Recently, ANN of all places posted this interesting article of a survey conducted in Japan on which anime characters the respondents wished to marry. Most of the characters on the lists shouldn’t be particularly surprising, and its somewhat tilted toward currently running shows, but it’s amusing nonetheless.

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A Zeon worth fighting for.

Well now that work is out of the way and I am currently waiting for orders during Spring Break I am finally able to fully address IKnight’s “War Sucks!” post in a fuller manner. IKnight raises an important distinction between the war sucks theme and the prevalent misnomer that it essentially means that such a work is by nature anti-war. For the most part Gundam is anything but anti-war and with exception to a few animated works such as Waltz with Bashir and Grave of the Fireflies there aren’t many animated works that are at their core anti-war. For the most part Gundam is not anti-war since all mecha is a glorification of violence on some level and not an out right rejection of violence as a means to an end. In most cases those who do writing probably have never fought a war nor have ever served in uniform, even then there is a great deal of difference between a conscript and a volunteer. The only widely read writer that I can think of (note there are many more that may or may not have seen combat) who actually fought in a modern war was George Orwell, given that anime is done almost exclusively by Japanese writers and given that they hardly talk of the full scope of the last war that they fought it is unlikely that they are capable of fully understanding the great big mess that is war. IKinght is largely correct in deducing that opposition to one war does not automatically mean that such a person is anti-war, the notion that there can be a just war is proof enough that there are few true pacifists.

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“You are both extremely excellent students. Your grades and living habits are flawless. Eventually, you’ll both become capable people who will heighten this school’s reputation even more. I look forward to it.”

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To make the template easier to follow, this time our collaboration has been formatted as a chat.

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After lelangir poked holes into the notion of a team blog as being a team I started reading about pirates for 18th Century English Literature. Certainly even here at THAT and elsewhere we are not a finely tuned military machine (blog) that ensures the best cooperation between all arms (members). There are many things that prevent a team blog to have the sort of efficiency that allowed the Wehrmacht to roll over most of Europe with Blitzkrieg. Instead even in the digital age I suppose most collaborative efforts are marred by communication problems, be it time zone differences or generally that it takes us days to respond to requests. Even lelangir, espouser of teamwork, was hard to get a hold of for a marimite post. While I am sure that a higher level of team work might be achievable, the limitations imposed simply because generally each blogger has real life obligations that we can scarcely move beyond a loose coaltiion.  Just as Blitzkreig would have been impossible without the radio so too is the kind of professional teamwork seen in such places as say 1up beyond the reach of most team blogs simply because we have our own schedules. At most we can probably attain as sort of Wellington and Blucher dynamic rather than a Patton and Abrams.

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Omisyth: black
lelangir: blue ←[109]

First thing I noticed was that the OP got kind of a generic pop sound to it. Yeah, I wasn’t fond of it, but the lyrics were significant. It’s very similar to the OP change in Marimite - there’s a line that says something like “embrace the fact that you can laugh honestly and run,” which signifies Natsume’s development from totally scared of Youkai to his more open relationship with them. I tend to ignore lyrics in most shows for fear that the fansubs are wrong or the original meaning is lost in translation, but even when thinking of that I see your point. Yeah, although you see him walking across a bridge and looking back, reminiscing, so that metaphor is definitely relevant. Either that or the creators just wanted a shot of him in repose. He seems a bit more fabulous than I remember. I actually liked the OP, the fact it’s more energetic and bold than the original seems to reflect what you said about his relationship with the Youkai. A great technique they used in the OP was that it was half without Youkai and half with Youkai. It demonstrated how much of a silent presence they are in Natsume’s world, especially with the Youkai creating a ripple on the water’s surface.
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