Forum - View topicANNCast - Weep for the Cheeseburger
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taster of pork
 Posts: 594 Location: My House |
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If ANN ever gets the chance to interview Kawamori, you should ask him about this series. I really wanna know what he was thinking when he made it.
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corinthian
Posts: 264 |
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Good lord. I'm putting together a panel on dark moments in magical girl anime, and I think I've just found my closer.
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Schoolie
Posts: 21 |
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I wrote about this before the deleted data - no biggie.
Just that I first learned of this show when I saw the soundtrack CD for sale at a FYE or similar store. The composer credits Yoko Kanno caught my eye (as well as the brightly colored cover design with a dog in a superhero costume - awhu?). I purchased the CD from Right Stuf and have enjoyed listening to the music - interesting mix of all sorts of styles by Yoko Kanno - including rock, chanting, mystical and "Earth Maiden-y" type music. I've never seen the show, however, and after hearing more about it I don't know if I'll go out of my way to watch it. It may ruin my enjoyment of the music. Anybody else have a similar experience with an anime and its soundtrack? |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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This show's contempt for modern civilization made me want to turn up the A/C and install rollin' coal smokestacks on my car. Gotta love its completely broken final message: "Don't try to use human technology and science to improve the environment, because magical worms controlled by the eco-terrorist organization known as SEED will ruin everything!"
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Lucis7
 Posts: 4 |
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I also watched this show when it came out, and I guess in my country they included the episode you guys say was taken out.
I think you forgot how different was 2002 compared to how we live now in 2015. This anime wasn't trying to make you abandon your entire life and become a farmer; the point was to make you THINK. Think about people's way of living back then, the long-term impact of consumption habits and of course health, education, birth etc. Didn't you started calculating how many people would have to become farmers?? everything was pushed to the extreme to that purpose. I find it weird that Kawamoi believed that every person watching this would immediately adopt the norms and theories that is exposing. Who really goes off watching an anime and decides to completely change their lifestyle? But I assumed that his intention was primarily to provoke rational thinking, that's why it had to be so blunt and "crazy" as you both said. I think you shouldn't approach old work without considering that was made in an specific period of time and place that is not what we are living at the moment. Exactly what you do when watching an old film right? PS: One of my best friends is vegan now, she grows all her vegetables in the backyard of her house, where she lives with her husband and her 1 year old baby who was born outside a hospital in one of those water births. She was telling me last month about this alternative school for kids she wants her son to go to when older... and she never watched Arjuna. |
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aereus
Posts: 574 |
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Well hopefully she at least gets her kid vaccinated
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GVman
 Posts: 729 |
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There's a difference between being heavy-handed and outright lying to support your argument. So you're saying he wanted people to think intelligently about these issues, so he blatantly lies to the audience about how eating placenta is necessary in this day and age*, and that bugs will not destroy your crops**? I'm sorry, but if that was his intent, he failed miserably. All this show makes me want to do is go to town on some hamburgers while cruising around in a crop-duster. As for who would change their beliefs after viewing a work, people do that all the time. Art can be powerful.
You keep talking about 2002 like it was a hundred years ago. It's barely over a decade old. This isn't a Fritz Lang movie from the silent era. Plus, you're using two arguments to try and defend this. First, you say that the show is just trying to be though-provoking, and then you say it spouts these insane messages because it's "old." Which is it, or how do these two arguments agree with one another.
I'm sorry, but I don't see how this is relevant. No one is saying Arjuna created veganism. *Placenta-eating was a pretty decent idea for women who just gave birth before you could actually get iron easily in your diet. **This is probably the most insulting part of the show for me. I grew up on a farm, and I'd like to see someone try growing 1800-acres of wheat/grain sorghum/what-have-you without pesticides. Yes, many are bad for human consumption, but we thankfully have folks testing them and raising a stink when they find something disheartening. |
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justsomeaccount
 Posts: 471 |
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The biggest key of all is tone and directing. If the show was straight-forward lines about what it's telling you without all the subtlety, writing and visuals you could think "what if he is trolling us and just wants us to think about the crazy things written?". But no, this is not one of those, because the episodes, directing and pacing are too ambitious and trying to be good and smartly placed to be like that. There is a lot of underlying assumptions inside lines, structure of scenes and even attemps to be "sympathetic" of the "right" persons with the "wrong" ones, even if it is totally misleading, but it's framed as that. This is not a self-aware show, this is completely sincere and passionate, and the way Shoji Kawamori talked about it in interviews about the underlying themes is also specific but not blatant enough to feel dishonest.
And even then, saying horrible things like "intersex people are natural twisted monsters" is despicable because they are a group that already suffer a whooole lot even by people who didn't know anything about them until they see one, and if most of the people without knowledge take this message as "oh, so intersex people are really pathetic, ok, I'll treat them like that", that's awful, and the author is awful whatever he thinks about them just by showing it like that. And with this, most of the things he touched on, especially social issues. |
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kawaiibunny3
 Posts: 534 Location: Houston, Texas |
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So I marathoned through my Arjuna DVDs yesterday so I could listen to this episode
man what a trip. I will say that it was never boring, and it was definitely the right amount of "different" and beyond that I wanted out of a new magical girl show for me to watch (which is why i bought it initially). While I don't think it aged well, there were parts where I thought it made some nice art choices. And I was kindof into what it had to say early on, but by the time it reached the teacher episode and onto the pregnancy/abortion episode I was like "wait..what?!" and I think I realized how crazy it really was from then on. There are interviews with Kawamori on the DVDs where they ask "what was your inspiration?" but he mostly just talked about the stylistic choices like the Hindu and Yoga influences? (although, I was really distracted by the old 2002 convention they used as the backdrop) So maybe he just wanted to be as extreme as possible just to make people think about where they stand on some issues? That or he joined a cult, that sounds pretty plausible now actually. |
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Lucis7
Posts: 4 |
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I don't think Kawamori is lying, but pushing to an extreme all the topics he wants this anime to talk about. Mainly to give you a reaction, any kind of reaction, in your case is as you say
And obviously why would be pesticides be invented in the first place if they were not necessary for growing vegetables efficiently. There's a lot of misses in the anime indeed.
I completely agree, art has that power, personally I don't believe someone would watch this and mindlessly agree with all these "norms", but again I keep repeating it's meant to make you question, not just agree silently.
Yes I do haha, all I can say is that I was there and things were very different, specially people's way of seeing environmental issues. This was before a lot of natural disasters that happened (Hurricane Katrina 2005- Asian earthquake tsunami 2004, etc.) so I think that in the collective conscience of people things really changed. I never said the "insane messages" were from being old, maybe I expressed myself wrong sorry. If there's a reason for how crazy is this (in my opinion) is to be tough provoking like I said before.
Is not relevant at all, you can ignore that. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4367 Location: New York |
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I said it before, but few things annoy me like people who grossly oversimplify complex issues. This and stuff like that episode of Captain Planet that says you should never have been born are so insulting they become hilarious. And bein obnoxious and self righteous about it makes me want to grill a steak for dinner.
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Seif
 Posts: 456 |
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Woah, what one was that? |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4367 Location: New York |
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Numbers Game. One of the few cartoons to make me genuinely angry. |
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ResistNormal
Posts: 117 |
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Captain Planet lol, do you really think a lot of thought went into it. I mean, Solar Powered Jet plane. lol
I have family like that too, I just hope they never have to watch their child suffer though a preventable illness. Sad really, cause If have kids they will never be allowed to go near them. |
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kawaiibunny3
Posts: 534 Location: Houston, Texas |
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Just thought of this, but Macross Zero, which came out not even 2 years after Arjuna, also has a heavy "being in tune with nature is rad" message. (although, much less in your face about it than Arjuna is)
So whatever inspiration Kawamori had in mind for Arjuna I guess spilled into his other works from there too. Heck, maybe he was even trying to use the Macross franchise as a more mainstream platform, since Arjuna wasn't really commercially successful. |
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