2020 Reflection: Princess Tutu

 

Princess Tutu was written in August 2002 by Michiko Yokoto and Ikuko Itoh. The series stars numerous characters that have come out of an in-universe story come to life and struggling with acceptance or fighting their roles in the story and the fates that those roles decide for them. Princess Tutu is probably the least bad magical girl series. That is to say while it's not my favorite it has the fewest flaws I can name and if there is an "objective good" this is probably it. This series is a real masterpiece that unlike a lot of MG series I would recommend even if you don't watch MG series. 

3 Reasons I love it:

1: I'll get the obvious point out of the way first; this series is probably the most classically beautiful, elegant and cultured series is the magical girl genre. With inspirations like classical ballet and fairy tales, it was pretty much guarenteered that even when the series is dark, it would nontheless be timeless and aesthetically beautiful. This is a series that every action just bleeds finesse and grace, helped by the ballet themes. Everything from the art, music, plot elements etc. are just beautiful.

2: The series is probably my favorite use of metafiction in particular because it blends the lines between metafiction and fiction. In particular the series is metafictional defined from a fictional point of view. It's characters in conflict with their roles as character with the perspective of the metafictoinal being completely inside the narrative. The characters are battling against the story of the Prince and the Raven, a story inside Princess Tutu, not fighting against the story of Princess Tutu. That means a lot of the metafictional flairs I often find just distracting because they seem more style over substance aren't applied and the metafiction feels more deliberate here.

3: This series has a sophistication that comes from subtle complexities. Many of the episodes centered around one of the Heart Shards are explorations of an emotion and even though the characters are fairly archetypal, the emotions they confront have complexity unrivaled in almost anything I've seen yet they do this every episode. The world is similarly archetypal yet deeply complex, like a fairly simple but beautiful painting that has more subtleties to it the more you look. Very often I'm forced to speak about archetypal-ness and complexity as though they are opposed sides of a binary while in Princess Tutu they are seamlessly fused, the archetypes deep roots being explored showing the complexity in what we percieve as simple.

3 Flaws:

Princess Tutu probably has, as mentioned, the least amount of flaws in any magical girl work I've ever seen. That said if I were to try and critique this beautiful artwork far greater then anything I will ever make

1: Some of the episodes can feel a bit repetitive. Particularly mid-season episodes can feel like a bit of a game "what emotion are we tackling today and how does Tutu return them to the Prince". There's more subtetly then that as usually some plot elements are being revealed in each ep, but they definitely become a bit more predictable

2: The series humor is mixed. The series has some moments that are really funny however the key thing about these moments is that these tend to be one-off moments of characters reacting to some plot event in a funny way or Uzura being a loveable scamp or of course the greatness that is Femio. However there's a few recurring jokes that were maybe funny at first, but I really don't think are that funny that show up like every episode. Things like Neko-Sensei threatening to have his students marry him if they fail or Lille delighting in Duck's torment. I get from an artistic standpoint that Lille represents the fans of a series who take delight in the emotional suffering of the character that makes them cuter but while I can support it as symbolism, I don't think it's really funny as a joke. I'm not annoyed by these or anything but this is not the series I would go to for laughs. 

3: Duck as a character is really simple. Drosslemeyer even points this out in-universe that she's not even trying to do something that would be selfish because she's just a simply good person. Duck is a magical girl protagonist cut from the Usagi Tsukino cloth of having many character flaws but lacking any moral defects outside force of will. While she's really cute, she lacks the more real feeling sometimes selfish nature tha someone like Usagi sometimes had. Many of the other characters are also really simple. Mytho is really simple, he's a perfectly nice prince until he's forced not to be. Most of the side characters are really simple. Even Drosselmeyer, entertaining as he is, is a pretty simple character. The only characters that show a signifigant complexity are Rue and Fakir (and maybe Edel). In a way it IS fitting. These characters are all characters from a story book with very prescripted roles, so their personalities being so surprisingly easy to define.

My Favorite Part:

My Favorite part alternates between the climax of season 1 and the climax of season 2 but right now I'd have to say it's the climax of season 2. Duck is the ugly duckling, the character whose story was to end in tragedy, but she is the character whole role is to transcend her role, born to become greater then what she is and in doing she becomes the light of hope, the concept of transcending one's concept. Even though she is turned back into a little duck without any powers she dances with so much passion, love and skill that she invokes the very spirit of Princess Tutu, the spirit of becoming more then what you were made to be, and restores the whole of the town from the Raven. 

2020 Reflection: Freedom Force

 

Freedom Force was written in March 2002 by Ken Levine. The series is a set of 2 video games that is an homage to the Silver Age of Comics, with a group of random people gaining strange powers related to their personality and surroundings from Energy X, the noble of these group forming a superhero team to protect Patriot City called The Freedom Force. The games are tactical rpgs where the heroes must complete various objectives, usually the defeating of Energy X-powered villains via strategic usage and combination of their abilities. Freedom Force is one of those games like "Psychonauts" or "War of the Monsters" that aren't super well known but everyone who does it is trying to get more people to know about it, it's a very cult classic game.

3 reasons I love it:

I tend to really like homages and parodies of the Silver Age of Comics but not the actual comics from that age. This is because comics from that age, because of the comics code, were made for children and were often slow and repeated obvious information numerous times under the assumption that the reader had the mental capacity of a child. Silver Age Homages can take the best parts of the Silver Age; it's idealism, creativity and sense of wonder and leave behind the less pleasent parts we'd like to forget.

1: Everything about these games are stylized to be like Silver Age Comics (or Golden Age for the sections taking place during WWII in the sequel) and it's just wonderful to play. The dialogue is consistently over the top and filled with silver age-y style interjections like "Stars and Bars!" "By the Goddess!" and "Rings of Rexor!" The characters powers also feel so otherwordly, over the top and impactful that it really invokes the feeling of being inside them. Buildings can collapse, cars are thrown, people can be spontanteously brainwashed or turned into chickens, and characters can race around making sonic booms. If you're a fan of the Fleischer Superman shorts or the Adam West Batman and you want to try experiencing what being in that kind of world would be like, this verse will give it in spades. 

2: The games greatly encourage personalization and customization, a style which gives games nigh endless replayability. That's because the games allow you play the games with your own custom heroes you create and then recruit, plus was seemingly made to be fairly modular with a highly active and dynamic modding community with whole custom campaigns, characters, powers and so on for download. Whiel it would be a massive exaggeration to say that Freedom Force is less a game and more a platform to run numerous games to be modded in like some later games (like Skyrim or especially Minecraft, games made with the idea that they would be modded), Freedom Force is an early example of making a very personalize-able game that can have a lot more functionality then just what's in the base game and gives the user the options to make or download what they personally want to be in it.

3: The tactical rpg genre is the perfect genre it seems for capturing that style of comic book, with characters powers feeling varied and interplaying with each other in interesting dynamic ways. The gameplay feels very engaging due to the dynamicism of the many abilities both your characters have and your opponent will reveal over the course of a battle. One of the reasons I like vs debating is that I like the idea of supernatural tactics that can bend your brain and Freedom Force gives a greater degree of that in an interactive format then almost anything else. Tactics like should you hunker down behind a car from projectiles if you don't know if your opponent can make the car explode, should you try and use your ghost man to possess the tank so your blasters can get it in past them or possess one of the blasters to slow the actual damage, is it better for a character to be able to fly and thus avoid melee/some projectiles and move generally faster vs teleport where they can go straight through walls. If you want supernatural tactics, that is something this game excels at. 

3 Flaws:

I wanna start by saying that yes the steam release of this game was a bit of an infamously buggy mess. I don't take that as too big a thing though because it's not really a problem with the game itself, just how it was ported to steam and the also very easily accessible GOG version lacks any of these technical issues so it's not a consideration for the game itself. Also while I do know the game is fairly easy to break if you want, you can pretty easily make custom heroes that can cheese the levels with whatever combination of abilities, that's not really something that's going to happen unless you're actively trying too, so in my mind that's more like using cheat codes to make the game easier for yourself if you want too. These are what I consider the more general problems with the games. 

1: While the games have a large interesting roster of characters, they don't get too much. Alchemiss and Man-Bot get screen time and character development and some of the others get a little but most of what you get for each one is just whatever special lines happened to be put in if you take x character on y level. Those are cool bonuses but it's like having dessert for your meal, it's not gonna fill you up. Granted, maybe my wants are completely pie in the sky here. Ideally what I would have liked is something akin to the loyalty missions of Mass Effect, a special mission for each hero you can access at any time, taking place outside the main story events, when you get a character, that focuses around that hero and gives them extra experience for the main story to make the hardest difficulty a bit easier. I get that's really idealistic since FF has 24 members, and for comparison the main campaign of the second game only has 22 missions but still this cast of character's potential is really going to waste with most of them having such little stuff on them, but the games just aren't really games about characters so much as invoking the style of comics in the Silver Age. And while I get that, it is something I feel would have improved the experience.

2: The AI for this game is not the best. It's generally serviceable but there were numerous times when an enemy would basically just not notice me or do anything until I attacked them or a civilian would run right in front of my hero launching an attack. While on some level it might increase the Silver Age accuracy of having everyone act mildly silly, it doesn't really help from a gameplay perspective. When a civilian gets hurt or a building gets damaged you lose prestige which is the points you use to recruit heroes, either the premade ones or your custom ones and the fact that you can lose it for things that are clearly not something you can control like a civilian running in front of a fireblast or a robot on the other side of the map from where you spawn hitting a building is rather annoying. Although humorously enough for a game that is inspired by the Silver Age Idealism, it's a bizarrely annoying realism that the superheroes get blamed for everything even if they were not at all the reason for it.

3: These games are really difficult, especially on the higher difficulty settings, and there's one level in particular that I found just complely unfair. In the second game there is a mission where you have to protect one of your party members, Sky King, for a duration of time while he calibrates his suit. This means that instead of your normal party of 4 members, you only have 3 as Sky King counts towards your team for some reason and he can't move, use an ability or take any damage or he has to start the process over again. Challening but fair so far. Expect you don't choose your team for this mission. Sometimes the game limits you to having to pick certain heroes for a mission either for story reasons or because the mission is literally impossible without a unique power one of the heroes have. That's not the case here as the mission gives you El Diablo, a character uniquely unsuited to this mission as he has massive attack power but poor range and a tendency for friendly fire (and if Sky King takes damage he has to start over) and Tricolour who has the berserker weakness where if she takes damage she has a chance of attacking anything nearby, and if Sky King takes any damage you have to start over. It's a really really hard mission. The games are both really difficult, unless you're playing on the easiest settings.

Favorite Part:

I think my favorite part is during the second game in a desperate gambit to beat the Big Bad Entropy they summon the Big Bad of the first game Time Master and you actually get to play with Time Master and his forces for a bit, and it's a really cool face-off between the lord of time and the mistress of chaos, plus getting to control Time Master's broken abilities. 

2020 Reflection: Tokyo Mew Mew

 

Tokyo Mew Mew was written in September 2000 by Reiko Yoshida. The series is about a team of 5 magical girls infused with the DNA of endangered animals to stop aliens who were the original inhabitants of Earth who wish to retake it by accelerating humanity's environmental damage. It's an environmental magical girl series if you couldn't tell. The series is one of the classic magical girl series, basically everyone in the MG fandom knows TMM and it's popular enough that even some people outside the magical girl fandom know TMM (and for magical girl's that a pretty good achievement).

3 Reasons I love it:

Tokyo Mew Mew is a series that's really comfortable and fun to just watch. Sailor Moon is my favorite series but I don't just randomly read a chapter of SM. I will just sit down and watch a random TMM ep though. So why is that? Well...

1: First off TMM has a really great primary cast. I'm really fond of all the Mews Mews and their personalities as well as their relations to Ryo, Keiichiro and Masaya. They characters have a good mixture of high presence, entertaining and compelling in between them. Part of this I think is because TMM is very good at invoking the spirits of things. Each of the Mew Mews sort of invokes the spirit of their associated animal such as Ichigo invoking the dramatic reasons, cuteness but sometimes mysteriousness of cats or Pudding invoking the playful hyperactive curious nature of apes. This invoking extends especially to the ending of the series where the series gets it's most mystical with Deep Blue being an ancient spirit tied to humanity or the odd statement that the Earth "chose" Ichigo to be it's defender. Not only does this give it's characters immediatly recognizable and impactful archetypes, but it creates a sense of gravitas from the sense that the series events are the cultimation of the events long in the making.

2: Tokyo Mew Mew has the ability to seamlessly switch between comedy and drama. I'm always a bit nervous with a series trying to be comedic and dramatic at the same time. I tend to like them to be kept to seperate episodes or scenes as when they are immediatly together it can feel like a bit of a mood whiplash. However in TMM, both the comedy and the drama are drawn from the same place, that being generally the emotionality of the characters, especially Ichigo. As such just as the rush of emotions can quickly change, the mood of TMM can quickly change without causing whiplash. There's a chapter in the manga, where after  the until now aloof Minto is despondent that her idol Zakuro won't join the Mew Mews, so the Mew Mews hold a sleepover at her house to cheer her up, leading to childish hijinx like a pillow fight. Minto asks Ichigo why she came over and Ichigo responds to "see you smile". After this Kish attacks Ichigo and Minto stops him saying that Ichigo was her dear friend and if Kish hurt her Mint would make him very sorry. In a lot of series that much stuff of vary different emotional tones would feel like a major whiplash, however in TMM seems to build on itself as different levels of the same emotion.

3: This one is a bit hard to pin down but the series has a very wholesome energy and a very innoncent first love atmosphere. Where a lot of series with environmental themes can go wrong is that they make that like the only message of the series, or only that and very closeby messages. TMM is a series with an environmental theme but that's not the core of the series, it's just something that feels like a natural extension of the energy of the series, about 5 young girls representing (and quite literally from Deep Blue's perspective) the best of humanity and their desire to protect our planet. It's a series that wants to encourage you to be good not by showing what could go wrong but by showing as Ichigo does, what you can preserve.

3 Flaws:

1: I know that Kish has a really big fanbase, especially in the west but I personally don't really find the villains very interesting until Deep Blue fully appears. I mean they're fine but this is a definitely a series where I watch for the protagonists not the antagonists. It also confused me even when I was reading this when I was younger why if the aliens are mad humanity is polluting the planet and want to reclaim why they are speeding up pollution...it seems counter-intuitive to their goals. Side Note: I really wish the alien species had a name so that it seems less generic when I refer to "the aliens".

2: The series can get pretty melodramatic at times. I'm not generally a fan of civilian drama in series with supernatural stuff and while Tokyo Mew Mew handles it better then most series, it still gets kinda soap opera-y at times and much like the main character kind of makes a bigger deal out of something then it's worth. The biggest example which is arguably a character example but it goes on for so long and effects the plot so much is Ichigo worrying about revealing that she's a Mew Mew to Masaya because obviously any boy would be totally repulsed finding out his girlfriend changes into a catgirl superhero magical girl. That might seem like a character decision but it takes up a signifigant amount of time in the series of Ichigo just worrying about how she can't tell Masaya and waiting for the two of them to get together

3: A La Mode, the official sequel to Tokyo Mew Mew feels quite rushed, taking place over two volumes and having a story that could easily be much longer. I don't dislike Mew Berry like a lot of fans do; I think her personality itself is perfectly fine. The problem comes more from the framing, how the series presents her as suddenly the new leader of the mew mews for no reason, and how rushed we get to know her. Berry is fine but the framing and presentation of her in A La Mode, like a bunch in it feels overly indulgent and too quick to really gives details about it.

Favorite Part:

For a lot of these series, my favorite part is the climax of the series. Sometimes it's the part right before the climax but for TMM it's actually the part right after the climax. Ichigo has sacrificed herself to save Masaya and everyone wants her to come back to life and we see the mew power leave her body, just as it was stated was gonna happen several times throughout the series, when she defeats the aliens she'll go back to being a normal girl, turns into the image or spirit of a cat and leaves her body restoring her because mew power restores things to their natural state so the mew power moving through and exiting her body restored her body. It's a small moment but it's a moment that to me feels so well foreshadowed and is the perfect explanation for this trope you see in MG all the time, and it's a moment where intellectually you know what's gonna happen coincides with what you emotionally want to happen. 

2020 Reflection: The Powerpuff Girls

 

The Powerpuff Girls were written in November 1998 by Craig McCracken. The series is a superhero series starring the titular Powerpuff Girls, sisters Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup who are also kindergarden girls and their efforts to protect the city of Townsville from crime and the forces of evil. This will only be discussing the original series. I like Powerpuff Girls Z alright, possibly due to my affinity for magical girl series, but both it and the 2016 reboots are clearly seperate series to the original series with different continuities and shouldn't be considered the same thing. Superhero series can generally be viewed as a spectrum between two polarities in my opinion; "iconic" superhero series that focus on superhero tropes, which tend to have archetypal characters, relatively clear cut morality, and tend to be relatively idealistic overall (IE series that tend more DC-like) or "realistic" superhero series that tend to focus on human problems outside superheroing, tend to have more realistic characters, more grey moral issues, and tend to be more realistic (IE series that tend more Marvel-like). I tend to prefer more Iconic type superhero series and PPG I think is definitely closer to that type. It's the first primarily superhero series on this list after DC and the first western cartoon in general and I think that's attributable to it being a feminine iconic superhero series with a good mixture of comedic and dramatic elements, and themes personally relevant to me.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The series centers around a dichotomy of the fact that that these three 5-year old girls are also really powerful superheroes, like "throwing Kaiju around, faster then light 5 year Pre-Crisis Kryptonians" power. That seems like it might just be a small gag however it's actually used as the emotional core of the series. At the same time that PPG was airing both Marvel and DC tried to create what was basically superhero soap operas with their runs of X-Men and Teen Titans and part of the reason I don't like those is that I don't want my superhero comics to be soap operas, these are adults you expect to be acting emotionally sensibly. The PPG being young girls allows for them to each show more vulnerability and limits in emotional intelligence. This not only allows for humorous dichotomy showing little girls throwing giant monsters out of a city, but also creates the sense that you can be weak in some ways and still be a hero. It also highlights the important of family in this series. This is part of the reason that Bubbles is my favorite; Blossom and Buttercup in different ways act slightly more adult so for me the contrast works at it's best with Bubbles who is the most childish. However the girls personalities complete and compliment each other, they are far more effective because they can compensate for what each other lacks. Likewise the love their father the Professor has for them and they have in turn works so well because it highlights how the Powerpuff Girls can be both super strong, the perfect little girls; the heroines that Utonium sees them as that save the day, while also being...well little girls, emotionally vulnerable and needy at times. This also forms the basis of many of the episodes being an often humorous contrast between their job saving the city vs their nature as young girls. 

2: The series uses stylization and superhero tropes as a way that is a good balance between standardization and playfulness. Take for instance that episodes end with a sequence showing the Powerpuff Girls in front of a hearts silhoutte background with the narrator saying "so once again the day is saved, thanks to....The Powerpuff Girls!" This is played straight just enough that it becomes iconic but played with enough that it feels actually reactive to the episode and can be used for comedic or even dramatic purposes. At the start of each episode, during the theme song each girls comes on screen with a similar jingle but pitched differently and with a differnet tone to showcase each girl's personality. The villain roster of the series runs a gamut from highly sinister like HIM to (nearly) completely ineffectual like the Amoeba Boys and range from more common supervillain tropes like the evil counterparts and enhanced street crime to strange concepts sometimes fitted to the girl's unique nature for superheroes as being little girls, such as The Boogie Man, playing off Bubbles' fear of monsters or Sedusa whose first appearence is her trying to woo the girl's father in disguise so she can keep the Powerpuff Girls from stopping her crimes by acting as their maternal guardian. This is a point that is especially a composite of many smaller examples so hopefully the points gets across by now.

3: While PPG is a show that is made about little girls, it's surpisingly adult in how it handles many topics. It has an episode about misandry and an unrelated episode about misogyny "Equal Fights" and "Members Only", it would have often very brutal action scenes or very dark episodes (Speed Demon is the infamous example). There's also another episode that is filled with nothing but Beatles references. The series has a trait that I really value in media aimed at children in that it doesn't talk down to them. Not only does it encourage an actual child watching to think more, and not only was it annoying even at that age to be condescended too, but it just makes it so much more watch-able as an adult to have a series where it feels like there's something you can get out of it beyond just escapism. In particular and maybe I only notice this because Bubbles is my favorite, but despite the fact that the series seems entirely episodic with only nods to continuity showing clear continuity, there is actually subtle character progression for Bubbles over the course of the series. While she remains over the series the most fearful and naive of her sisters, she goes from taking a baby whale and putting it in their room because she thought he was sad in Helter Shelter to being the one to let Bullet the Squirrel go against her sisters' wishes because she knew it was best for Bullet in Stray Bullet. She also goes from being unable to sleep in the dark from fear in Mommy Fearest to facing her fears to help her sisters in Powernoia. I can tell Blossom and Buttercup similarly develop though I am less able to articulate the ways. 

3 Flaws:

1: After Craig McCracken left the series after the fourth season, the last two seasons changed up and generally not for the better. There are parts of season 5 and season 6 that I like, however the series pacing, which up until this point had been delightfully fast-paced, seriously slowed, and the series started focusing on unpleasent topics like Sun Scream or Pee Pee Gs.

2: Sometimes the series has a really odd perspective on who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Buttercup in particular very often gets the short end of the stick like being mocked for relying on a security blanket, when Bubbles relys on her stuffed friend Octi for security. There's other examples. Bubbles is my favorite but there's one episode where HIM gives the girls a test they have to solve in a certain time and Blossom the smart one gets the worst score and Bubbles is the only one who passes getting a massively higher score and it's really unfair. Now granted it's meant to be a gag, that Bubbles just drew a picture of a flower on her test answer sheet and that somehow were the correct answers but the gag doesn't make sense (even if Bubbles got it by sheer chance you would think Blossom would get a higher score then Buttercup and if HIM was rigging it why did he let Bubbles easily beat the requirement). There's also Mime for a Change, an episode that's mostly a personal favorite but ends with Rainbow the Clown being put in jail even when he wasn't in control of his actions the entire ep. And it wasn't even reckless behavior on his part, he was warped because of a truck accident that he had no control of turning him into a supervillain. 

3: So this is just a pet peeve of mine but it really does annoy me. I really don't like when superhero series depict the "normal" people as incompetent. The mayor is incompetent but that alone would be fine because he's meant to be a comic relief character but almost all of the people of Townsville are regularly depicted as incompetent, especialy later on in the series seeming to regularly turn into an angry mob and get angry the Powerpuff Girls over nothing. There's also another episode where the Powerpuff Girls try to teach the people of Townsville how to help themselves and the entire episode is them being too incompetent to do so. Although I will admit there is one ep where they do save the Powerpuff Girls from their deranged fan Lenny Baxter which was great, though I don't really understand how Lenny beat them in the first place (the PPG don't have any kryptonite-like weakness that would have explained it)

Favorite Part:

My favorite episode is Super-Zeroes where the Girls get obsessed with different comic book superheroes (or a cute manga protagonist in Bubbles case) and essentially attempt to mimic them, making themselves vastly more inefficent and completely destroying their team dynamic and the end of the episode I thought was a very heartwarming message about how you shouldn't try to be a lesser version of someone else but try to play to your own strengths. While the moral has obviously been done, I really happen to like the execution of it in this episode in particular.

2020 Reflection: Yu-Gi-Oh!

 

Yu-Gi-Oh! was written in September 1996 by Kazuki Takahashi. The series features young Yugi Muto who comes into possesion of an ancient Egyptian artifact called the Millennium Puzzle and becomes inhabited by the spirit of an ancient Pharaoh. Yugi strives to help the Pharaoh spirit regain his memories of his past life so he can be put to rest while defeating various villains that want to use the power of the millennium items or other ancient Egyptian forces malevolently. He does through various games, most famously the card game "Duel Monsters" as a modern day equivalent to the ancient battle of spirits performed by Egyptian Sorcerers. I don't know if this was the same for everyone, but back when I was in school, Yu-Gi-Oh! was probably the single unifying series that everyone liked. Yu-Gi-Oh! was like the most hype series ever. And while in particular the anime tended to devolve down to "oh will Yugi draw the one card he needs to beat the bad man with the really scary monster? That monster sure is scary and everything hangs on him drawing the one card that would be useless in most sitatutions that happens to work here" and he draws it and of course as a child this is obviously the most exciting thing in the universe. This is going to be mostly about the manga, which is my preferred version, although most of the points here apply to the anime as well. The anime skipped the first arc and then added a bunch of stuff, some of which I liked but a bunch I wasn't as fond off.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: Yu-Gi-Oh's cast is the best mixture of having a massive presence and being compelling characters I think I've ever seen. Generally speaking series either have characters that are very potent and demand attention on the screen or they are subdued and complex but lack the immediate presence. The manga arguably has 4 arc villains; Kaiba, Pegasus, Malik, and Bakura. Mailk is a brain washing sadist with a dark alternate identity that is even an even more sadisti psychotic killer and he has imo the LEAST presence which should give an idea. Anzu and Honda may not have a huge presence but Yugi and Jonouchi also have their large presences. Yet all these characters also have actually compelling personalities of their own unique sort of flavor ranging from Kaiba's nigh-infinite sense of ego, ambition and sense of misplaced materialistic rationality to Pegasus' camp eccentric jovial mask over his resentful and vindicitive heart to Marik's vengeful and joyfully sadistic tones to Bakura's serious cunning and conniving. The characters both have the tangibility of a real personality while also having the intensity of an archetypal caricature.

2: Yu-Gi-Oh! is amazing at imbue-ing everything that's happening with a sense of immense grandeur and dignity. A lot of battle shonen are "fate of the world" physical fights because that's a really easy way to get the point across that this is a really high stakes thing, but it lacks much personal attachment. Until the last arc, all of the fights in Yu-Gi-Oh! are pretty strictly smaller personal battles done through games ranging from Yugi trying to help his friends, trying to save his grandpa's soul, trying to gather the god cards and avoid being killed by an insane vengeful man who thinks the pharoah killed his father, and all the while trying to help the spirit of "his other self", the pharaoh regain his memories. All of this is imbued with a grandeur or dignity that an end of the world fight would, despite it being, as often memed, a "children's card game". Part of this is the fact that the whole setting is imbued with the inherent mystique of Ancient Egypt which looms over the whole setting. The alien and mystical world of Ancient Egypt lingers like a spirit over the plot events in aesthetic and plot elements, raising the intensity of the scenes. This is helped by the fact that the "other Yugi" early on and later on after his developement, their enemies are quick to elevate the game to the point of physical or psychological damage or even death. The series is masterful at making everything feel immensely important. 

3: The series does a very good job of integrating the literal games being played with both character and thematic development. While it may occasionally might seem a bit unnatural, it's very impactful I found and a great example of how to demonstrate symbolism through the mechanics of what's happening. An example right away as a very clear example of this is during Yugi's duel with Pegasus. After having his toons destroyed, creatures Pegasus reverses as perfect immortal deathless creatures mirroring his obsession with seeing his dead love again, representing Pegasus' jolly cheerful facade Pegasus summons Thousand Eyes Sacrifice, a monster that paralyzes others with it's mystical eyes and forcibly absorbs others, using them as shields, the same cowardly tactics Pegasus uses, using his millennium eye to see into the minds of others and using their loved ones as hostages, trying to take what's not his. He also initiate a game of darkness to tortue young Yugi, his ugly self like Sacrifice being revealed. However Yami Yugi plays Kuriboh, a card seen as totally weak and useless, a tiny monster that represents Yugi that Pegasus the creator of the game can't believe anyone would use and uses Kuriboh's special ability to multiply to cover every eye of Thousand Eyes Sacrifice, just as Hikari Yugi defeated Pegasus' millennium eye strategy. There's a lot of symbolism to this moment but it's a great example of how to integrate symbolism into one's "fights" to make them more satisfying then just an immediate adrenaline rush.

3 Flaws:

1: The second arc of the series, Duelist Kingdom, where they play Duel Monsters version 1 was a long procession of Yugi winning things by weird card interactions the reader wouldn't know about before. I will say this makes more sense in the manga then the anime. In the manga Duel Monsters version 1 is not a "card game" per se but a tabletop game using cards with the computer acting as an automatic Game Master to decide what is and isn't illegal. As such concepts that simply wouldn't be able to translated into a real TCG can be translated under the logic that the computer could rule what is and isn't a sensible idea. This is why you have things like Giant Soldier of Stone destroying the Moon, Launching Gaia the Dragon Champion at Castle of Black Illusions' Floating Ring, and fusing Mammoth Graveyard with Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon. However while it makes more sense that only solves part of the problem. In a fictional competition one generally needs to know the rules completely to try and understand the tactics and what the fictional player's options actually are so there's a sense that a victory is earned and not just anything can happen. While it makes more sense in the manga, the rules are still so open-ended that many of Yugi's victories seem less like clever tactical thinking and moreso cases of "wait, he can do that?" It doesn't help that Yugi's deck most for most of the series does not have the clear cohesive strategies of all his opponents and instead seems to contain mostly random associated cards so he can always draw something that seems just particularly suited to whatever the situation is.

2: Yu-Gi-Oh! is full of jobbers. The only people who ever win a duel are Yugi, Jonouchi, Kaiba and one of the main villains. That's technically an exaggeration although not much of one. There's lots of duelists in the series that are supposed to be really good strong duelists that are just informed traits because they always lose. Mai, Haga, Ryuzaki, Ryota. They never win an on page duel. This might seem like a small complaint but to me in particular it really increases the sense that the protagonist have a level of plot armor because nobody else in the series ever makes these spectacular draws or has a great comeback. Mai almost had one against Malik only to be stopped by sudden because Mai can't read the text on the card (something that no real tournament would allow and is basically only allowed because Kaiba wants to see the God Cards used and doesn't care about enforcing a rule more then that)

3: This is more so a personal taste thing but I would have liked a larger variety of games being played similar to the first arc of the manga. This is one of the few times where I think one of the flaws I am listing I think the original writer would agree.  Kazuki Takahashi seemed to want to focus his manga around games in general and only got roped into writing about duel monsters specifically because it was so popular. In the final arc when he doesn't have to, there's only a small handful of duels and that's about what I would want. I wouldn't want Duel Monsters to not be in the series just that they might play a few games and demonstrate different types of strategy.

Favorite Part:

My favorite part is the ceremonial duel. Each part of it could be analyzed from how Yami Yugi's monsters are all powerful past-oriented monsters representing the pride and strength and dignity of the past and Hikari Yugi's monsters are small and cute and seemingly weak but become stronger either by working together or by growing over time like Hikari Yugi, representing the brimming potential of the future. These two souls learned from each other, Yami Yugi learning gentleness and compassion and Hikari Yugi learning courage and perserverence. Hikari Yugi must defeat his other self to finally lay the spirit to rest and in the end he wins by revealing he had placed monster reborn in the gold sarcophagus, negating Yami Yugi's attempted revival of Osiris. There's so much that could be said about it, how Osiris represents the Pharaoh and how Hikari Yugi recognizing Yami Yugi's goal showing how they have grown to mirror each other's strengths. A perfect example of symbolism and character development demonstrated in the mechanics of the "battle". 

2020 Reflection: Shamanic Princess

 

Shamanic Princess was written in June 1996 by Mami Watanabe, Mitsuru Hongo, and Hiroyuki Nishimura. The series for the majority of it focuses on Tiara, a magical girl agent from the "Guardian World" who came to the Earth to retrieve a magical object of immense power and imporance called "The Throne of Yord" which provides power to Guardian World. Of all my favorite series this one is probably the most obscure, as well as likely the shortest being only six episodes long and most likely the darkest, both in aesthetics and themes. I view Shamanic Princess as a very early precursor to the so-called "dark magical girls" of the 2010s like Madoka Magicka and Yuki Yuna. I've heard some claim these are magical girl deconstructions however to me this seems an overly narrow view of what a magical girl series is; it's much closer in my view to two subgenres the way "super robot" and "real robot" are two subgenres of mecha.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: One of the great purposes of art in my opinion is being able to take intellectual ideas that maybe intriguing but hard to understand or abstract and embed them into narrative so they can more intuitively understood and be emotionally connected too. Shamanic Princess does this with the religious ideas of Gnosticism, a religious sect that claims the god that made the material universe was a malevolent lesser spiritual entity (called the Demiurge), that material existence is an entrapping illusion, and that enlightenment is transcending the material. It also does it with transdualism, the idea of things beyond outside binaries refuting dualism. These are really interesting ideas but by themselves they are a bit intellectually abstract. Shamanic Princess does an amazing job embeding these ideas into it's narrative, so the viewer can get a more intuitively sense of the ideas.

2: Shamanic Princess has an amazing minimalist elegance. Abilities and world building are never explained in an expository scene. These are shown visually through the events. Tiara for instance never stops to explain how her demon summoning works, we simply see her invoke and summon a demon and fuse with it for combat. The series is incredibly direct, lacking any fluff and gets to it's points very elegantly. Everything in SP has a sense of grace and purpose; while nothing is explained, it all feels so deliberate that it gives the impression that everything has meaning behind it. Characterization, character development, action, mystery and thematic importance all are integrated very well without anything feeling extraneous.

3: Speaking of characters, for a series that is only 6 episodes, the characters of Shamanic Princess are all surprsingly well developed, both having distinct personalities and development. Tiara and her ferret-like familiar Japolo make an endearing pair that we follow and every character manages to both fit their role without feeling like just a stereotype that is in the series for neccesity. Every single character has a case to be made for them, and fans, as well as detractors. The series stylistically avoids the usual moralistic take of Magical Girl series and almost every character is morally grey, if not a dark shade of grey. Tiara may be our protagonist but she comes from the dark "Guardian World" which holds different moral standards then us. Likewise even the villain of the piece, a representation of the Demiurge only acts on an eldritch and abstract moral code compared to us, rather then out of traditional malice. 

3 Flaws:

1: While this is a deliberate effect, the world of Shamanic Princess is a highly unpleasent world. It's aesthetic is consistently dark, and it's characters are often sinister or mysterious and ethereal. As such the world of Shamanic Princess feels cold and hostile. While some people are into this, this is not something that naturally appeals to me without other purpose. While I love to think about the world of Shamanic Princess, the world's intellectual attractiveness is rivaled by it's emotional repellence. 

2: There are points in SP where I feel the series is being deliberately confusing to preserve the mystery for longer. The series has an in media res start and after 4 eps, the last 2 eps actually take place before the first 4 eps. That's a relatively low example of this though because there is arguably reasons it's structured like that. However it doesn't help the overall problem where because the series doesn't explain anything, often enough when a character would actually explain something that it feels artifical. For instance Tiara will ask someone who they are and instead of just saying their identity they give a cryptic answer related to non-dualism. I get that it keeps it mysterious and it helps with the themes it's explaining but it feels unnatural and like the series is deliberately trying to be confusing.

3: So much of the series is left to the imagination that many things that are a few things are likely plot contrivances or plot holes, just hidden up by the fact that the series doesn't say. The biggest one imo is the fact that the Throne of Yord is so important that it literally maintains the existence of guardian world and yet Guardian World only sent Tiara and Japolo to retrieve it. Now it makes to send Tiara given she's apparently considered very strong in their world but sending just one person usually requires some explanation. The closest is that maybe they don't know where it is and are investigating different places, thought that opens other problems. There are definitely ways you can explain it; things like "if they send in too many agents, they will lose the element of stealth and Kagestu will flee with the Throne of Yord" but because the series is very devoted to not giving exposition, the kinds of things exposition normally explains just aren't explained.

Favorite Part:

So all of these blogs have spoilers but for this one ESPECIALLY, if you plan to watch this and haven't, this is gonna be a massive spoiler. So my favorite part is the climax of episode 4. Thoughout the series so far we have been shown constant non-dualism symbolism, imagery depicting how there are not actually 2 things but one thing seen from differnet perspectives. Tiara has been consistently trying to ask the Throne of Yord things like "who are you" and "is this reality or dream" and been met with ambigious non dual answers like "I am me" and that there is no difference between truth and false to him as the Demiurge. Tiara realizes that this was what Sara who is also Yord was trying to show her the entire time, that him fighting her and speaking to her as Yord and Sara was that they were not two people but one person, there is no duality between them, just a unity seen from different perspectives. Tiara then gains enlightenment, being one with Yord and Tiara-Yord slays the original "Yord", which was actually from the higher perspective Yord killing the perspective that it was alone by realizing it's own self-companionship. The moment is a complete brain twister and mind-bending in the best way, encouraging you to see the universe from different perspectives, from more cosmic and real perspectives. You realize how limited your thinking can be and what kinds of things you could understand if you only freed your mind from false dichotomy. 

2020 Reflection: Cardcaptor Sakura

 

Cardcaptor Sakura was written in May 1996 by Mangaka group CLAMP. The series premise is young Sakura Kinomoto accidentally unleashing the many "Clow Cards", a large number of spirits themed around elements or basic concepts and daily slice of life adventures where she endevors either to capture a clow card back into it's card after they've caused a disruption to her daily life, or use their abilities to help someone with their powers. Cardcaptor Sakura is by far one of the most well known and popular magical girl series globally with only Sailor Moon and Puella Magi Madoka Magicka able to equal it's global success. The series is among the lightest and most light-hearted of my favorite series; while the premise could in a different type of story easily serve as the premise for an actionary and quite serious story about stopping the chaos of the clow cards, the series is much more slice of life and childish whimsy that ocassionally veers into being suspenseful. I state this not as a positive or negative point, merely as a neutral point to express what this series is like. As one of my the most famous magical girl series however, it is probably expected that this neutral point is executed very well here.

3 Reasons I love it:

Cardcaptor Sakura is a series that is amazing in ways a lot of magical girl series aren't or doesn't even try to be and I would go so far as to say most children's series aren't. 

1: CCS is a series that has a joyful high spirit to it that is incredibly infectious. Much like it's primary character Sakura who is characterized by her optimism and sense of hopefulness, the series takes place in a somewhat idealized world, a world that best exemplifies the natural high spirits of children and their belief in a world of possibilities. CLAMP as a studio has an amazing ability to make the mundane seem just as magical and full of potential and wonder as the actually supernatural elements of the series. For instance, When Eriol is speaking about Tomoyo, Sakura's friend who has no magical abilities, he says that her great power is her intuition, her understanding of the feelings of others. In a less well constructed series this would seem a shallow attempt to make a civilian character seem relevant compared to her more excited main character friend who has the powers. However Eriol's statement which comes quite far into the manga rings so true because Tomoyo's intuition and her ability to understand others has been important at many points of the series. Sakura very often defeats the most mischevious cards not even via magic or strictly via magic but through observation of the thing's properties such as luring Watery into a freezer so it will freeze into ice, supercharing lanterns to create excess light so shadowy will be condensed into one place, or Sakura realizing the Illusion (which had been taking the form of her deceased mother and resided in a lake) was not her mother because her mother wouldn't endanger Sakura's life, even if it means being seperated. Unlike most Magical Girl series where the supernatural is kepy very seperate from the mundane, only mixing for purposes of drama, in CCS the two feed into each other, where magical elements seem normal and mundane things wonderous. 

2: Despite it's childish spirit, CCS has a grace and elegance to it. Sakura at the start of the series is 10 and there are many matter she simply doesn't understand. The series takes time to show little actions of more adult characters or more rarely scenes without Sakura where the character speak with more maturity and on more complex matters. This is partially why it's a series that a child can understand but that one understands on a deeper level as one ages, because it's a series that captures different levels of sophistication as one's comprehension grows. It's an idealistic series but not a purely escapist series meant to bring you to some alternate universe of wholesomeness. Instead it's a series that captures the complexity of life but highlights the most wholesome parts in the foreground and lets the details in the background get filled in by the viewer over time so that the parts in the foreground become more pronounced as they see the bigger picture. The world is filled with details of things of a complex nature like the fact that Sakura's mother passed away and several people close to her blame Sakura's father for it, though they understand that's not really fair. When you get to the age you can understand their emotions better, then it makes it all the more meaningful that Sakura helps to heal their divide. It's also what makes Sakura's development in the series, especially if you grew up with her, feel all the more powerful and downright world-defining. 

3: Also building on the first point, Cardcaptor Sakura has one of, if not the best extended cast of any magical girl series I've ever seen. Very often in magical girl series the civilian characters are there to be used as minor drama pieces or a few quick laughs and then gotten out of the way so the real important part of the series, the magic, can commence. Cardcaptor Sakura's cast, both magical and nonmagical is the point of the series and feel to my surprise every bit as engaging. CLAMP series tend to be on a spectrum of archetypaly potent but simiple characters to fleshed out deep real-feeling but somewhat humdrum. CCS hits the perfect balance as the characters feel both real enough to really exist but potent enough that they can take advantage of being fictional characters. Each character doesn't just have an interesting relationship to Sakura, but usually an interesting relation to most of the other characters. This is actually a major oddity to me. If you know my tastes well you know I usually vastly dislike when a series focuses on civilian drama over the main plot, especially if the plot involves the supernatural. I often ask "If I wanted to watch a soap opera or a slice of life, I would just watch that". Cardcaptor Sakura however shows it doesn't need to be a binary and moreover doesn't even need to feel like segmented parts within the same chapter/episode. It's so good at blending it's parts and so well-integrated that I never feel the desire to skip past the "boring civilian stuff".

3 Flaws:

This is true of almost any series here, but especially here most of the points I am about to give are moreso subjective things that are not my taste, rather then statements of what the writers tried to do and failed.

1: Cardcaptor Sakura lacks a villain within the main series. It goes further then that however; the series's focus is on creating a very light joyful experience and as such many chapters or episodes lack signifigant obstacles or menances. The series will sometimes have a dangerous card, but the series' idealism means there are very few signifigant negative repercussions. Again, this isn't the writers failing to do something and if you want a series like it then it does that in spades. However it can leave the series feeling to me a bit floaty and the lack of tension or massive stakes is not really to my taste. The series does have times when really bad things are threatened to happen; Erase erases most of Sakura's class for instance. However they rarely have a negative impact for very long. Because I love seeing characters I love tested so they can be drawn into their fullest from obstacles, this is not really what I would like. This is why my favorite thing within CCS is the second movie as it is essentially about bringing Sakura to her fullest both as a magician and emotionally

2: The series' focus on an innocent light atmosphere can cause somethings that really should have weight and are real life issues to be treated very lightly. In particular several of the relationship dynamics are of the type that would be a serious issue in real life such as teacher-student relationships or things like the grade-schooler Chiharu's consistent mild physical abuse of her crush Yamazaki played for comedy. The series doesn't treat these things with the seriousness they deserve because that would create a massive tonal problem however they didn't need to put these dynamics in. 

3: The characters in CCS are imo a bit too idealized. Very often they feel rather perfect. That's not to say they don't have character flaws, they very clearly do. However their character flaws are of the type that can be played as comedic and not ones that would cause the characters any serious drama or difficulty. Very often a character will display what is expected to be an important character flaw only for it to be resolved via maybe a small amount of talking and a small act of kindness. Wholesome yes, but at some point it feels a touch artifical. Same with how the child characters in the series sometimes speak or act like adults with more maturity then children their age would ever realistically have. Tomoyo never shows jealousy that her crush Sakura loves first one boy then another and isn't paying her attention, she is happy that Sakura has found someone that made her happy. The girls go to a toy shop and politely make chit-chat with the person running it instead of being all excited to get a stuffed animal. One of the most engaging parts of the series to me is the ending when Sakura thinks she might lost the chance to confess her feelings to Syaoran and is struggling to say them because it's romantic love and she doesn't know what this feeling is or how to express it. It's the time when she most acts her age. 

Favorite Part:

My favorite part is the climax of the second movie, the Sealed Card. Sakura all arc has been struggling to confess her feelings to Syaoran, and has been attempting to stop the Nothing, an actual antagonist force that turns all things it comes to contact with into nothing. The Nothing erases everyone but Sakura recognizes that the Nothing is lonely as it can never have contact with anything else. Sakura reconciles with the Nothing fusing it with the nameless card representing her love for Syaoran and it becomes the Hope, a force strong enough to exist even in Nothingness representing the best of Sakura, her endless optimism and hope and it ties in so wonderfully with her finally being able to confess her feelings to Syaoran. The Nothing had earlier taken his memories and when she thought she had completely lost him she finally tearfully confesses and he responses in kind, the fusing of the Nothing with Sakura's love, literally the blank emptiness that was her feelings of emptiness thinking her loved ones were gone with her love for them restored them all, the hope for a new beginning remaking everything even from nothing. It's such a perfectly classically beautiful moment.