Forum - View topicThe Humanist Legacy Of Keiko Nobumoto
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MarshalBanana
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It is a shame that she never got much recondition for her work, at least in the west. I've seen plenty of people cite Watanabe has the (sole)witter of Cowboy bebop.
Wolf's Rain is an interesting show when contrasted against her other work, it certainly has the same core of broken people coming together, but it's more cynical. It's like if in Bebop Julia had been a vain rich woman with an unhealthy obsession with Vicious.
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LightningComet
Posts: 48 |
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When I read books that people consider "classics" such "The Stranger" or "Crime and Punishment", I wonder who's writing the new classics; who that is still alive will have even one of their books feature on that "Classics" shelf in the bookstores for everyone to see and admire as standing tall among those masterworks?
I find that it's not quite like that when it comes to film or TV as I would argue that there are many works that are being released that will endure for years to come, but I take heart in the belief that on any shelf that is labeled "Anime Classics", at least one of Keiko Nobumoto's works will be there, without question. That's an achievement worth aspiring to. Rest in peace, madame. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1422 |
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Before the unaired last 4 episodes of Wolf's Rain were released in Japan, the show's DVD sales were already down to less than 2,000 copies per volume according to this source, so I doubt that the reception to the show's ending had anything to do with Nobumoto never creating or head-writing another anime title. It simply flopped over there, which probably made production committees less inclined to bankroll a new show created or written by her, unfortunately. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2302 |
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This is a nice run-through of her body of work. I haven't often dug into the cast behind most anime, and am definitely one of the western folks who was unaware of how important she seems to have been to many of my favorite works. Nice to have that corrected.
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earl.m
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I don't get the capitalism critiques with respect to media media. Prior to capitalism - more on this later - most artists could only make a living by the patronage system, meaning sponsorship by a wealthy noble or aristocrat. So they spent their lives writing literature and music, sculpting statues, painting pictures etc. for the elites of the elites. Artists had to be careful not to produce any output that offended, bored, baffled or embarrassed their sponsors, and if they did they would be summarily fired and replaced with another artist more accommodating. And the works of these artists were generally only ever seen by the elites. Was that better?
Now that the feudal aristocrat thing is dead in all developed countries, what is the alternative? Generally state-sponsored (or approved) propaganda. Including from regimes i.e. the former Soviet Union, China etc. that claim to be socialist or leftist. Again, is this better? If so, for who? Finally, I don't get the correlation between things like warfare, the patriarchy and capitalism. It makes no sense. Why? Because capitalism A. has been around 500 years at the absolute most and B. has literally never been implemented on most of the planet. Yet warfare, slavery, institutional misogyny etc. has been with us since the dawn of human civilization. In ancient Sparta, slaves outnumbered citizens by 7 to 1 and the Roman Empire was similarly dependent on slavery. Women, while technically citizens, had no political, legal or economic rights to speak of. And this was actually BETTER than women were treated in the Greek empire or outside the empire. And anyone who believes that ancient Greece, Rome, Sparta etc. were capitalist have little regard for actual history or economics. People who pass off feudal or even mercantilist economies for capitalism? The same. So ... where did this "associate capitalism with things that clearly exist in places where capitalism never has" thought process comes from? And why did it become so pervasive? |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2302 |
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I don't think criticizing capitalism implies that the critic thinks feudal or tribal societies were better, just that they think capitalism could be better than it is, or that there could be something better than it.
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GalaxyPicnic
Posts: 2 |
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Very interesting post. I can't really give a good answer, but I think it makes more sense if you replace capitalism with patriarchy, and then it could be argued that capitalism is a patriarchal structure. Out of curiosity have you seen Wolfs Rain? I definitely think that masculinity and and femininity is a major motif of the series, though I would argue the series doesn't treat them as strictly gender based forces (Wolves represent masculinity and the Flowermaiden represents femininity.). But the main villains the Nobels are definitely masculine coded rich self entitled people who are actively hastening the end of the world in their search for pleasure. This post kind of inevitably dumbs it all down, but I think Wolfs rain had allot to say about what it means to live a meaningful life. It is good to live with purpose and eyes open to suffering of others like the heroes, and not drowning yourself in distractions and ephemeral pleasure like the villains. When compared with the more direct critique of capitalism in Cowboy Bebop, I think its fair to say that Nobumoto at least feels that capitalism and consumer culture stands in direct opposition to living life with purpose. |
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SamTheNayru
Posts: 60 |
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This is a very well written article and I very much enjoyed reading it. Thank you so much!
I haven't watched a lot of her work, only Cowboy Bebop. But now I am very interested in checking out Wolf's Rain and I will definitely check out Tokyo Godfathers, which is one of the few Satoshi Kon works I haven't checked out yet. |
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