Arwen Spicer's Blog: Diary of a Readerly Writer (and Writerly Reader), page 6

Anime Review: Glass Fleet

The best thing I can say about the anime, Glass Fleet (2006), is it does interesting work with gender. If subverting gender stereotypes is up your alley, it’s worth watching. Pound for pound, it may include more gender fail than win, but when it wins, it wins in a pretty unusual way. The following review is substantially spoiler free. Below it, clearly labeled, is spoilerific commentary.



Glass Fleet is a 26-episode space fantasy anime about a People’s Army rebelling against the current emperor. The leader of this army, Michel, enlists the help of dethroned prince and super-warrior Cleo to overthrow the reign of the rather cold and amoral/immoral emperor, Vetti. Cleo has inherited a fantastically amazing glass battleship, which may become the pattern for a fleet: hence the title.

In many respects, the series is not very good. It looks cheap. The animation is choppy. The world building is ridiculous, inexplicable, and inconsistent even by generous fantasy standards. The space battles are absurd, though of the face-to-face fighting is reasonably well choreographed. The handling of the plot and character trajectories has some huge problems that may leave most viewers unsatisfied. So why am I bothering to pull this series out and dust it off now?

Because in odd moments, it’s deeply compelling.

Read the rest The Geek Girl Project.

Review: Blade of the Immortal 26 & House of Five Leaves 8

For the past couple of years, birthday present money from my parents has gone toward funding some sort of life necessity. This year, however, that wasn't the case and I actually got a couple of birthday presents in the form of manga, Blade of the Immortal vol. 26 and House of Five Leaves vol. 8.

They're a marvelous contrast to each other: the back cover of House of Five Leaves features a fat cat; the front page of Blade of the Immortal features a starving dog, and that sums up the difference really. Here are my quick impressions:

Blade of the Immortal 26
Series summary: a young woman, Rin, seeks revenge on the group of swordsmen who killed her parents in 18th-century Japan. To that end, she hires a bodyguard, Manji, who is has been infected by mysterious "worms" that make him nigh impossible to kill.

This is one of those volumes that is mostly an extended battle scene, but it's a reasonably interesting one and the end segment brings to a head an important moral plot thread that has been winding along since the early volumes. Overall, it's a good volume but lacks the plot and character development of the best.

Spoilers follow: Shira is dead. Thank. God. It came about ten volumes too late and his death speech was a rather contrived mush of life-wisdom-but-maybe-all-bullshit, but his final battle was well-realized, mostly from Magatsu's point of view with interesting martial thought process.

Shira, the great sadist of the series, is a very boring character. His great use in the story, for me, came early when he was still a member of the assassination squad, the Mugai-ryuu. For his basically conscientious companions, he posed the interesting moral problem of how to address the necessity of working with someone you know to be both evil and dangerous. This created some good tension for Hyakurin and Giichi. But Shira's subsequent career as "immortal" monster who kept coming back from what should be death--while it provided some good foiling to titular immortal, Manji--got tiresome. Like the other characters, I'm glad he's gone.

The emotional challenge in this volume comes from Rin's showdown with Renzo, wherein she confesses that she is responsible for killing his father (though she kindly leaves out the part where his father was presumably about to rape and murder her and also the part where he did rape and murder her mother). This was a great moment of moral and physical courage for Rin, who invites Renzo's revenge if he chooses to take it. It reminds us why she's the protagonist (which she is). And it's a lesson in life's ambiguities for Renzo, who has long been fond of Rin.

House of Five Leaves 8
Series summary: A timid samurai, Masanosuke, gets taken in as a member of a gang of kidnappers, led by Yaichi, and discovers he quite likes them (in 18th-century Japan).

This is the final volume of House of Five Leaves, and I must confess it's the only one I've read, the rest of my knowledge deriving from the anime. However, I wanted to see how the manga ended, and I was not disappointed. Though different from the anime's ending, this conclusion feels thematically and emotionally similar. It's a happy ending--very happy really, but understated and earned enough to make me root for the characters and their continued well being.

Spoilers follow: Masa emerges as the hero in this volume, giving up his identity as a samurai in exchange for Yaichi's freedom from prison. This is a very reasonable choice for Masa, who--good swordsman though he is--has never been a good samurai and will almost certainly be happier as a day laborer or whatever he ends up doing. This does, however, mean that he's permanently severed from his family. This fits well with the "family" theme of the series generally. Yaichi, too, many years before, was severed from a samurai family and through much pain, mistakes, and false starts, built another one with his band of kidnappers. Much to Yaichi's surprise, this family does not break in the end. Indeed, all five, Masa tells him, will go together into exile from Edo and start a new life. The implication seems to be that it won't be a life of kidnapping, but this point remains a little ambiguous.

My only complaint is that Yaichi, who is one of the top two major characters, has almost no personality in this volume. He goes through the whole book with almost the same expression of dazed dejection, even when Masa comes to get him in the end. I just wish we'd seen more range, particularly in the end where, for Yaichi, everything suddenly changes.

Hour before Morning Kickstarter Rewards

The Hour before Morning Kickstarter

Spotlight on our $15-or-more level: contribute at this level and receive an e-thank-you, PDF of the Hour before Morning novel and an autographed copy of this photograph of dashing leading man, Joel Albrecht (Elek). (All contributions are welcome: the minimum is $1.)

Sunset on the Sycamores

Today I saw a stand of sycamore trees bathed in the yellow summer twilight like a painting my Maxfield Parrish. I'm in the California Central Valley with my father and breathing freer back in the land of spreading trees.

It reminds me how from time to time I think about what I want my life to be like when I'm very old. I always picture myself sitting in the sunlight. I'm always in California, in my wine country home. Of course, in my visions, the weather is always perfect, which California isn't. In my visions it's warm--warm enough to sit very still and still feel comfortably warm, but it's not too hot. It might be spring or summer or fall (or one of those crazy, global warming winter days--by the time I'm very old, maybe winter will be the only season when I can sit outside like that without frying). There are always oak trees and grass and quiet. And there's time at last to watch the light and birds and insects.

This tells me a lot about myself, about what life is to me and what I let myself miss in these years when life seems dedicated to rushing through life, as if rushing itself were a virtue.

Much of the rush is framed for us as the necessity to make money. And I hope that when I'm very old, I will have money enough to sit in the sun and not have to work till I drop or find myself locked destitute in a cubicle in a convalescent hospital (like my grandmothers). I hope climate change will not have completely destroyed my oaks. I hope civilization will be intact enough that our lands will not be denuded and overrun by hungry masses. But I suspect that even if the world is in crisis, as seems likely, beauty will persist and quiet moments if I look as I looked this evening.

Kickstarter for The Hour before Morning

My movie adaptation of The Hour before Morning has raised $1583 on Kickstarter! Can you help us get all the way to $5000 by July 7th?

This indie science fiction film tells the story of a murderer seeking redemption in an oppressive future. We have a wide range of rewards for contributors, including a copy of the novel, the movie, and credit in the film, among others.

Contributing is easy. Just click "Back this project" and check out through Amazon.com We need to raise the full amount to get a penny of the funding, so please help us get there if you can.

Check out our Kickstart page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/a...

Please spread the word! And thanks in advance for helping us out with this movie. It's been a labor of love for all of us!

Anime Review: Angel's Egg

Angel’s Egg (1985) is an OVA I profoundly like—but I may be weird. Whether this collaboration between artist Yoshitaka Amano and director Mamoru Oshii will appeal to you depends strongly on what you look for in anime. If you like the meditative, beautiful, and atmospheric, you may be in for a treat. However, if you like your stories to have some sort of plot and pacing and make sense, you may wish to look elsewhere. One thing is undeniable: the visual artistry of this almost thirty-year-old anime stands up elegantly across the decades.

Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project

Vintage Voice: The Pregnancy Theme is Mirage of Blaze

(A Vintage Voice post: revised and reposted from my other blog long ago and far away...)

"History Was Created in This Way":
The Pregnancy Theme in Mirage of Blaze

Mirage of Blaze is a Japanese "light novel" series (really not "light" at all) by Mizuna Kuwabara, concerning the adventures of five samurai who died in the Warring States Period but have since roamed Japan as "Possessors" (of others' bodies) tasked with the mission of exorcising vengeful spirits for the safety of Japan and the world. The story focuses on the tempestuous love between their leader, Uesugi Kagetora, and one of his chief retainers, Naoe Nobutsuna. This essay presupposes some knowledge of the series and contains spoilers galore.

Warning: the series is dark and contains sexual violence.

For a story that seldom discusses its main characters as parents, Mirage of Blaze devotes a great deal of energy to reproductive themes. Symbolic and literal pregnancies form central events, yet (as far as I've read) they never result in offspring who become individuals independent from their parents. In MoB, pregnancy does not seem to signify creating new, separate individuals. It emphasizes a formative transformation of spiritual energy, which may be linked to changes in relationships or to changes within a character's self. Indeed, the resolution of MoB depends on Naoe's self (soul) being transformed through his impregnation by and with Kagetora. Through this transformation, I'll argue, Naoe attains his desire to achieve a Kagetora-like sense of agape (compassion / love of humanity). He will, further, disseminate this agape indefinitely throughout human society.

MoB's reproductive motif begins with the immoral act of Naoe's impregnating Minako and ends with the moral act of Kagetora's impregnating Naoe. The first act that shatters Kagetora and Naoe's already strained relationship is Naoe's rape of Minako. Minako scarcely has a chance to come to grips with this assault, much less with becoming pregnant with Naoe's child, when Naoe catapults her out of her body so that Kagetora's soul can take refuge there. This results in her soul's destruction but also in Kagetora's ending up pregnant with Naoe's child. For Kagetora, the situation could hardly be more nightmarish—for many reasons, one of which would surely be the amplification of his rape terrors. In 400 years, he hasn't been able to work through his own rape, but enforced pregnancy was one debasement he had been spared. Now, he is forced to confront that debasement at the hands of the most important person in his life. He doesn't confront it for long, of course. He is soon killed. Kagetora and Naoe's relationship will not recover for more than twenty years.

When they finally do make their peace, however, the theme of impregnation almost immediately resurfaces. In volume 20, Naoe ruminates on wanting to spiritually impregnate Kagetora. This time, however, the associations are positive, connected to love and redemption. Finally, in volume 40, Kagetora literally breathes the remains of his dying soul into Naoe, leaving Naoe pregnant with him. This, too, is an act of love, and it affects Naoe so profoundly that he vows to persist without being cleansed by reincarnation for as long as his (and Kagetora's) soul can survive.

In none of these cases, however, is an actual offspring—an independent third person—produced. Minako's child dies while still an undeveloped fetus, and Naoe and Kagetora share their souls with each other without producing a third entity whose existence is separate from each of theirs. On one level, this effacement of offspring suggests a Catherine-and-Heathcliff-like dual-solipsism. Naoe, in particular, loves Kagetora so much that he wants to share his very soul. Yet he loves him with such singular, central attention that he has no parental love to spare for a child. Their acts of reproduction remain more closely tied to sex than birth: an exploration of their love rather than a furtherance of independent life.

This obsessive love that idolizes the lover at the expense even of one's potential children is characteristic of Naoe. Broader commitments to people in general are comparatively difficult for him. Clearly, he has many emotional attachments: he loves the Tachibanas devotedly, for example, and of course, the rest of the Yashashuu. Yet he laments that he lacks Kagetora's love for humanity and his well-intentioned drive to serve it: "Kagetora's actions never seem to stem from any bad intent, causing Naoe to feel greater pain from the superficiality of his own good and bad intentions, his level was so low. He became clouded in darkness" (Vol. 20, ch. 4). Naoe holds his own self-interested motives in contempt yet is unable to overcome his egoism.

Kagetora, while his love for Naoe can be intense to the point of obsessive, is much more invested in others. He is a good parent: historically, he was supposed to have been deeply attached to his oldest son. His parenting skills also resurface in Takaya's solicitous protection of Miya throughout their troubled childhood. Kagetora is notably fond of animals (and stricken when his evil eye kills them), close to his family (sometimes even when they treat him horribly), dedicated to his clan and followers, and willing to let his soul itself be destroyed in order to fulfill his mission of protecting the human race from vengeful spirits. A stronger example of agape could hardly be imagined.

Naoe envies Kagetora's virtue. He wishes he could be as good—as great—a man but knows he is not and believes he never will be. Yet Naoe absorbs much of this virtue simply through Kagetora's influence. Ultimately, because he loves Kagetora, he agrees to let Kagetora's soul be destroyed, knowing that Kagetora considers the sacrifice worthwhile. In standing with Kagetora in this choice, Naoe himself embraces tremendous self-sacrifice: losing his greatest love, his reason for living. One might say he learns agape from Kagetora's example. But for Naoe, this transformation is not just a matter of mundane learning; it is an alteration in his soul brought about through exchange with Kagetora's soul, both through simple proximity and more intensely through having sex. For Naoe is dead serious when he opines that sperm is a vehicle for the soul. (As silly as "spiritual sperm" sounds in English, in Japanese, the two words are, indeed, closely etymologically—and symbolically—connected.)

Pondering his newfound sexual relationship with Kagetora, Naoe expresses a wish to spiritually impregnate him:

"It did not matter if this body had no way of giving birth,
as long as my sperm can stay somewhere in your soul,
as long as your soul becomes pregnant with a new spirit...
Even though we're not the people loved by God, we can still be redeemed.
My pain can be purified by the offspring of your spirit." (Vol. 20, ch. 6.)

Naoe sees Kagetora as a vehicle for their mutual salvation. If he can imbue Kagetora with his soul, Kagetora's goodness will purify his essence. He will be, as English translators often put it, "accepted" fully into the circle of Kagetora's virtue. He will be reborn. And Kagetora, too, through setting aside his resistance to Naoe, will cast off his fears and resentments and move forward toward "redemption."

The flaw in Naoe's reasoning is that it ultimately depends on Kagetora to solve Naoe's problems. He asks Kagetora to take responsibility for giving birth to the new Naoe, as if Naoe could be reborn by proxy. Finally, however, Naoe must take responsibility for his own rebirth. He must spiritually shift roles from seme to uke. He must not only beget this new spirit in Kagetora; he must conceive it, though Kagetora, in himself.

At times, Naoe clearly perceives this receiving aspect in himself. He muses:

"A person's reproduction does not only include the body. A soul can also reproduce. That has nothing to do with gender. Every individual has sperm, every individual has eggs, each person could mutually inseminate and become pregnant, and give birth to a spiritual infant.

"History was created in this way.

"My spirit has always been violated by you..." (Vol. 20, ch. 4).

Here, Naoe characterizes Kagetora's spiritual influence as rape, yet he does not express the idea of spiritual reproduction in negative terms. His own receptiveness to Kagetora both frightens and exhilarates him. By volume 40, however, Naoe's fear is largely quelled, and he is prepared, literally, to receive Kagetora's spirit into his body as a positive manifestation of their union and as a sacred trust: to preserve the remnants of Kagetora's precious soul. Through this impregnation, Naoe considers himself finally happy. He and Kagetora have at last achieved—or are in the process of achieving—the spiritual birth of a better self that Naoe has yearned for.

But Naoe's concept of spiritual reproduction is broader than his love-union with Kagetora. In volume 20, he thinks to Kagetora: "[Y]our sperm has remained in so many people's bodies..." (ch. 4). In this instance, he is not speaking of sex in literal terms at all. Rather, he is pondering the influence Kagetora has had over the lives of those he has known, led, protected. His very proximity has impregnated them, producing new souls, hybridizing their prior selves with his presence. "History was created this way," says Naoe ch. 4. The evolution of human society is predicated on a blending of souls that evolves the participants' selves. The use of this power—like sex itself—can be a violation, but it can also embody the most profound transformative power of love.

When ruminating on his sexual relationship with Kagetora, Naoe extrapolates on this reasoning in grandiose terms:

"Additionally, new life will be born.

"After that, our spiritual child will continue to flourish, after duplicating itself, if it can give birth to a new era, create history..." (Vol. 20, ch. 6).

The spiritual love child of Naoe and Kagetora will create a new era in history! If history is always a process of the merging of human souls, this statement is far from nonsensical. Yet why should Naoe and Kagetora's love, in particular, launch a new era? Is this simply an expression of Naoe's overwrought emotions? Or is he referring—perhaps without realizing it—to the depth of the spiritual union they must attain in order to defeat Nobunaga: a victory that presumably does literally affect the course of history? Both are doubtless true, but Naoe's premonition has another dimension, subtler but no less grand.

If MoB ends with Naoe pregnant with a new life that is a composite of his and Kagetora's souls, what will he give birth to? The story seems to end by repeating its motif of indefinite pregnancy without offspring. One could say that Naoe gives birth his new self, and this, indeed, is irrefutable. By merging with Kagetora, he becomes and will become more selfless, more compassionate, more Kagetora-like. But this transformation alone cannot represent the self-duplicating child that will change history simply because this duplication suggests existence outside of Naoe's self: the child born and individuated. How can this duplication occur?

The key, as always, is agape. Compassion is the highest virtue, represented in its most purified form not by Kagetora but by Naoe and Kagetora's mental image of Minako. Both liken her to the Virgin Mary, who, in Catholicism, is often presented as the ultimate force of compassion, the one to whom one prays for intercession when Christ himself seems unapproachable. In Naoe and Kagetora's minds, Minako is the ultimate selfless lover: she suffers the loss of her entire family, the violation of her body, the destruction of both her life and soul (and incidentally the loss of her child), and she forgives everything and asks nothing. Her entire joy—so Naoe and Kagetora hope—rests ultimately in knowing that others (such as Naoe and Kagetora) will find peace and love. The extent to which this idolization may resemble the real woman, Minako, is beside the point. It is the bar to which both Naoe and Kagetora attain. And while we may presume that even their united souls will never reach it, the furthering of their joined compassion is a principal aim of their union.

How can it be furthered? Through the process of history, the perpetual merging of souls—or, in mundane terms, through Naoe-Kagetora's influence on the people around him. A reasonable example might be Nagahide, still present at the end of MoB. Nagahide has always been deeply attached to Naoe and Kagetora. Indeed, his personal distress over their troubled relationship seems likeliest reason for his retreat from the Yashashuu. But though Naoe and Kagetora clearly love Nagahide, he has also been peripheralized by the inward-turning strength of their focus on each other. In the era of Naoe-Kagetora, reborn to compassion, this inward focus will turn outward. Companions like Nagahide will receive a more open, selfless concern for their own happiness. Nagahide will no longer be peripheral but cherished. This nurturing, in turn, should work to heal Nagahide's own wounds—artifacts of his exclusion, his aloneness. In time, Nagahide will become less self-protective and, thus, more openly compassionate himself. And he—and others—will, then, "pay it forward," uplifting others through agape. And, thus, compassion is duplicated in many reborn souls and, ultimately, human society will shift in shape, just like faces in response to spreading gene pools.

"A person's existence is tied to the future," Naoe asserts (Ch. 4). The Uesugi have always known this, committing their lives to opposing those vengeful spirits who seek to recreate the past. It is to the future that MoB always looks: not finally to the union of Kagetora and Naoe but to the offspring of that union, to the birth of a better world.

(Originally published 10/26/2007)

Note on translation: MoB has not been officially translated into English, and there appear to be no plans to do so. If this changes, I will be the first to advocate that everyone buy the official translation.

Anime Review: Psycho-Pass

Psycho-Pass: cop-turned-criminal tangles with disgruntled literature major (or that’s how I like to look at it). This 2012 series from Production I. G. is excellent hard sci fi and close-but-no-cigar to excellent character drama. Set about a hundred years in the future, the series posits a Japan in which all people are monitored by means of a biofeedback device called a “psycho-pass” (katakana pun on “psychopath”). The psycho-pass measures emotional state. If a person reaches a certain level of agitation, a very pink and kawaii robot (or cop inside a holo-robot suit) may appear to suggest therapy. At a higher level, the pink robot may arrest you or shoot you dead. This system is the basis of Japan’s new calm and well-adjusted civilization. But as you might expect, it also poses problems. For one thing, some high-strung or traumatized people are not really criminally inclined, yet they may find themselves imprisoned or worse. Conversely, there’s a segment of the population that tests as normal but is, in fact, coldly sociopathic. (If this sounds like Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it’s meant to: the anime explicitly invokes the book.) Throughout the series, a team of Enforcers (emotionally volatile prisoners put to work as cops) and their detective supervisors deal with with various crimes, mostly fomented by one of these cold sociopaths.

Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project.

Review: Les Misérables: 1991 Paris Revival Cast Recording

The verdict: fantastic! This is the Les Mis recording I waited twenty years to hear, and it did not disappoint. There is some urban legend that this version is no longer (legally) available, but that’s bull: it’s available at a very reasonable price on iTunes. In a nutshell, the cast is superb and the songs mostly excellent; I only wish the recording were more comprehensive. (Spoilers follow.)

The Editing:
The selection of songs is similar to the London recording’s. The focus is on set numbers with relatively few connecting parts. As in the London recording, this serves 1815 and 1823 better than 1832. Since most of the barricade drama does not break down into individual songs, much of the barricade story is missing. The exceptions are the set songs: (“Un peu de sang qui pleure”/“A Little Fall of Rain,” “Souviens-toi des jours passés,”/“Drink with Me,” and “Comme un homme,”/“Bring Him Home”), which all take place in between moments of military action and, thus, bypass the fall of the barricade arc. If you’re listening to the recording to get the full arc of the story, this is the biggest impediment. Another shame is the omission of much of Gavroche’s part. Lesser gaps, but still unfortunate are Valjean’s difficulties as a paroled convict, Fantine’s arrest, and the Valjean-Javert interchanges surrounding “Comment faire?”/“Who Am I?” (Not missed–by me–is some of the Thénardiers scheming at the wedding.)

The good news is that many of these omissions are parts the original French cast recording of 1980 included: Fantine’s arrest, more of the barricade, much more Gavroche. So with the two together, there’s comparatively good French coverage of the full play in a recorded format (though ironically not as good as we have in English).

Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project.

Manga Review & Ramble: Trigun

Trigun is routinely classified as one of the greats of anime/manga. Unquestionably, it is fun, exciting, gripping, and so on. But what makes it a masterpiece is the authenticity of its moral questioning, which rings hard and true. Disclaimer: it’s one of my favorite works, so expect bias!

Published 1996-2008, Yasuhiro Nightow’s signature manga comprises two large volumes* titled Trigun, followed by a 14-volume series, Trigun Maximum, which completes the saga. This tale of “deep space planet future gun action!!” stars Vash the Stampede, a super-powered gunslinger on a desert planet modeled on the American Old West. Vash appears to be a 20-something happy-go-lucky outlaw, but in reality he is older, sadder, and wiser than he pretends and–gunslinger though he is–he refuses to kill. Vash has a problem: his twin brother is out to get him and also to destroy the human race on their planet. While contending with this situation, Vash picks up several friends, notably Meryl and Millie, insurance agents tasked with following Vash (a humanoid disaster), and Nicholas D. Wolfwood, iconic gun-toting priest. Hijinks, fight scenes, and difficult moral questions ensue.

Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project