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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 11:08 pm Reply with quote
Not sure why Zac would expect the Berserk movies to be good. The production values on those things looked terrible enough in the trailers.
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Doodleboy



Joined: 23 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 11:25 pm Reply with quote
lkmjr wrote:

I really did enjoy PMMM the first time I saw it, but the longer I think about it, the more uncomfortable with it I become. Even with the ending, which spoiler[isn't nearly as positive as it's given credit for. Almost nothing actually changes. Madoka rescues puella magi before they become witches, but otherwise she doesn't change a single thing about the Incubators' system, which is still built around deceiving young girls into making wishes which will turn sour on them, ripping their souls from their bodies, and allowing them to either die quickly in combat or slowly of despair and corruption. And Madoka gives up everything for this!] The show spends episode after episode torturing little girls and crapping on everything magical girls stand for, then at the eleventh hour it tries to tack a smiley face on the end so that you don't feel bad about enjoying it.


There was a point about that as well. Madoka is a tragedy in story structure terms.

What happens in a tragedy? A great person has a fatal flaw which is destined to cause her downfall.

spoiler[Madoka is that great person, despite being completely average, has entire timelines folded around her. Her tragic flaw is that she will always selflessly sacrifice herself, she'll always have hope for a better world.

And that flaw is destined to cause her downfall, whether she gets killed, or transformed into a witch, or lose her entire existence.

No matter how many times Homura tries to save her. No matter how many magical girls she sees fall into despair and killed. No matter how much the world preaches for her to just look after herself, her hope will never be destroyed. She will always fight for a better future.]


And that's the flip-side to the cynicism that the show holds. Yes, the world is a bad place. Idealistic people get crushed by the system all the time and forced to compromise to reality, sometimes to the point of being monsters.

But it is still necessary to act on that idealism and hope. Because that's what makes the world better, that is what causes progress.

spoiler[Kyubey makes a point that it was the hope and sacrifice of magical girls in the past that made Madoka's world. Without it humanity will still be in the stone age, not having the imagination to move forward to a better future. Or they'd be like Kyubey, completely amoral.

And the world Madoka made isn't perfect. There are new monsters killing humans. Magical girls are still locked into an endless combat. They still lose their souls in the contract process.

But did Madoka make the world a better place? Yes, she did. Her sacrificed may have not made a perfect world, but it made a better one. And that's worth something.]
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ailblentyn



Joined: 28 Mar 2009
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Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney
PostPosted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 11:46 pm Reply with quote
Interesting hearing the discussion of The Wind Rises. Honestly, I couldn't disagree more with Zac about "whitewashing". The ominous mood and context was there all the time.
My take was that the film wanted to feel the contradiction between the conviction that art is worthwhile and the dreadful real-world uses of art. Just feel that contradiction, rather coming out on one side rather than another, or solving the contradiction somehow.
I would love to see it again.
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lkmjr



Joined: 21 Jun 2008
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Location: Austin, Texas
PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 12:13 am Reply with quote
@Doodleboy: spoiler[Yeah, it's worth "something," but it's not worth nearly enough to balance out the other 11 lovingly animated episodes of girls suffering and breaking down. It's awesome to celebrate every little victory as one more step towards an ultimate goal, but PMMM treats its little victory like crossing the finish line. You're supposed to feel satisfied with the ending; even though it doesn't give you everything, it's supposed to be enough. This is particularly disgusting given the existence of real-life systems which profit off of the abuse and manipulation of girls and women; can we really afford to fix just one aspect of such a system and then stop trying?]

Sorry about the spoiler post, everything here felt too sensitive to leave un-hidden.
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Doodleboy



Joined: 23 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 12:25 am Reply with quote
lkmjr wrote:
@Doodleboy: spoiler[Yeah, it's worth "something," but it's not worth nearly enough to balance out the other 11 lovingly animated episodes of girls suffering and breaking down. It's awesome to celebrate every little victory as one more step towards an ultimate goal, but PMMM treats its little victory like crossing the finish line. You're supposed to feel satisfied with the ending; even though it doesn't give you everything, it's supposed to be enough. This is particularly disgusting given the existence of real-life systems which profit off of the abuse and manipulation of girls and women; can we really afford to fix just one aspect of such a system and then stop trying?]

Sorry about the spoiler post, everything here felt too sensitive to leave un-hidden.


I'd argue that the ending was not happy but bittersweet. The world of the series is set up so that there is no unequivocal victory. Every new innovation and progress will cause more problems and the fight for a better world is an endless one.

And nobody "stops trying". It's important that in the ending that they are still fighting against the forces of despair. It's not about a perfect ending or a finish line. It's about human heroism and human struggle.

The reason Madoka made the choice that she did was not only to preserve the progress of those who came before her, but to allow those who come after her to keep going.

No the world won't be perfect. But don't give into cynicism and despair. Fight to make it better and keep on fighting.
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lkmjr



Joined: 21 Jun 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:57 am Reply with quote
Doodleboy wrote:
And nobody "stops trying". It's important that in the ending that they are still fighting against the forces of despair. It's not about a perfect ending or a finish line. It's about human heroism and human struggle.

That would be fine, but the real villain of the series was never the forces of despair, it was always Kyubey and its system. The puella magi are still fighting to improve the universe at their own expense, still being exploited by a system that they no longer appear to be trying to change.

Self-sacrifice is emphasized in far too many stories about girls; girls are constantly pushed to put the needs and desires of others before their own. In the ending, self-sacrifice is applauded; throughout the rest of the series, "selfishness" is punished. The girls are literally punished for having wishes, including such outrageous demands as "I want to survive." It's apparently not enough that Mami pays for her wish by becoming a puella magi, so she is also subjected to isolation and loneliness (if only she had wished for her family to survive, too). Breaking her punishment by finally finding a friend leads to Mami becoming overconfident and getting killed within minutes. Every single one of the girls' wishes comes with a similar pricetag or blows up in their faces eventually.

Girls are punished for trying to have things. Girls are exploited and sacrificed for the greater good. The way that Urobuchi makes his point is sexist, plain and simple.
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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 4:01 am Reply with quote
lkmjr wrote:
Girls are punished for trying to have things. Girls are exploited and sacrificed for the greater good. The way that Urobuchi makes his point is sexist, plain and simple.

That is the dumbest way to look at PMMM I've seen so far. You have to TRY HARD to twist things into that. I'm amazed how people see what they want to see, and then make up all sorts of crap to justify it.
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Galap
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 4:19 am Reply with quote
You know what, Zac's comments about Evangelion made me able to verbalize in a concise and specific way the main reason I don't like it, and it's specifically what Zac praises it for: that it wasn't really so much about the science ficiton, rather the characters' past personal trauma. Because to me, at the end of the day, real science fiction themes are much loftier than things about some characters and their trauma and their feelings.

The power of science ficiton is that you can explore things that you couldn't wihtout using those metaphors, and it can be on a great multitude of levels beyond mere interpersonal stuff. Evangelion could have done so many interesting things with what it had going. It could have been about the changes to people's interactions and behaviors in general after humanity came under attack from an outside force. It could have been about what it meant for the two types of life seed to come into contact prematurely, and why their designers tried to prevent that occurrence, or what kind of test life must pass to prove its worth and achieve apotheosis. It could have been about what it's really like to have to fight an alien war (somehow to me it surprisingly didn't really even attempt this one). It could have been about coming to an understanding of completely unfamiliar types of life. It could even have been about what it is about our society that causes these traumuas to happen and why people respond to them the way they do.

But it didn't really go there. All it really ended up being about was some people who had emotional problems because their parents were dead or absent. Don't get me wrong, a story about that kind of thing can be compelling, it can be an interesting backdrop to something else or something entertaining as an experience, but almost every time I see it done (Eva included) it's so damn ham fisted and self-righteous about it, and it really puts me off.

I have the same problem with a lot of other stuff that is held in high regard for similar reasons. For example, I recently watched some Satoshi Kon movies, Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress. They were fun to watch, and I'd even call them good, but at the end they felt pretty hollow. They had beautiful animation, compelling characters, exquisite storyboarding and presentation, interesting interleaving of elements from different contexts (the insanity and reality in PB and the film and reality in MA).

So you're a work of fiction and you want to be something I really like. Say you have all of those things I just mentioned. Cool. I'm entertained. What else can you do? Can you make me think about things in a way I never have before? Can you really make me understand something about the universe, or people, or societies, or anything really, that I never did before?

The things that really get me going also do these things, and to me it's pretty sad that stuff that's going for that is so rare. I think it's because it's really just not what anyone else wants.


Last edited by Galap on Sun Apr 20, 2014 4:27 am; edited 1 time in total
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Aylinn



Joined: 18 Nov 2006
Posts: 1684
PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 4:26 am Reply with quote
Oh dear! I thought some time ago that Madoka can be interpreted as a sexist anime and wondered if someone will come up with it. Not that I support it. First and foremost, I think PMMM has poor characterization, basically a bunch of cute girls who are there to fall, often thoughtlessly, into troubles to arouse pity in the viewers.

It makes me wonder how long it would have taken an intelligent and charismatic girl like Hajime form Gatchaman Crowds to kick Kyubey's ass and solve the problem.
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mdreura



Joined: 04 Nov 2010
Posts: 106
PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 5:04 am Reply with quote
Galap wrote:
So you're a work of fiction and you want to be something I really like. Say you have all of those things I just mentioned. Cool. I'm entertained. What else can you do? Can you make me think about things in a way I never have before? Can you really make me understand something about the universe, or people, or societies, or anything really, that I never did before?


For the sake of symmetry, I'd like to echo your own point of view right back at you and point out that in the same way that more traditional science fiction anime like Space Adventure Cobra and Galaxy Express 999 stimulate the imagination to look at civilizations, worlds and universes in new and surprising ways, more contemporary shows and moves like Eva, Satoshi Kon's films and PMMM stir emotional responses in me personally that give me new and surprising kinds of insights about myself and other people around me as thinking, feeling, conflicted individuals.

I don't think think either approach has a monopoly on storytelling power, as a matter of fact I'd like to think the objective of both is more similar than different. There's no accounting for taste, but if we remind ourselves to be open-minded to different styles of anime storytelling, maybe we serve our imaginations better all around? My two cents.
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invalidname
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 6:16 am Reply with quote
Mudkips wrote:
Edit: Anyways, on the whole "Madoka is sexist" thing. The post I see getting linked the most is this one. Basically, the argument is that it's moe tragedy porn that victimizes its protagonists and punishes them for wanting power so the viewers can beat off to them, which... well, it seems like a pretty disingenuous interpretation of the material that disregards the ending by its own admission, to be honest.

OSEG, I feel really sorry for people who think like that. They're going to miss out on a lot life has to offer.

When I thought about gender issues in Madoka, I was reminded of Melville's short story "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids", which is a sketch of two scenes: a comfortable gentlemen's club, contrasted with the wretched working conditions at a factory mill. While the go-to interpretation of the mill is as a comment on industrialization, it's a far more effective metaphor for the burden of women (calling back all the way to Eve in the Bible): the women at the mill take exactly nine minutes to produce paper, which is explicitly described as tabula rasa, like the newborn's impressionable mind. The point of the story being: without the suffering of women (to bear children), the human race doesn't exist. This is exactly the point of Kyubey's "living in caves" speech to Madoka: without the systematic exploitation of teen girls, humanity never develops beyond hunter-gatherers. (And that gets you back to PMMM's Faust references, as one of Göethe's main themes (often forgotten in pop culture) is that whatever you think of his choices, humanity depends on the destructive ambition of people like Faust to move forward.)

So, if identifying the fundamental exploitation of women and bringing it out in an evocative analogy is itself sexist… wow, we're going to have to throw out a whole lot of literature and entertainment. Good on ya, Tumblr.
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Mudkips



Joined: 09 Apr 2014
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 10:37 am Reply with quote
Personally, my problem with Evangelion using sci-fi trappings to tell a personal story was that they seemed to be using apocalyptic imagery as a flashy backdrop rather than as an effective metaphor to get the point across. It's one thing to use a post-apocalyptic setting to represent a ravaged mind, but EVA's haphazard employment of it seemed to imply that these specific people's suffering is more important than all the awful shit the rest of the world is going through.
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Doodleboy



Joined: 23 Dec 2013
Posts: 296
PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:03 pm Reply with quote
lkmjr wrote:

That would be fine, but the real villain of the series was never the forces of despair, it was always Kyubey and its system. The puella magi are still fighting to improve the universe at their own expense, still being exploited by a system that they no longer appear to be trying to change.

Self-sacrifice is emphasized in far too many stories about girls; girls are constantly pushed to put the needs and desires of others before their own. In the ending, self-sacrifice is applauded; throughout the rest of the series, "selfishness" is punished. The girls are literally punished for having wishes, including such outrageous demands as "I want to survive." It's apparently not enough that Mami pays for her wish by becoming a puella magi, so she is also subjected to isolation and loneliness (if only she had wished for her family to survive, too). Breaking her punishment by finally finding a friend leads to Mami becoming overconfident and getting killed within minutes. Every single one of the girls' wishes comes with a similar pricetag or blows up in their faces eventually.

Girls are punished for trying to have things. Girls are exploited and sacrificed for the greater good. The way that Urobuchi makes his point is sexist, plain and simple.


Ok, that interpretation requires the assumption that what happens to Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko was just. That the show is telling us that they deserved what happened to them, because they were selfish.

To which I say, no, the show is not saying that at all. The show is saying that the world is unfair and what happened was unfair. Just because Kyubey survived, doesn't mean the show is telling us his actions were justified. Villains don't always get punished in the real world.

Madoka Magica is an exploration of heroism and self-sacrifice. It shows us what it really means. It says while it's important to help others, it is equally important to take care of yourself. A model of selfless sacrifice is an unsustainable model, courage can get your killed, and good deeds sometime have no rewards. Which is why what happens to Madoka Kaname is a tragedy.

And you know what? For a dramatic story, bad things have to happen to people, and not always because they deserve it. If sunshine and rainbows and justified happy endings is all that is required to make a story feminist. Then K-on would be the most feminist show ever.

There's a writer in comics called Greg Rucka, who has a tendency to write women protagonists. He was called sexist because bad things tend to happen to his characters. They get shot, they get tortured, they suffer PTSD, they are put in danger, their husbands get killed in massacres.

And that's bull. To say that female characters shouldn't have bad things happen to them, just because they are women is condescending. Women are just as capable of heroism as men, and just as capable of suffering.

Is Puella Magi Madoka Magica a feminist show? Well yes and no.

To be honest I don't buy a lot of the feminist interpretations of the story. I haven't found one that was convincing. I think a lot of the themes of the show don't apply to just women. Nor were they supposed to.

But it is feminist in that it has well-developed characters in a powerful dramatic story. Yes, bad things happen to them but the story shows them fighting back. Homura's entire arc shows that. No matter what trauma she goes through, no matter how hopeless the fight may seem, she gets back up and keeps going with no regrets.

That is strength and resilience in the face of adversity, and we cheer for her because of that.

Also who says a magical girl in the future won't change the system to screw over Kyubey. spoiler[In fact that's exactly what Homura did in the movie.]
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Bingal



Joined: 10 Jun 2010
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:51 pm Reply with quote
Lavnovice9 wrote:


I think we found two right here.


Oh look, your typical straw man attack from someone who assumes too much.

Lavnovice9 wrote:

Happens all the time in any thread about "anime should appeal to the west because Japan's market is dying" or "anime needs to be more mainstream and less otaku pandering garbage because otherwise it'll die!"

Every year we get that, every year anime does fine, every year they push their doomsday prediction to the next year hoping a broken clock will be right once a day.


Sure it happens all the time. I guess that's why you can only rely on a hyperbolic statement instead of providing a reasoned response as to why this seems to be a very vocal majority.

But that's going to be very hard to pull off since everything about this rhetoric is blown out of proportion, and I'm terribly sorry for pointing that out. I guess using your brilliant deductive skills, that automatically makes me a part of this group. Rolling Eyes
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INS Division 6
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 5:13 pm Reply with quote
What show was Justin talking about that was described by Zac as "Elfen Lied 2"?
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