Roving Thoughts archives

How changing times can change our interpretation of what we see

Through a complicated chain of conversation, I recently wound up watching Digibro's "10 Killer Cuts in Evangelion Ep. 1" (via). Starting at 03:04 in that video, Digibro discusses one of his choices and, well, let me show you what startled me here with a frame from Digibro's video:

(full-sized, and Digibro primarily discusses this scene assuming that they are special sci-fi glasses)

According to his MAL profile, Digibro was born in 1991, which means that he probably first saw Neon Genesis Evangelion in the late 00s or maybe even in this decade. Even in the late 00s, glasses with electronic displays were not a particularly extreme idea and they'd probably shown up in a number of 00s anime shows, as well as being demonstrated and talked about in real life. By this decade, of course, the technology was far enough along that Google Glass could be offered as a high-end consumer item. Someone watching anime today could reasonably 'read' (aka interpret) a scene like this as showing such fancy smart glasses in action.

But Neon Genesis Evangelion was made in 1995 and first seen then, when even the idea of such glasses was relatively far out of the mainstream (much less the real-world technology). Almost no one seeing Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995 would have read this scene as showing a futuristic heads-up display instead of being the reflection of the giant display screens on Gendo's mundane sunglasses, and it's very likely that the mundane explanation is what was intended by Gainax; otherwise they probably would have been far more explicit about showing us that Gendo's glasses were very special in both this scene and others.

Times have changed, though. A reading that was obvious in 1995 is no longer obvious now; the environment that we the audience exist in has changed our assumptions about what we see. And if smart glasses wind up becoming common, the 'smart glasses' reading will only become more and more the likely assumption of future audiences. They will have to be explicitly reminded that although Neon Genesis Evangelion is futuristic, it was created in the past and so its vision of the future does not match reality.

All of this makes me think, primarily about hidden assumptions.

I'm sure that Neon Genesis Evangelion is not the only show affected by being watched well after its creation and in a different environment, with an audience that makes different assumptions about 'obvious' things that we're seeing. Sometimes what we don't get in such shows is obvious and clearly out of place (which can be interesting), but sometimes it's not at all; our assumptions that we understand what we're seeing and are correctly interpreting it are just silently off.

(There are other little elements in Neon Genesis Evangelion that are quietly drifting out of place. One that comes to mind is how the cellphones are apparently there mostly just for voice calls.)

PS: Making assumptions is both necessary and assumed by the show's creators. One of the purposes of putting in familiar things, using familiar settings, and so on is that you can rely on the audience to understand them without having to take the time to explain them; instead you only have to cover any deviations from the normal (or from genre cliches that the audience will also assume).

Where I think each Pure Illusion world comes from in Flip Flappers

(There are going to be massive spoilers here for Flip Flappers, and of course this is speculation.)

At this point it seems pretty clear that some or many settings (or worlds) in Pure Illusion are not arbitrary but instead come from something or someone (or maybe in some cases represent things). So here are my theories about the source of the main worlds from each episode so far, up through episode 8 (at the moment).

• episode 1: tentatively Cocona herself. The world is frozen over but the sun comes up when Cocona moves herself to action, and it feels a quite Cocona-thematic setting in retrospect (well, Cocona as she is at the start of Flip Flappers).

• episode 2: Uexküll and the insides of the school's roof cleaning system.

• episode 3: Unknown. An interesting speculation would be that it's Papika.
  Update: it's from Sayuri.
• episode 5: Unknown. If you want to attribute episode 3's setting to Papika, I'd turn around and attribute this one to Cocona, as then they make a thematic pair (and say some interesting things).

  Update: it's probably Yayaka.

• episode 6: Iroha Irodori, of course. Even the Pure Illusion world they're in before they enter what is either her past or her mind is made in the colours and style of her paintings.

• episode 7: I feel it's unknown, although you could argue that it's Cocona again. If it is Cocona, it means that two fragments/amorphous have been recovered from Cocona-based worlds (one from ep 1, by Cocona, and one here, by Yayaka's team). I'm willing to believe this, as Cocona is clearly something special.

• episode 8: TT-392, who we know has a human or at least biological brain inside its chassis (seen in episode 1 and a couple of times since).

My overall view is that not all Pure Illusion worlds are neatly tied into the cast, so I think that the PI worlds in 3 and 5 are not due to anyone or anything we've seen. As far as episode 7 goes, my theory is that the PI setting there was originally something else (and from someone else), but it was basically hijacked by Cocona falling into it with unresolved issues; her presence warped it into something that reflected her worries.

(This entry may get updated to add more episodes.)

Update:

• episode 9: likely Yayaka; all the signs seem to point that way.

Update: I wrote a part 2 about new information on episode 3 that was revealed in episode 11, a strong theory about episode 5 from Emily Rand, more argument about episode 9, and a general wrapup in which I conclude that we aren't going to find any more good evidence in the show.

The Ancient Magus' Bride and a puzzle of the translation of a term

In The Ancient Magus' Bride, the protagonist, Chise Hatori, is a special kind of human magus. As I wrote about in passing once before, the English language term that should be used for Chise's status is somewhat unclear; the initial fan translations of the manga used one term and then the official Seven Seas version used another. Then something interesting happened when the first OVA episode came out recently on Crunchyroll, as I wound up discussing on Twitter.

@cks_anime: Well I'll be. The Crunchyroll subs for Ancient Magus' Bride do indeed call Chise a 'slay vega', not a 'sleigh beggy'. That's … interesting.
And the prob[able] reason that CR uses 'slay vega' for Chise in Ancient Magus' Bride is that really seems to be what the character actually says.

This happens at about 14:03 in OVA episode 1, if you want to see and hear it for yourself on Crunchyroll.

(When I initially watched the OVA I didn't really notice this usage, but I was recently thinking back and suddenly it stood out, so I checked back to make sure that I wasn't misremembering because of my biases.)

I think this means the Japanese dialog directions went out of their way to use 'slay vega'. So why did the US manga make it 'sleigh beggy'? ♯

I may be predisposed to hear an ambiguous couple of words this way, but it certainly seems that the fairy's seiyu is specifically saying 'slay vega', not something ambiguous. This is especially interesting because my understanding is that Japanese does not normally have 'sl[a]' or 've' phonemes; if this is correct, the seiyu has to be carefully going out of their way to pronounce this 'right', and the Japanese script likely had to call for that.

@halfadeckshort: I was curious. It looks like they [Seven Seas] answered a couple of questions on tumblr. (link) (link)

@cks_anime: Yep, their pre-OVA claim is that 'slay vega' was a fan mistranslation. But if the JP OVA dialog uses 'slay vega', well...
So, did the original mangaka say 'not slay vega' to Seven Seas & later 'sure, slay vega' to the OVA writer?
Or did Seven Seas decide to use 'sleigh beggy' without asking the Japanese side about it, then get ambushed by the OVA?

It's not clear to me who wrote the OVA. Wikipedia co-credits Kore Yamazaki, the mangaka, and Aya Takaha; MAL lists Aya Takaha as 'script' and Kore Yamazaki as 'original creator'; ANN has Kore Yamazaki as 'scenario' and Aya Takaha as 'script'. On the whole it seems most likely that Aya Takaha wrote the dialog but that Kore Yamazaki was clearly involved and thus available to be consulted for things like 'how is this term pronounced'.

@cks_anime: I suspect that what happened is that SS didn't want to use the fan translation, didn't ask the JP side & just picked a name.
What term Seven Seas use in the next translated volume will be quite interesting, since it'll be the first post-OVA volume.

Looking back, Seven Seas' first answer does not explicitly say that they asked the Japanese mangaka or publisher what the English language term should be, although it certainly sort of implies that they did. The 'translator, adapter, editors, etc' could have been entirely the team within Seven Seas.

My personal preference is for 'slay vega', so I am happy to have it validated by Crunchyroll and apparently the Japanese OVA and I hope that Seven Seas switches the term with the next translated manga volume (currently said to be released in January). Also, of course, right now 'slay vega' seems more likely to be what the mangaka actually intended, not 'sleigh beggy'.

Explaining my uncertainty about Darker Than Black - Gemini of the Meteor's ending

At the end of the series back in 2009 I wrote about my uncertain feelings about its ending, but I was of course completely oblique about it all for fear of spoilers. The whole thing has stuck with me since then, and today it came bubbling out on Twitter so I'm going to dump it here as well. This time around there are spoilers and there will be even more spoilers in my elaboration after my tweets.

(Probably no one cares about DtB: Gemini spoilers by now.)

@cks_anime: I still like Darker than Black's 2nd season. How could you not like a confused, emotionally numb teenage girl with an anti-material rifle?

Also, I continue to not know if the ending of Darker than Black S2 is a good one or a terrifying one. (It's probably supposed to be good.)

@Evirus: Did the OVAs help?
[...]

Unless they touch on the nature of the alternate world, prob. not (for this). Maybe not even if they do; it's a philosophical issue.

Alternate/second world Suo has at least completely different memories than DtB-world Suo. Is she the same person in any real way?
If she isn't, then DtB-world Suo dissolved away to death and we have some fake clone thing wandering around in the second world.
It's kind of nice that there's some second-world Suo enjoying a nice life (along with versions of other characters), but ...
... it's not really a happy ending for many of the DtB-world characters like Suo. They're pretty much all dead or otherwise nothing.

Unusually, the Wikipedia page lacks its usual spoilers, so I must describe things from my memory. At the end of DtB: Gemini, we discover that the original Suo died in a terrorist bombing as a child and the Suo we know is an imperfect copy created by Shion and stabilized by the meteor fragment. With Shion reaching the end of his life and powers, Suo's life (or if you prefer 'life') is at best limited, and I think the meteor fragment was decaying as well. At the end of the show, Shion uses the last of his powers to help Suo as she dissolves away, and we see another Earth hanging in the sky visible from the weird place Shion and Suo are.

We cut to that second Earth, where a 'Suo' is living a perfectly ordinary happy family life with her parents, and I have a memory that we see versions of some other now-dead characters as well. It is clear that the Suo of this world does not remember anything from Gemini and has led a completely different life. If this actually is the real Suo from Gemini, transported to this second world in the sky by Shion's last actions, she is at least a completely different person in every practical sense. The Suo of Gemini has gotten a happy ending by losing everything that made her the Suo that we knew.

Is this really a happy ending? I don't know. I suspect that it was intended to be at least a somewhat happy one (after all, Suo lives). But it's not the Gemini Suo that lives; it's some stranger who has a tangential relationship to the real Suo beyond sharing her name and having parents with the same names and so on.

That's why to me it's at least partly a philosophical question. Suo's soul probably survived, but she wound up as more or less a different person. Is this a happy ending or basically a tragic one, because the real Suo is more than a soul and the person that was Suo is dissolved away now? I still don't know what my answer is here, but I can't feel that the ending is any better than bittersweet at best.

(Similar questions apply to other characters in the second world if we assume that Shion shifted their souls over to the second world along with Suo's.)

PS: After all this time it's possible that I've mangled bits of the ending of Gemini, as I'm relying on my memories here.

Brief impressions of the Fall 2016 anime season so far

I'll admit it; I've been lazy about putting fingers to keyboard and just getting on with this entry. So before things get too far along, here's how my views of this season have coagulated so far, following up on my first episode reactions, and it turns out that this is a rather unusual season for me.

Solidly good and enjoyable:

• Flip Flappers: I'm quite enjoying this so far, weirdness and all, and yes I know that it could all fall apart spectacularly later on (it's a common problem). But for now this is very much my kind of thing and I wave my hands about exactly why. Part of it is that it's a rather science fiction anime, but explaining that cryptic remark is going to need another entry.

  With that said, Flip Flappers is not perfect. I especially don't entirely like Papika, because she is pretty strongly a character cliche that gets on my nerves (cf).

• Sound! Euphonium S2: This feels not quite as sharp and focused as the first season, but in many ways that's to be expected. The first season had a narrow but important topic and dealt with it, so now the show needs to find other things to be about.

• March comes in like a Lion: I'm enjoying the portraits of people and life that it continues to paint, and I feel that it's being both reasonably subtle and reasonably funny. Ultimately, though, I just like it.

• BBK/BRNK: The show is not deep or complex or mysterious, so what it has going for it is extremely competent execution of its basic story. Given that so many shows partially fumble their writing and execution even for basic stuff, I decidedly appreciate this. BBK/BRNK is not likely to surprise me or be a deep show for the ages, but like Thunderbolt Fantasy it is a very good execution of what it's aiming for, and what it's aiming for is perfectly good.

  (See my commentary on the first season, because this is basically a straight continuation of it.)

Teetering on the edge:

• Regalia - The Three Sacred Stars: In the end I picked up the restart of this, and since then I've alternated between being enthused about the action segments and mostly bored with the rest of it. If I was smart I'd drop this, but as it is it's feeding me just enough to keep me watching the next episode. Eventually.

  (Maybe writing this will cause me to drop it.)

Dropped already:

• Izetta: The Last Witch: This show has one or two good characters and some good directing in the services of a story that I aggressively have absolutely no interest in at all. Not only do I not care about the story of not-Germany invading not-sort-of-Switzerland in not-World-War-II, I actually don't want to see it; it feels so boring and flat and 'why do I care' that it turns me off the whole show. The various cliches that poke their way to the surface of the first three episodes didn't help either.

• Brave Witches: After thinking about it some more from my first episode reaction, I decided that I had no need to see another episode. It wasn't doing anything special and I have no particular attachment to Strike Witches in general.

Not for me (probably):

• Girlish Number: People praise this, but they also admit that it's mostly about a bunch of jerks and I've decided that I don't want to watch that, even if it's also about the production of anime.

Shows that I maybe theoretically want to look at because they get praised but in practice I know I'll never look at them:

• Yuri!!! On Ice
• Fune wo Amu

This season has wound up being quite unusual, in that I have four shows that I think are very good to solidly good and that I'm quite enjoying, and then I have nothing else that I want to watch. In another season maybe I'd keep watching Izetta and even Brave Witches for some empty action calories; in this season, I have chucked them aside without even thinking twice about it. This season I have no equivalent of, say, Qualidea Code from last season.

(I'm finding that I'm not bothered by only watching four shows, and that I have no urge to fill my time with others, either current shows or from a potential backlog.)

PS: Flip Flappers has the best ED of the season among shows that I've watched. I have no strong opinions on best OP so far, although March's is pretty good.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 2016 season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).

• Izetta episode 1: Now that's how you start an (action) episode and make me like the characters. And want to see more, of course. ♯

• BBK/BRNK episode 13: It's back, it's fun, and I liked seeing the core cast again. We'll have to see where this storyline goes, of course. →

• Brave Witches episode 1: I guess that was okay, although it's nowhere near the standard set by Izetta. I suppose I'll watch the next ep too. →

• Flip Flappers ep 1: This was nice but it wasn't stunning, & Papika is a character archetype that often irritates. Still, solidly promising. →

• Drifters episode 1: I think I'm supposed to be interested in these people and what's happening to them, but I'm not in the least. →

• March comes in like a Lion episode 1: That was a solid & understated drama, with a lot more implied than said. I definitely like it so far. ♯

• Sound! Euphonium S2 episode 1: There was a bunch of setup here, but it was compelling all on its own. And then the festival, wow. →

(A → instead of a ♯ means that the tweet has further discussion.)

I haven't yet watched Girlish Number, which is getting praise, or Fune wo Amu. I may watch either and update this with my first episode reaction. I so far feel that Yuri!!! on Ice is out due to its setting, even if it's apparently very well done and well made.

(I know, March comes in like a Lion also has an ordinary life setting. It gets a special exemption because I loved Honey & Clover and I'm willing to see if the author's magic works a second time.)

Looking back at the Summer 2016 anime season

Once again it's time for my usual look back at what I watched this past season, to follow up on my early impressions and my midway views. This one has turned out a lot shorter than it is in many seasons, because, well, let's run down the shows:

Great:

• Thunderbolt Fantasy: Puppets and all, this remained very strong all the way through. We had twists and turns and revelations and surprises, even things that pleasantly surprised me. This was over the top wuxia, but I like that, and I happen to feel it was pretty darn good over the top wuxia.

  Thunderbolt Fantasy did not necessarily aim high, but (like Flying Witch) it's a show that absolutely delivered perfectly on what it aimed for. It had very sharp genre writing and it hit every beat you could want, including quite clever revelations and explanations in the last two episodes. It is one of my favorite shows of the year and I'm happy that we're apparently getting a sequel (even though I don't expect it to be quite as dramatic).

I finished it:

• Qualidea Code: The animation quality clearly dropped off at the end (and when I can notice, you know it really went) and things got a bit silly, but on the whole QC delivered what I expected and wanted from the whole experience. It even threw in a few surprises and unexplained things.

I sort of continued watching it:

• Twin Star Exorcists: I watched this all the way or almost all of the way to the end of the season and enjoyed it, but I've now dropped it. The show has apparently entered a filler arc that I'm not too enthused about (and added a kid character, although it's doing okay at handling her), but the real failing in my eyes is that it skipped forward two years and nothing particularly changed in terms of character relationships. If the show hadn't explicitly said 'we skipped forward two years', I wouldn't have noticed. Given how fast things were moving in character relationships before then, I find that this totally blew away my suspension of disbelief.

  More fundamentally, while the character interplay between the protagonists was cute and okay, it just feels played out. I'm not really going to see anything new and something just felt played out about the whole thing. I don't need to see these characters repeat their same nice patterns over and over again; I've already seen it enough times.

  (I'm writing so much here because there's part of me that wants to keep on watching TSE because it's a perfectly decent show. But my gut has told me that I'm not particularly interested in watching episodes, so. On Twitter.)

I wound up dropping Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 3rei!!. I'm neither surprised nor particularly sad; I honestly expected it from the start. I probably won't give any future PI series a chance, because I keep getting burned out on it.

On the one hand, this was not a very good or very active season overall. On the other hand, Thunderbolt Fantasy was amazing and I feel fully satisfied about having watched it. On the whole I'll take this season over one where there's a bunch of okay shows but nothing that stands out in the way TF does.

(And in things that I keep omitting, Active Raid S2 aired this season but in contrast to my earlier guess I didn't watch it and in fact ignored it so thoroughly that I kept forgetting to mention it in these entries.)

My summer rain gear (for biking)

In much of the year, rain gear for biking is simple and obvious. You just cover yourself with reasonably breathable waterproof gear (jacket, pants, shoe covers, and helmet cover) and you're done. In the heat of summer this approach or downsized variants of it doesn't work; with conventional gear (even just a jacket with all its vents open), your choices are getting wet from the rain or getting wet from your own sweat as you cook inside your jacket. One popular summer option is to just shrug and get wet from the rain. Unfortunately this isn't really suitable for commute riding, at least for me, because all too often it involves getting totally, utterly soaked and having whatever I'm wearing be clammy and soggy.

My current approach is the following gear:

• Sandals instead of shoes, so that I don't have to worry about them getting soaked. Both sandals and my feet dry out very easily, which isn't true of normal shoes; if normal shoes get soaked, they may still be sodden the next day.

  (Before I switched to sandals, I had this happen to me. Biking the next day in still-sodden shoes was not a great experience.)

• A helmet cover, in part to keep water from dripping directly onto my glasses (and eyes). I'd like to avoid putting a helmet cover over my helmet because it means I have to do without my helmet lights, but so far I haven't found any other way to keep enough rain out of my eyes (my summer helmet's visor doesn't do it on its own).

  (I've may try wearing a cycling cap under my helmet in the hope that the cap's visor will do the job.)

• A storm poncho (aka rain cape); my current one is an inexpensive one from Sierra Designs that I picked up in a local bike shop at one point. The storm poncho is the most important piece of gear, because it's what keeps most of me dry without drowning me in sweat. However, there's a trick here.

A storm poncho by itself will leave you at least as sweaty as a regular waterproof jacket, because it's no better ventilated (in fact it's likely to be worse). So the trick is to gather up the front of the poncho and hold it up on the handlebars. This keeps the front plastic away from your body and functions as a big air scoop to keep cooling you. Of course I can't go very fast like this, but so what; I'm commuting in the rain (sometimes very strong rain), so I'm fine with being slow.

My experience is that this trick only really works on my commuter bike, which has riser bars. My other bike has drop handlebars and my one attempt to use the storm poncho there was best described as 'extremely awkward'; it was not really a success. My current approach is to not go on weekend group rides in the summer if rain is too likely, and otherwise to just live with maybe getting soaked if we get unlucky.

A storm poncho worn on the bike won't shield my lower legs (or feet), but that's okay; it's summer and I'm wearing shorts. My bare legs can get as wet as they want and they'll dry right off. Similarly I only care about keeping the rain off my upper arms (where my shirt is), not my bare forearms, which the storm poncho leaves mostly or entirely exposed.

(People who wear sleeveless tops here don't even have to care about their upper arms.)

(This elaborates on a tweet I made after a recent rainstorm ride.)