Christopher Keene's Blog, page 12

Why Sasuke Uchiha is a Terribly Written Character

[image error]Sasuke Uchiha is one of the most polarizing characters in shōnen anime. He had fan girls and emo boys ready to fight to the death to defend his honor and even now there are anime analyzing commentators willing to make entire videos explaining why he was such a great character. From the title of this post, you might deduce that I fall on the other side of this equation. Sasuke was a generic revenge-motivated Gary Stu, who, through a convoluted twist, becomes a bad guy with too many character inconsistencies to take seriously. Even if Kishimoto hadn’t admitted to it, which he has, it was obvious that he was coming up with Sasuke’s story as he was writing it, for he couldn’t seem to decide whether he was a badass with a traumatic past, or as I took him, an overly emotional, irrationally motivated spastic.

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Here’s-what-I-think-of-your-character!

Sasuke really is a testament of Kishimoto’s terrible writing, both in its inconsistencies and its lack of set up for important plot points. Right from the beginning we are told AND shown that Sasuke is a focused, coldly rational “genius” shinobi governed by the code of surviving to avenge his clan as well as to prevent himself from going down any path his brother, Itachi, might have taken. Up until a certain point, his character remains relatively consistent. Whenever he did something overly emotional it was generally due to being affected by the Cursed Seal or in reaction to Itachi himself. However, after Itachi shows how weak Sasuke is (and Gaara before him), we begin to see how irrational Sasuke is in his desperation get the strength he needs to kill him. This is where the inconsistencies with his character begins to reveal themselves.

[image error]In the later parts of the first series, Sasuke’s emotions completely take dominance and undermine his reason: He charges at Itachi three times when he knows he can’t win and he flees to seek Orochimaru’s help to kill Itachi despite knowing that Orochimaru was easily defeated by Itachi (the reason he wants his body). Even after learning that Itachi’s actions were for the greater good of The Hidden Leaf, instead of following his path, he decides that redirecting his hatred and revenge at the people Itachi worked with and starting an all out war is the better option. Although these are all good examples of Sasuke doing something incredibly stupid from being overly emotional, he doesn’t go full retard until he decides to support Madara’s war EVEN after learning of Itachi’s motive for killing the Uchiha and what he sacrificed to prevent such a thing.

[image error]Don’t get me wrong. It could be interpreted that Sasuke had an identity crisis after realizing that Itachi was a “victim” due to the Konoha’s leaders exploiting his hatred of war to kill the Uchiha and prevent their uprising. But this context doesn’t really stop Itachi from being a blind tool. He didn’t have to follow their orders, after all, it was not a unanimous decision to have the Uchiha killed as the Third Hokage voted against it. But even if it had been, he could have just killed those involved with the coup, but no, he killed EVERYONE but Sasuke. Despite his motivation to stop war, or maybe even because of it, Itachi doing what he did was a dick move considering its consequences. However, not only was Sasuke blind to this fact and began fighting to avenge him, but he was also blind to the fact that by avenging Itachi against Konoha he was causing the very thing Itachi died trying to prevent.

[image error]A testament to Kishimoto’s bad writing was that it wasn’t until this was revealed to Sasuke by Obito that certain parts of Sasuke’s flashbacks (which hadn’t been seen in previous – lengthy – retellings of Sasuke’s backstory) was just conveniently inserted into Sasuke’s memory to increase the impact of the revelation. That’s the equivalent of remembering an important part of a set-up for a joke you forgot to add so you just sneakily slide it in right before delivering the punchline, ironically taking away any punch the line might have had. To put the cherry on the cake, even after Sasuke learns that Obito lied to him about Madara’s involvement in the Nine-tails invasion, it doesn’t put a dent in his resolve, despite this showing that it was really him who caused the Uchiha coup, and in turn, their destruction.

[image error]Even after he sorts all this nonsense out with his resurrected brother and learns the true reason behind Itachi’s actions (trying to prevent war), his motives were still irrational and overly emotional. His final authoritarian goal to stop war through fear is retarded. He wanted to kill all leaders and put himself up as a common enemy people will hate together, who else can see where this plan might go wrong? (Like him dying for one!) It becomes so convoluted that it takes losing an arm to make him realize how retarded it is, and even then he only submits because Naruto is more childishly stubborn about his ideals than he is. When a character’s motives are obviously irrational from them being emotionally unstable, it’s hard to see why anyone’s favorite character would be such an over-powered spaz.

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You agree with me, don’t you?

Eden of the East [Anime Review]

[image error]I want to sum up this review by just saying this anime was awful, but it had some good parts too, so that wouldn’t be fair. The fact that I’m this late to watching it is impressive by itself. It took me eight years to finally watch this show, and not many anime last on my list for that long. That being said, I think the wait raised my hopes for it a little too high. From what I’d heard of it, Eden of the East was one of those anime I thought I could put away for a rainy day as a reliably good show. I’ll say not only that I’m glad I didn’t wait for that rainy day to come before watching it, but that even after the two films to end the story, I still feel like the thing didn’t end well. The whole anime gave me the feeling that the writers didn’t know where the plot was going when they started.

[image error]Eden of the East starts with a naked dude with a phone and a gun (the gun doesn’t matter) appearing outside the white house with amnesia. Right off the bat, amnesia. The heroine starts off as the main character but her part in the story becomes more and more insignificant to the point that you wonder why her scenes are relevant for key events. The key events I’m talking about is the game where a few individuals are given phones with ten billion yen and a voice aid that will do anything you ask for so long as you’re within some vague parameters. With all this, they are supposed to “improve” the country. They then introduce the heroine’s group of tech-savvy friends that try to help the main character who is locked into this game.

[image error]You can see just from that short description that the plot is all over the place and this allowed for one of the few good parts of the show: the convoluted plot allowed the first half of the series to have an air of mystery. However, nothing ruins a good mystery like bad explanations to those mysteries, and that’s where Eden of the East falls in quality. I knew from the moment they explained the point of the game that it would have a cop-out ending. Eden of the East did not surprise me in this even after two movies that could really have been one if the director either knew anything about pacing or how to make satisfying conclusion.

[image error]Another aspect of the anime I still can’t decide on is the main character. Takizawa is the most flaky main character I have ever watched in an anime, and I don’t know if that’s a bad thing, because when added to his charisma that draws people to him, it makes him seem like an absolute asshole every time he ditches them. But on the another side of the coin, once you catch on to this characteristic and the naive way the supporting characters react to it, it ends up being hilarious without it meaning to be.  Although I’m sure the ending was supposed to be dramatic and emotional, I could help but laugh from it.

[image error]For Production I.G., the character designs and animation is sub-par, the 2D characters really clashing against common 3D and water colored backgrounds they used. The character designs put me off, with nose shadows and wide faces making some of their emotional reactions seem unconvincing, which, along with the main character’s devil-may-care attitude, stops you from feeling any real suspense or engagement. On top of that, with the amount of censored male wang on display in this series (and wang centered themes), I was almost convinced by my theory that this anime was just an overly convoluted, badly executed comedy.

[image error]My last criticism was with the ending films, which took the few subtleties of the series and hammered them home very ham-handily. We get it, baby boomers were dicks and their children are lazy, were two movies and a convoluted economic power game the best way to show this? I haven’t seen a more forced ideologically driven theme since reading Ayn Rand. There were some scenes that took me out of the show so much that I couldn’t possibly figure why some people consider their favorite anime of 2009. However, that’s not saying much. You can put down one of my opinions as being consistent for the last 8 years, and that was that 2009 was the worst year yet in regards to anime releases.

Total Rank 5/10

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Fantasy or Sci-fi: Where should my priorities lie? [Poll]

[image error]Fantasy and Anime is considering a theme change. I’ve recently realized that the fantasy elements in the books I’m having published this year are all executed through the science fiction sub-genres and have been thinking of changing my blog’s theme to suit them. Then I thought, what better way to decide this than doing a poll on ideas for future stories and decide from the results? We have two premises from each genre. Pick the one that sounds the most interesting to you and the final result will decide the new theme for this website.

Vote in the sidebar ⇒

In my opinion, 2016 was…

… a pretty underrated year all up …

[image error]Think about it, it was incredibly promising year Film-wise. We had an amazing film festival line-up that brought us Nocturnal Animals, Moonlight AND Arrival, probably the best alien film I’ve ever watched. Even the mainstream films had ego maniac Tony Stark getting his ass handed to him in Civil War, an actually decent Star War prequel in Rogue One and, finally, M. Night Shamalan’s return to form in Split. The only real disappointment were the DC films, the surprise of Baflect being so good nearly making up for Suicide Squad being so bad.

[image error]TV series took a backseat with the Marvel Netflix settling into its own predictable style. However, 2016 was a great year for sci-fi, for me anyway. I discovered the sci-fi greatness of Rick and Morty, Black Mirror and the Expanse, an adaptation of one of my favorite sci-fi books, Leviathan Wakes, with West World being the most hyped up decent show I’d ever watched. It seems that after Game of Thrones, television has finally caught onto novel’s popularity in these genres. More on that later.

[image error]Anime, for the most part in 2016, has been about characters with special abilities. My Hero Academia took off where One Punch Man ended, portraying the tropes that we thought were only good for satires and making them even better, followed by the revenge of the satire with semi-serious Mob Psycho 100, only touching on the supernatural elements that Erased made more atmospheric with the butterfly effect and unexplained ass pulls. I didn’t watch Yaoi on Ice, and don’t plan on doing so.

[image error]Manga was left only one of the Big 3 standing (Boruto…seriously?) with Toriko and Fairy Tail failing to pick up where they left off. Popularity for manga still follows the anime that gets adaptations earlier on in the year, with Dragonball Super making the fan-drawn manga even more popular than the show itself with it’s clean design and lack of filler, and with readers patiently waiting for the next chapters of ongoing series… or impatiently in the case of Hunter X Hunter, Shingeki no Kyojin and Berserk (because we aren’t getting a good anime for it anytime soon).

[image error]Visual Novels for me were condensed down into one gut-punching masterpiece in The House in Fata Morgana, in which its effects makes me feel haunted and melancholy when thinking about it even now. The Steins;Gate prequel and a numerous amount of steam releases I haven’t played yet will be made up for when I finally get around to the Kara no Shoujo series and can play catch up. That being said, don’t expect me to jump on the Neko Para ship any time soon.

[image error]Fantasy Novels, rather ironically, lost its novelty for me. Maybe I should rename my blog scifiandanime, because modern sci-fi has been taking my attention a lot more (like the awesomeness of Altered Carbon), along with my two publishing contracts being for my young adult science fiction books and not for my fantasy stories (so sad). On that end my blog’s activity slowed to halt when contractual obligations gave me both less time to write posts and more fodder for satire in my novels, so… make sure to read Continue the Game in 2017.

MRW my publisher asks me if I can have the next book in a series ready in the next month (P.S. Stuck in the Game sequel 2017)

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Your Name. (Kimi no Na wa.) [Anime Review]

[image error]Despite despising romance anime, I make an exception for one director: Makoto Shinkai. I’ve been a big fan of his ever since watching The Place Promised in Our Early Days, ironically, in my early days. His films are always stunning with impeccable animation and music, even if his films always seem like different ways of telling same story. What’s interesting about the anime he directs is that it doesn’t always have  a happy ending, such as 5 Anime Wallpapers Per Second, leaving many “will they, won’t they” stories ending in a “won’t they.” This gives them a level of engagement that not many complete romance anime can claim to have. Your Name is one of these.

[image error]Kimi no Na wa uses a plot element like that of Kokoro Connect. That being the body swapping between characters of different sexes and an ensuing romance. As not to spoil the the story itself, I’ll go so far to say that, although adding another element that allowed it to go in a different direction, I felt that a lot of the explanations for them seem shoehorned in early on and don’t really justify how the characters act on them. The differences are interesting enough that it could have been great if they hadn’t brushed past them getting used to it in a montage that, along with the opening credits, made it seem like they wanted to split the film up into episodes so they might be able sell it as a series instead. I would have actually liked a few slice of life moments to solidify their relationship during the first half (I can’t believe I just said that).

[image error]As much as I have to nitpick with the story, it’s a Makoto Shinkai film, so it’s a pretty decent despite the flaws. The animation, the music and the delivery is all very effective to ring whatever emotion is desired out of the viewer, and although there are moments of, “But he just…!” and “But how are they…!” they don’t take you out of the film long enough to be noticeable by the average anime-goer. Maybe it’s because of my prejudice against romance anime, or maybe because of the hype leading me to watch it, but from all I’d read about this movie being “perfect” and “Oscar worthy,” I found it incredibly overrated as far as “masterpieces” go. I’ll be the first one to say you should go into this film expecting a good supernatural romance, that’s it.

[image error]In order to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, I’ll wrap this up as a short review. Granted, the heroine is better than the hero who gets most of the attention in the second half of the film, and granted, the story had enough exposition to be a part of an episodic series (as it seems to be structured like one), apart from all this, Your Name is a beautiful film that everyone should watch. Then again, I’d say you should watch ALL Makoto Shinkai films. If someone who hates romance anime like me can enjoy his stuff, then those open to romance anime will love it. No excuses romance fans, or any kind of anime fan, you should be watching his stuff, and Your Name is a decent place to start.

Total Rank: 9/10

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A Rant on Wizardchan, MGTOW & Otaku who say “3D Women”

[image error]As someone who was single for a large part their life, I’ll freely admit that being a single straight guy trying to find love can be a struggle. There are terrible moments of anxiety, insecurity and heart crushing rejection, enough so that I can imagine why some might try to swear off women entirely. However, one must use a lot of cognitive dissonance to do this without feeling the social shame or a denial of the instinctual desire to perform sexual acts. But this is the internet, a magical place where memes can justify anything!

[image error]An examples of this cognitive dissonance is done by turning that shame into pride by trying to convince themselves and others that they are proud of the fact that they are anti-social, or can’t approach or court women, such as they do on Wizardchan. Getting its name from a quote from the anime Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai: “If you pass the age of thirty as a virgin, you become a wizard” it’s not hard to see that this 4chan page is also intended for the mentally ill and those wanting to laugh at them. This is the equivalent of a modern freak-show for every socially inept recluse who needs help more than acceptance.

[image error]Another way to replace the shame with pride is through expressing agenda-based generalizations against the opposite sex. MGTOW is the closest thing I could find to the equivalent of male feminism. Swallowing the “red pill”, as they put it, is to “wake up” to the idea that females are either consciously or subconsciously taking advantage of their biological and social benefits to the detriment of men, this malicious agenda making ‘Men Go Their Own Way’ (hense MGTOW). This anti-coercion motive for abstinence shows a clear cognitive dissonance by the means of a conspiracy theory based on groundless generalizations about half the people of the planet.

[image error]My last example is to express a preference of those catering for sexual desires, the most detached version of this being that of simulated females in the form of anime, games or visual novel dating simulators. These are the people who are so entrenched in the otaku culture that they legitimately use the caveat “3D” when talking about women to distinguish them from animated characters. For people who enjoy visual novels for the stories or style of the medium, these kinds of otaku or hikikomori are the reason why people narrow their eyes or smirk when finding out you enjoy visual novels.

[image error]Despite understanding why someone might want to swear off women, and even if some of the ideals behind them are appealing, the amount of mental flipflops one would have to go through to actually believe in these ideologies would have them denying reality. In short, you won’t become a wizard because you haven’t had sex at thirty, women don’t have a malicious agenda to pull your balls out through your wallet (and won’t if you don’t let them), and “3D women” are the only kind of women that exist.

– A. Normie

Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive [Anime Review]

I seriously geeked-out over this film, both before and long after I’d watched it. If you thought that Final Fantasy XV was missing an epic opening cut scene that most Final Fantasy games have, then this film is that opening cut scene. It may be two hours long, and have a lot of world building, but so far it’s more thrilling than anything I’ve seen of the game itself. Do yourself a favor and watch this film.

The action scenes and animation put Advent Children to shame from its sheer epic-ness. The characters are decent but the plot tools are great. Combing the ideas of teleporting blades you can throw with airships to create fantastic aerial battles was ingenious. Kingsglaive takes the stealthy, free-running style of action Assassin’s Creed first put into a CGI a step further by making them special op warriors.

There are enough cameos  from the previous Final Fantasy games from terms to monsters to entertain your average veteran Final Fantasy player, but the story itself is spoon fed through entertaining dialogue in a way that could ease anyone new to the world. However, the climax battle would give me enough reason recommend this to almost anyone.

I enjoyed the dub. Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad suited the main protagonist Nyx really well, so well that it made the other characters seem a little droll, although at times the mouthing seemed over-animated. If I could give one caveat it would be to watch this in the highest quality your computer can handle to give the animation the attention it deserves. The music is the same epic BGM you would expect from any Final Fantasy.

The story left me wanting more from the world and left me wondering what I could do with the different magic used in the film. The twists and turns of the story had me second guessing every character, and yet the main twist still got me. If one were to consider this film to be just a trailer for the game, it definitely convinced me to play the game if I ever got a chance, and might even be lacking in comparison.

Total Rank: 8.5/10

The Japanese Pro-Natalism Conspiracy

Being anti-natalist, I’m very suspicious of anything that attempts to convince people to have babies. So when a video I watched suggested the idea that there are a collection of anime and movies trying to do this, it made a surprising amount of sense to me and led me to think up this half-serious conspiracy theory.Despite how crowded the main cities may seem, Japan’s population has been steadily declining ever since the late 90s. Being aware of the main cause of increasing CO2 levels, I think this is great, especially for a first world country. However, for a capitalist country that judges its worth by domestic gross, this is a cause for concern, and a problem they’re trying to solve with propaganda.

With anime like Bunny Drop, Sweetness and Lightning, Barakamon,  shorts like Shelter, films like Wolf Children and many other anime both encouraging female hormones through cute imagery of little children and pushing forward the romantic idea of parenting for fathers, this motive couldn’t seem more obvious. I think this is why Japanese media is one of the few things that still conclude stories with old fashion, baby-boomer values.

However, anime isn’t the only medium this is done in. The amount of visual novel happy endings with children being a conclusion makes sense considering the lack of contraception being pushed in it and other Japanese erotica. This is not to mention the many films that express the horror of abortion and romance being the top priority of a character’s life, one of the many problems I list having with romance anime.

On my trip to Japan I went through Gongzhou, China and watched a film on the flights to and from these countries. They were created by production companies from those countries and I noticed a clear difference between the values they were pushing in them. Where the Chinese film showed how children ruined the relationship between the romantic couple, the Japanese film ended with an abortion ruining the couples relationship until a new kid was introduced. The meaning behind this was not lost on me.

Now media expressing its cultural values is not anything new. American patriotism values are so transparent in action films that it’s almost funny. However, from studying markets to sell my books, I’ve noticed how people use this to push certain agendas, whether they be pro-diversity, anti-capitalism or pro-natalism. It’s how manipulative these can be for societies as a whole that makes me wonder if and how effective they are.

It’s the level of coercion that I judge, the sneakiness or transparency showing whether its nature is manipulative or self-aware. Although a creator’s ideology inevitably comes through in their creations, a little bit of self-awareness to explore the problems in their own beliefs shows that a piece is more than just an author’s self-insert jerk-off fantasy, or whose work was chosen in order to increase the population of his country.

PSA: Knowing When to Shill

Recently I was offered to put sponsored content on my blog for a fair amount of money. Now if what they were asking me to sponsor was something relevant to my blog or something I would’ve promoted anyway, I might have considered doing it. BUT what I was being asked to promote was casino, online poker, and gambling websites. I have some friends who have legitimate gambling problems which is slowly ruining their lives. So not only was I like “FUCK THAT!” but by pretending to be interested, I managed to get some of the blogs that had already agreed to do this just so I could list and shame them in this post. So steer clear of these blogs run by shilling douche-bags:

Youthgiri.com

Pali101.com

Zombiesdontrun.net

With that out of the way, I would like to bring up the topic of donating money to blogs. Not only will I never ask my readers to donate money for something I do freely, but I feel a compulsion not to follow (or unfollow) blogs that do. I don’t really think writing opinion pieces is a valuable service worth paying for UNLESS they are incredibly entertaining. And that’s where I draw the line, because as an author, that’s my career, and if anyone ever wants to support me, all you have to do is buy my books when they come out to convince my publishers they could sell a sequel. Because although I won’t be getting much money from it, when you’ve put an honest effort to get something out there that’s your own original work, that’s when you’ve earned the right to shill.