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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
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Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 7:50 pm Reply with quote
Higurashi series review podcast in October sounds like a great idea, and you’ve given us all enough time to watch it (and/or play the VN). Thanks!
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arromdee



Joined: 15 Mar 2010
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:48 pm Reply with quote
Zack said something to the effect of "the world has 7.5 billion people and there's no sign of it stopping". That is so not true. Population growth in all technologically advanced societies is below replacement level, or would be below replacement level if it wasn't for immigrants from poorer countries. Even China gave up its one child policy because it's stopping everywhere.

Also, complaining about the metaphor of bird wings is silly. It's like looking at a pride flag and saying "Isn't that absurd? Rainbows are supposed to appear in an arc! And rainbows always have to have a light source, and that's not on the flag, so this is symbolic of how actitists are trying to hide the details behind their movement. Also, since rainbows are fleeting, insubstantial, things, is that saying that the movement means nothing and is going to break up?"
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Mad_Scientist
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Joined: 08 Apr 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 1:48 am Reply with quote
I don't think the klaxo sapiens are actually aliens, the implication I got was that they were the original inhabitants of earth who evolved before humans. Not that this makes much of a difference really, unless they bring it up that humans are in some way related to the klaxo sapiens because of that.


I agree with Jake that a show COULD do an interesting idea on what immortality + lack of children would do to humanity in the long one, what effects (good and bad) it would have on society. In fact I'd love to see some good stories explore that. But oh boy did Franxx not really do that.


I disagree with Jake about what the next episode will be, I think it's gonna reveal that actually, the planet ISN'T 2 minutes away from blowing up, they'll have like 30 minutes maybe (even though it didn't seem like that last episode).


And yeah as much as Franxx has frustrated me, I too am enjoying it. The last episode wasn't really "better" than the last few episodes, but also was just more enjoyable, maybe because of its silliness with the whole alien reveal.
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TexZero



Joined: 25 Oct 2017
Posts: 582
PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 1:51 am Reply with quote
Just gonna jump on the question train segment....

1) Im that weird guy who wanted a Solo film. I think his character has a lot going on that could have been done better than what the film did, but that didn't stop my enjoyment.

2) Eva Clones in no order of Mediocrity - as mention RahXephon, Dual Parallel Trouble Adventure (Hybrid tenchi/eva plays up the Harem aspects more), Blue Gender (Plays up more on the humanity being the engine of its own destruction / Less Mecha), Capitain Earth (Instead of biblical references it's Shakespeare), E7.

Outside of that...there was a bunch of games stuff and all i can say is Waluigi is missing from the main roster.
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arromdee



Joined: 15 Mar 2010
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 2:19 am Reply with quote
And does Serial Experiments Lain count as an Eva clone? It doesn't have any mechs, but Lain sort of looks and acts like Rei, and there's a heavy theme of alienation going on, as well as trying to make the series sound deep by not telling you much.
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CrowLia



Joined: 24 Feb 2012
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 4:33 am Reply with quote
Fwiw, the Jian bird comes from Chinese mythology, so it's not something they made up out of thin air. Doesn't make it any less dumb as a metaphor though, just like how all the Norse mythology symbolism doesn't really add anything to the story.

I may have phrased the first part of my question awkwardly, but at one point -after the episode where the Nines give their speech about how "gender is such a pain"- I think Jake's thesis about the show was that it was alt-right propaganda that had APE as a strawman representation of "the left", a "what if all these new gender diversity goes to the extreme and starts oppressing heterosexuality and babymaking" that was meant to be overthrown by the protagonists with their proper heterosexual relationships and desire to procreate. But that kind of falls apart now that APE/VIRM turned out to be aliens, so it's not that the show is some sort of cautionary tales about what the right perceives as the "dangers of the gay agenda", it's just very poorly thought out.

My point is I don't think this was ever purposefully meant to be active propaganda, just that the writers have a set of prejudices/opinions that seep through in the story and they never stopped three seconds to consider all the implications of the setting they created.

But I guess Jake summarized it better when you talked about how Franks is meant to be a nu-Gendo except they completely forgot the fact that Gendo is a villain. So it's a bunch of mixed metaphors that make no sense between each other. I'd also parse that it's a lot of metaphors and visual-narrative callbacks to other shows for the sake of style, and they never stopped to think if the substance-content of those metaphors had any internal coherency when they put them all together.
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 6:34 am Reply with quote
CrowLia wrote:
My point is I don't think this was ever purposefully meant to be active propaganda, just that the writers have a set of prejudices/opinions that seep through in the story and they never stopped three seconds to consider all the implications of the setting they created.

He did literally say that in the last podcast, though.
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AA751



Joined: 13 Nov 2017
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 6:35 am Reply with quote
TexZero wrote:

2) Eva Clones in no order of Mediocrity - as mention RahXephon, Dual Parallel Trouble Adventure (Hybrid tenchi/eva plays up the Harem aspects more), Blue Gender (Plays up more on the humanity being the engine of its own destruction / Less Mecha), Capitain Earth (Instead of biblical references it's Shakespeare), E7.


Also Fafner in the Azure, which is actually a decent mecha in it's own right.
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NeverConvex
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 7:18 am Reply with quote
I think 'eugenic' is an odd choice of adjective for the argument made about FranXX in the start of the podcast. If you can't or won't breed, then you've already removed yourself from the next generation's gene pool in precisely the sense that a malevolent eugenicist would want, so it seems strange to think of dehumanizing people who don't want to procreate as 'eugenic.' Suggesting that people who don't want to procreate are rejecting or missing a fundamental part of 'the beauty of being human' is still a very ugly thing to say, and absurd besides, but in a substantial way it's actually kind've the opposite of a eugenic argument.

(The situation is, of course, much more complicated in reality -- alleles of genes that predispose people to not wanting to breed in some circuitous socio-biochemical fashion or other could be carried on by people who do breed, and people can push vile eugenic agendas to try to remove e.g. homosexuality from the population by identifying and controlling the breeding of people containing these alleles, thereby trying to eugenically make a humanity in which everybody is baby-crazy. That seems like a more subtle argument than FranXX could be accused of making, though; FranXX loves people who want babies, doesn't care about people who don't want babies, doesn't explore any overlap between the two categories, and certainly doesn't spend any time thinking about why some people don't want babies, unless 'immortality' or 'ALIENS' count as serious ruminations.)

CrowLia wrote:
I'd also parse that it's a lot of metaphors and visual-narrative callbacks to other shows for the sake of style, and they never stopped to think if the substance-content of those metaphors had any internal coherency when they put them all together.


I think this is a good summary of FranXX to date. I don't think any of its messages are coherent enough at this point to be very powerful.


Last edited by NeverConvex on Sat Jun 16, 2018 7:37 am; edited 6 times in total
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Chester McCool



Joined: 06 Jan 2016
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 7:21 am Reply with quote
arromdee wrote:
And does Serial Experiments Lain count as an Eva clone? It doesn't have any mechs, but Lain sort of looks and acts like Rei, and there's a heavy theme of alienation going on, as well as trying to make the series sound deep by not telling you much.


Eva itself would be a Devilman clone, given it was hugely based on it and even Anno admits he copies things from Nagai's series. The whole notion of 'show clones' seems like it gives people an excuse to act really flippant about established tropes and themes from groundbreaking series.
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NeverConvex
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 7:25 am Reply with quote
Rather than just calling a show a clone and being done with it, I think the key issues in evaluating a show relative to another show from which it draws significant inspiration are:

A) Do the borrowed ideas survive the migration process in tact, maintaining coherency when transformed and integrated with the rest of the new show's ideas?

B) Does the borrowing show do anything novel and interesting with the original show's ideas?
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Tirol Choco



Joined: 16 May 2018
Posts: 73
PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 8:14 pm Reply with quote
Chester McCool wrote:
arromdee wrote:
And does Serial Experiments Lain count as an Eva clone? It doesn't have any mechs, but Lain sort of looks and acts like Rei, and there's a heavy theme of alienation going on, as well as trying to make the series sound deep by not telling you much.


Eva itself would be a Devilman clone, given it was hugely based on it and even Anno admits he copies things from Nagai's series. The whole notion of 'show clones' seems like it gives people an excuse to act really flippant about established tropes and themes from groundbreaking series.

Eva takes inspiration from many series like Gundam and Ultraman not just Devilmam so calling it a clone of that is downplaying its other influences when the mechanisms of the plot, theme and characters couldn't be anymore different. Also those shows are called Eva clones because they take cues directly from Eva, the staff of Rahxephon did not hide the fact that Eva was a big influence on the conception of the show as stated via interviews.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 8:52 pm Reply with quote
13:00 - Dr. Franxx is meant to be a deeply flawed human that lost his humanity due to his own mistakes. His idea that the fertility cycle is a necessary component of life may be presented as correct but the 19th episode was named Inhumanity for a reason.

15:00 - Hiro and Zero Two are the anime couple of the year.

24:00 - I don't think this show is actually that big on gender roles. In the latest episode Zero Two rushes off to save Hiro and in that episode spoiler[it even looks like she might have died to achieve that goal].
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Scalfin



Joined: 18 May 2008
Posts: 249
PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 10:07 pm Reply with quote
wolf10 wrote:
CrowLia wrote:
My point is I don't think this was ever purposefully meant to be active propaganda, just that the writers have a set of prejudices/opinions that seep through in the story and they never stopped three seconds to consider all the implications of the setting they created.

He did literally say that in the last podcast, though.


He really, really wants to squeeze it into American politics and, because it doesn't actively endorse his tribe, make it the boogieman of that context.

In reality, it's responding to Japan's population crunch and the society's ideas about young love.
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mbanu



Joined: 11 Jan 2010
Posts: 159
PostPosted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 11:20 pm Reply with quote
Interesting follow-up to the previous thoughts on Franxx!

Might the aliens be a metaphor for foreign influence in Japan? You mentioned how heavily inspired the show seemed to be from Evangelion, which reminded me of a quote that Anno made in an interview with The Atlantic in 2007:
Quote:
“Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. “Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.” The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces.

Anno pauses for a moment, and gives a dark-browed stare out the window. “I don’t see any adults here in Japan,” he says, with a shrug. “The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children.”

(https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/let-s-die-together/305776/)

Might the premise of the show be nationalist?

*Edit: I hadn't realized Zac was a cyberpunk fan. Smile I think the common thread in cyberpunk isn't politics so much as technological nihilism and how it reacts with society. Cyberpunk is about going blind in your cybernetic eye after the company goes bankrupt and takes down their proprietary vision servers. Cyberpunk is about running a cryogenic start-up that promises a way to keep loved ones with terminal illnesses alive until a cure is found that is really just a front for illegal organ-harvesting. In that sense, Terry Gilliam's Brazil is a very cyberpunk movie, even though it doesn't follow the "Working Class vs. MegaCorps" dynamic.
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