So I missed Madoka fever when Madoka fever was all the rage. (That is, last summer.) But seeing as I’ll be at Otakon in a week, and basically every industry guest at Otakon is there because of their role in the Puella Magi Madoka Magica Japanese or English cast/production staff, I figured I’d give it a look-see. It is only twelve episodes, after all.
The plot of Madoka revolves around the character of Kyubey. Kyubey is an extraterrestrial creature called an Incubator, who will grant you one wish—any wish—if you agree to let him turn you into a magical girl (mahou shoujo, a la Sailor Moon) and fight witches the rest of your life.
The deal is, quite obviously, rigged in Kyubey’s favor. The life of a magical girl is a twisted pyramid-scheme-slash-vicious-cycle that ultimately ends in despair and violent death.
Kaname Madoka (the cute pink-haired one below) is one of the girls Kyubey has chosen to take up the magical girl mantle, and the story of the anime follows her as she sees the effects of magical-girl life and makes her decision.
A friend once referred to Madoka as ‘the most fucked-up anime’ he’s ever seen. I wouldn’t go so far. I think Madoka is a pretty standard horror anime, and really a lightweight one at that, since the show ends on a happy note. The real horror of this show comes from the juxtaposition of the magical girl genre into an anime that is clearly horror. Everything about the peppy opening theme by ClariS, the bright and happy promotional art, and the cutesy character designs screams that this will be an adorable moe escapade, which is why it is all the more harsh and gruesome when the truths of magical girl life are one by one revealed.
This isn’t the be-all end-all of mindfuck anime. But it is actually really good (albeit depressing and horrific at times), and it’s so short that there’s really no reason to not watch it. Check it out!
Do you like schadenfreude? I, for one, practice schadenfreude daily and today’s Webcrush combines this with two of my most adored things: good translations and Japanese television. Essentially, it’s perfect.
In Japan, the ‘variety show’ style of show that seemed to die out in America during the Seventies is still running strong and none is better
than Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!! (Literally “Downtown’s ‘This is No Task for Kids!!'”). This is known more affectionately to me, as this is the title it was introduced to me under, as ‘Batsu Game’. Batsu directly translates to ‘punishment’ and from that I’m sure you can gather some sense of what the game entails. The players are assumed to have lost a bet—although in this series, I’ve only seen the actual bet once or twice—and thus must suffer through a punishment game for it. Usually it’s something simple: playing rock-paper-scissors and the person who loses gets slapped in the face. Downtown takes it to a whole other level.
Downtown itself is a manzai comedy duo formed of Hitoshi Matsumoto (who plays the role of the boke: the stupid one or “funny man”) and Masatoshi Hamada (the tsukkomi: the “straight man”). They’ve been around for at least twenty years, so they know their shit and know exactly how to get each other to continuously lose in their batsu games. Notice I said ‘continuously’.
Yes, folks, the thing that sets the Downtown batsu games apart from several other ones is that they are a legitimate event. Stretching far beyond a single prank, these punishment games of theirs last for a full, 24-hour day and utilize a full cast of other comedians and stars from Japan along with elaborate sets (the last batsu game used an actual intercontinental airport, just to give you an idea). The only rule? They can’t laugh for the duration lest they suffer divine retribution on their buttocks.
Now, as I stated before, this Webcrush isn’t only for the series itself, it’s also a very fangirl-y appreciation post for the sub-ers who take the time to
translate the show almost perfectly. In short, I want to be like them when I grow up. You can tell they have a love not only for the show and its victims, but also for the Japanese language. So here’s to you, GakiFiles! May you continue subbing and giving us all the gift of laughter at the expense of others!
If you’re interesting in watching one of these games—and you really should be—visit their site here. My personal favorite is the High School Batsu, but each game is different! Just make sure you have some time on your hands to sit down and watch it: each game takes at least an hour and you may get addicted.
Here I am again! As a reminder, this series reviews shows that all geeks are ‘supposed to be’ familiar with, when that’s not always the case, and lets you know if you really should care about them. This time around, I’m looking at The X-Files.
The X-Files follows the story of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in their work on the titular X-files, a department where the FBI sends the cases they deem ‘unsolvable by standard means’. Basically, the cases deal with problems that are paranormal or extraterrestrial in origin. Mulder has devoted his life to the X-Files because he hopes that by working on them he can find his sister, who was abducted by aliens when they were children. Scully, a medical doctor and scientific thinker, is originally assigned to the department to temper Mulder’s passion and discredit his work. They discover that the United States’ government is neck-deep in a conspiracy with extraterrestrials, but constantly struggle to find conclusve evidence to prove it.
(From here on there be spoilers.)
That was one of my first problems with the show. No matter what happened, not matter how many people inside and outside the FBI they convinced of their theories, Mulder and Scully were always left knowing they were right but with no way to prove it. This happening once or twice makes it a show that isn’t afraid to have a sad ending. This happening all the time makes it a show that enjoys trolling its viewers.
The other problems I had with the show were centered around Scully’s character. First of all, eventually she and Mulder develop feelings for each other, making their six-plus season platonic relationship romantic. Honestly I thought this was poorly handled—I only rarely felt any real romance between the two, and as soon as they were thrown together they were pulled apart.
That was the other big issue I had with this show. Yes, Mulder’s obsession with the X-files is centered around his sister being taken, and he eventually loses the rest of his family. But nearly all of the show’s plot points are based around something being taken from Scully. She is abducted. Her ability to reproduce is taken. She is forced to question her faith. Her sister is killed. Her father dies. She is diagnosed with terminal cancer. She is mystically impregnated, and then forced to give away her baby for its own protection. She falls in love with Mulder, and he is forced out of the FBI and into hiding so they can’t be together. Nine seasons and two movies later, Scully doesn’t seem to have gained anything significant from her times on the X-Files besides the experience of being there and a few friends.
The roots for a mostly procedural paranormal show like Supernatural are definitely clear in this show (And SPN boasts some X-Files alums like Grandpa Samuel Campbell who was A.D. Walter Skinner—I liked him better as Skinner, actually—and Bobby’s hunter friend Rufus Turner, who played Mr. X; Crowley even has a villain role in one episode), and the first several seasons are pretty solid in my opinion. But the last two seasons were really just bad, I thought, and shoehorned in some new characters to make up for the fact that David Duchovny (Mulder) hadn’t signed on as more than a guest star for the last two seasons. They lost the thread of the really compelling alien plotline and focused on something they didn’t really have a handle on, and the final two-hour episode was only exciting in the last ten minutes or so.
I won’t stop interested parties from seeking out The X-Files. But I can only half-heartedly recommend the show to sci-fi geeks—I’ve seen better.
Here is an article (more like a list) of twenty fun facts about Batman Begins and some of the other Batman movies in the Nolan trilogy. Maybe you know some of them, maybe you’ll learn something new!
What has me particularly interested is number twenty, the one with Clint Eastwood as Batman. What made me think was, wouldn’t it be awesome if they did a live-action movie of the Batman Beyond cartoon that aired on Kids WB years ago and had Clint Eastwood as the older Batman. I know this probably isn’t exactly canon (I’m fairly uneducated in American comics) but wouldn’t it be awesome?!
Go agree or disagree with me in the comments! I want a debate going!
It’s that time again! Let’s look at another trailer. This week, it’s Wreck-ItRalph.
Wreck-It Ralph looks like it’s going to be a great movie from Disney and much like Toy Story seems to be geared toward those of that our older and, in this case, have played the old video games and continue to play the new ones. That doesn’t mean that this movie won’t be relatable to a younger crowd—if anything it should hopefully introduce them to many of the old classic games.
The idea that games have lives and personalities when the game is on or off is a popular one and one that I adore. It reminds me greatly of the TV Show Reboot. Does anyone remember that? It was on Toonami for a while. Anyway, I’m looking forward to Wreck-It Ralph let’s hope it’s fun, funny, and gives the old video games the respect they deserve.
Oh, how I love all the older games. Unfortunately, the graphics give my boyfriend a headache, thus I must stick to single-player RPGs. And to be honest, I kind of prefer it that way. I don’t get along well when there are other players. But pursuing through my collection the other day, I came across one game that I hadn’t played in forever: Legend of Legaia.
I have such fond memories of this game. I remember my older brother tricking my nine-year-old self into paying for half of it, with the hope that I wouldn’t like it so he could keep it for himself. The love we family members have for each other.
I also remember him being bored with it and getting annoyed that I actually really liked the game, despite what he initially hoped. Unfortunately for him, because it was half mine, I refused to let him sell it after he decided he didn’t want it anymore. And that’s why it’s been collecting dust underneath my bed for the past fourteen years. I guess he should have known that his nature-hating sister would love a game about saving trees so long as magic was involved. And so long as I could beat the shit out of monsters. Those tree-murdering bastards!
Anyway, Legend of Legaia first came out for the PlayStation in 1998, and it had okay ratings, but it was by no means a big hit. And most people I mention it to have never heard of it. In 2001, Prokion released the sequel, Legaia: Duel Saga. From what I can tell—as I’ve never played the sequel, nor do I really plan to—it has nothing to do with the first game. It also had okay reviews, but any connection it has to its predecessor seems to end at simply being based in the same world. From what I’ve gathered, the whole world/tree-saving fiasco impacts nothing in Duel Saga’s plot.
So Legend of Legaia takes place in a world called Legaia. The game begins by giving a brief introduction and history lesson on the world.
God created the heavens, the earth, and the seas. After creating all things in the universe, god created humans to rule over this world. Yet while possessing the wisdom of god, humans were physically weaker than the wild beasts, and impulsive in spirit. Many times did the humans come close to dying out forever. Concerned about the humans’ future, god gave them a mighty force with which to aid them.
It was the Seru.
Since the dawn of human memory, known as history, humans lived together with creatures known as the Seru. The Seru lived together with the humans, always obeying them, and making the humans many times stronger than before.
When not worn by a human, a Seru looks much like a stone figure. However…
Upon touching a human, a Seru changes form and gives that human secret abilities. With a Seru, a human can lift objects heavier than itself and even fly in the air at will.
However, that era came to an end.
Appearing from out of nowhere, the Mist covered the land, bringing to an end symbiosis between humans and Seru.
After the thick Mist came, the Seru, who were once obeyed humans, rebelled against them.
The Seru began attacking humans at will. Seru that attached themselves to humans controlled their minds and turned them into evil beasts.
As if forsaken by god, human civilization collapsed. It was the twilight of humanity.
Those who escaped the Mist inhabited desolate areas and protected each other. Now, their faint hope is their only source of inspiration.
Yeah, all of that could probably have been explained during the gameplay, and not shoved on us all at one. It also takes about two or three minutes for the game to even scroll all that along the screen. It’s pretty dull. I much rather prefer this opening sequence:
It’s after this that we’re introduced to our main character, Vahn. Vahn, who takes after characters like Link and doesn’t talk or have any sort of personality outside what you want him to have, lives in a tiny ocean town called Rim Elm, with high walls that keep the Mist at bay. I guess it’s a good thing the Mist apparently can’t travel over water, or they’d be screwed.
Oh, wait. It can.
Plot hole?
So we start off by going through Vahn’s daily routine—but wait, the hunters are back, and the one, the father of Vahn’s love interest who has no relevance outside the first ten minutes of gameplay, has been injured. He dies, everyone mourns, and life with the Mist is truly awful. Then, later that night, there’s ominous banging on the wall. Some giant Seru-like monster breaks it down, which allows the Mist and a bunch of other Seru and monsters to enter Rim Elm.
However, the Mist cannot seem to penetrate the town center where a giant dying tree sits. And though this tree seems capable of holding back the Mist, despite dying, none of the other dying trees can. Plot hole?
When Vahn touches the tree, he encounters Meta, who is a Ra-Seru, not to be confused with plain Seru. A Ra-Seru is a Seru that is immune to the Mist, and even though earlier we had hunters who could travel through the Mist, apparently that’s only possible if a person has a Ra-Seru attached to their arm. That might be another plot hole. Or maybe it’s just really hard to not get possessed by an evil Seru without a Ra-Seru. I’m not sure, because the game seems to flip on its stance here.
Anyway, the tree in the square is called a Genesis Tree, and with Meta’s power, Vahn is able to restore it to full health. The tree does some magic, and it pushes the Mist and the evil Seru away from Rim Elm. From there, Vahn is obligated to go out into the world and revive as many Genesis Trees as possible to save Legaia from the Mist.
Oh, and remember when our history lesson said this:
Upon touching a human, a Seru changes form and gives that human secret abilities. With a Seru, a human can lift objects heavier than itself and even fly in the air at will.
Don’t expect the ability to fly in this game. Or to lift heavy objects. The oh-so-secret abilities of having a Ra-Seru, secret in that everyone knows about them, is to save trees and absorb the magic from Seru controlled by the Mist. It’s also a nice free pass for not having to pay for letting rooms at certain inns. Meta at one point tells Vahn to kill as many Seru as possible to gain magic spells. So… in order to gain power, Vahn should murder all the creatures being controlled against their will to stop evil…?
Well, I personally don’t care. I just want the magic. You end up with a total of three characters that all have Ra-Seru, and they can all absorb magic. One thing I like about this game is that there isn’t some ridiculously large amount of Seru types, so it’s within reason to get all the characters every spell. What’s a bitch is leveling up all the spells for the different characters. They each have nine levels, which may not seem like a lot, but that requires using each spell about sixty some times for each character. And for an obsessive-compulsive person like me who has to level everything up to max, it takes a while. It doesn’t help that each spell takes about as long as the summons from Final Fantasy to be cast.
Our second main character is a girl named Noa. Her personality ranges between quirky and fun to Oh-God-Please-Make-Her-Shut-Up-Before-I-Shoot-Her-In-The-Face. Okay, she’s not that bad, and she has admittedly a lot more personality than Vahn, though that’s not hard. Furthermore, her relationship with her Ra-Seru, Terra, is much more in depth than Vahn’s with Meta. Noa’s backstory—she’s a princess. Opps! Spoilers!—is that she was abandoned as a baby near the Genesis Tree Terra resided in when the Mist first came. But at the time, she was too small for Terra to bond with. Thus Terra took over the body of a wolf and scurried Noah off into a cave protected from the mist, where she raised Noa as her daughter and trained her how to fight. Upon Noa’s meeting with Vahn, Terra uses the power of a Genesis Tree to transfer from the wolf to Noah.
Noa’s fun in a way that I don’t often see—or when I do see it, it’s not done well. Because of being raised by Terra away from any kind of human interaction, she doesn’t understand a lot of trivial things, like the fact that men grow mustaches. Like seriously, they have whiskers coming out their noses. Weird.
Gala, our other character, was raised in a monastery, where it’s taboo to have a Ra-Seru. On top of that, he also hates the Seru and Ra-Seru, though he reluctantly agrees to being bonded with Ozma, which gets him excommunicated. It takes him quite a while to come to terms with having a Ra-Seru and not thinking of Ozma as little more than a leech on his life. And though being a big tough, burly man, he is one of the kinder and gentler characters in the game. His childhood rival, Songi, also ends up with a Ra-Seru, but Songi’s is evil, and he then becomes one of the main antagonists throughout the rest of the game. One internet site I came across gave a character description for him that read something along the lines of this:
He will haunt you for the entire game.
I’m not going to lie though, this game is kind of hard. Unless you’re like me, and you have to spend time leveling up all your Seru magic the moment you get it and are thus about ten levels higher than you should be at any given time, some of the boss fights in this can be a real bitch. Bosses like Xain, a big minotaur-like creature, have been known to be so tough that players have given up.
On top of that, for someone who wants to get all the different magic for each character, you’re going to find that bit of a challenge too. Yeah, it’s not impossible, and it doesn’t take forever, but it is time consuming. Some Seru are easier to absorb than others. For instance, Vahn’s Ra-Seru, Meta, is fire based, so fire Seru are pretty easy to get. However, Ozma, Gala’s Ra-Seru, is lightning based, so water Seru can take a bit of time. Furthermore, Ozma takes longer to level up water Seru than it would lightning Seru.
That aside, the battle system is pretty good, and it has the original Japanese voice actors shouting things during fights. Though, unless you speak Japanese, what they say won’t make any sense outside grunts with syllables. Each character can either do magic, chose between four different physical moves, or something called Spirit each turn. Because this is a martial arts game, a player can pick how the characters fight and discover different combos. Some combos only take three moves, while others take eight or more, and they can be combined. The aforementioned Spirit move increases the combo bar, allowing the characters to do more moves. So it is a lot of fun.
Here’s someone fighting Xain:
Unfortunately, the graphics are lacking compared to today’s standards, but for a 1998 game, they were pretty good. They remind me a lot of Final Fantasy VII, actually. Both games did come out around the same time.
For the most part, yeah, the story can be a little cheesy, but it’s not like it beats its audience over the head with some self-righteous moral of saving plants like Avatar does. It’s just a pretty fun game with an interesting concept. Of course, the beginning history lesson doesn’t really do much. I mean, God had some vested interest in humanity, and then I guess He stopped caring after the Mist made everything go to hell, because He’s never really mentioned again.
I’d definitely check this game out if you happen to have a PlayStation or a PS2 lying about. You’d still need a PS1 memory card. Most of my files are around somewhere between thirty to fifty hours long, so there is a fair amount of story and gameplay. Legend of Legaia kind of got swept under the rug of other games, and despite that fact that I see it referenced a lot, it’s still not that popular, which is a shame, because despite some of the faults I mentioned, they’re all forgivable. If any of you’ve played it, tell me what you think.
So there is a Legend of Zelda manga series based on the video games. I have come across Ocarina of Time (two volumes), Majora’s Mask, Oracle of Ages, and Oracle of Seasons (which I have not read) in my travels. Apparently there are more which are based on Toon Link who I refuse to acknowledge exists. Here is the general low-down.
If you like the video games, you are going to like the mangas. If you didn’t like the video games, you are not going to like the mangas. It’s that simple. The only manga that is significantly different from the video game is Oracle of Ages (which I’m not going to describe, because that would be spoilers). My favorite mangas were the Ocarina of Time pair, but that’s probably because they were my favorite video game. Also, because it was spread out over two volumes, it wasn’t rushed. Majora’s Mask, on the other hand, was insanely rushed. Because I knew the storyline I knew what was going on, but it was so rushed. If it had been one manga longer (like some of the Ranma ½ mangas) then it would have been fine. There wasn’t enough of a story to make Majora’s Mask two mangas, but it was still too much for one. And anyone who has played that game knows it’s crammed full of stuff.
I really like the art, especially the depictions of adult Link. He just looks really attractive.
But if you like the games, you will like the mangas. They aren’t hard to read (they’re Viz Kids you guys) and they don’t take up much time (There are nine or ten volumes and you don’t have to read all of them). So if you are looking for brain junk food or don’t know the games and want to figure out what all the fuss is about, pick these suckers up!
First of all, this is one of those anime that are equally referred to by their English and Japanese names, so I’m not sure what to call it. I’ll refer to it as SnA the rest of this post. SnA is not the kind of fare I usually seek out—emotional, slice-of-life stuff—but I was unfairly roped in by the one-two punch combination of Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, etc.) as director and Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Wolf’s Rain, Ghost in the Shell, Darker than Black) as composer.
Basically, this show is about three kids who are in love with jazz music and each other, living in Kyushu (the southernmost part of Japan) in the 1960s. The animation has a very different look and feel to it than most shows I’ve watched, the selection of jazz music was great even to me as a total jazz noob, and it definitely felt like it could have been a real-life story to me, which, I suppose, is high praise for a slice-of-life story. It’s also only twelve episodes, so it’s not a huge time commitment.
There were a few things I didn’t like about SnA—first of all, and this is not just my inner fujoshi speaking, the two boys and the two girls had far better chemistry with their same-sex friend than they did with their designated love interest. People really strongly defend Sentarou and Kaoru’s relationship as being platonic, and far be it from me to put a box on what straight male friendship in the 1960s looks like, but I don’t think that a guy who wasn’t just a little bit interested in his guy best friend would describe him as ‘so handsome that sometimes it takes my breath away.’ I honestly thought they might end up together at the end of the series. Also, it had a bit of a slow pace to it, but that’s probably just my action-loving brain being confused by a more thoughtful plot without lasers or robots or anything. I recommend it.
Haiyore! Nyarko-san!
Oh, Nyarko-san. I had such high hopes for you. The premise of this show was what pulled me in: Most of the cast is Lovecraftian gods/eldritch horrors/etc, but in the bodies of mostly adorable high school girls (and one boy). Nyarko is actually a Nyarlathotep, Hasuta is actually a god of winds, Kuko is actually Cthuga, a fire deity, etc. I was hoping that this would be fun, intellectual, and different. Instead it was just a Lovecraftian twist on a harem anime. Seriously, boring male lead with inexplicable number of supernatural love interests vying for his attention in ways that are probably definitely inappropriate for middle-schoolers (or ageless gods in middleschooler bodies), various homosexual crushes dismissed as disgusting and perverted, lots of non-consensual kissing. Don’t waste your time unless you really like harem anime.
Sengoku Collection
I was actually quite surprised by Sengoku Collection. I have this weird habit where I hope that one day harem anime will get less annoying and rapey and so I continue to watch it for one reason or another and continually get disappointed. (Love Hina someone recommended to me, I watched Shuffle for the dads, etc.) The description of and first episode of Sengoku Collection had me believing for sure this would be another example of this. (The gimmick in this show being, of course, Sengoku (Warring States) era warriors are falling through into modern day, except they’re from an alternate universe where all of them are beautiful young women rather than gruff old men.)
Like I said, I figured this would be another crappy harem anime, but actually each episode has taken the time to focus on a different Warring States figure and their individual conflicts upon arriving in modern times. The only real connecting thread is Oda Nobunaga, who wants to get back to the Sengoku period and is collecting magic power from the other women to do so. She usually shows up at the end of an episode and talks, bargains, or fights the other girl and then disappears again. This anime is twice the length of SnA and Nyarko-san, so it’s not over yet, but I’m actually enjoying tuning in every week as of right now. (Although I think they may be running out of Warring States-era figures, becaues the last episode I watched was about Kondou, Hijikata, and Okita of the Shinsengumi, who didn’t live until 300 years after the Sengoku era.) Either way, though, I do recommend this show.
Alright, it’s time to talk about one of my favorite things in the world, and that is the wonderful world of Big Time Rush. I’ve posted things related to them here before, like featuring Carlos as my last Web Crush, but haven’t worked up the nerve to talk about the whole band and everything I love about them.
Ooh, I’m getting excited just at the prospect of talking about these guys and their show and their music and how much I love them. Truth be told, I’m a bit nervous too. There’s so much hate for entertainment aimed at teens/tweens, especially the music which aims for that demographic, that I worry people will write off these fantastic guys just for being a Nickelodeon band without giving them a second glance. So I ask you to give them a chance, to ignore that voice in your head saying “Look at these over-produced, auto-tuned, mass-marketed punks” and open up to the possibility that they are more than they seem.
Because they are more than they seem. They are so much more.
Big Time Rush was conceived by Nickelodeon to be The Monkees for the new millennium: a television show about a band and an actual band that makes pop music. The casting process took around two years I believe as the producers searched for the right combination of singer/actors who would work well together as a group and appeal to the right demographic.
Not only did they achieve this, but I think it’s safe to say these four young men gelled better than anyone could have imagined.
The four band members are James Maslow, Carlos Pena Jr., Logan Henderson, and Kendall Schmidt. James, Carlos, and Logan had been selected for a while before the fourth spot was finally filled by Kendall and he has been described as the last piece of the puzzle which finally fell into place. Despite being the last to join the group even after others had been tried in his role he became the instant fit and all involved knew that they had gotten the group right. Seeing how these four interact and speak so highly of each other is frankly beautiful. In a world where machismo is so valued and male friends are not exactly encouraged to be affectionate with each other it’s incredible to see these four so unafraid of hugging, sharing private jokes, and using the words “love” and “family” to describe their bond.
This incredible chemistry is a huge part of what makes their show such a joy to watch. It’s rare to see a group of males whose friendship is the focus of a television show. I don’t mean that there are no male friendships on TV, but I seem to see it always being two friends, usually a girl or two thrown into the mix for romantic tension, and the focus of the show is usually outside of their relationship with each other; the fact that they’re friends merely an accepted fact of the show and not its main thrust. This is not the case with “Big Time Rush”. The four boys share a bond which is celebrated, tested, damaged, and mended but never broken. While there are love interests and romantic story arcs it is this incredible bond of friendship which is the heart of the show.
Also on the show we see some amazing things which are almost never a part of teen/tween shows: ongoing story arcs, character development, parents who aren’t utter failures, consequences for careless/selfish behavior, and incredible role models for both girls and boys. To be sure, these are not heavily emphasized aspects of the show and over-the-top antics and slapstick humor are much more apparent, but seeing what drives the story behind those gimmicks is so rewarding, and after all, isn’t that the point of being a geek? Looking deeper than the surface appearance of something, obsessing over the details, and appreciating the nuanced heart of the matter?
So this is my brief introduction to the world of BTR. Look forward to posts expanding on the ideas I’ve touched on here and further celebrating these guys and all they’ve built. I’m excited to share my love for them with you!
Are you humming the Avengers theme music now? Because I am.
I’m pretty sure the Avengers is still in theaters, and if you haven’t seen it already get your ass there or we can’t be friends anymore.
…You’re back. Did you enjoy it? Damn straight you did. Now you may have noticed the guy in the silly hat and the green and gold armor that did all that bad stuff. Loki has gone from a figure in Norse mythology to a full-on badass villain in the Marvelverse, but you can see him or variations of his trickter god character elsewhere too. Spoilers for both American Gods and Supernatural below.
American Gods:
The Loki of this story bears little resemblance to the Marvel villain, at least as far as daddy issues are concerned. In this book by Neil Gaiman, the characters Low-Key Lyesmith and Mr. Wednesday (secretly Loki Liesmith and Odin) cook up an elaborate, decades-spanning scheme to sacrifice the gods of the new world (media, the Internet, etc.) and the gods of the old world (Anansi, Bast, Ganesh) at once to restore themselves to the power they once knew.
Supernatural:
When does Supernatural not feature in an OMPCJ discussion? It’s just so rife with unpackable religious imagery! Anyway, the main trickster in Supernatural turns out to be not Loki, but (spoilers for S5) Gabriel, but he plays the trickster game up until (and a little bit after) the big reveal; even the other non-Judeo-Christian gods who appear in season five’s “Hammer of the Gods” believe him to be Loki, inviting him to their anti-Apocalypse pow-wow and referring to him with the Norse god’s name.
Where else do the trickster gods lurk? I was tempted to include the kooky-sounding anime Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok but having not actually watched it I feared doing it injustice. Let me know in the comments, and as always, tune in next time to get some religion!
So I missed Madoka fever when Madoka fever was all the rage. (That is, last summer.) But seeing as I’ll be at Otakon in a week, and basically every industry guest at Otakon is there because of their role in the Puella Magi Madoka Magica Japanese or English cast/production staff, I figured I’d give it a look-see. It is only twelve episodes, after all.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 