My first anime was probably Rōnin Warriors. To this day, I remember very little of it, and looking at the Wikipedia page I can't believe how relatively short a series it was. It felt like it went on for a long time when I was a kid.
I'd always appreciated anime and cartoons even growing into a young adult, something I still do to this day even though many anime fans would say I'm not really one because I don't watch everything they do, and a lot of the most popular anime series or movies I've not seen (Attack on Titan or Ghost in a Shell, for instance). Things just fit my tastes, and some just don't.
It's like how I've not gone out of the way to see the Underworld series, though I have watched one (that I barely remember, and am not even sure which one) because one of my fraternity brothers had a movie night in his room once.
So, exploring for anime I haven't seen and would actually like, let alone things in live action, has been difficult.
Simultaneously, I have a few things in queue on Hulu and I just haven't allocated time to watch them (notably Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works). So, I have what to watch, I just need to do it.
I'd talked about my musical tastes a few days ago, but it's funny how my tastes can run the gamut. And then, there are sometimes I hear a song completely randomly and it stuns me. And then I can't get enough of it.
I heard "Eternal Eternity" while watching Sailor Moon Crystal. It's probably my favorite of the Sailor Moon songs. I love, as well, how they'd managed to entagle the names Haruka and Michiru grammatically into the song lyrics.
The Count is my favorite Sesame Street character, and I suppose it's partly his OCD. His songs are incredibly catchy, and his songs are the only ones I really know by heart. The other two I know are "The Lambaba" and "The Count Goes To School." They're all so fun!
"WARRIORS" was a jolt. After hearing episode after episode of "Wild Ride" and kind of getting used to that, having this song, which I absolutely love, come on was welcome. It ends up being the theme song that has the most amount of episodes it precedes. I like how they'd played around a little bit with when they'd play it, too. Sometimes they would just start the episode with it. Sometimes they would start the episode, and then have something relatively shocking or pausing happen, and then start "WARRIORS." Other times still, they'd do kind of a "Previously on..." and, usually Anzu or Yugi, they'd narrate and then the theme begins. It's super-catchy.
I'd heard this song as one of those they intersperse PRI's "The World" with as the show goes on. I had to find out what that song was.
I'd heard "Blow" as part of a Vine clip, which was a little annoying. Thankfully, there were people in the comments who were also, like, "What is this song?" and there were people who'd answered it. I can't say I'm an immense Beyoncé fan. I know I've tried to give her some shots. I remember there was a commercial that had runway models walking and I was wondering "What is that?!" It ended up being the beginning of "Girls (Who Runs The World?)". It upset me that the rest of the song wasn't as entrancing as that beginning! I'm glad that "Blow" makes up for it.
I don't even remember how I came on this song. All I know is I'd heard it and was like this is the Metallica I know!!!
Yet another song I'd discovered via a Vine video (and a pleasant juxtaposition was it was a Supernatural fan's video featuring mostly Castiel). "TRKRTRT"!!!
So, that's a little jaunt into some of the music I like. There are lots more!
So this is a throwback from my burgeoning adulthood, a card I'd seen from one of my all-time favorite series Digimon.
A little background for the unaware:
Digimon are digital monsters, creatures that exist in a virtual/computer world that have the ability to evolve into superior forms as their energy increases. In the case of this one, Magnamon, a specific lower-level digimon (often one called Veemon) takes hold of something called a digimental (an ancient power object, essentially) and evolves into Magnamon, one of the most powerful digimon in existence.
As a rule of anime in general, whenever there are named attacks, the attacker (often a good guy and often the leader-type) has 必殺技 (hissatsu waza, or a “sure-kill attack”), an attack that completely disarms, makes harmless, or destroys the target.
In the English versions of the cards (and in the anime dub), they've interpreted Magnamon's sure-kill attack to be "Magna Blast". For the record, though, I've included the image of an original Japanese card to show what the original name of the attack is, bringing me to the point of this post.
Anime has been a hot-button topic for a lot of people because the Japanese creators of these manga/shows often seem to have blissful ignorance of what the things they create might mean to audiences outside Japan, or how sensitive they might be to it (at least until the late 90's to early 2000's when it really took off internationally).
I mean, I don't think many Japanese had even thought about jihadism until the IS/ISIS/ISIL agent "Jihadi John" beheaded two of their citizens recently, so Magnamon's "Japanese-language" attack (even though it is, essentially, borrowed English) would barely phase them whereas the rest of the world would probably be in an uproar because of it.
Magnamon's sure-kill attack is エクストリーム・ジハード.
Literal translation into English is "Extreme Jihad."
Expansion: I have been remiss to mention the character of Magnamon is a holy warrior in the card mythology.
This half-season of two shows I like, Teen Wolf and Supernatural, decided to take different tacks than what I've known them to do: they've taken elements of foreign mythologies and made plot points out of them.
And for some reason, while I'd enjoyed that fact, it felt a little weird at first. Thinking about that underlying reaction, I had to reflect about that because I also happen to be a somewhat-passionate anime fan. Anime, the animated Japanese-originate phenomenon, often borrows elements from non-Japanese and Japanese mythology and history (often the former) to drive their stories, and it's never felt odd.
One of my favorite anime series is Digimon, and there are thousands of digimon that have names coming from all kinds of sources. For example, you have Sakuyamon, coming from Japan, Wolfmon (pronounced 'vollfmon'), from Germany, and Shinduramon, from India. Another favorite series, The Big O, borrows highly in style and feel from the American cartoon Batman: The Animated Series. Yet with Teen Wolf, bringing in kitsune, oni masks, and demon warriors into the werewolf and coyote spirit mix, and Supernatural having in its most recent episode a Peruvian/Andean beast called a pishtaco, it felt weird for the first couple seconds hearing it.
Might it have been because Teen Wolf and Supernatural, for the majority of their histories, have used United States-based (more or less) creatures, beasts, and myths? That's more than likely probable. Bringing in other bits so late into the game might have been a little jarring, though the anthropology major in me jumps for joy at the chance to learn different aspects of other culture's artefacts and how American writers use them in their creations as much as learning that one of the Pokémon, Ooper, looks like the Mexican amphibian the axolotl.
It might be as well that one's imagination can accept animated series bringing in other myths more easily than a series with human actors. I suppose I should stay tuned to see what other shows I like start importing things, especially the live action ones.
I'm one of those people who always has to have a proper name for everything, and if there's a distinguisher I'm always searching for ways to bring that out in speech. Ever since Sailor Moon was in my consciousness and something that I could spout facts about I had come up with a scheme to refer to her various transformations into Sailor Moon based on the brooch/item she uses. I grant it, though, they'd started calling her differently by the time Sailor Moon Super came around to the chalice use time.
Still...
She starts with this one. And with this I call her Prism Sailor Moon.
She moves on to this, and so I call her Crystal Sailor Moon.
When being Crystal Sailor Moon wasn't enough, she became Cosmic Sailor Moon.
Then with the Holy Chalice, they'd started calling her Super Sailor Moon. This is where the spice starts.
She loses the chalice, and by SuperS, she gains a new brooch and they still call her Super Sailor Moon, but because it's a different form of transformation - and me being anal-retentive - I have to distinguish the Super Sailor Moons. So, the Holy Chalice one is Crisis Super Sailor Moon (or even Messiah Super Sailor Moon), while the transformation with the crisis compact yields Moon Crisis Super Sailor Moon (or even more concisely Golden Super Sailor Moon [since it was Pegasus's Golden Crystal that transformed the cosmic compact into the crisis compact anyway]).
Finally, she becomes Eternal Sailor Moon, something Naoko-san had already come up with.
Not surprisingly, I'd used the words she recites to transform as guides to what I call the Sailor Moon form, and it works well enough. I don't know if anyone else actually does it, but I've always liked this system, and now looking at the renderings the DeviantArtist SayurixSama had done, I'm really now seeing some of the details on the brooches I'd never noticed before, especially the eternal brooch.
Well, enough of that. To bed, because I actually have an interview in the morning...
