Deus ex magical girl recently got a mention Nathan Housley’s blog, The Pulp Archivist. Glancing at his blogroll, it appears that he runs in the same circles I do. Check him out.
He has this to say:
D. G. D. Davidson has been discussing Revolutionary Girl Utena, a shoujo series aimed at teenaged girls, bringing a more balanced and thoughtful analysis of the anime and themes than the gloss of surface-level feminism that normally passes for shoujo criticism.
I’m glad to hear it. That is, in fact, one raison d’être for this blog, because I thought it was high time for an alternate interpretation of shoujo anime.
Pulp Archivist is part of a movement Housley calls “PulpRev,” which stands for “Pulp Revival” (or sometimes “Pulp Revolution”), an attempt to recapture some of the fun and grandeur of early sf and adventure stories. It’s certainly a movement I can support, even though I’ve moved from sf fandom to weeaboo in my personal interests. Housley has no great interest in magical girls, but he does from time to time discuss anime. Check him out.
We find a quick definition of the Pulp Revival from Misha Burnett, who summarizes it in “five pillars.” Although I may not be a formal part of this movement, I think I could argue that Jake and the Dynamo embraces all five of the pillars and could in that sense be called a pulp novel.
