Tag: news

Netflix Pisses Off Pretty Much Everybody with ‘Cuties’

As you can see from the meme collage at the head of this post, the streaming service Netflix absolutely loves it some dirty, sexy kids. In the last couple of days, this fact has become apparent not just to the few edgelords talking about it on /pol/, but to everybody, as Netflix has advertised its acquisition of a French movie called Cuties, which made it big at Sundance.

What’s remarkable is that, although Cuties has a handful of defenders, this is one case where almost everyone seems to be pissed off. The left-right divide, over this one film, has evaporated: Everyone is angry. For a brief moment, our fractured nation is united in mutual offendedness and outrage. Maybe now we can begin to heal.

What sparked the controversy is the poster Netflix chose to advertise the film—a poster notably different from the original French version, which Netflix apparently created on the unwise assumption that it would appeal more to American audiences. The poster has so outraged some that I have even seen an individual I admire and respect begging people not to share it, even to criticize. Because I don’t think we can talk about this without depicting, in some fashion, what we are talking about, I’ve decided to share the poster, but only after the break. Consider yourself warned.

This movie, Cuties in English and Mignonnes in French, is about a group of eleven-year-old girls who dance. That brief description sounds inoccuous, even charming, but wait until I tell you that the film achieved an NC-17 rating and will be rated TV-MA when it appears on Netflix next month. As you likely know, NC-17 is the rating that replaced X; this is an X-rated film about eleven-year-olds.

After the break comes the poster, and then I will discuss how Netflix chose to describe the movie, what people are mad about, and so forth.

Continue reading “Netflix Pisses Off Pretty Much Everybody with ‘Cuties’”

‘KissAnime’ Shuts Its Doors

The big news in weebdom is the complete shutdown of KissAnime and KissManga, two hugely popular pirate sites that fans of manga and anime have relied on to get content for free. This follows on the heels of Japan tightening its copyright laws.

Given the enormous popularity of these sites, this will have repercussions that remain to be seen.

American voice actors have been doing a lot to make themselves obnoxious lately, so they took this as another chance to show their lack of basic P.R. skills: Several took to Twitter (the internet’s home of celebrities behaving moronically) to rub salt in the wound and gloat over the fans who could no longer get their content from these sites. Of those I’ve seen, the most notable of these gloats is this one:

That’s from Alex Moore, who has done English dubs for Fire Force and Fairy Tail. To her credit, she later apologized for some of her language. Still, I think her comment is worth noting because she brings up one of the most compelling reasons to turn away from official translations and toward pirate sites and fansubs. I’ll quote it in case the tweet goes away and the image accompanying it disappears:

“But [PC culture/feminism/politics] of dubs ruins the show!”

No it doesn’t, you’re just an asshole. How many times have you heard someone yell “YOLO!” or “YEET!” Or mention a meme in a localization? It’s done to make it accessible and relevant, not be transliteral. (BTW, next liberal feminist Witch coven meeting is at BN’s.)

Notice what she’s doing here: People complain about messages that are not in the original material being wedged into that material, and her response is, first, that you’re an asshole, apparently because you disagree with her ideologically. This is a standard tactic of the Woke cult—either acquiesce to them on every last little jot and tittle or you lose your humanity card.

Second, she argues that trendy words should be wedged ham-fistedly into translations to be “relevant” and then, laughably, gives outdated examples: No one says “YOLO” anymore (thank goodness), and “yeet” is on its way out. Memes, generally, go stale within a few weeks after they appear. That’s why you shouldn’t screw around with translations this way: Because you’re dating your material, and chances are, you don’t know what the kids think is hep and happening anyway, even if you think you do.

Since she likes internet lingo so much, I’ll sum it up this way: What she writes here is Boomer-tier cringe.

She inadvertently makes the best case for piracy I’ve ever seen: “Yes, we are going to be unfaithful in our translations, and you’re going to like it, you asshole!”

To give an idea, of what she thinks is making a show “accessible” and “relevant,” this is the most infamous of altered translations, from a show called Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid:

Comparison of dub and sub of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid

You can see that the dub has nothing to recommend it over the sub; it is not more comprehensible, not more “relevant” in its lingo. It is merely an example of someone thrusting a political agenda into a show that has nothing to do with it, simply because she can.

I’ve previously encountered this before: I have a review expressing my suspicions that VIZ inserted identity politics into Sailor Moon R: The Movie. I have since had confirmed that my suspicions were correct—but of course I knew I was correct to begin with because, unlike VIZ (and most of Sailor Moon’s Western feminist fanbase), I can grasp the worldview in which Sailor Moon was written and recognize lines that don’t belong to it. Those lines don’t make the show more “relevant” as Miss Moore asserts; they stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I can’t in good conscience approve of piracy: There’s a lot of anime I want but don’t have because I can’t get it legally. Despite this being a site about magical girls, you’ll notice I don’t talk about the latest Pretty Cure series; that’s because I can’t get them. I’d love to watch Sugar Sugar Rune or the Studio Pierrot shows from the 1980s, but I can’t acquire them legally, so I go without. Asking that people purchase things legally rather than steal, and go without if they cannot purchase legally, is not normally unreasonable, especially when those things are mere entertainments—normally.

I’m not actually prepared to approve piracy. But smug voice actresses make it tempting.

Anime Maru: ‘Magical Girl Recruitment Down’

I stumbled upon this recently, a satirical article from Anime Maru reporting that talking animal mascots have had a hard time recruiting new magical girls because of the increasingly dark tone of new magical girl anime.

I repost it mostly because I myself am a little tired of the dark turn in the genre since Puella Magi Madoka Magica and am ready for earnestly made but lighter fare.

With such challenges, many magical girl recruiting mascots have been forced to turn to drastic measures. It has been reported some are even going to alternative realities for recruiting, framing the opportunities they offer as isekei.

[More …]

‘Cleopatra in Space’ Final Volume and Television Series

A few years ago, I was reading and reviewing Cleopatra in Space, a junior graphic novel from Mike Maihack. I lost track of the series after I last changed jobs and towns, but since I reviewed volume 4, Maihack has released two subsequent volumes. The most recent volume, Queen of the Nile, is apparently the finale.

Also, there is a new animated series based on it, streaming on a service called Peacock. I can say nothing about it because I had not heard of Peacock, or this show, before just now.

I admit the clunky animation and pop music in the preview don’t give me high hopes:

Amazon Disappears Light Novels and Manga

Some time back, I mentioned that Amazon had developed a draconian new policy for its advertisements, forbidding ads for any books that feature firing guns or guns held by children on the cover. At the time, I said this was clearly an attempt to go after indie creators, and that Amazon would never enforce such a policy against, say, Japanese manga.

I was wrong.

In fact, it’s worse than that: Amazon isn’t just removing ads but removing books. Whole light-novel and manga series have been deleted from the platform silently and without explanation.

Several outlets have now reported on this, including Crunchyroll, Anime News Network, AniTAY, and Comicbook.com. Several translator-publishers have likewise announced the removal of their books.

This is apparently not limited to the U.S. Amazon but affects all Amazon portals outside Japan. Some of the publishers affected are fairly big players, too, including Yen Press and Darkhorse.

As Crunchyroll reports, publishers have tried to get in contact with Amazon to get the reasons for delisting, and Amazon has been less than forthcoming:

Pinansky said that despite multiple attempts over the last few months to get in contact with anyone on a review team at Kindle through email, they rang the support phone line and requested support tickets, doing so 10 or 12 times. “Phone support has no power to override or obtain any further information from Kindle Content Review.” Though all J-Novel Club got in response from Amazon after multiple nine-day waits are a generic email …

Because Amazon is not being transparent, we are left to speculate. The most likely reason is that Amazon is going after lolicon, and while such a purge would include a few of the titles that have been removed, some other, considerably tamer books are being removed as well. Someone in my mentions (no doubt with some exaggeration) said they were removing most anything that has a cute girl on the cover.

Most of what’s being purged, being light novels, is isekai, and while I personally dislike isekai, this censorship is still troubling: If they can throw these off the platform, they can start removing content for considerably more tenuous reasons.

“They came for the lolicons, and I did not speak out because I was not a child molestor,” and so forth.

Update to Armageddon

As some of you are no doubt aware, I’m planning to get married, and the universe, realizing that my successfully wooing an attractive woman is as impossible and unacceptable as, say, Arthur Dent or Jon Arbuckle doing the same, has taken drastic steps to correct.

So yeah, this whole global pandemic thing is my fault. Sorry about that.

Anyway, the magical girl and I intend to defy the laws of the universe and get married anyway, and we’re now scratching our heads to figure out where, and when, and how.

In the meanwhile, since I caused this disaster in the first place, I think I can present a few ideas of what to do while you’re in quarantine. Stay tuned.

‘Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul’ Coming to America

The movie Dawn of the Deep Soul, which continues the story of the acclaimed Made in Abyss anime, which I have reviewed, is slated for an American release at Anime Boston on April 11, according to Crunchyroll. After that, the film will see (presumably limited) theatrical distribution.

Personally, I’m not sure if I should be thrilled or disappointed. Rumors have swirled around for a while about a sequel to Made in Abyss, and one was announced at a talk show some years back, followed by speculations on a 2019 release date.

2019 is obviously behind us, but with the upcoming movie set to continue the story where season 1 ended, it is no longer clear if there will be a season 2 at all.

The United Nations Gets Something Right

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:

  1. Muh freedom. This argument is  that “free expression” is a good in itself and should not be impinged in any fashion. I live in the United States, which was at least formerly the world’s leading defender of free speech. Our First Amendment, in its phrasing and original context, was clearly meant to protect political and religious speech. In spite of some erroneous and disastrous Supreme Court interpretations, it was never meant to protect pornography, which once upon a time was as illegal here as in the rest of the civilized world.

    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.

  2. 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.

‘My Little Pony’ Animator Arrested for Child Pornography

According to the Ottawa Citizen, Tom Wysom, who worked extensively in animation for My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop, both Hasbro franchises, was just arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography.

He had over 60,000 images and 1,600 videos on his computer. And I must say that these numbers always fascinate me in a perverse sort of way: surely if the first 59,000 images didn’t satisfy him, he should have figured that the 60,000th wouldn’t either. But then again, I probably don’t quite grasp how these people actually think.

I would bet even money that there is a lot of this in the field of children’s entertainment. The whole establishment is probably in need of burning with fire, starting with animation and moving from there.

Jon Del Arroz Banned from WorldCon

It came to my attention early this morning that Jon Del Arroz, author of Star Realms: Rescue Run and For Steam and Country and several shorter works, who is also slated to write two novel spin-offs for the new Alt-Hero comic book series, has been banned from WorldCon, the annual convention that hands out the Hugo Awards, apparently without provocation. WorldCon claims that Del Arroz threatened to engage in some behavior contrary to the convention’s code of conduct, but the only information available indicates that he promised to wear a body cam and record it if anyone harassed him, something that is legal to do in the State of California, where the convention is to be hosted.

In the sci fi fandom—well, actually, it’s more among writers than among fans—there is a long-running political feud over WorldCon and the Hugos. It started a few years back, spearheaded by independently successful sf author Larry Correia, who suspected political bias in the way the awards are handed out. He started what became known as “Sad Puppies,” which grew into a small group of authors writing lists of what they considered the best sf of the previous year, and encouraging people to read those works and consider voting for them, as an alternative to alleged block voting dominated by Tor Books. The write-up on the situation at Know Your Meme is surprisingly even-handed.

Although this is a relatively innocuous activity, the Sad Puppies were labeled white supremacists and smeared in major media outlets including Entertainment Weekly (which retracted) and National Public Radio (which did not). I was an observer rather than a participant in the whole Sad Puppies debacle, but I know the authors involved. There’s a lot of talk lately about media bias and whether it’s a real thing, but for me, that’s not a matter of debate. There is most definitely a problem with media bias: I know this because I have watched the media lie about, smear, and write hit pieces on people I know.

My own opinion on Sad Puppies, if anyone cares, is that the Puppies’ complaints were legitimate if sometimes exaggerated. Hugos and Nebulas have in recent years gone to garbage in short fiction, but that is in large part because the short fiction market is garbage. The Hugos for best novel have remained considerably less awful. Nonetheless, it is certainly true that the social justice cult (and it does deserve to be called a cult) has wormed its way into sf as surely as into every other area of life, and this has affected who can get published, and what authors can say in public, as the present case illustrates.

Complicating the matter with the Sad Puppies was the involvement of Vox Day, who used it to further his personal feud with author John Scalzi and the Science Fiction Writers of America, which had ejected Day in violation of its own bylaws after he finally responded in kind to an authoress who had been insulting him for years. After being kicked out of the SFWA, Day took his ball and went home: living in Italy, he is the one-man show in charge of the Finnish publisher Castalia House, which has gathered a stable of talented yet disaffected authors, published numerous Amazon bestsellers, and is now planning a move into comics. While the Sad Puppies merely encouraged people to read, buy WorldCon memberships, and vote, Day’s “Rabid Puppies” created a voting block that skewed the award’s nominations; his greatest (and funniest) triumph was getting the self-published niche porn “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” by Chuck Tingle on the ballot for best short story. In subsequent years, however, changes to the voting rules largely defanged the Rabid Puppies.

Meanwhile, the Sad Puppies gave up because they have jobs and families and insufficient interest in being repeatedly libeled. Also, the Puppies have largely decided to ignore the Hugos in favor of the new Dragon Awards, given out by DragonCon, which have recognized authors that WorldCon and the Hugos have shunned for their political opinions.

Although the Puppies thing is mostly over, Vox Day has more than one prong to his attack: he has recently published Moira Greyland’s The Last Closet, which chronicles Greyland’s childhood sexual abuse at the hands of celebrated sf author Marion Zimmer Bradley. This publication follows up on several years that Day has spent shedding light on the long-running sheltering of pedophiles in the sf community; see especially the Castalia House blog series Safe Space as Rape Room. Day’s Rabid Puppies got Safe Space nominated for a Hugo, but WorldCon refused to put it in the voting packet on the tenuous grounds that its content might be illegal in some countries—thereby furthering the impression that WorldCon shelters child molesters.

Anyway, Jon Del Arroz is something of a latecomer to all this, as his name wasn’t made yet when Sad Puppies was at its height. Nonetheless, he is is openly right-leaning in his politics, which has made him a target for abuse by other sf writers and high-level fans, as indicated by his feud with File 770, whose creator Mike Glyer seems to have a hate-crush on him. After Del Arroz was banned from WorldCon for no apparent reason, Vox Day naturally followed up with the provocatively entitled blog post, “Worldcon doesn’t ban pedophiles.”

In the interest of Twitter sniping, I made the same the same point in a Twitter thread and suggested that Del Arroz was banned because he might catch someone grooming children on video. After I made the comment, I was within seconds kicked out of my Twitter account, and my comment disappeared—maybe coincidence, maybe not.