but introduce characters in these groups of several each which leads to many characters not having signifigant development. To be clear I don't want it to be like the 90s anime where there is a lot of filler, but hopefully the story can be expanded so that there are more chapters to explore characters while progressing the plot in each one.

3: The series is kind of repetitive. Outside the fifth arc, which is my favorite in small part for this reason, Sailor Moon arcs have a very standard proceeding where each Senshi is matched up against one miniboss enemy, that they defeat one by one while investigating what the hell is going on with whatever Humanoid enemy is leading the enemies this time, there's some dramatic fight against the humanoid enemy, only to find out that they were serving a horrible eldritch abomination that is actually an incarnation of Chaos which Sailor Moon defeats after attaining a new power that is connected to whatever the arc is about. This isn't a big problem for me personally but I understand why others might not like it.

Favorite Part:

My favorite part in Sailor Moon's manga is the climax of act 59. Preceeding this is the climax of Galaxia's arc, my favorite villain, where Galaxia sees that the perfect eternal meaning she longed for and searched for was the mysterious power that Usagi had, the love for the temporal. In embracing the temporal, Usagi had found the eternal in the never-ending love one has. Usagi is told she should let the universe come to a peaceful end but Usagi refuses trusting she will always love the universe, no matter the suffering she must go through before leaping into the Galaxy Cauldron, the source of everything, merged with Chaos the ultimate evil, symbolically and literally embracing every possible suffering she could ever have before she is willing to fight for all eternity believing in what she loves. This is what I aspire to be; this world is intimidating, with dark stars, shadowy incarnations of suffering appearing from the chaos, and all the things one loves within it are temporary and bound to end eventually, but in loving them you will find that eternity that gives it meaning. 

2020 Reflection: Yu Yu Hakusho

 

Yu Yu Hakusho was written in December 1990 by Yoshihiro Togashi. It is a battle shonen themed based around the trials Yusuke Urameshi undergoes as spirit detective to protect the spirit world, using spiritual energy and martial arts to defeat various spirit and demonic threats. Unlike a lot of people, I didn't actually grow up with this series; I first read the manga in my late teens. Therefore none of this is gonna be based in nostalgia, the series is just a good series whether you first watch is as a child or not.

3 Reasons I love it:

It's difficult to talk about the good points about Yu Yu Hakusho not because it is lacking them, but because it has so many and they are so interwoven that it becomes hard to tell where one good point ends and another begins. Trying to pick out individual good points becomes troublesome thus. However I will do my best to give 3 distinct points.

1: The Yu Yu Hakusho cast is one of the most interesting and dynamic, if not the most interesting and dynamic, casts that a battle shonen has had. If you compare it to other early Battle Shonens; the series has neither the zany cartoonish off-the wall nature of Dragon Ball nor does it have the mythological gravitas of Saint Seiya. Instead the series punk and occult inspirations are reflected in the dualities of most of the main characters. They are each complex yet their interactions still have the immediate relatibility of simpler characters due to the way the characters masks interact as archetypes, all the while the characters true selves leave more unsaid.

2: Adding on to that, the series has an overarching sense of environment and atmosphere beyond almost any other I've seen while still remaining flexible and able to adapt. The series incorporates punk and occult influences, as mentioned, to create a sense of both brooding somberness and also fiery passion; with characters designs ranging from cute and fun to monsterous and threating to elegant and otherworldly, all the while keeping a sense of visual cohesion even despite it's sometimes very heavy stylization through it's sense of 90s flair.

3: Yu Yu Hakusho avoids a lot of the negative tropes associated with battle shonen; the pace moves along very quickly with at most some fights feeling maybe half an ep too long; the series has an actual sweet romance we see develop over time, there's very little filler. Even people that normally wouldn't like a battle shonen tend to like Yu Yu Hakusho for being stylish and lacking many of the common complaints of the genre; something it can attribute to it's overall consistency.

3 Flaws:

1: Infamously, the last arc of Yu Yu Hakusho was cut short due to the declining health of writer Yoshihiro Togashi. As such, particularly with the manga version, the ending of the arc feels very abrupt.

2: The series has a tendency to go back on itself, undoing what's already happened, robbing some incredible scenes of some of their emotional punch. The obvious example of this, and if you don't want spoilers then stop reading this point now, is Kuwabara's death, and arguably Genkai's death, in the Dark Tournament. I obviously don't want them to be dead, they're great characters, but their deaths were what motivated Yusuke to rise beyond and defeat Toguro. 

3: In both the Dark Tournament and Chapter Black Sagas, there are numerous villains that are beaten that are made friends by team Urameshi however they don't really do much else for the rest of the series. This may be partially due to the abrupt ending of the fourth arc, but even in the third arc the psychics don't do much help to fight Sensui outside Kaito. 

Favorite Part:

This may be an unconventional pick, but my favorite part is Kurama's moment in the Chapter Black Saga. Kurama is a demon fox trying to reform and live as a human, who occasionally gives in to the strength of Yoko Kurama, the amoral demon fox inside him, and this division between choosing the path of kindness and the path of strength drivse much of his actions. He spends most of his fights before then winning via strategy rather then brute power, taking unneccesary hits just to not lose himself to Yoko Kurama's influence. After being forced to kill an innocent child psychic, Kurama for the first time is unified in his two identities and completely contrary to how he normally fights just destroys the Elder Toguro after easily finding him, without any planning or strategy. It's a really cool moment, highlights the unification of Kurama's identities and foreshadows his role in the Three Kings Saga.

2020 Reflection: Metroid

 

Metroid was released in August, 1986 and was first written by Makoto Kano. The series is a science-fiction action adventure video game series starring Samus Aran, galactic bounty hunter, who hunts various threats to the galaxy; most notably the space pirates, the DNA-replicating x parasite, the infective radioactive superorganism Phazon, and the energy-draining animalistic species known as Metroids. The series is well known for the twist at the end of the first game where it is revealed Samus Aran is actually female, which was a major oddity in 1986 particularly for this genre. While I would talk about how I really like having a cool female main character I have 3 bigger praises to give the series.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: Metroid games are, by and large, masterpieces of environmental storytelling. The series has a devotion to telling story not through dialogue or cutscenes but through gameplay and the environment. It's incredible how much Metroid can say just through things like enemy placement and design of the setting. In Metroid 2 for instance, Samus arrives on the world SR388 overrun by the Metroids. As she gets further into the level, more and more the world seems desolate reflecting the destruction of the local environement and Samus' genocide of the metroids, culminating before the final boss with a long empty section without any life whatsoever, where Samus is alone, and the player is given a moment to reflect. This beautifully contrasts the end of the game with Samus bringing the baby Metroid who has mistaken her for it's mother, where the two travel through a long empty corridor together, showing the importance and the peace of choosing a differnet path then genocide and giving the Metroids another chance. All of this was communicated via environment on a gameboy game from 1991 that initially didn't even have color. In Super Metroid, you learn how to use abilities that the Chozo modeled after Zebesian animals by watching how the Zebesian animals do it and then copying without tutorial. Stuff like that is all over the series. 

2: The series has a massive focus on continuity and an expansive wholistic world that one can be absorbed into. The Classic Metroid games were known, at least from what I can tell, for the ability to massively sequence break them to the point you could often fight bosses in the reverse order you were "intended" too. They weren't linear levels to tell a linear story, instead each Metroid game is a miniture world. This design philosophy is carried on through all the games, with the prime trilogy for instance introducing as a primary tool the ability to scan every object for information about it's lore and importance to the character. The games have a very clear continuity between games....save for that one game we don't talk about....and the series is full of imaginative science-fiction ideas that come together nonethless to form a very cohesive feeling world. The galaxy of Metroid is a complete environment where all the parts form a massive connected web. 

3: No other series I know better captures the feeling of "space". More somber and serious then Mass Effect, less bleak and nihilistic then the Cthulhu Mythos, Metroid is a series that carries with it in almost everything the feeling of space and it's duality. Since childhood I was interested in the concept of space, and Metroid is the best series to capture it's feel that I know. The massive empty spaces and sheer isolation is captured by Samus' isolation in each game, put into hostile worlds without backup. The creature and location design carry both the weightlessness yet immensity of floating worlds in the cosmos. And the feeling of exploration, of exploring that unknown is captured in it's immense interconnected feeling worlds. 

3 Flaws: 

I'm going to resist the urge to use Other M as one of the points here. 

1: If you're interested in dialogue or deep characterization, this may disappoint. Metroid is a series focused on storytelling through environment. There is very little dialogue outside of Fusion, Prime 3, and that one we don't speak off. 

2: Both ocassionally by purposeful design and more oftne by the virute of giving a world one can usually freely explore, the Metroid series became somewhat infamous for "backtracking". If you are unaware, backtracking in games is when one goes through something and is then required to go back through the entire space. Metroid games have a lot of backtracking, partially because to allow the level of exploration it does. If backtracking frustrates then you may find yourself frustated.

3: Metroid has some weird difficulty curves. It varies how much of a thing this is from game to game, but because of it's open-ended nature and the fact that it lets the player take on mid or sometimes late game content early on, the game can be radically hard or weirdly easy out of nowhere. Several of the Metroid final bossess are weirdly easy as well.

Favorite Part:

Not going to be getting any points for originality here, but my favorite part is the climax of Super Metroid with the sacrifice of the Baby Metroid. First time I ever cried at a game before. Mother Brain is obliterating Samus but the Baby Metroid stops the attack and shields Samus from it's blast, absorbing the energy before finally dying, allowing it's energy to strengten Samus to defeat Mother Brain. 

2020 Reflection: Saint Seiya

 

Saint Seiya was written in January 1986 by Masami Kurumada. Saint Seiya is a battle shonen themed after mythology, most often Greek mythology, whose plot centers around the "Saints of Athena", mystical armor wearing warriors who protect the Earth under the guide of the goddess Athena. The series is a very large franchise now with numerous series although unlike some of the prior entries I've talked about, they tend to stick closer to the feel of the original, if not exactly, so I can mostly focus on the original when talking about SS. My favorite version is the Lost Canvas.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: It's Elegance. Everything about Saint Seiya is incredibly elegant and there's a clear attempt to imbue everything with dignity and grandeur. The armor designs, music, storylines, and characters are all like something out of theatre. I really like how the story's sense of importance in presentation matches the giant stakes of every battle. Everything has such a sense of scope and importance in SS. Compared to most shonen of it's day, Saint Seiya was known for it being less comedic, more dramatic and emotional, more restrained, characters being more underplayed and less comical exaggerations, and having lots of pretty boys. It's really no surprise it got a large female following. 

2: On a related note, Saint Seiya does an amazing job matching the feel of myth. Mythological Fantasy is really good at creating a sense of dignity and grandeur and SS is really good at matching that. The characters all feel like they come out of myth, being archetypal and following character arcs that are designed to led their archetypes to their extremes. The series humanism sneaks up on you because you are so used to the feeling of wonder and perhaps intimidation at seeing the power of divinities, of natural forces, swept up in the cosmos that when the series reminds you the greatest cosmo is within the human potential to grow endlessly, it feels all the more impressive. The series is about, I think, the contrast of the conceptual realm, the divine, the natural forces which are great and terrible but are limited to being what they are, vs the human realm where we are naturally much weaker but can grow without limit to far exceeding what we were.

3: It's directness to the plot. The Saint Seiya Manga is really direct in it's plot. There's basically no filler. The Anime has more, although still compared to a lot of shonen series, SS is relatively speaking a very direct story with each arc the Saints having to beat x number of minions of arc bad guy in usually 1 on 1 fights that usually correspond to them. I don't like filler and SS is really minimal on it.

 

3 Flaws:

1: Probably the biggest flaw, and what everyone mentions; the series is really repetitive. Especially the original series, each arc has basically the same structure. It gets a bit predictable at times. 

2: Saint Seiya has a bad tendency towards deus ex machina. Things will sometimes happen, and the series will try to explain why it happened, but it will basically state a rule it stated on the spot as opposed something foreshadowed beforehand. Either that or it will be only foreshadowed in the sense that it's something that happened before like Seiya's ability to massively grow in cosmo via the power of friendship.

3: It has some very standard shonen tropes. So these aren't a huge bother for me personally, but if you are the type to get bothered by lots of flashbacks and lengthy explanations of abilities and tourment arcs and the like, then you may experience some of that. Saint Seiya was one of the first big successful shonen, and so it helped popularize many of the tropes that younger shonen series adopted. It's partly why the series' quick pace is very surprising, since that's not a trope most shonen get from it. Likewise while it's characters are more subtle then most of it's contempories they are still basically the battle shonen tropes of the book dumb hot-blooded main character, the angsty edgy loner that was once a villain, the quiet reflective one that became close friends with the main character through combat etc. Watching Saint Seiya be expected to be surprised at the newness of it's themes rather then it's plot structure or how it tackles battle shonen genre.

Favorite Part:

This one changes around for me, but my favorite part of Saint Seiya currently is Shiryu defeating Deathmask in the Sanctuary Arc. It slowly builds on the theme of whether or not one can depend on abstract concepts like justice, and though Deathmask proclaims he does not believe them, he is still surprised when his own cloth abandons him for his sins and he is defeated by his sins. I really like Shiryu's moments. 

2020 Reflection: Cutie Honey

 

Cutie Honey was written in October 1973 by Go Nagai. It's generally agreed to be the first magical girl warrior series. While magical girls existed before Cutie Honey, they were generally slice of life series about solving mundane problems with magical powers. Cutie Honey was the first example of a series with a magical girl fighting supernatural evil with her powers. Instead of one long continuous series, Cutie Honey is made of many alternate universes, all loosely connected by the central character Cutie Honey. Cutie Honey is an android who is usually also a schoolgirl in her civilian life who seeks vengeance on the nefarious Panther Claw organization for the murder of her father, usually defeating them via her transformation abilities and gadgets. It's notably more violent and sexual then prior magical girl series.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The series is very versatile. Cutie Honey has been ultra light-hearted goofy comedy, serious emotional melodrama, and both at once. Cutie Honey has been ultra sexual fanserice with dirty jokes, cutesy girly shojo, and both. It can have very violent brutal action scenes or be goofy fun or both. It has been totally plot focused, completely episodic, and somehow both. Different versions of the series emphasize different parts. My favorite version, Cutie Honey Flash, is probably the least sexual and the most girly shojo and very emotional and dramatic, but I love all versions of it. It's versatility means you can connect with the central story in a multude of ways. You can relax with Cutie Honey, laugh with it, or cry with it. You can watch for serious emotional moments and story or laugh at sex jokes. It's very wholistic feeling and really takes advantage of the versatility of being a superhero magical girl series with a variety of tones and plot structures.

2: Honey herself is a massively versatile character. Feeding into the last point, Honey does a great job of being a character who core concept is clear but allows a lot of room for experimentation. Generally speaking Honey is a clever driven warrior of love, but otherwise a relatable teenage girl. Her ability to change form, to create weapons out of the air, and the general properties of the Airbone Element Soldifier means you can do a massive amount with her powerset, complementing the versatility of the potential stories. 

3: The series is a very interesting genre fusion. I always love when you take two genres or two of anything really that are clearly distinct and manage to mash them up in a way that it feels seemless; in other words not when the two genres are distinct from each other and create contrast, but when they naturally feed into each other. Cutie Honey is an odd amalgam of the 60s science fiction that was idealistic about humanity, or at the very least of science's ability to elevate humanity and the dark crime noir dramas of the 70s. These things don't seem like they should go together but they feed in very well, with the science fiction being more so a flavor or setting for the core noir story. In the same way that people have observed that Harry Potter stories are at their core mystery stories that are in a Fantasy Setting, Cutie Honey are crime stories in a science-fiction superhero setting that can quickly shift from goofy 60s science-fiction in the form of tokuatsu and 70s crime thriler in the form of Panther Claw's heists.

3 Flaws:

1: I don't mind dirty jokes. To be honest, I often find them quite funny. That said I get really uncomfortable at anything related to sexual harrasment. A lot of versions of Cutie Honey, save Flash really, tend to have sexual harrasment jokes which make me uncomfortable. The manga also has gross humor which I don't personally like, although it's fairly tame. 

2: There's not a large amount of good villains. The series does have a few good villains, in particular I like Misty Honey from Flash, and Scarlet Claw and Sister Jill from Re. That said a lot of the Honey series' villains are pretty lacking in motivation and tend to get blown out of the water by Honey quite literally. This leads me too

3: This one may take a bit to explain but Honey is really overpowered. I don't agree when people use overpowered to just mean "powerful". "That character can move faster then light, that's overpowered!" or "That character can perform 50 different techniques, that's overpowered!" That just means the character is powerful, overpowered in my opinion means the character breaks the setting. Goku and Superman are powerful but not overpowered, their powers are pretty reasonable for their setting and their enemies. Saitama is overpowered in a gag way, he breaks the setting purposefully to be funny. Magical Girls Pre-Honey were also like this, the joke was that little girls had godlike magical power to solve their mundane problems with. Honey also has this but we're supposed to take her conflict seriously. This is hard to prove but to give some examples: Some of the recurring Panther Claw agents powers are things like shooting fire out of her hands, or making web like a spider, or Sister Jill who is basically a really strong whip-user and is their leader. You know what Honey's power is? The Airbone Element Fixing Device lets her make ANYTHING by changing the particles in the air. In the original manga, she beats 10 of the strongest Panther Claw agents at once. In Flash it's shown that Honey's transformation can destroy the Earth, in a setting where bombs, bullets, a boomerang and swords are relevant threats. In Re she absorbs the energy of every nuclear bomb at once. Honey has the magical deus ex machina of earlier magical girls, but is in serious stories where fighting opponents is supposed to be the point.

Favorite Part: 

My Favorite part is from Cutie Honey Flash where Misty Honey makes Peace with Cutie Honey after seeing the love her "twin" has with their father and fuses their airborne element fixing devices to give her the Hyper Honey Form in a heroic sacrifice. It's a really moving moment that highlights Honey's character and is a resolution to Misty's arc of envy of Honey's position. Misty Honey is in general my favorite Cutie Honey villain.

2020 Reflection: DC Comics

 

DC Comics, first named as National Allied Publications was founded in 1934 by Malcom Wheeler-Nicholson. It's had too many writers to count. So when comparing DC Comics to the other series of my favorites list, one thing clearly stands out: it's WAY longer. As in, you could put all 31 other series together in length and it would still not be DC's size. THAT'S how big it is. This makes talking about it as a whole kind of difficult, except in relation to the only other series of similar size it's competitor Marvel Comics. I'm going to try to avoid making every good and bad point about how it has x thing in it, because it's so large that it has examples of almost any good and bad thing you can imagine. It's also the second oldest series on this list by a wide margin being decades older then third oldest, although that's not really fair as the parts of DC I love most are newer then that. My favorite time in mainline DC was last post-crisis era, like late 00s. I also like the Vertigo imprints of the 80s, many of the live-action DC films, and the early rebirth stuff of mid to late 2010s Those are my favorites. If you're wondering, my favorite time for Marvel was really late 90s to early 00s, the time when the JMS Spider-Man stuff was going on. It's a bit hard to give good points and bad points without basically just saying in a different tone "it's a really giant franchise" or comparing it to Marvel, but I'm going to try to give statements that are not just those.

3 reasons I love it:

1: It's archetypal-ness. So DC characters are without a doubt some of the most iconic and universally recognizable in the world, especially Superman and Batman. I think DC does an incredible job in capturing an archetypal nature, and it's writing of conceptual entites is amazing. It has been said superheroes are the modern mythology, and if so I think DC does an amazing job of capturing the metaphysical nature of legends, how they are representations of deeper truths. Characters like Superman and Batman have an immediate strong presence and versatility due to their sheer archetypal-ness. Like you feel like you're reading a story about concepts.

2: DC has an incredible sense of legacy. This is not the same as it's length, but does rely on it. DC has a sense of grandeur and sense of history in everything that can't be achieved by a series that is so much shorter. Having read a LOT of DC, it makes moments like the magicians arriving to save the superheroes in Crisis on Infinite Earths or basically everything in Final Crisis hit a lot harder because you feel the sheer amount of events leading up to it. Simple phrases like "This looks like a job....FOR SUPERMAN!" or "I am Vengance, I am the Night, I am....BATMAN!" have the weight they do because of the sheer legacy they have. It's something not replicatable without an immense amount of buildup. There's also whole teams of retired superheroes, superhero titles passed on between generations etc.

3: DC is shockingly humanistic. For a series full of demigods that could obliterate the Earth with a sneeze, DC loves the common man, something which resonantes with me greatly, as part of it's general idealism. Some of the best moments of DC are emphasizing that beings of incredible power and awareness are really just like us or showing how great humans can be. 

3 Flaws:

1: It's ocassional pretentiousness. I think I'm probably like most people in that I am alright with messages I don't agree with if they aren't being preached at me or messages I do agree with even if they are. Some of my favorite series have messages that don't resonante with me, but I appreciate the series for the passion they endorse them and for other reasons. If a series preaches at me something I do agree with it gets kind annoying in a preaching to the choir kind of way. But when a series preaches something to me that I think is wrong, then it's really bad. And DC sometimes will try to preach morally questionable things with a really annoying sanctimoniousness. I think this is a result of the character beings so archetypal that it feels like if you want to write a good story with them, that it has to be using them to send a message, instead of letting the message naturally flow from the characters' actions.

2: It's lack of direction. DC is a massive franchise of many series that stop and start, sometimes feeding into each other like a massive river system. There's some advantages of that, but it can make it very confusing to try to start and hard to keep up with everything. It's not an easy to experience linear experience, but a mass of series that sometimes feed into each other, sometimes seem to be in different worlds and sometimes outright contradict each other.

3: DC's various sub franchises aren't highly unified. Maybe you'd expect this of a franchise of it's size, but arguably more then you'd expect. The Sci-Fi Space Opera of people like the Lantern Cores have nothing to do with the occult stories fo Justice League Dark, which have little to do with the metafictional stories of the New Gods even though you'd expect all these to be constantly interacting. 

Favorite Part:

Allow me to be pretty cliche but it's the part with Superman and the jumper in All-Star Superman. Superman is always with you, he will believe in you even if you don't.