Before I start, I would like to thank all of the people who commented on my KnJ post. First time trolling on my part and it was awesome. You guys have given me much to think about and had me going “Woah!” in response to some of the strong reactions that I got. Thank you for taking the time and care to comment, even if you disagreed with my views and convictions, because it lets me know that at least people are reading my work and acknowledging it enough to form their own opinions on it and get back to me about it =]

So… It’s been a long, long time since an anime has gotten me this emotionally attached to it. The last time this happened was circa summer of 2006, when I, in an attempt to escape from RL issues, marathoned through H&C and used up a whole box of tissue crying my eyes out at every twist and turn. Now every time I sit down to watch a Kaiba episode, I do so knowing that I’m going to get some masochistic pleasure out of getting my heart mutilated and broken by this fantastic monstrosity. Regardless, I know that I will keep coming back for more abuse because it IS that good.

It was unquestionably the grandmother character that got to me. Poor little, old grandma who waits in that little, old lighthouse for grandpa to come back. Except he’s dead. And whenever anyone mentions this fact, she falls into a deep, deep sleep.

Her mind is a library of memories, with books lining the shelves, books that are probably full of so much happiness and pain and wisdom and loss. There is one book held close with a clamp and it trembles every time grandpa is mentioned. Besides the books, there is the incomplete ship model and a broken blue door. These are all the unfinished business that grandpa left behind when he died, that she still keeps locked away in her mind, still holds close to her while she waits for him to come back. And fuck, THIS:

Broke me. Made my throat go dry, my breath catch, my chest hurt. Because I can’t… I can’t even dare to imagine what that must be like. That kind of loss and loneliness. All that time spent waiting inside of her memories for someone who [didn’t die didn’t die] will never come back. She sleeps so deep because she doesn’t want to remember that stupid little fact that messed up everything, she sleeps because she wants to remember life as it was before THE FACT. See that, the act of remembering and not remembering, of sleeping and dreaming, see how it works and how it doesn’t. Really? Because I don’t. Shit, what a fucking mess it’s made out of my head.

And maybe it would be all well and good for her if her greedy grandsons hadn’t come looking for the treasure inside of her pain. Here, we are presented with the question of value and worth. Which memory constitutes as a treasure, and to whom? The ungrateful bastards want info, they want a map to a treasure chest, anything else is disregarded because they have not attached any meaning to the past. They are simply looking for a one-way ticket out of what they perceive as a shithole. If there is no monetary appeal to a memory, then it is worthless. So apparently this makes it okay for them to exploit Grandma’s memories, to dig up her grief and turn her loss inside out to see if they could scavenge anything from it.

Grandma isn’t very happy about this. Big surprise. She more or less tells them to fuck off by directing them to an old shoe box filled with mementos from the past. For her, that IS the true treasure. Because all she has are her memories, and they are so much more than just fuel for bitterness or resentment. To her, they are everything:

Even on that shitty planet with the weak ass gravity, she was able to find wonder and magic and love, and she was happy. So maybe the bigger tragedy here are her grandsons, both of whom resent their literal and figurative place in life. They dream instead of leaving and traveling the world because they can’t find any kind of meaning where they are now. They don’t see the little worlds that they have created or any of the great things that are possible for them still. And maybe there’s a big message being conveyed here. A big message that I’m too fucking lazy to elaborate on so I will it sum up as: Life sucked and then they died. To avoid said fate, have a little care.

all the strange wonders

While all of this is going on, Kaiba is once again the onlooker. So far, he has merely been the spectator, the one that takes us all over the universe and shows us what it means to exist and to be human in that specific time and place. But with each passing episode, his character gets more and more twisted up in the actual plot, so that he can no longer just watch things unfold from a detached distance. For Kaiba, someone without any memories of his own, it must be painful to see other people exploit each other’s and their own memories. He’s getting entangled within the discourse of memories and if the flashbacks in this episode are anything to go by, soon the plot demons will eat him alive. Something that I am quite looking forward to because I’ve been “WTF, where’s Neiro? Go find Neiro!” for the longest time.

So while on the topic of assigning meanings and emotions… Maybe I am stupid for getting so attached to something that isn’t real, for crying over something so inconsequential as moving pictures and words spoken by 2-D characters. But I think it’s because anime is… well, animated that I am able to put so much of my emotions into it. Because it’s so far removed from the reality that I live in and I know that these characters have no intrinsic values to them, that they’re just polished elements of some guy’s dreams, trapped forever in their plight. But because they are art, and art is the work of conveying human truths, they are like open vessels where I can store all of my little feelings that would otherwise have no outlet for expression in society, in the different social spheres that I move through as I go about my life trying not to fuck up or embarrass myself. Because these characters aren’t real and they can’t hurt you so you don’t have the same reserves that you otherwise would towards other human beings. Ergo, you’re free to put as much stock into them as you want because they won’t complain or bite you in the ass for it later on.

So I guess in this way, anime is cathartic for me, wherein the characters go through hell and back and I’m just trying really hard to pick up on the lessons that they’re teaching me and hoping that I won’t fail. Or maybe I’m taking this too seriously. Maybe I do need a new hobby.

Is anime serious business?

Well, that’s really up to you and what you put into it. Now excuse me while I go try to buy back my soul from Masaaki Yuasa.

Anyway, thank you for reading and do catch Kaiba if you get the chance. It hurts so good =D

Hi again. So here’s the dealio: I just got a brand new blog over at http://itsubun.dasaku.net/, courtesy of digiwombat. For those who are interested, plz update your blogroll. Future anime/manga editorials will be posted both here and over at itsubun. Although I will update itsubun more often with my own thoughts and opinions on a variety of Japanese media in which my entries will be a lot more free with the crazies and the personal because the mentality is –> my blog, my comfort, my freedom of expression. Now let’s start.

Before I actually picked up the nominally controversial Kodomo no Jikan and read it, I had heard so many interesting things about the series. And most of what I picked up through the grapevines go something like this: child porn, fan service gone too far, immoral justification of pedophilia, cannot be licensed due to being inappropriate for US audiences [because apparently we’re just so fucking moral-minded and too pure to be tainted by such appalling narratives from Asian countries with their exoticized sexuality and their kama sutra].

After hearing all of that I was like, “OMG! No way! That’s disgusting! [I wanna see!] How can something like that even be allowed to be published? [Me see! Me see!]”

So eventually [inevitably] I got the manga, read it, and found that I have much to say about it.

Kodomo no Jikan [A Child’s Time] is about an elementary school teacher who gets assigned to his first class of 3^rd graders. In the class is Rin, problem child extraordinaire, who develops strong feelings towards him and goes to great lengths to seduce him. Lengths that include (but are not limited to): sexual extortion, nude cell phone pictures, spermy haikus, exhibition of various loli parts, and… you get the gist that series is a step up from your standard ecchi. That’s the synopsis in a nutshell.

Step through the curtains for more awesome

So lemme clarify some things before I dive head first into this: Yes, the manga is explicit in that it depicts young children in sexually charged situations. Yes, it is chock full of sexual innuendos and explicit jokes. And there are enough panty shots and tit teases to put a HxC lolicon in a coma from his non-stop nosebleeds and painful blue balls in response to the incredible amount of fan service this series provides.

But wouldn’t all of those things add up to justifying the injurious rumors about the series?

NO. Because if you took the time to read the fucking series, and I mean REALLY read the series [not just ogle at the no-no pictures, although those are really nice to look at too <3], then you will realize that Kodomo no Jikan is so much more than just fan service or fetishization. They’re so fucking stupid, the people who trivialize and condemn it based on the mystique and the rumors. Because they’re so scared of what it could teach them, of what it could mean to them. There is a rhyme & reason to the sexual content.

Take exhibit A:

This is Rin taking a picture of her principal with his fingers in her underwear. See how she’s smiling? It must mean that she likes it.

In a situation like that, when you’re young and stupid and afraid, with an old man breathing down your neck, it’s so easy to get scared and give up the struggle. So why the pretty smile? Instead of being resigned to her role as the passive victim, she uses her age and all that it signifies in order to manipulate societal norms to empower and protect herself from the advances of sexual predators. She knows that she is capable of owning her sexuality and does so by using it to bring down THE LAW on THE MAN. Now tell me how this is a negative message to send out to the masses? Tell me how this will corrupt the youth of the world and lead us all into darkness. Preach to me about your laws and teach me a lesson in propriety, make me understand how a world where children can and should defend themselves against the fallible hierarchies and institutions that adults set up is bad.

But wait, aren’t the children too young to own up to the responsibilities of their own actions? What would happen if they were to abuse their power because they’re too young to know any better?

Well, let’s look at Exhibit B:

What? What’s that you say? We as adults have to monitor and regulate ourselves because unlike the children, we have no excuses for our naivety and ignorance when it comes to pedophilia and child abuse? In-fucking-deed. Therefore the responsibility does fall with a heavy weight upon us to ask ourselves the really hard questions and not run away from our own desires, but to evaluate them and figure out what’s worth it. Because shit like, “She was asking for it!” or “She acted like an adult” don’t fly in court. That’s what the rapists and child molesters say. And you can’t just censor out that part of yourself that twitches and twists when you look at the sexual images in Kodomo no Jikan. You have to work within that taboo, to invert it and examine it, and then admit that: Yes, the underage girls are really, really fucking hot and they make me think of all kinds of wrong. But I’m not going to touch that thing with a 10 foot pole because I know that I’ll end up fucking up a human life. And ultimately I can’t bear the burden of that on my conscience. And THAT would be epic owning up.

This is a manga that far from commodifying children as sexual objects, it takes them seriously and gives them the consideration that they almost never get in normative society. The notion of children’s sexuality brings great shock and disgust to people because they cannot reconcile that with their idealization of the purity and innocence of youth. People need a frame of reference in order to fantasize about “happier days” and “carefree times”. But what comes with those kind of ideals is a horrible oppression that completely subjugates and invalidates a child’s feelings and desires.

I have such profound awe and respect for Kaworu Watashiya’s prodigious achievement of finding that precious balance between producing kiddie porn and an incredibly intelligent and enlightening discussion about the rights of children to their own bodies and emotions. The “monstrosity” that she has created is beautiful in its versatile capacity to be a mechanism that both appeals to mass demands for lolicon fan service as well as facilitates a complex discourse on the sexuality of children.

Kaworu Watashiya’s Kodomo no Jikan is not just a product of decadent society nor is it an attack on standard moral discourses, but rather a more sincere representation of the sublimated and tyrannically policed world of children.

did i ever tell you, you’re my hero?

Highly recommended for all of the reasons stated above.

Also, US – please to be getting off your racist high horse and stop pulling rank on Asia with your own repressed and codified sexual discourses and superiority complex about what’s “moral” and “acceptable” pertaining to anything related to sex. It’s not so much about Seven Seas Entertainment canceling the licensing because I understand that each nation has its own diverse values and standards, and yeah, fine, reject alien medias to protect the national symbolic as you please. But when those ideals infringe upon other nations’ [and oh they do, they do], you get shit like Memoirs of a Geisha becoming sensationalized and contributing to the already detrimental stereotypes about Asians and now proliferating them on a massive scale. Oh US, your hypocrisy comes through loud and clear when you objectify the same characters that you seek to sublimate from your society. You need to move on from the Asian mystique and leave the Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and Lotus Blossoms alone. And Santa Clause doesn’t exist either. So sorry QQ!

Oh, and yes, I do live in the US and I am Asian American. And I do love my ironic, topsy-turvy country. So no deportment plz. =D

Hi, I’m the new THAT blogger. My own anime blog is here. I like anime. A lot. Now I am going to write about it.

Originally, I was scared that the series wasn’t going to get subbed because it was so radically different from mainstream anime. So I was ecstatic when I found out that Ureshii and Froth-Bite has picked up the series. The amount of time and effort they put into their work is remarkable and it really shows through the excellent quality and wonderful subs in Kaiba. A big thank you to the people over at Ureshii and F-B subs. And now onto the spoils of their hard labor.

Short summary: The series is about a boy who wakes up in a strange world without any memories of who he is or how he ended up there. The only clue to his lost memories is a locket with the picture of a girl inside. This series has been described as a romantic sci-fi. I think it’s the best thing since I discovered Nutella.

Kaiba really took the concept of classism and ran with it. The stated facts are: the rich live above the clouds, the poor live underground. Now what about that ominous purple cloud separating them? A cloud is a cloud, a cloud is not a wall because a wall is something that is impenetrable. But a cloud is just water droplets in the air, just soft wetness on your skin. It is not a physical obstruction. But it’s still there as a perceived entity taking up space in your awareness along with all of your doubts and reservations. Now how do we get through this meta-barrier?

Villager X proposes that they fly there on a hot air balloon. But their makeshift, patchwork hot air balloon is what it is, just hot air, hasty goals, and clumsy dreams. There is no point in making it to the surface and then forgetting who you are or why you wanted to go there in the first place.

Let’s see if Warp will have more luck with that in the future.

In Japanese culture, purple signifies royalty and wealth, and is worn in different shades by the various characters who chase after Warp. During the scenes where they are in the club, the purple is volatile and so unnatural when meshed with green that it violates the eyes, forces you to see a world in infrared, a stark contrast to the earthly colors of the underground (clay grey, mud brown). The color schema here suggests that the rich are the abnormal beings because they are the ones who seek to bypass death and violate the order of nature. Whereas the poor live underground, so close to the earth, among the mud and dirt, that they themselves are extensions of nature. But beware of this natural vs unnatural binary because the world of Kaiba as a whole functions on very different standards and values from our world, intentionally so in order to encourage out-of-the-box reflection on our own societal norms. Therefore what is unnatural to us, may actually be ordinary to them, and that’s what makes the prospect of it so horrifying. That something so cold and so UGLY (like the harvesting of human bodies, like Neo-slavery) could be normalized.

I found the scene with the faces on the wheels extremely disturbing. Because of an individual’s debts, the whole family unit must collectively suffer for it. The face of the adolescent girl who said, “I want to fall in love,” the lack of privacy and the constant struggle to talk over each other and be heard, the future of little Momo who can’t even speak yet, all of these individual dreams and ambitions have been compromised by of the lack of a physical human body to carry them out.

My initial reaction to the people who shook their heads and walked away from the wheel, the same people who decided not to put big brother’s memories back in his body because he was a burden on them, was that they were cold fuckers. But then I finished the episode. And then I mentally kicked myself, really hard, for being such a high-minded bitch. It’s so easy to look down on those who are lower than you and condemn them for lacking in human compassion and empathy, for being something less than human. It’s so easy to ignore their circumstances and say that they deserve their plight because they don’t have the luxury of being generous or kind when there is a whole network of institutions in place that create these horrible circumstances. It’s not that people don’t give a fuck, it’s because they don’t know how they could possible help with their own hands tied behind their backs. People are just trying to make do with their own lot, and it must be hard when you live in a giant mud pie and the rich are after your body.

This girl is the epitome of perpetual discontent. She has the nice body, she wears the cool colors, but she’s still unhappy. Why is that? Does her discontentment hint at the problematics of wealth and beauty, that maybe those two things don’t exactly equate to happiness? Or maybe she’s just a greedy little girl who doesn’t acknowledge there are so many other people worse off than her, because at least she has the freedom to pursue the things that makes her happy even if she keeps failing. I think it’s interesting that her pursuit of happiness entails the changing of bodies. Her failure thus far indicates that her discontentment transcends the physical, that’s it’s something inherent within her and it follows her around as she keeps trying on different bodies. It’s vexing and heartbreaking and it’s all in your head.

The notion of being able to preserve memories and transfer them into different bodies is profoundly interesting to me. The idea that you will not end with death, that something so fundamental to you will live on after the rest is gone, will still exist in this world without the prospect of an afterlife. What a mind-fuck.

I give Kaiba two thumbs up for being able to convey and facilitate the multiple discourses that I have barely touched on in just the first episode. Looking forward to the rest of the series. I am not an episodic blogger, so I won’t write on every episode. But I will most likely post more editorials on Kaiba in the future. Thank you for reading. Do comment.

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