Today is another work day for me. I’m coming along on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. Very, very soon now, it will be out of the house. I’m in that “I’m sick of this” phase.
I’ve also added Son of Hel to my book progress tracker because it’s my next project. Fair warning: This is going to become a Christmas-themed blog while I’m working on that one.
Roffles Lowell, the interior illustrator of the Jake and the Dynamo series, recently sent me this sketch. For the second book, Dead to Rites, he is planning to update the design of Magical Girl Pretty Dynamo to match the version that Lee Madison used on the cover of the first volume.
I have no strong opinions on Dynamo’s design myself. I’m just thrilled to see other people’s imaginings of her. That being said, I do rather like this updated version. I was quite impressed with Madison’s design to begin with, and I think Lowell’s version gives her a sort of spunky, whimsical character. In my head, I’ve always seen Dynamo (unlike her counterpart Dana) as a tomboy, the kind of girl who usually has a smudge of dirt on her face and who tries to make her voice sound lower than it really is. To me, this redesign conveys that impression.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if a million perverts cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
The online anime community has been in an uproar since Valentine’s Day because the United Nations has proposed an expanded definition of child pornography. The “Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” currently in draft, defines child pornography as including “photographs, movies, drawings and cartoons” depicting “a child engaged in real or simulated sexually explicit conduct.” As usual, Know Your Meme has an impressively even-tempered write-up.
This has a lot of otaku and weeaboos in a tizzy because … well, because they want their sexually explicit depictions of children, and they’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Some have taken to referring to this as a “loli ban,” or in some cases, as in MaiOtaku, they’ve claimed the “United Nations is trying to ban anime,” which would be true only if anime and child pornography were synonymous.
Even calling it a loli ban is arguably disingenuous: Although the term loli is unquestionably of disreputable etymology (it ultimately derives from the novel Lolita), it is used by weebs as a generic term for any young girl characters, particularly ones who wear pseudo-Victorian dress, at least as often as it is used for child pornography. They’re trying to imply here that animators will no longer be allowed to depict children at all, which is simply not the case.
Taken in its literal meaning, this “loli ban” would actually ban only unambiguous child pornography, which means the creepers could still keep their panty shots and their suggestive transformation sequences and all the other things that manga and anime don’t need and would be better off without. In fact, it would probably have little effect at all anyway, since creators of this stuff long ago discovered that they could get around such rules by claiming that a clearly prepubescent character is actually eighteen or a robot or something.
And besides that, the U.N. is a joke and would have no actual power to enforce this anyway. I mean, what are they gonna do, invade Japan?
What is perhaps most dismaying to me personally about the whole affair is just how bad the arguments are against the U.N.’s proposed policy. Child pornography isn’t really defensible anyway, but jeez, it shows what a philosophical dark age we live in that these are the best defenses anyone can come up with.
The arguments against the policy, at least that I have seen, are two, and they go like this:
UN’s definition of child porn tries to include “drawings and cartoons” “written materials in print or online”. This is a SERIOUS threat for the freedom of expression, Should comment now. https://t.co/F07OWUr6oC
— Masayuki Hatta (@mhatta) February 15, 2019
The error here is in treating free speech as a good in itself rather than as a means to a good end. Pornography, the disastrous effects of which are obvious to anyone honest with himself, has no possible good end and does not need to be protected as free speech. It is akin to the example of adultery that Aristotle uses in the Nichomachean Ethics: it is wrong in itself and cannot be done moderately or temperately, which places it in an entirely separate category from expressing one’s honest opinion on matters philosophical, political, or religious.
No real children are involved so it doesn’t hurt anybody. This argument has popped up in various forms all over the place. It is an argument that derives from a degraded version of Utilitarian ethics.
The Utilitarians have held to the view that ethical actions should seek to maximize the most good, or pleasure, for the largest number of people. Utilitarianism typically flounders in trying to determine how such a calculus could actually be done. Over time, it has degenerated into doing the least amount of harm, or “not hurting anybody,” rather than doing the most good. This enables people to get away with most anything simply by defining harm in such a narrow way as to excuse most any vice they want to indulge in. Animated or drawn child pornography may not harm a specific child directly, but it nonetheless harms children generally in that it normalizes the sexualization and sexual exploitation of children. It also harms, morally or spiritually, the artist who produces the work and the people who consume it.
I have previously reviewed both the first and the second seasons of Miraculous Ladybug, the popular magical girl show out of France. A few brief additional comments worth making:
First, I mentioned before that plans for a live-action film were in the works, to be released through Lionsgate. That would arguably have been the first, or maybe just the most prominent, live-action magical girl title from outside Japan. However, the movie has, in spite of the cartoon’s popularity, died in pre-production hell. That is perhaps no great surprise: crowd-pleasing though the cartoon is, the film would probably have struggled to find a sufficiently large audience outside of France.
Second, for whatever reason, Netflix only has the second season available in English, but the first is available in multiple language, so I find myself rewatching the first season in French—which I assume is the original French and not a Netflix re-dub. I have mentioned before that the English voice cast of this show is excellent, and now I am astounded to find that it in fact closely matches the original. The characters for the most part sound largely the same in both languages, though I admit I prefer both Adrien and his kwami Plagg in the English: The French Adrien sounds whiny, and Plagg has a voice that’s surprisingly deep for such a tiny character.
My only real complaint about the French version is with the subtitles, which are a transcription of the English dub rather than a direct translation of the French. My French is admittedly rusty, but even I can tell that the subtitles deviate considerably at times from what the characters are actually saying. I don’t know if this problem is unique to Netflix, or if one would find it on the DVDs as well.
I’m spending the day working on the editing phase of Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. It’s coming along smoothly, if slowly. I hope to be about half done by the end of the day, and my goal is to have it out to both my illustrator and my editor by the end of the month.
In other news, I’m working my way through Little Witch Academia, and will review when I’m done. I’m also hoping to finally get through the two series of Glitter Force by the end of the month, but I’ve picked a bad month for it, since I’m also trying to finish my book.
There’s a lot of other things going on in the world of YA and anime, much of it rancorous. I’m mostly keeping my nose out of it, but might have a few comments later.
A fellow calling himself Exclamation Point, who makes pretty good videos analyzing anime, has recently uploaded one entitled “How to Suffer Well: Sympathetic Characterization in Madoka and Magical Girl Site.” From the title, I assumed he was going to use magical girl shows as a jumping-off point to discuss Stoical philosophy. I was wrong, but I think the video is still worth watching.
My opinion about “dark” magical girl shows is less positive than his, though, perhaps ironically, I think I enjoyed Magical Girl Site more than he did. His point in this video, which he makes very well (and then drives into the ground) is that the suffering in Puella Magi Madoka Magica stems directly from the characters’ decisions, and has consequences that fundamentally change their world, a world that is worth preserving. In Magical Girl Site, by contrast, life just sucks and then you die: The heroine is not at all responsible for all the bad things that happens to her, and she has no reason to preserve anything because everything is miserable.
He makes a good case, and I think what he says could apply not to Magical Girl Site only, but to the whole slew of “lesser” dark magical girl shows that have followed in Madoka’s wake without understanding why Madoka works. Magical Girl Site is just one particularly extreme example, one where the flaws especially stand out because it’s trying especially hard to be on the edge.
I basically agree with him, but I might point out that there is, at least, an improvement to the heroine’s life by the end: She’s got away from her abusers and found friendship, and has concluded, contrary to what she had been told and believed previously, that she is not in fact unfortunate.
Exclamation Point’s reply to me after I say that would no doubt be to point out that the heroine’s just going to die anyway within two years or less so her happiness is temporary and therefore pointless. I might then answer by way of rebuttal that all temporal happiness is temporary—and I might add that the story isn’t over yet by the time the first season ends, so it’s possible that the girls might find a way to foil the shortening of their lifespans.
What the hell is this even …
I just made progress on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites! So far I’m 15% complete on the Editing phase.
I don’t talk in specifics about my day job on my blog, but I’ll go so far as to say that I work at a university, and that the university was closed today on account of an ice storm. Thus, I am spending the day sipping bourbon and working on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. I am now in the editing phase, making the first pass in preparation to send it to my illustrator.
I’ve mentioned before that my drafts expand as I edit, even though the convention is that a final should be considerably shorter than a rough. There are, however, good reasons for this. First, I tend to write dialogue in staccato fashion, often without attribution. As I make my second pass, I notice when a reader might not know who’s talking, and then I add in attribution along with description of what characters are doing.
Also, in action scenes, my first draft is usually technical description. Only in later drafts do I add things like what characters are thinking and feeling and so forth. My perceptive editor rightly noted, on receiving my submission draft of The Wattage of Justice, that Jake disappeared during action sequences, so I added in a lot more detail about his thoughts and behaviors, which naturally upped the word count. The most dramatic example of this is in Pretty Dynamo’s climactic battle with the demoniac: Originally, this was told as a single paragraph outlining her spear technique, but in the final version, the paragraph was broken into single-sentence paragraphs interspersed with Jake’s reactions, consisting mostly of his indignant ruminations on how little girls have to be humanity’s defenders.
So that’s why my word counts increase in later drafts. I do of course cut out rabbit trails and needless discursions, but those are usually smaller than the added material. Thus, the working draft currently stands at 140,016 words, and will probably be much larger when I’m done (I previously said it was 140,000, but that was rounded up).
Changing subjects—on the review side of things, I’m currently indulging in yet another free month of Netflix (a service I refuse to pay for), which is why I reviewed the second season of Miraculous Ladybug. For my next trick, I will most likely review Little Witch Academia, which I’ve been eager to see for some time. Then I will probably (finally!) get around to the two series of Glitter Force, the execrable localication/butchering of Pretty Cure. Aside from those, Netflix contains little or nothing I give a fig about—which is why I don’t pay for it.
I am late to this party, but as they say, better late than never.
The television series LazyTown, a show aimed at young kids, ran on Nick Jr. from 2004 to 2007 and later saw a reboot in 2013. I had personally never heard of it, but it enjoyed a surge of popularity after one of its most beloved stars, Stefán Karl Stefánsson, who played the villain, was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, leading to a fundraiser driven in large part by fans making internet memes. The condition ultimately took Stefánsson’s life in August of 2018, resulting, in turn, in multiple homages.
The show LazyTown was the brainchild of Magnús Scheving, an Icelandic aerobic gymnast and motivational speaker who came up with the concept after multiple parents had asked him how to encourage their children to eat well and to exercise. LazyTown appeared first as a book, then as a stage play, and finally as a television series combining puppetry, acrobatic stunts, and CGI, which, at least according to the Wikipedia page, made it one of the most expensive children’s shows of all time.
I have for some time had my eye on the show’s official YouTube channel, which has for the most part posted music videos and homages to Stefánsson. There are a lot of bootlegs of the show floating around the web—unsurprising, given its recent popularity boost. The official channel has within the last week apparently decided that it’s easier to join them than beat them, and has begun to release a selection of free episodes online. Most of those episodes are available on the Full Episode Playlist, though a few strays are lurking elsewhere on the channel.
Unlike many of the fans, I didn’t watch the show as a kid (I was already grown up when it appeared), and I must limit my comments to what is freely available on YouTube, but based on this selection of episodes, I’m impressed. A lot of the kids’ shows that cross live actors with puppets are endurance tests for adults, but LazyTown is an exception. It’s really entertaining; it’s perhaps not quite on the level of classic Sesame Street, but it’s close.
Continue reading “‘LazyTown’ on the Official YouTube Channel”
Featured image: “Miraculous” by DelianaM.
