LetalisNox

I'm wondering, would same-sex pairings between two characters that show little or no evidence of attraction towards each other in the actual series be so irritating if the story was well-written and gave more background story than sudden, out-of-the-blue lust and love? I mean, sometimes it isn't about being gay or straight. It's about a relationship that deepens beyond that of friendship. Is it more about yaoi/yuri relationships simply making no sense half the time than the thought of same-sex pairings?

Well, yaoi implications in popular anime are not entirely in the broad imaginations of fangirls. Japanese doujinshi art caters to the yaoi fanbase with pictures that go from merely suggestive to . . . well, way beyond suggestive. Any fans of GW can find Heero/Duo and Trowa/Quatre doujinshi spanning the net in the hundreds, decidedly more than straight doujinshi. And let's all not forget about CLAMP . . . 'nuff said there.

Wow, the general opinion really seems to revolve around Cowboy Bebop, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies. Huh. Gotta see those. But at the moment, my favorites are Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and X: The Movie. Vampire Hunter D because of the intensely gothic art and sweet bloody action, and X because of, yes, the dark and richly detailed art and lots and lots of blood (not to mention one of my favorite end songs in all of anime.) Not exactly the most inspired plots of all time (vampire hunters, end of the world), but artistically brilliant, definitely.

Gah, the dissection's just for fun. Jeez, we all need a hobby, lay off. Keeps my mind off college exams.

Now, let me tell you, I'm not a born yaoi fan. The first time I read a Heero/Duo Gundam Wing fic I nearly had a coronary. Then I became accepting of yaoi, even a fan of it (depending on the writer of the fanfiction, of course) and now there are some pairings that are just priceless to me. But then I noticed something in anime: It seems to be awfully common for the main male character to have a male best friend and a female that falls in love with him while he more or less ignores her affection and gets on with the story. The two guys end up as a rave fanfiction couple by all the fangirls while the girl gets more flames than a volcano. The whole threesome concept has repeated itself too often to be ignored. Prime examples being: 1) Gundam Wing (Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Relena Peacecraft) You wouldn't BELIEVE the flames Relena gets. Whole sites are dedicated to hating her. 2) Rurouni Kenshin (Kenshin Himura, Sanosuke Sagara, Kaoru Kamiya) 3)Trigun (Vash the Stampede, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Meryl Stryfe) And those are just the most obvious ones. Is this just the work of irate fangirls obsessed with cute guys falling in love with each other? Or is there more to the deal? Think about it. Heero and Duo (voted in the top five of favorite anime couples by Animerica magazine) have a great camaraderie in the risk-their-lives-for-each-other sense, while Relena comes off as clingy and goody-goody. Kenshin and Sano are always going off to fight together and what-not, while Kaoru just mopes about her feelings for Kenshin. Wolfwood is the first person to see through Vash's false smiles (Quote from Wolfwood: "Your smile is so empty that it's painful to look at.") and from then on he and Vash establish a relationship more touching than anything Vash makes with Meryl (who does little more than berate him) by the series' end. So many male/female relationships in popular anime are one-sided, fueled only by the argument of traditional romance in comparison with homosexual romance, an argument losing power more and more everyday. Is this intentional? Why do the two guys always seem to bond with each other far more deeply than the guy bonds with his potential girlfriend, and then we all assume the guy will get with the girl anyway, or we bash the girl into oblivion in fanfiction? I'm neither a yaoi fangirl nor homophobic(I just like ALL the possibilities), so I can ask this without being biased either way: Yaoi or straight? What's the deal?[QUOTE]"I never could explain why I love anybody, or anything." Walter Whitman[/QUOTE]

Sailor Moon was also my very first anime. I didn't even know it WAS Japanese animated, but I know I woke up at six o'clock every weekday morning for a large portion of my grade-school years just to watch it. When Toonami aired on Cartoon Network with new episodes of Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, and finally, Gundam Wing (which became my utter and complete obsession), that is when I truly discovered anime. Why? I haven't the slightest idea. I know I've always loved animated shows (I've seen almost every Disney movie and television series to date) but what it was about Sailor Moon that made me love it eludes me to this day. The humor? The creative and fantastic storyline that is missing in most Western cartoons? (At least, back then, it was.) Eh, who knows? But it did open a door for me, and I walked through and have never looked back since.

My (very religious) mother and grandmother took one look at X the Movie and decided that anime was spawned in Hell as a tool of the devil to mislead unsuspecting teenagers. I'm so utterly serious you should feel sorry for me. As long as they don't actually SEE the majority of what I'm watching (InuYasha all chock-full of demons, Hellsing with its relgious babble, Gundam Wing's Treize Khushrenada's statements on God, my single La Blue Girl tape, etc.) I won't be heckled. They know I deal in some pretty freaky stuff, anyway, and leave me to my freedom of expression; they're tolerance is astounding. But my life would just get way too complicated for comfort's sake if they got hold of La Blue Girl. (I'd wild out my child, too, if I caught them with that freaky vid.)

(To MillieFan: The Heero/Duo, Quatre/Trowa pairings are not necessarily fan created. Gundam Wing was incredibly ambiguous when it came to romance and God only knows who the male characters found attractive when it all cruised towards the finale.) The worst couple in the world, I'd have to say, is Spike and Julia from Cowboy Bebop. Now, don't stone me yet, let me explain why: Vicious, who used to be Spike's best friend, dated Julia FIRST, before she fell in love with Spike and they both betrayed Vicious trying to get away and live happily ever after. I mean, yeah, Vicious didn't necessarily have to go all psycho over the situation like he did, but jeez, Spike, how could you do that kind of thing to your boy? That just isn't right. It's no wonder he and Julia could never find happiness. Bad karma was all over that relationship from the get-go.

Samurai Jack is obviously the brainchild of someone heavily influenced by anime, as is the Powerpuff girls (those EYES) and Dexter's Laboratory. (One episode of Dexter has him fighting this tall, well-built, blue-haired male bombshell with big narrow eyes and a weird way of talking. It SCREAMED anime, let me tell you.)

I suppose I have to go with the general consensus: Anime does not necessarily give you more of an open mind. In fact, in order to truly appreciate anime for the artform it is, you have to go INTO it with an open mind. Having a closed mind towards anime leads to grossly editing a perfectly good show (such as Sailor Moon, for example, my very first anime experience.) To accept issues that anime deals with wholeheartedly and to which Western culture attaches much stigma (homosexualism, animated violence and rape, ect.) you have to have an open mind to begin with. And I can only speak for myself, but in no way has anime affected my love for animated Disney movies and other such Western "cartoons". In fact, without Disney to start me off, I never would have appreciated animation as much as I do. I don't see Japan as any better than anyone one else just because they created anime, and I feel only a form of sympathy for those who don't know anime. But then, my guy friends feel sorry for me because I don't know sports. All a matter of opinion, I'd say.

Lotsa Spoilers. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN "X: THE MOVIE" or "VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST" I'd have to say the X movie. The entire thing was one big death scene. EVERYBODY dies. NEVER in my LIFE have I encountered a movie where EVERY SINGLE PERSON bites it. Good guys, bad guys, the stupid dog, everyone was DEAD, all except Kamui. And how many boxsets you wanna bet he jumped off Tokyo Tower to his doom after that? I know I would have. I admit it, I cried like an utter pansy when that movie ended, and the depressing end song didn't help one tiny bit. Forever Love, Forever Dream, my rear. They're all DEAD. Not much love 'round those parts. THEN there was Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. It had a total Romeo and Juliet thing going when Charlotte died. I SWEAR I thought she was gonna live, that she and Meier would live happily ever after . . . and I shoulda known better. Totally gothic movie plus doomed romance? I've seen The Crow. I know how these things work. Wah! And DON'T even get me started on Cowboy Bebop. Tragic don't know tragic until you've seen "The Real Folk Blues". I'm depressed now. I think I'll just go lie down.

I'm probably forgetting the scenes that REALLY made me crack up, but a very funny moment for me included three in partciular: 1) When, directly after InuYasha's first fight against Sesshomaru using Tetsusaiga, Myouga the flea is trying to convince InuYasha that he didn't run off like a coward during the heat of the battle. InuYasha gets this incredibly and ridiculously bright, sparkly, benevolent grin on his face, making Myouga think he's off the hook, then the grin turns utterly psychotic and InuYasha crushes Myouga to a pulp. I thought I would die, I really did. 2)When, during the fight with the Thunder Brothers, InuYasha and Kagome go off into their own little universe yelling at each other about Kagome's lie about them being lovers. (Two horrible demons trying to kill them both, and InuYasha's more peeved about the implication that he might actually LIKE Kagome. Idiot.) 3)Sesshomaru throwing a rock at Jaken for screeching some nonsense about Sesshomaru's lack of concern for his servant's well-being. It just struck me as so hilarious that this proud and utterly deadly demon lord would resort to chucking rocks in order to get his point acorss. Makes me think Fluffy has a sense of humor after all. ^_^

The worst of the craze is over, for which I'm thankful, because I think it leaves people more willing to look at anime as something serious, rather than refer to it as "that weird Pokemon stuff." And no, I believe anime is here to stay. It may not remain as intensely popular as it is today, but when you have such incredibly moving movie epics such as "Grave of the Fireflies" (an anime war movie which acclaimed American critic Roger Ebert himself proclaimed a masterpiece) it's obvious that anime is an artform that will, as most artforms do, never die out as long as someone remembers how truly wonderful it really is.

The character designs ARE irritating, in a sense, and the basis of the plot rather overdone, but it's recently become very interesting in that it's not so much harping about an android having human emotions as explaining that being human can be more a curse than a blessing. The variety in camera angles is nice to watch, and the lack of complication in certain things (like how DO they reassert their human images after changing to android forms?) is kind of a refreshing. The action and plot override the simplicity of the animation, just like, in my opinion, The Big O (which I snubbed because of character designs before I got a clue. It's coming back, though, and I can't wait! ^_^)

My reason for preferring dubs is mostly redundant: I can't speak Japanese, (though subs help me learn) all those little words on the bottom are annoying to read (even though I'm a very fast reader) those high-pitched voices get on my nerves, despite the skill at acting, and it's distracting from the action to watch something in another language. I prefer subs for their accuracy in the original storytelling in comparison with dubs, but ultimately, dubs are my favorite because the story just isn't as good unless you can hear someone yell smart-aleck insults in English. (Nothing like Western irreverance, don't ya know). But it is true, there have been some pretty awful dubs out there. (The Shadow Skill movie being one. My God, what was WRONG with those people? They couldn't act their way out of a glass box with a sledgehammer.) Although I feel that, now, with America forced to deal with the fact that anime is NOT just a passing trend, they're putting more effort into making sure anime remains as much like the original version as possible. After the Sailor Moon/Dragonball Z editing tragedy (they were changing peoples' GENDERS, for crying out loud) anime is coming overseas in more and more accurate forms all the time. Take, for example, Rurouni Kenshin. Not only is the voice acting good and appropriate for each character, but the names of everything Japanese has remained quite Japanese (and utterly confusing; my Japanese dictionary just doesn't help anymore ::crying::) and they actually have a crossdressing male character chasing after another male character's affections and they let our children in on this on Toonami. Now, compare that to the Sailor Moon fiasco and say that we Americans haven't come far. ^_^ Dub all the way!