September 7th, 2017
An excercise in Zombies (not anime)
Anime Relations: Highschool of the Dead
My analyses on zombies
Zombies! Zombies! Come one, come all for this decade’s most overused monster! From books, movies, to video games, it seems as though the torrential onslaught of zombies just won't stop. We just won't be happy if zombies don't wipe us out. If the end of the world is due to the bloody Daleks invading or nuclear war, I bet the survivors will still make little zombie replicas out of old tissue paper.
Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a rant about the utter proclivity of zombies in our current pop culture, but you'll get plenty of that. Instead, it's supposed to be a super-duper serious piece in which I over-analyze the sky-high relevance of zombies, without pointing out the obvious that zombie stories are at the bottom half of the creativity spectrum, and if Hollywood ever had a creative spark in its head it would probably assume it was a tumor.
Moving on, you'll find that throughout the modern interpretation of zombie literature, a theme that gets beaten into us harder than Apollo Creed's fist into Rocky's skull is ‘We are the Monsters’. Dun! Dun! DUN! I hope it’s obvious that I’m not speaking in a literal sense, with us walking around slack jawed, torn clothes, smelling horrible and shambling along for our next meal, even If could be describing myself every Saturday morning.
It's about the degradation of our morals without the bounds of society. Take the Walking Dead for example, the creators highlight this theme constantly. It is most clearly demonstrated in the episode ‘Too Far Gone’, in which the character ‘The Governor’, or what I prefer to call him ‘Poor man's Liam Neeson’, is shown to be even less negotiable than a certain current US president. Anyway, politics aside, poor man's Liam Neeson chooses to kill all that lived within a prison structure, instead of living in peace due to his own greed.
Hell! It’s even in the first 20 minutes of ‘Dawn of the Dead’. Within 3 hours of the zombie outbreak, the security guards have already had the bright idea to create their very own gang. So steadfast, they won’t even let a pregnant woman into the mall, living by the phrase “You work till you die” I guess. Once out of societal bounds, human morals begin to crumble, focusing on the individual's own survival rather than the mass majority.
It's a rather grand looking glass for people to vicariously think about what they would do if put in a similar situation. Do I kill a man that has been recently bitten in front of his daughter? Do I share my limited supplies with another group? Do I kill my infected pregnant wife? Or, do I let said infected wife live, tie her to a bed, and have her give birth to my child while she is a zombie?
But there is no real point to even bother thinking about all that tripe, because even if you think the apocalypse will give you a new lease on life with a shotgun in one hand and zombie skull in the other, let’s face it, most of you would start talking suicide pacts if the internet went down for more than a week.
Moving, from its conception, zombies have been an oddball monster, to say the least. While pop culture icons, such as the werewolves and vampires, explore the fantasies of abnormal strength, rage, immortality, and your own hoard of underage girls, it isn’t the same with zombies. Oh wait, I just remembered "Warm Bodies" exists, showing the depraved lengths humans will go to sexualize anything that has an orifice, be it dead or alive.
Anyway, NORMALLY that isn't the case for zombies. Throughout the years, zombies have always been used as a metaphor for the loss of one's identity, whether this is during the slave trade, or in our current society. When used today, almost all represent our consumerist based society. For those that have had a lobotomy recently, consumerism is the consumption of goods and services on a large scale.
So, I hope you see the irony in the most popular and inane monster being used to comment on modern consumerism. It’s like a wee dum-dum saying “oh man, I sure love zombies! I love their funny little walk that looks like a man that’s just had a particularly bad stroke, and how they look like humans but not quite so I can fantasize slaughtering them in the thousands without mum sending me to the psychiatrist again. But what I love most of all is, how they satirize the dumb sheep-like consumerism of modern humanity. I love it so much that I’m going to buy everything to do with zombies with no perception of irony whatsoever”.
Anyway, as you can tell it isn’t hard to see the anti-consumerist message that is prevalent within the zombie text. But because I’m a hack, and I need this done sharpish, so let’s just go through the list of “Dawn of the Dead”. The group take over a mall, the place of boring afternoons and spending money, check. They begin to loot the entire place while happy tunes play on the air waves indulging in free goods, thus representing our own love materialistic things, double check. All the while hordes of zombies bang at the door, showing how their love of goods is imprisoning them in the mall, thus the director is communicating to the audience that today’s society has turned us into a mindless horde of shopper that only find happiness in the consumption of goods, triple check. Bish bash and Barnaby bosh! That calls for an early lunch.
In conclusion, zombie literature isn’t just about survival and horror, it is a critical view of society and the flaws of humanity, in hopes to expose these flaws to the audience. However, for me personally, zombie literature is like a small high school student using big words he doesn’t understand in his essays to make himself seem smart, all the while having no clue what the words mean or where to use them, to the amusement of his teacher.
Zombies! Zombies! Come one, come all for this decade’s most overused monster! From books, movies, to video games, it seems as though the torrential onslaught of zombies just won't stop. We just won't be happy if zombies don't wipe us out. If the end of the world is due to the bloody Daleks invading or nuclear war, I bet the survivors will still make little zombie replicas out of old tissue paper.
Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a rant about the utter proclivity of zombies in our current pop culture, but you'll get plenty of that. Instead, it's supposed to be a super-duper serious piece in which I over-analyze the sky-high relevance of zombies, without pointing out the obvious that zombie stories are at the bottom half of the creativity spectrum, and if Hollywood ever had a creative spark in its head it would probably assume it was a tumor.
Moving on, you'll find that throughout the modern interpretation of zombie literature, a theme that gets beaten into us harder than Apollo Creed's fist into Rocky's skull is ‘We are the Monsters’. Dun! Dun! DUN! I hope it’s obvious that I’m not speaking in a literal sense, with us walking around slack jawed, torn clothes, smelling horrible and shambling along for our next meal, even If could be describing myself every Saturday morning.
It's about the degradation of our morals without the bounds of society. Take the Walking Dead for example, the creators highlight this theme constantly. It is most clearly demonstrated in the episode ‘Too Far Gone’, in which the character ‘The Governor’, or what I prefer to call him ‘Poor man's Liam Neeson’, is shown to be even less negotiable than a certain current US president. Anyway, politics aside, poor man's Liam Neeson chooses to kill all that lived within a prison structure, instead of living in peace due to his own greed.
Hell! It’s even in the first 20 minutes of ‘Dawn of the Dead’. Within 3 hours of the zombie outbreak, the security guards have already had the bright idea to create their very own gang. So steadfast, they won’t even let a pregnant woman into the mall, living by the phrase “You work till you die” I guess. Once out of societal bounds, human morals begin to crumble, focusing on the individual's own survival rather than the mass majority.
It's a rather grand looking glass for people to vicariously think about what they would do if put in a similar situation. Do I kill a man that has been recently bitten in front of his daughter? Do I share my limited supplies with another group? Do I kill my infected pregnant wife? Or, do I let said infected wife live, tie her to a bed, and have her give birth to my child while she is a zombie?
But there is no real point to even bother thinking about all that tripe, because even if you think the apocalypse will give you a new lease on life with a shotgun in one hand and zombie skull in the other, let’s face it, most of you would start talking suicide pacts if the internet went down for more than a week.
Moving, from its conception, zombies have been an oddball monster, to say the least. While pop culture icons, such as the werewolves and vampires, explore the fantasies of abnormal strength, rage, immortality, and your own hoard of underage girls, it isn’t the same with zombies. Oh wait, I just remembered "Warm Bodies" exists, showing the depraved lengths humans will go to sexualize anything that has an orifice, be it dead or alive.
Anyway, NORMALLY that isn't the case for zombies. Throughout the years, zombies have always been used as a metaphor for the loss of one's identity, whether this is during the slave trade, or in our current society. When used today, almost all represent our consumerist based society. For those that have had a lobotomy recently, consumerism is the consumption of goods and services on a large scale.
So, I hope you see the irony in the most popular and inane monster being used to comment on modern consumerism. It’s like a wee dum-dum saying “oh man, I sure love zombies! I love their funny little walk that looks like a man that’s just had a particularly bad stroke, and how they look like humans but not quite so I can fantasize slaughtering them in the thousands without mum sending me to the psychiatrist again. But what I love most of all is, how they satirize the dumb sheep-like consumerism of modern humanity. I love it so much that I’m going to buy everything to do with zombies with no perception of irony whatsoever”.
Anyway, as you can tell it isn’t hard to see the anti-consumerist message that is prevalent within the zombie text. But because I’m a hack, and I need this done sharpish, so let’s just go through the list of “Dawn of the Dead”. The group take over a mall, the place of boring afternoons and spending money, check. They begin to loot the entire place while happy tunes play on the air waves indulging in free goods, thus representing our own love materialistic things, double check. All the while hordes of zombies bang at the door, showing how their love of goods is imprisoning them in the mall, thus the director is communicating to the audience that today’s society has turned us into a mindless horde of shopper that only find happiness in the consumption of goods, triple check. Bish bash and Barnaby bosh! That calls for an early lunch.
In conclusion, zombie literature isn’t just about survival and horror, it is a critical view of society and the flaws of humanity, in hopes to expose these flaws to the audience. However, for me personally, zombie literature is like a small high school student using big words he doesn’t understand in his essays to make himself seem smart, all the while having no clue what the words mean or where to use them, to the amusement of his teacher.
Posted by Oppai_Defender | Sep 7, 2017 7:10 PM | 0 comments
May 4th, 2016
Ramble Review: Akatsuki no Yona and my thought
Anime Relations: Akatsuki no Yona
Akatsuki no Yona Ramble Review
Like all pieces of media that we use to distract ourselves before the inevitable, there are always some genres you try to steer clear of, like you would social responsibility or German scat porn. One genre that gets this abusive treatment from me is the shoujo genre. But before we continue, the shoujo genre is kinda garbage. Hopefully my negative propensity towards the genre isn’t showing. But in all seriousness, it’s a genre targeted towards teenage girls. The real reason I hold such distaste to this particular genre is due to it consisting of characters that are written by people that haven’t had sex in a very long time. Meaning, the heroin is apparently so perfect and attractive that the entire male cast gets on their hands and knees and starts to fawn over her (and also the fact most of them are rom coms, but that is for a different time).
So when my friend through her gags and burbles of her mentally damaged brain would suggest a show for me, I would always reply with “is it one of horrible shoujo anime, that whenever I try to watch it I feels like I’m shitting out a hedgehog that has barbed wires instead of spines?”, which would just lead to more gags and burbles as she rolls on the carpet, trying to improve her noodle impression. But I finally took pity on my poor, retarded, idiot, stupid (maybe I should stop being friends with them) friend and listened to her suggestion and began to watch Akatsuki no Yona. And I will say I was mildly surprised.
Akastsuki no Yona is an anime about a princess Yona, who has the ability of being genetically superior to everyone because she has red hair, and she has the emperor dragons blood. But like every princess story, a great tragedy strikes. The king is killed by her crush, the original “boy toy”, Soo Won. So she escapes with her trusty side “boy toy”, Hak. These two companions have great chemistry and travel the land to collect four more “boy toys”( I’m going to keep calling them boy toys until I get a laugh, you bastard), to build her harem and fill her empty heart. and other orifices. Opps, I mean to take back her kingdom. But these four “boy toys” aren’t just anyone, no no no, they are special with dragon blood running through their veins with amazing abilities, and just so happen to be a list of character tropes and fetishes for the fujoshi community to argue which would make for the best “husbandu”.
The series seems to be set in an “ancient” China inspired kingdom. Sadly I can’t be certain if it is actually china because it is never clearly stated, probably because the producers were having a little giggle to see how many racists they can catch by calling it Chinese. But in all seriousness, this simple fact was its biggest pull for me towards the series. In the world of anime, with its overabundant high school slice of life and the countless generic light novel adaptation that gets hacked every year by the uncoordinated hands of a butcher who just stopped giving a fuck, uniqueness is a quality hard to find. So for a shoujo to not have a highschool setting certainly did make me raise an eyebrow and investigate. And regardless of what you think, that is certainly a plus.
But after my eyebrow reached the top my un-arguably handsome face, my senses slammed on the breaks and came back to me, which lead to the thought “Is it a horrible reverse harem that is so bad it’ll make my throat want to fill out divorce proceedings with my stomach as I vomit a litre stomach acid? And the simple answer is a big fat shovel of “isn’t it good you went shopping this morning”
I’ve seen many reviews on people’s thoughts on Akatsuki’s characters, and every god damn single one of the cum gurgling twats that praises this series all seem to say the exact same thing, “The characters are amazing with intricate back stories and amazing development through the series”. This statement I whole heartedly agree to… Oh wait scratch that last part. The characters do have an interesting and unique back story, and Yona’s transformation from a scared, timid princess to a strong female heroin is interesting. But as soon as the “boy toys” have joined the harem bandwagon, they devolve into body pillow number 6745 and just become another member of the reverse harem bullshit. This is what I hate and loath about this series and the shoujo genre as a whole. Develop apparently means a character becoming infatuated with the main heroin, until there are enough handsome men to perform their very own bukkake shoot.
What the writer of the series should have done was throw out the love hexagon and make entire series focus on Hak and Yona, and make the rest of the cast just loyal to Yona. But that isn’t going to happen because like I said in my introduction, the characters are written by people that haven’t had sex since they played doctor with Uncle Tom. When I think about it, the characters as a whole, excluding best boy blonde, aren’t that great either. Plus the end villain came from the local cookie cutter bakery of Disney villain cliche, already in a pretty pink ribbon bow as he trots onto the stage, hoping people don’t notice as she shakes in fear. To add to that, the tone of the series swings like a convulsive Gibbon on crack. One minute the heroes will be fighting kidnappers who sell woman and children as slaves, and the next minute it'll change art style to adorable chibi characters, as they tell a joke that falls flat so hard it tunnels into the earth and burns up in its core. It’s just so bad it made me want to pull my teeth out and jam them in my eye sockets so I don’t see that shit ever again. Who thought that was a good idea to implement comedy with murder, other then Punch and Judy? It’s like me and relationships, they just don’t seem to work out.
I have other complaints about the series such as the music, animation,the ending and Yona’s sun glare, but this is already getting to long, so I’m will wrap this up. As I wrote this review I realised the mountains of problems the leaked out of the shows pores, like yellow puss from a wound. And every single one them stem from the Shoujo heritage, from the reverse harem, the lack of character development of the male characters, the erratic tonal shifts, and many other complaints and nitpicks I have. But I still found the show mildly entertaining (even if it was for the wrong reasons), from the unique setting, Yona’s development as a character, or just pointing out everything bad about the series. This “enabled” me to claw through the story, in the same way someone “enables” a crippling drug habit. So in conclusion, Akatsuki no Yona turned out to be a slightly above average Shoujo series that surprised me. But keep in mind, for me personally an average Shoujo is about as good as putrefied shit left on black tarmac to cook. So you can gauge my opinion of the series from there. But for a Shoujo fan sure go watch it. But for everyone else, just go watch Arslan Senki.
Score: 4.4
Like all pieces of media that we use to distract ourselves before the inevitable, there are always some genres you try to steer clear of, like you would social responsibility or German scat porn. One genre that gets this abusive treatment from me is the shoujo genre. But before we continue, the shoujo genre is kinda garbage. Hopefully my negative propensity towards the genre isn’t showing. But in all seriousness, it’s a genre targeted towards teenage girls. The real reason I hold such distaste to this particular genre is due to it consisting of characters that are written by people that haven’t had sex in a very long time. Meaning, the heroin is apparently so perfect and attractive that the entire male cast gets on their hands and knees and starts to fawn over her (and also the fact most of them are rom coms, but that is for a different time).
So when my friend through her gags and burbles of her mentally damaged brain would suggest a show for me, I would always reply with “is it one of horrible shoujo anime, that whenever I try to watch it I feels like I’m shitting out a hedgehog that has barbed wires instead of spines?”, which would just lead to more gags and burbles as she rolls on the carpet, trying to improve her noodle impression. But I finally took pity on my poor, retarded, idiot, stupid (maybe I should stop being friends with them) friend and listened to her suggestion and began to watch Akatsuki no Yona. And I will say I was mildly surprised.
Akastsuki no Yona is an anime about a princess Yona, who has the ability of being genetically superior to everyone because she has red hair, and she has the emperor dragons blood. But like every princess story, a great tragedy strikes. The king is killed by her crush, the original “boy toy”, Soo Won. So she escapes with her trusty side “boy toy”, Hak. These two companions have great chemistry and travel the land to collect four more “boy toys”( I’m going to keep calling them boy toys until I get a laugh, you bastard), to build her harem and fill her empty heart. and other orifices. Opps, I mean to take back her kingdom. But these four “boy toys” aren’t just anyone, no no no, they are special with dragon blood running through their veins with amazing abilities, and just so happen to be a list of character tropes and fetishes for the fujoshi community to argue which would make for the best “husbandu”.
The series seems to be set in an “ancient” China inspired kingdom. Sadly I can’t be certain if it is actually china because it is never clearly stated, probably because the producers were having a little giggle to see how many racists they can catch by calling it Chinese. But in all seriousness, this simple fact was its biggest pull for me towards the series. In the world of anime, with its overabundant high school slice of life and the countless generic light novel adaptation that gets hacked every year by the uncoordinated hands of a butcher who just stopped giving a fuck, uniqueness is a quality hard to find. So for a shoujo to not have a highschool setting certainly did make me raise an eyebrow and investigate. And regardless of what you think, that is certainly a plus.
But after my eyebrow reached the top my un-arguably handsome face, my senses slammed on the breaks and came back to me, which lead to the thought “Is it a horrible reverse harem that is so bad it’ll make my throat want to fill out divorce proceedings with my stomach as I vomit a litre stomach acid? And the simple answer is a big fat shovel of “isn’t it good you went shopping this morning”
I’ve seen many reviews on people’s thoughts on Akatsuki’s characters, and every god damn single one of the cum gurgling twats that praises this series all seem to say the exact same thing, “The characters are amazing with intricate back stories and amazing development through the series”. This statement I whole heartedly agree to… Oh wait scratch that last part. The characters do have an interesting and unique back story, and Yona’s transformation from a scared, timid princess to a strong female heroin is interesting. But as soon as the “boy toys” have joined the harem bandwagon, they devolve into body pillow number 6745 and just become another member of the reverse harem bullshit. This is what I hate and loath about this series and the shoujo genre as a whole. Develop apparently means a character becoming infatuated with the main heroin, until there are enough handsome men to perform their very own bukkake shoot.
What the writer of the series should have done was throw out the love hexagon and make entire series focus on Hak and Yona, and make the rest of the cast just loyal to Yona. But that isn’t going to happen because like I said in my introduction, the characters are written by people that haven’t had sex since they played doctor with Uncle Tom. When I think about it, the characters as a whole, excluding best boy blonde, aren’t that great either. Plus the end villain came from the local cookie cutter bakery of Disney villain cliche, already in a pretty pink ribbon bow as he trots onto the stage, hoping people don’t notice as she shakes in fear. To add to that, the tone of the series swings like a convulsive Gibbon on crack. One minute the heroes will be fighting kidnappers who sell woman and children as slaves, and the next minute it'll change art style to adorable chibi characters, as they tell a joke that falls flat so hard it tunnels into the earth and burns up in its core. It’s just so bad it made me want to pull my teeth out and jam them in my eye sockets so I don’t see that shit ever again. Who thought that was a good idea to implement comedy with murder, other then Punch and Judy? It’s like me and relationships, they just don’t seem to work out.
I have other complaints about the series such as the music, animation,the ending and Yona’s sun glare, but this is already getting to long, so I’m will wrap this up. As I wrote this review I realised the mountains of problems the leaked out of the shows pores, like yellow puss from a wound. And every single one them stem from the Shoujo heritage, from the reverse harem, the lack of character development of the male characters, the erratic tonal shifts, and many other complaints and nitpicks I have. But I still found the show mildly entertaining (even if it was for the wrong reasons), from the unique setting, Yona’s development as a character, or just pointing out everything bad about the series. This “enabled” me to claw through the story, in the same way someone “enables” a crippling drug habit. So in conclusion, Akatsuki no Yona turned out to be a slightly above average Shoujo series that surprised me. But keep in mind, for me personally an average Shoujo is about as good as putrefied shit left on black tarmac to cook. So you can gauge my opinion of the series from there. But for a Shoujo fan sure go watch it. But for everyone else, just go watch Arslan Senki.
Score: 4.4
Posted by Oppai_Defender | May 4, 2016 5:36 AM | 1 comments