Anime

Kill la Kill – Feminism, Sexuality… Revisited

Selie 4 Comments

I don’t know if anyone else does this but every now and then, I go back and reread my articles I’ve written.  It’s not for any narcissistic reason. (Though, that’s exactly what a narcissist would say.) I’m not sure if it could be a smaller side effect of my anxiety disorder, but it’s more for fear.  I get so nervous that something I’ve said before will come back and haunt me. Other times, I worry that I’ve written something I completely disagree with now or, just as bad, that I’ve written it so poorly, that my ideas could be misconstrued or actually are terrible in some way.  To be fair, thanks to Facebook constantly bombarding me with “Your posts from 9 years ago!” reminders, I feel I have my reasons to get nervous about what I’ve said in the past. Hot damn, high school me was a dumb shit.

mako1

Me gesturing to my dumb-ass past self.

The article I constantly go back to more than any other, though, is my Kill la Kill article, my very first one I ever wrote for this blog and the one that started the whole dang project of The Backloggers.  I think this one, more than anything, I get so nervous about. For one, it’s been one of the single most trafficked articles for our blog, and has been referenced not only in the blogosphere but also on Reddit as well as on a Chinese forum discussing Western and Eastern ideas about sexism.  Which… HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?! The Internet is amazing!

However, that’s what scares me.  Even after I wrote it, I didn’t feel as hot about it compared to how I wanted it to be.  And as time has gone on, I constantly think back to what I said, particularly when it comes to the themes of objectification and sexism versus equal treatment and empowerment.  And I’m still not sold. Kill la Kill, to me, has been really complicated in that I feel it does so many genuinely cool and amazing things, particularly when it comes to multiple badass female characters that are so different from each other and fun to see be the leads in a fighting genre anime.  However, while at the time of writing it, I tried to have a good answer for various scenes in the show, looking back, it’s a problematic piece on the whole.  And after recently reading a discussion about these very same feelings from someone else, I finally caved in and decided I needed to review my earlier ideas.

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May 2018 Monthly Content Round-up

thebackloggers 5 Comments

Hey, Mythos here.  May kinda came and went for me way too fast.  I’m still balancing multiple things in my life, which unfortunately also hit a couple of us here at The Backloggers at the same time so I want to apologize for the lack of content recently.  We’re gonna try and push through this, most likely becoming master jugglers by the end of it, joining the circus, and amazing all with our incredibly skill and dexterity… Or we could just write a few articles.  That works too.

Anyways, in the meantime, other people have been going full ham and we wanna share some of that good, good stuff out there with you.  Definitely gives these a look ‘cause we got some hot takes here, and they’re comin’ atcha fast!

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3D Kanojo 3 + 4 – Love, Insecurity, and Other Such Things

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3D Kanojo got off to a fascinating start in the first two episodes, giving us some perspective and a view into our awkward, complicated romantic leads Tsutsui and Igarashi. It was a pretty solid foundation, in my opinion, to base the rest of the show off of, and episodes 3 and 4 have both proved to have not dropped the bar of quality that has been set for the show thus far. While the first two episodes acted as a primer of sorts, episodes three and four focus quite heavily on the ways in which insecurities can develop on all sides of a new, burgeoning romance, how they can complicate issues between partners, and ultimately how people can respond to those issues in healthy, trusting ways.

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3D Kanojo 1 + 2 – Brick by Brick

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3D Kanojo, on the surface, isn’t exactly a show we haven’t seen before. At first glance, it appears to follow the archetypical show/book/etc. formula of “nerdy boy finds love through beautiful girl”, a trope which, obviously, is fairly problematic. But there is far more to this show going on below the surface. From these first two episodes, we find that, in fact, it has so far come to us as a show about harmful misconceptions, and how looking beyond them can lead to genuine, satisfying relationships. While there’s a lot that we could focus on for a discussion of this show, I want us to look specifically at our main characters, Hikari Tsutsui and Iroha Igarashi, and the fascinating, complex spaces that they inhabit.

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Log Time General Podcast #14 | Beginning of Spring 2018 — We Never Fall in Love (with Spring Anime)

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This week on the Log Time Podcast, we combat the veritable wasteland that is the Spring 2018 anime season. We discuss a few solid shows that knocked (or boxed) our socks off, a solid smattering of “meh”-worthy works, and contend with the general sense of anime ennui that comes from having a season try to follow up the Winter 2018 season. Also, Kyle dies. He will be missed until the next podcast.

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

This podcast was recorded on April 27th, 2018.

April 2018 Monthly Content Round-up

thebackloggers 2 Comments

Another month of anime has passed which means it’s time for a whole bunch of articles talking about all dat sweet, sweet animation goodness.  Interestingly, it hasn’t all been about this current season, with a wide spread of really great stuff about classics as well as seasons past. Some good stuff here on top of the already active discussions on the current season and all the new anime coming out.  It’s a fun time to be an anime fan, really. Even if we argue over the specifics, it’s great to see so many different opinions all wanting to celebrate a really great and interesting medium. Let’s dive into some of ‘em!

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[Season Sampler] Megalo Box 1+2 – I Know the Ride, but it’s Still Fun

Selie Leave a comment

If there’s nothing else that should be taken from this article, the tl;dr of all of this is:

Just because I know the destination and can name all the stops along the way doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the ride, especially when the train is this freaking jazzed up.

Megalo Box is a reimagining Ashita no Joe, taking its classic story of the underdog boxer and setting it in a near future version of Japan where the rich live in a beautiful utopia while the poor exist in sprawling slums outside the city and aren’t even considered citizens.  Junk Dog, our Joe of this series, makes a living convincingly losing matches to payback his coach’s debts to a crime lord. We see him battered and bruised, sick of this life but stuck without a way to make things better, especially given that as part of the poor class, he’s unable to get a citizen’s license, meaning he’s not even considered a citizen of this world.  He spends his days recklessly driving until he accidentally almost runs over the head of a large corporation who is in charge of a new league of boxing sport called Megalonia. Junk Dog, due to his love of old fashioned Megalo Boxing, hates the ideas behind Megalonia and tells off this business woman, causing her prized boxer and devotee, Yuuri, to almost fight him before he is called off.  Because Yuuri is still upset about this, he later gets a match with Junk Dog in the illegal boxing ring Dog calls home and defeats him brutally. Junk Dog wants a rematch immediately but Yuuri says he will only fight him again if he can fight him in his own Megalonia ring. This kickstarts the journey of Junk Dog to get into Megalonia and get his revenge on Yuuri.

[HorribleSubs] Megalo Box - 02 [1080p].mkv_snapshot_04.38_[2018.04.16_02.46.58]

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Log Time General Podcast #13 | End of Winter 2018 — After the Winter Anime

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I really can’t tell you what happened with this one, but this week on the Log Time Podcast, we lose our collective minds and have a ton of fun with this wrap-up of the Winter 2018 anime season. We unintentionally cover what were this season’s big three shows, get *deep* into a discussion of Violet Evergarden, and get hype about a few other solid picks from the season, such as After the Rain and Hakumei to Mikochi. Among other things, we also (sort of) hold an airing of grievances at the end of the cast, and we try to help Matt pronounce “hnnnnnnng”.

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

This podcast was recorded on April 6th, 2018.

Violet Evergarden 13 – Letters Written, Burdens Lifted

generaltofu 1 Comment

Violet Evergarden’s final episode is an episode largely of catharsis, and it is one that I, and many others, have wrestled with. In many ways, it brings us to the logical conclusion of the show, or rather to the stopping point for this portion of Violet’s story that we receive. In truth, I have watched this episode numerous times over, mulling its events over in my head, and it has been a process of numerous revisions to how I have come to finally view this last piece of Violet’s story (for now, anyway). Through this, I have found that my thoughts have changed significantly in more recent viewings. This final episode, depending on your reading of events, can be quite clear-cut on the surface, or somewhat more muddied as you dive deeper into it. It does give Violet a great sense of closure, a lifting of burdens, a renewed sense of self and purpose, and a renewed vigor to live her life. But that vigor for a life that she has fought tooth and nail for over the course of this season, again, depending on your reading, can manifest as either a genuine sense of moving on, or it can be somewhat tainted, if it is read as a vigor to live her life for Gilbert; no longer in pursuit of him, but to live life waiting for him, should he be alive. I want to talk about the two as we go forward here, because through my viewings of this final act, I have come to see both.

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Violet Evergarden 11 + 12 — An Outburst of Feelings

Owningmatt93 2 Comments

Violet Evergarden continues to surprise me on several different levels, pulling out some of the biggest emotional gut-punches that I’ve seen from a single anime in a while. While other anime of Winter 2018 such as A Place Further Than the Universe have also had some huge emotional moments, I think Violet Evergarden has one over every show of the season, especially with some of the previous episodes and how they’ve ended. The show is still far from perfect though, and while I still love the show dearly, it’s obvious where some of its problems lie within these two episodes.

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