Wake the Sun

Hey, I'm in a thing!

I've been very quietly involved with the Fandomspotting broadcast (all zanzando's fault) and yesterday was my first turn on an episode. It's about 'the best anime/manga you're [the english speaking fandom] not reading/watching' and it's full of great panelists (including Melinda from MangaBookshelf) and also me. You should check it out!

We were joking before the broadcast that it felt like exams, with the nerves and the prep and the copious notes. And I did... okay, I guess? I completely, completely flubbed my bit on Hayate x Blade, but everything else went well enough.

Fortunately, I have my Hayate x Blade Guide to Idiots post to fall back on - if you're interested in a hilarious, action packed, girl filled, explicitly queer manga of amazing, you should go read it.

( Random observations on the broadcasting experience. )

I'm putting my money on copperbadge's latest post spawning a wave of fannish reminesance - it's certainly got me trying to pinpoint my transition from 'geek' to 'fannish geek'.

My first con was Anime Expo 2000 when I was 15, but I'm pretty sure I was reading fic before that. I must have started just after discovering manga/anime, which lead to buying Japanese language manga which lead to fan translations* which led to the great wide Internet. I got the second issue of Animerica Extra when it hit the stands, that was pretty close to the start, so we'll call it 1998. 14 years. Half my life.

God, who here remembers Animerica Extra? And the fight over flipped manga? And getting tapes through the fansub underground? Oh man, and YYH DJs in English, that site changed my life. And Talya Firedancer and White Cat and Bishonenink and Ruaki**. And sex scenes being called lemons. And memorizing the different Gundam Wing pairings (1x2 vs 2x1, 3x4, and my beloved rarepair 2x5). And the RanmaxRyoga archive.

I'm trying to remember when I started transitioning to media fandom - some time in collage, I think. Probably with Harry Potter, there were a lot of anime fans writing for it. Or maybe Sleeps With Coyote's stuff? She was branching out around that time.

The two people I've followed the longest, at least 9 years*** continuously, are copperbadge and chirart. That's... amazing. Surreal, but amazing.

*ahaha, which I used to print out and keep in massive binders, so I could have them in one hand and the manga in the other. The days before scanslations were dark days.

**who I sent my ~first ever fanfic~ when she running a Pokemon archive. I am intensely grateful she turned me down.

***shit, nepenthe, isn't that about when we met? Late 2003/2004? 9 years of epic friendship.

I watched episodes 1 and 2 of Gintama at some point in my Mouretsu Pirates marathon. It was funny and I liked the characters and holy shit, was this scifi? How had I missed this was scifi? I made a note to watch more.

Then pseudo_tsuga linked me to a primer and an episode guide, because she knows an easy mark when she sees one. The primer says the first two episodes suck in comparison to the rest of the series, which I thought was strange - they were pretty good for a shonen show. So I watched another episode. And another, and - look, CrunchyRoll automatically loads the next episode, okay? If you're watching from the couch you have to get up to it stop and why do that when you could watch more Gintama instead?

Turns out the first two episodes do suck in comparison.



Gintama is magical. It's stupid and funny and gross and heartwarming and clever and meta and I love it to pieces. It's shot up as one of my favorite things and there are 200 more episodes to go (and counting!), can we maintain this kind of momentum?

( There is no answer, only picspam. OR Why you should watch this show! )

Gintama's not perfect - there are lots of ladies, but it doesn't pass the Bechdel test very often (though it's been getting better!). There's stalking played as a running gag. There's a kinky character that's played for laughs. There's an episode about trans* and genderqueer people that aims for a positive portrayal and gets about 80% there (trans*/genderqueer people are strong and to be respected, but they can't be attractive). There are no PoC who aren't Japanese (yet. I've seen screencaps with black characters from later episodes, so I'll report back). And in practical terms, you'll miss a lot if you're not familiar with Japanese history and pop-culture.

But on the whole, it's an excellent show. All of the characters are fantastic, the women get to be cool/gross/violent as often as the men, everyone gets character development. There's just enough drama to keep the comedy from getting stale and the drama is really good. It's meta as hell. It pokes fun at its genre. It constantly breaks the fourth wall. It has a canon high school AU. It has amazing voice acting. It has an infinite amount of heart (and dick jokes).

In conclusion:






Whew. Now that's out of the way, I can start spamming you with episode reactions.

You guys you guys you guys. Shinichiro Watanabe's directing a new show. Shinichiro Watanabe as in Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo's Shinichiro Watanabe. And Yoko Kanno's doing the music. And it's about music, and jazz, and coming of age in 1960's Japan, and also looks super gay. Like legit canon gay.

It's called Sakamichi no Apollon / Kids on the Slope and you can watch the trailer here. It starts in April, yesssssss.

Volume one of Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V are out! You can buy 'em from a local indie bookstore via Indiebound (US) or at the Book Depository (International, free shipping, priced the same as Amazon). Wooooooo!

And while we're talking about awesome manga, volume 1 of Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko) is out and volume 2 is on preorder. I picked up volume 1 at Comic Con and it's gorgeous.

* We had Storms last night, including several tornadoes on the ground and hail everywhere, but the damage was relatively light. Made for an intense evening, though.

* I finished watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It was amazing - up until the end I was explaining it (mostly to my roommates) as a show about the cost of miracles, but that's almost completely incorrect.

* Relatedly, my shiny new Utena boxset arrived! I'm torn between starting on it, watching Princess Tutu for the first time, or rewatching Static Shock. Or all three, I suppose.

* Booked my flight to ComicCon! nepenthe and I are going to rock San Diego. Plus it'll be nice to almost-home again.

* Roommate D got a kitten. Her name is Sassafras and she's adorable.

* My parent's are fostering a mom-dog and her litter of 11 (11) puppies, which brings them up to 12 babies with another on the way. Babies! Babies everywhere!

* scifi_fest has 4 days left for prompts. If you're thinking about participating (and you can leave prompts without needing to signup for fanworks later), now's a good time. Also! If you know of a community where I could promote the fest, please let me know.

Finally watched episode 7 of Tiger & Bunny (which you should watch, even if you're not into anime or superheroes) and holy shit, we're getting plot on top of the shiny punching? JOY.

Also, while Kotetsu/Bunny Batman Barnaby is understandably the fandom OTP, what I really want is Nathan/Keith. Or Nathan/Antonio. Whatever gets Nathan laid, basically, especially if the other guy is the totally smitten pursuer.

Seriously, this man deserves it.

A couple of links:

* Al Jazeera's 'Disaster in Japan' live blog for March 15th (previous days linked in the post)

* On Good.is: Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan: How to Help

* Nuclear energy 101: Inside the "black box" of power plants. Also, Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation.

* Al Jazeera's spotlight on Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, and Algeria.

~*~

There's more - sweet baby bunnies, there's more - but I'm not in a good headspace for going over it right now. Let's talk about TV instead.

I've been faithfully watching Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko) since Crunchy Roll started airing it and folks, let me tell you, this show is amazing. Amazing. You should click on that link and watch it (it's free!).

Wandering Son's a lovely, slow, slice of life story about trans kids in Japan - growing up, struggling with identity, and love, and family, and friendship, and puberty. It's gorgeous, beautifully animated and acted and full of sympathetic characters and, just [flails].



Let's move on to something I can talk about coherently, shall we? My roommate D and I spent Saturday afternoon burning through both seasons of The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers and, well. Never have I seen that much Awesome and that much Fail packed into the same space.

The basics: LXD (for short) is a webseries that runs on Hulu. It's about dancers! There's a nominal plot, but mostly it's about showing off the work of some incredible artists.

The awesome: The vast majority of the characters are people of color - something like 13 out of 19 of the reoccuring characters (in the first season). Ditto for the background dancers (though I didn't go back and count, heh). Every single one of them is a fucking amazing dancer. We've got b-boying, we've got ballet, tricking, krumping, hip-hop, roboting, popping, tap... all integrated into the environment and the (again, nominal) plot. There's no special effect or wire work, everything's shot on location, the cinematography is beautiful. Also, there is Harry Shum, Jr.

The fail: The show is really, really, really bad with woman. Only 3 of the aforementioned repeating characters are female, only two of them are dancers (there are more in the background, but not many). All three are love interests/plot devices and, ugh. In the 7th episode of season 1 (S1Ep7), one of them literally has control of her body stolen by a dude in a sequence that should come with a trigger warning. The only all-female dance routine (S2Ep5) is all about how women seduce and kill men, good times. There's also some messed up race stuff (especially the Eaters in S2Ep3 - black demons, really?) and ablism (the psychiatric hospital scenes, especially in S2Ep8). There's also a weird weaponization of dance/art that I'm iffy about.

The neutral: The writing is terrible - they basically threw a bunch of Cool Stuff (chi chakra Ra! Secret organizations! Boarding schools! The occult! Love triangles! Etc!) at a wall to see what would stick. The end of season 2 is so hilariously bad it comes out into awesome. The acting's not great either, but most of these guys are dancers, not actors.

So. If you want to watch a bunch of amazing, often adorable and/or attractive dudes dance and can ignore the fail (and the plot), LXD's worth a look. If nothing else, you should catch Harry Shum, Jr's intro chapter (he shows up at 1:08, dancing starts at 2:20):



Why is there no fanfic for this, fandom? I am disappoint.

Oh snap, almost forgot - I'm planning to start The Radical One Piece Read-a-thon* (volumes 1-3) next Wednesday at 3pm, same as the HikaGo reread. Because I am a creature of habit. A flexible creature of habit - let me know if that time slot doesn't work for you and we'll figure out a better one.

WOOHOO, ONE PIECE!

* I gotta amuse myself somehow.

I'm giving away two of the Hayate X Blade Omnibus 1, which collects volumes 1-3 of the Hayate X Blade manga. Because Hayate X Blade is my favorite and I want more people to read it and I want Seven Seas to continue releasing the series.

So comment here and in five-ish hours (9pm US Central) I will draw names out of a hat and notify the two lucky recipients. Anyone can comment - I'll be buying from Better World Books for US winners and The Book Depository for international winners, hurray for free shipping :D - just make sure to use OpenID or sign your name if you don't have a DW account.

Let me know if you have any questions!

EDIT: the giveaway has ended - congrats to the_future_modernes and waywren!