Fasteriskhead

I'm no good at being an armchair analyst. But maybe I can at least open up the discussion some. [quote name='lostvoice']My boyfriend is kind,witty and paitient,especially with me.[/quote]The whole issue is basically contained here. The very first thing you think to say is that he's got all these nice qualities - the implication being that because of these qualities, he's the kind of person who deserves intimacy. I can't help but be struck by the fact that you don't start off by saying, straight out, that you [i]love[/i] him. Or, to put the emphasis where it should be, you don't start by saying that you love [i]him[/i] - the absolutely unique person that he is is not what you think of first, only that there are basic facts [i]about[/i] him that make him a "nice guy." "He has all these good qualities; he must be worthy of love!" But from your posts, you probably understand better than most that "because he's a nice guy, I [i]ought[/i] to be in love with him" does not immediately lead into "I [i]am[/i] in love with him." Especially in love, there's always a space between what [i]ought to be[/i] and what [i]is[/i]. I'm terrible at advice, but I think if you need to consider anything, then consider the gap that exists between this guy who is [i]worthy[/i] of your love and the fact of whether or not you [i]actually[/i] love him. Of course, the question "do you love him?" is never an easy one to answer, but I can point in a direction. He's "kind, witty, and patient" - but if he didn't have these qualities, and if in fact he didn't even notice you existed, would you still be interested in him at all? What I'm trying to ask is: when you feel obligated to kiss your boyfriend, is it because of his uniqueness as a [i]person[/i] or because of all of his [i]good qualities[/i]? And if you can answer that question, then I think you will have cleared up a lot.

For awhile, Death Note and Code Geass were in a week-by-week shooting war to see which one could outdo the other in terms of over-the-top shounendrama. Although I could be proven wrong, right now it looks very much like Death Note is the winner. Code Geass finally broke down and did a comedy episode where [spoiler]the brooding teenage master schemer chases down a cat for ten minutes[/spoiler] - clearly a fumble, the equivalent of an actor giggling during a play. Death Note, on the other hand, has kept itself straight-faced and grim for ten episodes in a row now (with the possible exception of Ryuk, who doesn't count), and it's utterly glorious. It's like it's [i]daring[/i] me not to laugh at it. Ten episodes - four hours' worth of internal monologues, dramatic music and sudden black and white shots, and the most confounding leaps of logic in entertainment history. To paraphrase something once said of William James, the two leads in the show turn out to be right pretty much all the time with their guesses, but God only knows how they managed to get there. It's an ideal of mine to try to watch anime with an eye towards larger themes and concerns. This is not possible with Death Note. Finally in the tenth episode they whap us over the head with the impending moral lesson [spoiler]via Raito's dad[/spoiler], but while one is watching this scene one is actually conscious of thinking: "Whew, I'm glad that's finally out, let's get back to [spoiler]L sitting in cute poses and Raito eating potato chips.[/spoiler]" It's just not the kind of show that one can think about any more carefully than this, it crumbles like ancient parchment the moment anything like a critical stance approaches. Rather, the only way to watch it is with a kind of of mad glee (or, if you prefer, gleeful madness). Every point is punctuated with all the subtlety of a daytime soap opera, regardless of whether or not it actually means anything: "holy god!! [spoiler]L is up to [b]SEVEN PERCENT CERTAINTY!![/b][/spoiler]" One imagines another scene - [spoiler]Raito: "L, what you don't know... is that I've only been using FIVE PERCENT of my Kira possibility level..." L (watching through scouter): "This can't be! The possibility of his being Kira is... OVER TEN THOUSAND?!?" (scouter explodes)[/spoiler] When one watches this series, it's those punctuations above anything like "plot" or "things that logically follow" that you're waiting for like a coke fiend. The [spoiler]tennis match[/spoiler] is a good example of this, although for my money it would have been better had they set it to that one piece of BGM that sounds like the Beetlejuice theme with a four-part choir thrown in. Just out of curiosity, anyone know how much slash fiction and yaoi dojinshi has been produced by this series? Judging from the past two episodes I am willing to suspect: a whole goddamn lot.

I think I agree most with Dagger here. Nostalgia is rarely more than a poor way of dealing with dissatisfactions with the present. Over my years of watching anime there has been "an irreversible gain of truthfulness, of intellectual honesty, and therefore of objectivity." True, I've now lost something that I once had back in the day, a kind of naive immediacy with the stuff that I'm never going to regain, but I don't miss it much. The shows from my childhood that I once enjoyed in a fairly vague way - and I'm glad someone brought up Tekkaman Blade! it's the perfect example - now have to prove themselves much more substantially, but I'd say that I appreciate them all the more for it. As I've said before, if it's to mean anything at all beyond just being a "fad" then anime must become [i]entertainment[/i], not mere diversion. To entertain, in its original sense, means to [i]maintain[/i], to keep in shape and continually replenish, which is worlds away from something that just pleases us and gives us a break on life (diversion: "to turn away"). That means taking anime [i]seriously[/i], putting as much honesty to ourselves and the shows as possible. And, if I can say this without sounding too cynical, I don't see many signs for hope on this happening... frankly, the future of anime "consumption" over here looks more and more like shounen over-drama and moe without end. On the other hand, if we're talking about comparing the [I]quality[/I] of domestic releases and broadcasts, I think it can be shown pretty clearly that things have done nothing but improve since the '90s. Hell, half the time the English dubs are better acted than the original Japanese! Although, this says less about the improvement of our voice acting, more about the degradation of theirs. But for me this isn't really the major question to be asked.

[quote name='indifference][COLOR=DarkRed']You could also argue that based on that we don?t need the words, but to be frank, he?s doing it because he wants life to reflect his atheist views, he wants a neutral saying because the idea that someone like God might exist is offensive to him. [/COLOR][/quote][SIZE=1]Well, you might be right. I don't really like these kinds of people, to be honest; most of them are just morons with too much time and money who've read Ayn Rand and Hume and think they've got all they need to know about religion. However, he could be Captain Jerk McAssholister and still have a leg to stand on legally. This is not about motives, it's a question of how to interpret constitutional law.[/SIZE] [quote name='indifference][COLOR=DarkRed][B](1)[/B] The problem with his desire to remove the phrase In God we trust, is that the hard reality is that you are pledging your allegiance to the country, the government, not a particular religion that believes in God. [B](2)[/B] The establishment clause is airtight, but the phrase In God we trust is not a true law in that sense. [B](3)[/B] It is more of a reflection to appeal to those who are Christians not a statement that requires you to [I]actually become a Christian[/I']. So trying to argue that the use of those words is somehow a law that respects an establishment of religion is on some level irrelevant.... Saying the words In God we trust or reading them in no way changes his views or requires him to be a Christian or belong to any form of faith. In fact no one is required to believe. [/COLOR][/quote][SIZE=1]I added numbers to your post so I could address each point (this is kind of crude, I'm sorry). To your first, I disagree based on the evidence. The phrase does not say "in the Union we trust," it doesn't even say "in liberty we trust." It uses the G-word [I]specifically[/I]. This does not promote any particular sect - obviously the word "God" is used in different ways - nor even one particular religion. But there are other religious positions that will endorse many gods or no god, and at [I]that[/I] point it becomes an establishment problem. This is not yet enough to say that the clause [I]is[/I] or [I]ought to be[/I] interpreted widely enough to nix the motto, but we're clearly in a place where it's fair to start asking legal questions. Anything more in-depth than that I leave to the people who've actually gone through law school... I'm not sure if I understand your second point. I don't actually know the name of the law, but what I've read indicates that passing the motto and sticking it on currency was legislation like any other. If you just meant it in the sense that it's a law that doesn't end up being a problem under the EC, then I disagree for the reasons stated above. I grant point three. Indeed, "no one is required to believe." But the question is whether the EC is narrow to the point where it only discourages [i]full-on government coercion[/i] in favor of a particular religion, or whether it also discourages mere [I]endorsement[/I]. "Reflections to appeal to those who are Christians" are definitely, I think, well in the neighborhood of that kind of endorsement. Again, it's a question of how widely the EC is to be read.[/SIZE] [quote name='indifference][COLOR=DarkRed][B](1)[/B] Still my original argument of it being part of American history still stands, and the very fact that he has the freedom to be an Atheist is proof of that fact. So it?s kind of pathetic that he?s trying to do away with a symbol that is part of the very freedom he himself enjoys. [B](2)[/B'] A vast majority of the American population finds comfort in that simple phrase and just as he finds it offensive, his desire to erase it from the public is equally offensive to those who are religious.[/COLOR][/quote][SIZE=1]Second point first. Again, it doesn't matter whether one person or everyone [I]except[/I] that one person gets anything out of this kind of motto. That will only become relevant at the moment when another amendment gets tacked onto the constitution. Even the "offensiveness" only matters insofar as it's what brought the whole issue up in the first place. The [I]only[/I] thing this is really about is how the highest law of the country is to be understood. And back to the first point. I'm not going to argue too much here about the Christianity (or lack of Christianity) of the founding fathers, except to say that evidence suggests that Jefferson was an extreme deist, Madison was one of the strongest speakers against endorsement, and no one seems to know what the hell Washington was. Your stronger point (and I hope I'm understanding you correctly) is that in trying to do away with "in God we trust" he is effectively using his own freedom to violate the first amendment freedoms of others. This would be correct if, say, there was a private organization who used this motto and Mr. Atheist tried to shut them down. But this isn't what's happening: the phrase "in God we trust" is here being endorsed [i]by the government[/i]. The government, as an entity, has no first amendment rights. What it can decree is checked by a number of things, the most important being the constitution. And, as I've been droning on about for several paragraphs now, it's at least up for question whether this motto can be allowed by that document.[/SIZE] [quote name='indifference][COLOR=DarkRed']And since the phrase In God we trust, is not a true law and does not require him to actually believe in God, and is not infringing on his rights, well regardless of what he may think, I think it shouldn't be changed. And I would be greatly surprised if it was.[/COLOR][/quote][SIZE=1]I've addressed most of this already. Anyways, I agree with you on the last sentence. If the motto had been legislated five years ago, I think there would be a much better chance of it going down to the SCOTUS as compared to the thing being on the books for 50 years. Remember that at his confirmation the term John Roberts kept using was "stare decisis," which is basically Latin for "if it's working fine then don't touch it." While I doubt Los Angeles would suddenly have to be renamed, a ruling against the motto would definitely open up a can of worms. Prevailing wisdom in jurisprudence now seems to be that unless there's a smoking gun - which may not quite be there in this case - one should steer close to past decisions. If one can't be sure about being right, one should at least be consistent. However, I think that's a different question from the one regarding whether the motto is at least up for [I]question[/I] on these grounds, which is what I've been pushing in this post.[/SIZE]

Two things. First, this is an establishment clause question. There are a couple of good places to read up on this, but [URL=http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/rel_liberty/establishment/index.aspx][u]here[/u][/URL] is as good a spot as any. Basically I would just note that unless the constitution is amended otherwise, the opinion of the majority pretty much amounts to jack and squat here. The phrase "no law respecting an establishment of religion" is pretty darn airtight; whether it's okay or not to have the name of a certain deity on US currency depends wholly on the interpretation of constitutional law, and given the history of SCOTUS rulings since Everson in 1947 I think Mr. Atheist here could definitely make a case of it. As for the slippery slope (oh no! no more Sacramento!), I stress that WorldNetDaily isn't the most unbiased source in the world and that city names in Spanish probably aren't as up for question as having the G-word on your currency. (There are, of course, other problems regarding the establishment clause that I won't go into - they're fairly technical and not relevant here). Second, by no means did "In God We Trust" fall out of the sky the moment the Declaration of Independence was written. According to research the phrase didn't gain a foothold until the Civil War, as a way of drumming up patriotism. It was on coins for awhile, but didn't appear on US paper money until 1957 - shortly after it was adopted as the motto of the country in 1956, itself two years after "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. I shouldn't need to remind anyone of [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War][u]what was going on[/u][/URL] during that time period. The phrase certainly has a history, and the SCOTUS [I]likes[/I] things that have been around for a few generations, but it's by no means an inviolate institution of the US.

[IMG]http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/5490/pizzahutpt2ef4.jpg[/IMG] I am apparently one of those people. Pizza Hut and an attempted coup against the Imperial American-supported puppet government ruling Japan. They have to be trying to tell us something here. But [I]what[/I]?

[SIZE=1]Okay, here we go. I'm limiting myself to TV and OVA anime here, as including movies would have made this way too long. Also, no rankings (I'm just sort of putting them up as I think of them). [b]Neon Genesis Evangelion[/b] - This could have been the best mecha show of all time. I would go so far as to say that it really [i]was[/i], from a period starting around ep. 7 and ending around 12. Had it followed through on this and done a conventional ending, it would have been an instant "classic" up there with Gundam. Obviously this didn't happen. But what is constantly misunderstood about NGE is that the rest of the series, where the darkness and anxiety overwhelms everything, [i]only[/i] works because it started as an extraordinarily good mecha series before it made the turn. What's unique about NGE is the [i]how[/i], not the what. [b]Maria-sama ga Miteru[/b] -Despite reasonable experience with shoujo, I've [i]never[/i] seen anything else like Marimite. For a genre stereotyped as being about melodramatic romance, Marimite is incredibly underspoken: In a set of 26 episodes, I can count the number of kisses on one hand. It's certainly [i]there[/i], but rarely shown. What I love about Marimite is the enormous weight given to the tiniest of moments: a glance, a smile, an off-the-cuff remark - the thing kicks itself off with what would elsewhere be a triviality, one girl straightening the bow on another's seifuku. It moves within the small, the petite, the tiny gestures that mean everything - it's a show about subtlety and mystery, the play of shadows and implications. What humanizes it is that Yumi, the adorable and constantly frazzled lead, is usually as mystified as we are. [b]Saikano (Saishuu Heiki Kanojo)[/b] - Saikano's a masterpiece. It's a rare and wonderful event where the right artists and directors got together with the best possible group of actors, and they all set out to tackle one of the best stories to ever come out of manga. And it's about love, all of it. Every moment of this thing obsesses over love - it never manages to pull itself away from that one theme, however much it might want to. [b]Superdimensional Fortress Macross[/b] - It happens on occasion that someone sets out to make a parody of something, and in the process manages to completely reinvent it. For god's sake, Macross is a space opera (originally intended as a cynical Gundam cash-in) about transforming robots, pop music, and love triangles. Several of the episodes are farmed out to other studios that couldn't [I]draw[/I] much less maintain continuity, the last third of the series is completely superfluous - and yet it still ends up one of the best animes ever made. I don't really get it, but there it is. And, I might add: one of the great shortcomings of domestic anime fandom is that it has not really entered into the great Misa v. Minmay debate. [b]Azumanga Daioh[/b] - Good god, what a breath of fresh air this was. In a period crowded with harem shows and (bad) post-Evangelion plot-driven psychological fiestas, what should show up but this modest, incredibly cute and frequently hilarious series about seven mutually incomprehensible girls, their teachers, and their adventures in high school. No driving "arc" to be found: the show simply creates a space where all the characters can go in their own directions and occasionally encounter one another. The miracle is that all of them can be [i]so[/i] completely idiosyncratic, [i]so[/i] completely unique in terms of how they think, and yet still have their friendship. The folks who constantly complain that AD "has no plot" misunderstand: the friendship IS the plot. ALSO REQUIRING MENTION (BUT NOT IN THE TOP 5): [b]Tekkaman Blade[/b] - Not only a really good transforming hero/mecha series, but extremely thoughtful in terms of its themes. Especially in the second half of the series, questions of past, origins, family, and memory are brought up in ways that no other anime has really tried. [b]Top wo Nerae (Gunbuster) I and II[/b] - It's fitting that two really good shows sharing a name and separated by nearly two decades should, in fact, both be approaching problems of separation. The same energy that Gainax elsewhere puts into a crushing sense of loneliness here goes into rabid optimism and an unshakeable faith in EFFORT AND GUTS. And, I should add, these shows cheer me up like nothing else. [b]Kamichu[/b] - The first show after Azumanga to really be able to take the same idea and send it off in a new direction (Petopeto-san tries, but can't quite pull it off). Plus, being a religion geek, I'm kind of required to like this. [b]Cowboy Bebop[/b] - Hasn't held up over time as well as I'd hoped, but still an absolutely incredible series with a great set of final episodes (one thing you may notice about all of the shows on this list, with perhaps the exception of Macross and the still-ongoing Marimite, is that they all have fantastic endings). [b]RE: Cutie Honey[/b] - Leave it to Anno & pals to drag a masterpiece out of Go Nagai's highly questionable transforming girl series circa 1974. Hell, if I was really honest with myself this entire list would probably just be nothing but Anno shows (notice the lack of Kare Kano? I had to make the cut somewhere). [b]Eureka Seven[/b] - Probably the best mecha series in recent memory. In many ways it takes its cue, if not really its questions, from Rahxephon (another very good series), but manages to be somewhat more surefooted. Its only flaw is that it's just too long: what would have been a lean gut-puncher of a 26 (or even 39) episode set feels stretched out and Wagnerian at 50. [b]Jungle wa itsumo Hare nochi Guu[/b] - Some people will swear that the best slapstick anime of all time is Excel Saga, but I hold that it's actually Guu. Right from the beginning, Guu is pretty much one of the most unique characters in anime. And then there's the fun of slowly watching Hale lose his mind. Also cf Dokuro-chan and Dai Mahou Touge.[/SIZE]

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By english translation do you just mean the lyrics? I can't really tell from your post. If so, [URL=http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/bgc/][u]you're in luck[/u][/URL]! But if you're looking for english versions of the songs [I]themselves[/I] you may be in for a tough time; as I recall, they DID do english versions of at least some of the tunes (anyone else want to back me up on this?), but I don't think they ever got a proper release recording-wise. I'm willing to be proved wrong, however. [quote name='Cudwieser']Also which is the better series and why. The original or tokyo 2040?[/quote]I like 2040 and all, and both series are great fun, but as a total geek for mid/late-'80s anime I have to side with the original. The writing's a bit better, ditto for the acting - and there's also the fact that you bring up, which is that Bubblegum Crisis the first has one of the greatest soundtracks in the genre. But really, any choice between the two is likely going to come down to whether you prefer the style of 1988 to 1998 or vice versa.

Good god, that outfit. It's like CLAMP does Mysterio by way of Count Dracula. I'm sort of imagining Lelouch throwing this thing together in the garage in his free time. All hunting all over Area 11 to find the store that sells capes with the most garishly overextended collars possible, speed-reading "Helmet-Making for Dummies" and making a little forge in his bathtub ("hey, don't come in! I'm, uh, not decent!") to get that headpiece of his going - and I don't even want to know how long he spent fixing up that little mechanism which makes his left eye visible. Give him points for industry if not for style, I guess.

The difficulty in any kind of discussion about love is that the term itself is deeply unclear. Until very recently, I thought one could understand particular kinds of love by way of the classical, two-millenia old distinction between [i]eros[/i] (a kind of intense, transcendent desire), [i]philia[/i] ("friendliness" based on certain social relationships), and [i]agape[/i] (the kind of love from God to the pious person, the pious person to God, and occasionally even the pious person towards the rest of the world).* Despite this distinction being useful, however, I now think it's still basically inadequate to understanding the practically [i]innumerable[/i] kinds of love we may encounter.** Here's the difficulty: I can certainly say that I "love" my father. But this kind of love tells me almost nothing about another kind of love I may have towards my fiancee, or towards football, or towards my children, or towards God. The sentence "that person loves" says very little (although this is a different story from "that person is IN love," which always sounds specifically romantic). I don't know if there's a solution to this issue: one kind of love says practically nothing about the other kinds, so if there's a common thread it must be a very subtle one. However, a good start (I think, at least) may be to try to take particular kinds of "thinking" in love and understand them individually and internally. This was the idea in my two articles on Saikano ([URL=http://articles.theotaku.com/view.php?action=retrieve&id=2026][u]here[/u][/URL] and [URL=http://articles.theotaku.com/view.php?action=retrieve&id=2027][u]here[/u][/URL]) and Kasimasi ([URL=http://articles.theotaku.com/view.php?action=retrieve&id=2448][u]here[/u][/URL]), which are (despite appearances to the contrary) far too brief to really address this problem well. So that's a roundabout way of answering your question. On the more personal side of the first post: yes, I've been in (romantic) love before. Or at least, I [i]think[/i] I have. One of the characteristics of a certain kind of love, if not all love, is that there's an ambiguity to whether it's actually THERE or not. I would often ask myself whether I was really in love, or if it was just a momentary attraction; or, indeed, whether a momentary attraction still counted as love (despite everything). Whether there was a [i]pure[/i] love, what such a love would look like, whether my own love would meet such a criteria, whether I was loving enough to be worthy of that kind of love, etc.. This is a poor way to spend one's adolescence, but I think I'm only now beginning to understand the worth of these questions. Uh, and as far as actual romantic [i]relationships[/i] go, you may want to ask someone else. * folks more curious about this should read the IEP entry [URL=http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/love.htm][u]here[/u][/URL]. ** EDIT: I propose [URL=http://www.amazon.com/69-Love-Songs-Magnetic-Fields/dp/B00000JY1X/][u]69 Love Songs[/u][/URL] as evidence of this.

Space Runaway Ideon. First item, you've got the most powerful mecha in anime history, and this is what it looks like: [IMG]http://www.gearsonline.net/ideon/ideon/id-intro.jpg[/IMG] Basically if you took a 1983 Chevy Malibu Stationwagon, painted it fire engine red, and made it so that it could harnass infinite energy and destroy the universe, that would be the Ideon. Look folks, I don't ask a whole lot from 1980s mecha design - I like Gundam and all but I don't really think the style peaked until Gunbuster, an opinion for which I will probably get a LOT of flak. But damn it, if you're going to make the giant robot to end all others, you should at least have it look like something other than a boxy eyesore that recently escaped from a trailer park. The Ideon, above all other mechas, is due for a redesign. Second item, the cast. SRI's themes seem to be more or less trying to show the horror and absurdity of war, and it fails in this. It fails because the evidence of the show indicates that, far from being a tragedy, war is actually just the result of the entire cast being [i]complete idiots[/i]. Seriously, in the past I've made fun of Hikaru (from Macross) and Amuro Ray (from Gundam) for being morons, but throw them into the Ideon universe and they'd be treated like savants. These people bumble into one easily-avoided catastrophe after another. And this is not even mentioning characters doing things like SUDDENLY INDICATING THAT THEY HAVE CRUSHES ON BUFF CLAN MEMBERS THEY HAVE PREVIOUSLY NEVER GIVEN A SECOND GLANCE TO (by the way, the Buff Clan never stops being hilarious). After about a dozen episodes of this, it's by no means harrowing when they suddenly start having gory deaths left and right. It feels more like natural selection finally kicking in. Ideon thinks it's a much better show than it actually turns out to be. But it definitely deserves a second chance. Oh, and one last note: for the hypothetical remake, they should keep the original opening music. Because it's [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi19MKqkS9c][u]completely awesome[/u][/URL] .

[quote name='Dagger]Wow... episode 2 had logical gaps that one could have driven a truck through. But it looked [I]so darn pretty[/I']! :animecry: If things keep going this way, that's probably all it will amount to, unfortunately.[/quote]You're absolutely correct. But - and I'm surprised as anyone by this - I ended up enjoying the second episode quite a bit more. For me at least, the show plays quite a bit better when it ceases trying to be [I]moving[/I] or [I]important[/I] or [I]foreshadowy[/I]* (but not [I]coherent[/I], since that had never been in the cards in the first place) and just gets on with the massive, ridiculous spectacle of a budget-drunk shounen pissing contest. Watching the second episode reminded me of old samurai serials or bad soap operas; it's trash, utterly without any merit at all, yet entertaining in a certain silly, immature way. This series will play [i]extremely[/i] well to power-starved 14-year-olds who've read Ender's Game one too many times. For the rest of us the sheer ridiculousness, combined with a great attention to detail in every aspect [I]except[/I] the writing and general balance of the thing, make it a sort of gorgeous (in a twisted way) ten-car pileup that we can gleefully stare at as we sail past at low speed and slow down the rest of traffic. [quote name='Dagger']Either way, F*head, I encourage you to keep watching--it frankly won't be much fun without your comments. In other words, misery loves company and all that. ;)[/quote]Thanks, I think I will. Last season this wouldn't have had a chance - there were just too many genuinely good shows. But I'll keep going with it for now, assuming the second coming of Haruhi (series-wise) doesn't show up in the next few weeks. Also, there's actually an irony to the series that I missed in my first post. Apparently it's America, and [I]not[/I] Japan, that manages to field the first combat-ready giant walking robot. Who knew? *if foreshadowy isn't an actual adjective, I'm declaring it one here and now. [CENTER] -----------------------------------[/CENTER] Episode three continues on-course for disaster. The plotting once again throws any kind of explicability to the wind, and we've now got what appears to be a full-on [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundere][u]moe tsunderekko[/u][/URL] thrown into the mix. I'm here and now placing five to one odds on there being some scene in the future where Lelouch flirts over the phone while playing chess ("She said yes to a date! Knight takes rook, check!!") - contact a local bookie if you'd like to get in on this. Also, there seems to somehow be a common thread running through this season about arbitrary rules governing shounen super-powers. [spoiler]Yes, you can take control of anyone's mind just by looking at them... but you can only do it once per person!! Techincal question: can you order the person to be permanently bound to obey your commands? Or is this like using one of your three wishes to wish for another twenty wishes?[/spoiler] I'm willing to call this thing [I]fun[/I] at this point, in a kind of operatic way. And I don't use that word by accident: some of the stuff that's happened on this show so far has been about as sensible as having a mortally wounded person spend ten minutes belting out a death aria. To paraphrase Ambrose Bierce, Geass represents life in another world whose inhabitants have no speech but declarations, no motions but gestures, and no postures but attitudes. [COLOR=DeepSkyBlue][SIZE=1][INDENT]Fasteriskhead, you've been a member long enough to know not to double post. If you want to post again you can either use the edit button, or if you are trying to bump the thread, simply copy your old post, delete it and then re-post it with the new information, like I just did. ~indifference[/INDENT][/SIZE][/COLOR]EDIT: Fair enough. I had assumed that for the rules statement reading "If members post a message and wish to post another directly after, we ask that they edit their original message rather than create a new one," a timespan of some four or five days between posts would more than clear the "directly after" requirement. Lesson learned...

[quote name='Dagger']I also have to wonder how they'll do a prequel story centering around Rei and Kaworu...[/quote]Picture the following. Rei is a new freshman at Lilith Academy, where the students' pure bodies and minds are wrapped in dark-colored seifuku and where collars must always be tidy - causing Third Impact slowly is preferred there. In the first segment of the story Rei will arrive at the academy only to be confronted by Kaworu, who has noticed that the bow on her uniform is crooked and, as they both stand in front of the statue with the big Seele mask, he tidies her up and sends her on her way. Later on after a number of further developments, Rei is asked by Kaworu to become his [i]petit ange[/i], meaning that Kaworu will act as Rei's "steward" and teach her the ways of the Academy. The style of the movie will involve a lot of flowing elegant slow motion shots, extremely detailed close-ups, classical music, bubbles or flowers everywhere, and AT fields used in unusual ways (piano-playing, making tea etc.). (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist - Lilimite was just too good an idea. Anyways I'm very excited about all this, although I have absolutely no clue how it's going to turn out.)

Clumsy, ham-handed, frivolous, and more than a little nihilistic. Dagger, I agree with you in disliking the (apparent) nationalism, but this is frankly just a symptom of deeper issues. You don't get character interactions so much as posturing between walking metaphors. You don't get plot events so much as manipulations serving dramatic necessity. This show wants to [i]say[/i] something, dammit, and it's not going to let little things like "coming across as completely arbitrary" get in its way. Everything is flat. Those are the villains; boo! hiss!! Oh but wait, that one's not really a villain; golf clap!! Oh hey, maybe the hero there's got some kind of [i]moral ambiguity[/i] to him; shock and confusion!! There isn't any depth here, more the superficial [i]appearance[/i] of depth. Lelouch and some of the other characters, i.e. the cast members assigned tasks (and one really ought to speak of characters ordered around by the writers) beyond SHOOT THOSE PEOPLE MERCILESSLY or BLOW YOURSELF UP or BE AN EVIL SELF-SERVING RACIST BUREAUCRAT, aren't so much genuinely complex as they just go through all the [i]gestures[/i] of complexity. But the strings are as easy to spot with them as with the rest. One moment, I think, sums up the clumsiness of the first episode perfectly. Lelouch is riding with his pal in a motorcycle, after having solved a difficult chess problem by moving the king piece first (this isn't really a spoiler, it happens three or four minutes in). His pal asks why he chose to do this, and Lelouch responds: "If the king doesn't move, then his subjects won't follow." Not [i]only[/i] is this an incredibly laughable justification for a chess strategy (should the king go and deliver the St. Crispin's Day speech for an encore?), but it also eventually turns out to be a very clumsy way of [i]foreshadowing[/i] later events. Good god, was this written by a second-year English major? The solution to the show's (apparent) nationalism isn't to sever any sense of morality from the series at all and find this rather adolescent nihilism "edgy" (Elfin Lied, anyone?). The solution may rather be as simple as having a [i]cast[/i] rather than extremely well-drawn placards shouting in the audience's faces, and a [i]narrative[/i] rather than a continuous spoon-feeding of empty emotional cues. It's very nice-looking, though!! And hell, I've got something like trust in the folks who made this, so for that alone I'll probably give it another episode. But I'm not holding out much hope. ALSO, WTF: [IMG]http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4614/snapshot20061016143924le1.jpg[/IMG]

I'd say Chiranjeevi screwed me up pretty good. [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll8Qm8yDj-8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll8Qm8yDj-8[/URL] [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcBs8QHpGdo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcBs8QHpGdo[/URL] Apparently this guy is like the Arnold Schwarzenegger (circa 1994) of southern India. The sunglasses-throwing in the second video would have completely changed the course of my life had the green contacts and fangs not done it already.

One of the better Trigun spawn of the current season (and there appear to be a [I]lot[/I]). I'm expecting a half-dozen or so standalone episodes, most of them ending with Randel killing a lot of people and/or learning a life lesson (Raiyuu beat me to it), and somewhere in the second month the plot should kick in. What say we make up a DRINKING GAME? I'll make the first few rules (feel free to add your own): -whenever Alice acts brashly in a dangerous situation, take a sip. -for each dog bite, take a sip. -every time the two juniors (the blonde and the meganekko) complain about their jobs, take a sip. -for each tank interior scene where the main cannon reloads, take a sip. -whenever Alice pulls the sword, take a sip. (note: for each scene where she pulls the sword in order to act brashly in a dangerous situation, this would be two sips total) -every time Randel says something in a profound-sounding tone, take a sip. -one sip per neck chill. (two or three in one scene only counts as one) -one sip per phrase in neither japanese nor english. -one sip for every line from the heavies regarding 901 ATT horror stories. -if a dark secret from someone's past is revealed, chug. -every time an evil bureaucrat obstructs justice, chug. -whenever it's revealed that the government did something very very bad during the war, chug. -if the main arc turns out to involve a dark secret from someone's past, finish your bottle and chug another.

Well I'll be gobsmacked, it's actually pretty good! Score one for the hype machine. Basically what you've got here is a kind of Faust done Shonen Jump style - Light in the title role, Ryuk as a kind of Mephistopheles (and as of yet no Gretchen). Frankly I don't think this'll last - as much as I love anime, it really does not know how to linger on the ethical thing or the salvation question very long or very deeply without interrupting it for plot movement. I suspect the moral issues are going to be sidelined pretty quick in favor of set pieces and intrigue. But that'll be fun too. The music here is especially good. Someone got to play around with a choir, and they're going to let you know it: there's a full Kyrie, something that sounds like it could have fallen out of Ligeti's dresser drawer, your standard driving half-Orff thing (accompanying an absolutely absurd but very fun scene at the climax), and so on. Unfortunately, in contrast, neither the op nor the ed do the slightest thing for me (the shows this season have been especially weak on this so far). I'm definitely in for the next couple of weeks, at least...

Thread requires resurrection. Man, this last season has had some really great endings - Diebuster's (aka Gunbuster 2) wonderful homage, Blood+ finally pulling itself together after an EXTREMELY uneven run, Black Lagoon's surprisingly laid back buddy moment, and of course Haruhi (which I'm not breathing a word about). But out of the whole bunch I think Ouran's ending may be the one I remember most - I don't think I can recall another comedy series that suddenly spun off in a dramatic direction in the final episodes and actually [i]made it work[/i], but Ouran manages to pull it off. So, let's discuss Ouran and the spat of good endings while we can, as I'm sure the new season's got at least two or three Mai Himes waiting for us. Anyways, not only did they pull off the drama thing, everyone in the show (except for maybe Renge) managed to get a nice little moment in those last few minutes! And also, I'm not really sure how it happened, but Kyouya somehow ended up becoming the best (i.e. the most developed) character in the series. But that still doesn't mean he's my [I]favorite[/I], mind (Renge's not giving up that spot).

Man, all's I know is that if this thing isn't as good (or at least in the [i]neighborhood[/i] of as good) as every anime site on the web has been claiming it's going to be for the past, oh, three months, I feel like I should personally go over to each one of them and correct them on their mistake. Not that this should be called cynical - there's cynicism, and then there's having several recent seasons where the Next Big Thing turns out to have neither thought in its head nor heart in its chest (Ergo Proxy, anyone?). Reasons for optimism: it looks v. nice and Madhouse is producing it. Then again, being pretty rarely gives a series staying power, and as I recall these guys were also responsible for Okusama wa Joshikosei in-between their bouts of Nana and Kemonozume. There's reason to be hopeful, but I'm going to hedge my bets some.

[SIZE=1]Sorry to bring back a thread that's been dead for awhile (and probably thankfully so, for some people). But damn it, had I not been gone for two weeks y'all know I wouldn't have missed this thing. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to address all of the really wonderful stuff further up. I'll just quote two sources to try to address the question below, talk a little about them, and leave it at that. [QUOTE=Phaedrus][SIZE=1]Well, let us start at the beginning. What is philosophy?[/SIZE][/QUOTE]First quote. In the first book of his [i]Physics[/i] Aristotle writes: [quote][SIZE=1]When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, conditions, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge [my note: Aristotle does not mean "science" in the modern sense of experimentation; read "scientific knowledge" as "knowledge found by way of first principles"], is attained. For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements. Plainly therefore in the science of Essence, as in other branches of study, our first task will be to try to determine what relates to its principles.[/SIZE][/quote]If a definition of philosophy (which is the only thing Aristotle talks about here) better than this paragraph has ever been written, I haven't read it. Philosophy (in the "western" sense at least; in any case, given that the term and the tradition comes from Greece it might be more appropriate to call "eastern philosophy" something else) is a kind of inquiry which always looks first to the [i]principles[/i] upon which everything else stands (and this is something different from what's merely "in common" to everything, which is how Aristotle is usually misunderstood). Philosophy seeks to know about things in terms of their "primary conditions or first principles," and doesn't count itself as really knowing anything at all before it gets to this. And it should be immediately obvious to everyone that these "first principles" are quite different from physical laws in our sense, and that the word "thing" doesn't necessarily refer just to some objectively extant piece of matter. The fact that he first says "object of an inquiry" gives us a clue: [i]included[/i] in the search for first principles is the question of how we're able to inquire about this or that "thing" in the first place. Second quote. In his [i]Theaetetus[/i] Plato has Socrates describe philosophers' relation to the rest of society. This is a bit long, but it's worth quoting as much as can be tolerated: [quote][SIZE=1]SOCRATES: ...In the first place, the lords of philosophy have never, from their youth upwards, known their way to the Agora, or the dicastery, or the council, or any other political assembly; they neither see nor hear the laws or decrees, as they are called, of the state written or recited; the eagerness of political societies in the attainment of offices, clubs, and banquets, and revels, and singing-maidens, do not enter even into their dreams. Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace may have descended to any one from his ancestors, male or female, are matters of which the philosopher no more knows than he can tell, as they say, how many pints are contained in the ocean. Neither is he conscious of his ignorance. For he does not hold aloof in order that he may gain a reputation; but the truth is, that the outer form of him only is in the city: his mind, disdaining the littlenesses and nothingnesses of human things, is ?flying all abroad? as Pindar says, measuring earth and heaven and the things which are under and on the earth and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all in their entirety, but not condescending to anything which is within reach. THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates? SOCRATES: I will illustrate my meaning, Theodorus, by the jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars. She said, that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet. This is a jest which is equally applicable to all philosophers. For the philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his next-door neighbour; he is ignorant, not only of what he is doing, but he hardly knows whether he is a man or an animal; he is searching into the essence of man, and busy in enquiring what belongs to such a nature to do or suffer different from any other; I think that you understand me, Theodorus? THEODORUS: I do, and what you say is true. SOCRATES: And thus, my friend, on every occasion, private as well as public, as I said at first, when he appears in a law-court, or in any place in which he has to speak of things which are at his feet and before his eyes, he is the jest, not only of Thracian handmaids but of the general herd, tumbling into wells and every sort of disaster through his inexperience. His awkwardness is fearful, and gives the impression of imbecility. When he is reviled, he has nothing personal to say in answer to the civilities of his adversaries, for he knows no scandals of any one, and they do not interest him; and therefore he is laughed at for his sheepishness; and when others are being praised and glorified, in the simplicity of his heart he cannot help going into fits of laughter, so that he seems to be a downright idiot. When he hears a tyrant or king eulogized, he fancies that he is listening to the praises of some keeper of cattle ? a swineherd, or shepherd, or perhaps a cowherd, who is congratulated on the quantity of milk which he squeezes from them; and he remarks that the creature whom they tend, and out of whom they squeeze the wealth, is of a less tractable and more insidious nature. Then, again, he observes that the great man is of necessity as ill-mannered and uneducated as any shepherd ? for he has no leisure, and he is surrounded by a wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of family, and say that some one is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray a dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable. And when people pride themselves on having a pedigree of twenty-five ancestors, which goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand their poverty of ideas. Why are they unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth, and so on? He amuses himself with the notion that they cannot count, and thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of their senseless vanity. Now, in all these cases our philosopher is derided by the vulgar, partly because he is thought to despise them, and also because he is ignorant of what is before him, and always at a loss.[/SIZE][/quote]Again, if something better than this has been written on the topic, I am unaware of it. How do philosophers relate to the rest of the world? They are laughed at, because they are constantly falling into wells. The uniqueness of the philosopher, for Plato, is that they "look at the whole," the "whole nature of each and all in their entirety," and that they do so in a state of being "ignorant of what is before them, and always at a loss." (this kind of looking is also what Aristotle means by "carrying out analysis by way of first principles.") What does "looking at the whole" mean? For example, today we've got a very complex and well-developed science called "physics" which is able to investigate not only massive gravitational entities that can even suck in light, but also subatomic particles too small to be examined any way other than through probability. Doesn't physics then "look at the whole"? If I were to ask a particularly honest physicist, he would probably say no: the "objects of inquiry" for physics can only be the [i]physical[/i], and physics couldn't proceed at all unless it knew in advance how that was distinct from the nonphysical. But then, isn't that kind of abstract inquiry completely silly? Yes, and it's for precisely that kind of reason that philosophers get laughed at by Thracian handmaids. Handmaids don't really take it upon themselves to ask, for example, what "principles, conditions, or elements" separate the physical from the nonphysical and vice versa, because this doesn't even seem to be a sensible question. Physics as it stands today would never even be [i]possible[/i] had no "downright idiot" first stumbled into a well and searched into physicality's primary conditions, but that doesn't make the question any less silly. Handmaids today might know a lot more about physics, but they still never see a point to "looking up" at the distant and abstract. And rightly so: in not seeing a point to philosophy, they know more about it than they think. Again, I wish I could go on and speak further about the other posts, but I think this is long enough already. Whoever understands these two quotes has, I think, a fairly good grasp on what philosophy aims for. If given proper consideration, they say far more than I can.[/SIZE]

Smurf, one of the "pretend philosophers" would like to ask you a question. [quote name='Papa Smurf']Everything else becomes stretched and forced pseudo-philosophical ramblings with little to no relevance at all that suggest downright stupid hypothetical scenarios totally ignorant of reality itself in an attempt to justify so-called "deeper thinking" that can never, ever be justified.[/quote](It's interesting that you use the word "justified" here, as I seem to remember you ridiculing me for using the same term a little earlier) If you're saying that all this "deeper thinking" is really unjustifiable, I take this to mean that your own point (and I think this last post is your best in the thread) [i]can[/i] be justified. I assume you hold that this is because "hard physics" is "reality itself," period. In which case, my question is: [i]how do you know this?[/i] I'm not rhetorically asking this to be some skeptical smartass. I'm seriously looking for an answer. I'm asking for you to describe, as systematically as you can, how it is that you come to know all this stuff. Even if reality always goes by a set collection of determinable rules we still have to [i]learn[/i] things, assuming we don't get born into the world already knowing the sound made when a friend gets smacked in the head. So, how does this learning process happen? [quote name='Papa Smurf][at the Jersey Pine Barrens'] we can do two things: go kayaking and enjoy the scenery, and ask the redneck bumf-cks "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" If you think this "What do we know" philosophy is all that realistic, how about you try using it in reality? Guarantee that at least three of those redneck bumf-cks will drag you off into the woods and beat you mercilessly.[/quote]True, this discussion basically has no place in everyday "sensible" conversation. No one brings [url=http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1268996][u]Hume[/u][/url] to a party. But that doesn't necessarily make these kinds of questions completely irrelevant... unless, of course, for anything to be considered "relevant" at all it must immediately produce useful, practical results, in which case I have no reply and the entire thread fails the test miserably.

[quote name='SunfallE][COLOR=RoyalBlue][B']All you would have to do is place some type of recording device in a forest and later view it to see that pretty much any event like a tree falling has some sort of noise associated with it.[/COLOR][/quote][SIZE=1]True, but this just defeats the spirit of the question by going through a loophole in the wording. I don't think this really approaches it fairly. Assume the question isn't just asking about direct first-person hearing - i.e., that it extends to all possible forms of recording or measurement. Assume, in other words, that there's no way of getting evidence one way or another about this particular case. Is this unrealistic, given what's going on? You bet. But this isn't really a good objection, given that the kind of question we're asking about involves the nature of knowledge and its justification, and not just what's likely to happen. Let me see if I can restate the first of my earlier points in a different way (or, if you like things brief: Adahn is basically right, although I don't know if invoking omniscience is necessary here). Scientific spheres have a notion called "falsifiability" (which stems from certain developments in 20th century philosophy that I won't get into). Falsifiability basically says that if one makes a general, universal statement based on one or more observations, that statement is scientifically valid (i.e. the statement can be [i]investigated[/i]) if it could concievably be falsified in the course of other observations. For example: after studying swans for awhile I make the general statement that "all swans are white." This statement is falsificable, because were I to go looking around the world long enough I may find swans of different colors (or, some guy might go and breed a pink one). The statement "all objects fall towards the earth at a speed of 9.8 meters per second" is also falsifiable, because it can be tested and verified over and over again. However, "ghosts exist which have no physical properties" is [i]not[/i] falsifiable, because there's no way of investigating these ghosts and determining if they really do exist or not - crucially, this is not to say outright that "ghosts don't exist," but only that they can [i]never be the object of observation[/i] and thus anything said about them stands outside the scope of responsible scientific thinking. The statements "falling trees make noise" and "falling trees do not make noise" are falsifiable, because they can be investigated: we can go listen to (or otherwise measure) falling trees all day, and probably we'll learn pretty quickly that one of those claims isn't true. However, the question in the topic post is asking about a falling tree that cannot be heard; I am further assuming that all other methods of measurement are cheating the question, so they're out too. So, what about the statement "One particular falling tree makes noise that [i]can never be measured[/i]" and its reverse (that it doesn't make this noise)? Neither one, which everyone should recognize as the "yes" or "no" answers to the topic post's questions, can [i]ever[/i] be falsified, because we're talking about a noise which [i]by definition[/i] can't be observed, tested, measured, or anything else. Hence the question is not within the bounds of scientific knowledge (and all knowledge gained through observation is basically scientific). We can still talk about what is [i]likely[/i] to happen based on past observations of other falling things, but because this particular sound or lack of sound cannot be the object of investigation, properly speaking we can say nothing about it. In this sense, the correct answer is not to answer. (Although if we wanted to keep ourselves honest we could admit that yes, it's extremely unlikely that this one tree will suddenly flout everything currently known in physics) I do have a second thing to say in my posts, which is about the fact that the minute we hear the topic question we immediately have that crashing sound sneak into out heads. Or, to put it another way: when we hear about a falling tree, we're already associating a sound with it even if (properly speaking) the actual physical sound is unavailable. I find this extremely interesting, and it lies in a completely different sphere of questioning than my first point, but I'm not sure how to approach the issue. If I think of a way I'll post it here.[/SIZE]

[QUOTE=Papa Smurf]Sorry, I missed the part where you were actually answering any questions with your pointless rambles... [etc.][/quote]I see no meaning in trying to rewrite everything I've said in this thread just so you can then call the rewrites equally incomprehensible, declare victory, and give yourself a big pat on the back for taking down another "pseudo-philosopher." I don't have the time or the temper for it, and I don't see how it can result in anyone learning a damn thing. If you're interested in knowing what I think (and I doubt you are), then please reread my first three posts more carefully. Everything relevant is already there if you're willing to put some effort in (also doubtful), and I'm not going to continue this. If you'd really like to, you can even write down in your little record that you totally kicked my ***. One more pseudo-philosopher showed up! Respectable and realistic wins the day, mindshatting crawls back into its hole! High five!!! Beers for everyone!!

I worked in a private bookstore one summer that sold tons of the stuff. Whatever appreciation for jerky I might have had was unfortunately snuffed out by sharing a room with the stuff for around three months...