So the the anime-based music video for Perfect Day the top track to their latest album Today is a Beautiful Day was released a few weeks ago, and it’s pretty phenomenal. Telling the story of two girl friends who somehow grew apart, I couldn’t help but be reminded of another anime work based on a Supercell song. And it simply puts Black Rock Shooter to shame.

First of all, look at the art. Just look at it! It’s beautiful. The sparkles and feathers, the bloom and lighting give everything an almost angelic feeling. The shakycam effect is overused a bit, but for the most part it works, because the moving camera adds just a touch of reality to this world. Some of the backdrops are gorgeous, with the crisp detail and lighting reminding me of Makoto Shinkai’s works.

Like Supercell’s song’s tend to do, it captures perfectly the emotions without necessarily going into the details of what happened. The innocence of childhood friendship. The pain of having to say good bye. The shock, and then gratitude at the sudden encounter. These emotions feels stronger and more genuine than whatever Black Rock Shooter had to offer with its story about Yomi getting jealous of Mato.

And I absolutely love the blue haired girl’s design! The hard angles, especially in the hair, remind me a bit of the characters from Shiki, but they’re not nearly as harsh. I could get lost in those wondrous round blue eyes. The simplicity of her clothing is appealing, and the little flourishes like her boots or the tight loops of her necklace stand out well against them.

But what I love most are the bandages on her legs. They’re not wrapped bandages like the kind you see on Abiru or Rei, but rather the rectangular stick on kind. And they’re just plastered all over the place around her knees, as if willy nilly. Instead of giving the image of weakness as bandages tend to do, they give her a tough and masculine one, like Lark with her chipped tooth.

Anyway, Today is a Beautiful Day came out a couple of days ago, and I highly recommend it. 6 of the 13 tracks are songs that were released on singles before – most of which I talked about in my 12 Days of Christmas post – but the new tracks are great. And the final track, Watashi e (To Me) is a follow up to Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari, the Bakemonogatari ED, providing some concluding remarks to that song. You can find translations to most of the new songs on Words of My Life.

I bought the limited edition with the DVD on YesAsia, but the regular edition is there as well.

And it all came to an end. 10 years ago today, on March 16, 2001, the grand finale, and the longest episode of FLCL, FLCLimax (originally Furi Kura) was released on DVD. It brought forth the 3rd amazing episode in a row and also provided a worthy finish to this great series, one that left me speechless and sad that it was over. But it didn’t leave me wanting more. Rather, it made me happy that the work was so complete, so well constructed from start to finish.

This is the last post in a series of posts I’ve made celebrating the 10th anniversary of the release of each of the episodes of FLCL. As for all the posts before this, I did not rewatch the episode before writing this and instead chose to write based on my memories. The last time I watched the series was in the summer of 2009. You can read the previous posts here: (1 & 2: Fooly Cooly and Firestarter) (3: Marquis de Carabas) (4: Full Swing) (5: Brittle Bullet).

I don’t know if it came to me upon first viewing or later on, but what stayed with me was how well this final and the 1st episode bookended the series (indeed, there was a symmetry to the whole 6 episode series in some aspect). The most obvious thing the 2 episodes had in common was the manga dinner scene, which was an exact copy of the one in the 1st episode, at least at the start. There was also the title of the episode, Furi Kura, just 1 letter away from Furi Kuri, the title of the 1st episode. The use of The Pillows’s One Life right before the halfway cut as Naota bemoaned the boring life in this town while crying into Haruko’s bosom was similar to the series’s cold open leading to the title shot, in which he was being held by Mamimi. Right down to the overhead view of the iron-shaped Medical Mechanica factory. On a higher level, the episode started off with a slow, melancholy, almost dejected mood before Haruko entered and brought life to the setting, much like the 1st episode. And there was the epilogue as well, showing Ninamori taking Naota’s, a much more appropriate girl for him than Mamimi in the 1st episode.

These couple frames in which Naota became doe eyed somehow felt so significant.

Of course, to get to the epilogue this episode provided the climax proper. The yellow saturated finale, starting with The Pillows’s Last Dinosaur, followed by I Think I Can when Naota took Atomsk’s power remains one of my favorite scenes in anime. It lacked the raw emotional magic of the episode 4 climax or the high octane action of the episode 5 climax, but it was a worthy finish to this chain of 3 incredible episode climaxes. Seeing Haruko really upset for the 1st time was a bit jarring, and it would be some time later that I realized its significance in the series as a whole.

And it delivered the single most powerful moment in the series, when Naota, having beaten Haruko handily, dove at her and… said, “I like you” before stealing a kiss from her (the fansub I had translated the “suki” as “I’m in love with you,” which sounded even more powerful to me, though I’d learn later it wasn’t the best translation). There was something amazing about this simple moment, when our hero finally got the guts to say what he said and do what he did. It was an ultimate moment of catharsis, when all the emotional tension and pressure that had been building up throughout the series was released, with a simple, “I like you” and a kiss. The first one he initiated, one he had wanted so badly from the start.

This image was my wallpaper for a long time after I watched this.

In typical FLCL fashion, it was followed by a literal explosion, but all that was just the aftermath, the falling action before the denouement. I remember being heavily moved by the ending. Some of it was the sadness from watching the series end. Some of it was that it was a bittersweet ending, in which both Haruko and Mamimi left Naota. But more than anything, the ending was one of hope, showing Naota go on with his life, moving on to middle school, with a girl who genuinely liked him, not one who just wanted to use him. Mamimi’s story ended with hope as well, as she moved on from her stuck crush on Tasuku and left the town that had been nothing but abusive to her, to discover her own path (she likely learned a lesson about the futility of revenge as well, seeing what her “Ta-kun” this time ended up doing).

Certainly, life would not be easy for any of our protagonists. But life isn’t supposed to be. It’s about moving forward with what you have, making the best of it. This was how the most mature characters in this series – Haruko and, as this episode revealed during his conversation with Naota’s teacher Miyaji, Naota’s father – approached their lives. By the end, Naota and Mamimi had learned it as well.

Mamimi Samejima. She knew how to make smoking look cool.

Of course, this being FLCL, it was technically and artistically excellent throughout. One scene that stood out to me was Mamimi’s first meeting with the Terminal Core under the bridge, when she nonchalantly took a giant step towards it and shuffled over next to it discreetly before calmly turning to it and blowing smoke on it. There’s also a shot of her that has stayed with me, when she was enacting revenge on the scooter that had splashed her earlier in the episode, her dead eyes calmly watching the robot devour the scooter, her face only illuminated by the cigarette in her mouth.

Another memorable scene was the aforementioned hug between Naota and Haruko. When Haruko went from playfully poking fun at Naota to seriously asking him if he wanted to run away with her, when Naota’s usual barrier dropped down, his eyes swelled, and he cried into her bosom. The slow pan up to Haruko’s bored eyes as the sensor on her wrist started to clang once again, and The Pillows’s One Life fading in. It was a perfectly directed scene.

"Good bye, Naota-kun." A beautiful transition into the epilogue, Mamimi finally letting go and calling Naota by his real name.

I don’t know if or how watching the entire last half of the series in a row affected my initial reaction to it. As I’ve written before, I consider the final 3 episodes of FLCL to be a set, each a great episode in its own right with a powerful, exciting climax set to a rocking energetic song by The Pillows. The reason that they’re a set is that they worked together to form the final half of this series. Episode 4 saw Naota triumph over his fears of swinging the bat, episode 5 saw his downfall as he learned that he wasn’t “all that,” that the women around him were just using him. And episode 6 saw him triumph again, but differently. As amazing as he had been once he turned against Haruko, he wasn’t filled with joy or excitement afterward. He looked calm, almost serene, as Haruko sarcastically blamed him for losing Atomsk and said good bye.

It was as if he had finally learned that important fact, perhaps the most important fact about being an adult: there is nothing amazing or special about it. The path to adulthood isn’t one with leaps and bounds, it’s one defined by its gradual progression, of growing accustomed to new things little by little.

Naota wasn’t there yet, but he learned what it meant to grow up. And that was all I needed to see.

And as one story ends, another begins. However, it is not FLCL's role to tell that story. This is how it should end.

So soon we’ll see the release of the 3rd episode of the massively (self) hyped work by Yutaka Yamamoto, Fractale. When the 1st episode came out, it receiveda a decidedly tepid response, and deservedly so. This was a Noitamina show. Yamamoto had staked his career on it. Yet there was pretty much nothing about it that was special. The 2nd episode only continued that trend. Indeed, this is a show we’ve already seen before.

By now, magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap is a well established and rather overused genre in the world of anime. The girl isn’t always magical or even a real girl, and she doesn’t have to literally fall into the boy’s lap, of course, although she often does. But this is something that has gone way past being a mere trope and is a full-on cliche, not the good kind. And that’s exactly what Fractale is, with a dash of the bumbling-villain-trio for fun. The only thing that sets it apart is its interesting vision of the future, wherein people have all their needs taken care of and only interact through virtual avatars or surrogates of themselves from afar.

Or does it really set it apart? No, actually, it doesn’t, and not because the setting isn’t particularly original. In fact, the setting is quite compelling, if only for the fact that it’s one that’s unusual, even if it’s not new. The problem is, plenty of shows have already gone down this route. Anime, by its very nature of being animated, attracts settings that are fantastical. It’s no coincidence that the most popular franchises in anime – Evangelion, Gundam, Haruhi – are science fiction, or that fantasy is such an overrepresented genre in season after season of anime. You can make really cool, fascinating, compelling settings in anime.

But too often, these settings act as little more than backgrounds as the same interactions and stories that we’ve seen a thousand times before play out. At best, the settings serve as excuses to justify whatever magical powers the characters might have or encounter.

At least the official art lets us fantasize about what could have been...

For me, a recent perfect example of this problem is in the Index franchise. Academy City is a fascinating place, filled with neat bits of near futuristic technology and students studying and researching with academics the limits of supernatural power as set up in this science fiction world. The story, naturally, should play to the show’s unique strengths and explore this interesting concept, right?

No, the setting becomes an excuse to give people magical powers while Touma goes around shouting self righteous tripe while using his plothax fist against generic villains. Oh, and his superpower is to make everyone else normal. Throw in the magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap cliche as well as a generic harem for good measure. The Railgun side show failed just as hard, except that it mainly consisted of a poorly conceived and executed story of friendship. These were just your typical harem and cute-girls-doing-cute-things shows, just with a neat science fiction fantasy setting behind them.

Why take this goldmine and insert the same old characters and cliches we’ve seen dozens of times before? Even in the same series, the MISAKA sisters and the Last Order arcs showed off that the show could be strong when it took its setting and ran with it. In those, the characters and their interactions weren’t just dropped in there but rather integral parts of the settings themselves. The plot actually went into some of the interesting details of the mechanics of the world and came out ahead thanks to it.

Why not make the protagonists a BADASS TOP LEVEL TELEKINETIC with a chip on his shoulder and a loli with (almost) 10,000 HIVEMIND SUPPORT instead of a boring self-righteous prick whose power is to make everyone else more boring, and a nun who's really good at remembering things and being hungry?

Another great example, perhaps a better one to which to compare Fractale due to their sharing the same studio as well as the type of setting, is last year’s Sora no Woto. The backdrop of the post-post-apocalyptic world, while not original, was certainly unusual, and provided plenty of potential for fun world building and exploration. Instead, what we got was cute girls doing cute things, punctuated by them saving nations from war through THE POWER OF LOVE AND MUSIC! Excuse me while I barf from merely remembering this horrible show.

Another example? Last year’s Ookami-san and Seven Companions. Funny and whimsical fantasy premise, torn down by being a typical boy-protects-tsundere story. While we’re piling on J.C. Staff, why not mention the 2nd season of Shakugan no Shana, which decided to eschew all the fun and exciting action from the 1st season and replace it with a typical run of the mill high school harem love comedy?

This is a problem that plagues even good shows. Katanagatari, for example, is a great show, the best of last year in the opinion of some, but the places where it faltered were those when Togame devolved into a typical tsundere moeblob, completely unfitting for the fantastical past setting. Thankfully, those times became less and less frequent as the show progressed, but when they happened, they distracted from the world of the show and reminded us of this stale, boring, and downright annoying character cliche that is so pervasive in anime today.

Here's a scifi/fantasy show that embraced its unique setting and built its story around it. It was pretty successful.

If I may anthropomorphize a bit, the way I see it is that these shows are not confident in themselves. They have these intriguing uncommon ideas, but they’re afraid of showing them off, lest they be rejected. So they put on their proverbial masks and instead of showing their true selves, they show what has been tried and true, dozens and dozens and dozens of times before ad nauseum, because that’s what people responded to in the past. Unfortunately, that’s how you create unoriginal, boring tripe like A Certain Magical Index or Sora no Woto.

A phrase I think of often is “ambitiously itself.” This refers to works that don’t fall into the traps mentioned above. They are confident about what they are, and, for better or for worse, they’ll go about doing their own thing without catering to what they think you want. Surely, this is a formula that can – and has, often – fail. It can create niche products that appeal to just a few. But it also has given rise to some of the greatest, most memorable works in anime. Look at a couple fairly recent huge science fiction successes The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. They each had a clear vision for what they wanted to do and executed on them, using their unique settings to full effect. That is how they ended up in such high stature, that is how they found success.

So, what am I trying to say here? Certainly, not every science fiction or fantasy work needs to fully exploit its setting. In fact, it can be a lot of fun to see an otherwise normal piece of work take place with something fantastical as the backdrop. What determines the work’s quality, then, is the execution of the narrative itself, regardless of the setting. And that’s something true for all works. Simply having a fascinating world such as the one in Fractale or A Certain Magical Index or Sora no Woto is not good enough. In fact, it’s nothing. The actual story that takes place within must be compelling as well, and for the setting not to go to waste, the story must use it to shine in a way other works can’t.

Don't even get me started on the militant-anti-pervert-girl cliche. How does that even make sense in this kind of world?

What is sure to lead to mediocrity is to shove cliches we’ve gotten sick of years ago into the setting and to call it a day. In the end, A Certain Magical Index is just another supernatural harem show despite the really cool city in which it takes place. Sora no Woto is just another cute-girls-doing-cute things show despite it taking place in a post-post-apocalyptic world. And so far, Fractale is just another (genki) magical-girl-falls-into-boy’s-lap show, despite the post-scarcity science fiction setting. I’ve seen this show before. So have you. And we both know that it’s not something worth watching again.

10 years ago today, on October 24, 2000 (correction: actually October 25, 2000), the 4th episode of Gainax’s OVA series FLCL was released to DVD. This is part of a series of posts I’m making on this show. In my first post, I covered how I came upon this series and my reaction to the first 2 episodes. My second post was made a day late and covered episode 3, Marquis de Carabas. This one covers what my initial reaction was to the 4th episode, Full Swing. (note: for the purposes of this post, I did not rewatch the episode. The last time I watched it was some time in the summer of 2009)

What is there to say about Full Swing? Quite a lot, probably. I could talk your ears off about this episode. It is unequivocally my favorite episode of any anime, all time (so far). Others have come close, such as The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the final episodes of Gunbuster, Diebuster and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Bakemonogatari episode 12, but Full Swing still holds the number one place in my heart.

The question, of course, is why? As with all of these types of questions, there are many answers. I’m sure part of it is that I was a huge fan of baseball at the time, and the entire episode was about baseball. Or rather, it used baseball as a metaphor for all the events taking place in the plot. In typical FLCL fashion, it was not at all subtle about this, with the ongoing theme of “swinging the bat” which was blindingly obvious and resonated with me. Indeed, I still consider the adoption of Haruko’s attitude regarding “swinging the bat” – that is, trying even if it means showing everyone that you fail – to be a key component for becoming a mature adult. As an episode of a coming of age story, Full Swing hit it out of the park (sorry, this is the one and only baseball related pun in this post).

Then there was the scene in which Naota confronts his father and hits the TV. It was masterfully directed, surreal, hectic, and, yes, haunting. The build up to that was fittingly erotic and inappropriate with Naota watching his father and Haruko at night, the release of destroying his father was fittingly unsatisfying and confusing, and the redemption of finding his real father and bringing him back to life was fittingly wacky and off-the-wall.

This was one of the most hectic and confusing scenes I've seen, thanks in no small part of the events being shown non-chronologically. But somehow it all made sense.

But I think we’ve beat around the bush enough. The real reason I loved this episode so much was the thrilling climax featuring The Pillows’s Crazy Sunshine. That entire sequence may be my favorite in any work of moving picture.

From the very start of that sequence, when Amarao asked Naota to ask Haruko to hit another one out of the park, the scene was just plain cool. The music started off quiet as Haruko quietly contemplated the situation and commented that “doubleheaders are tough,” before taking Naota up to the top of the plant, but it quickly came more into the forefront as the anticipation of the impact kept building.

And during all the intensity, FLCL retained it’s unique sense of humor. There was Mamimi, sitting atop Canti, celebrating the satellite’s fall and wondering whether they’d have school tomorrow. There was Haruko, fitting a shampoo cap on Naota and pulling out his squirming guitar, commenting that “boys feel weird inside.” There were Amarao’s subordinates at his base, inexplicably getting nosebleeds.

Then, as the satellite neared its final approach, it suddenly and seamlessly turned into a gigantic hand throwing a just as gigantic baseball. Amarao called out, “It’s a sinker!” It was hilarious, but I didn’t laugh, lost in the intensity of the moment.

10 years later, I still can't get over just what an amazing scene this was. Kazuya Tsurumaki went on to direct other works with amazing dramatic action scenes (Diebuster and the Evangelion remakes), but I still rank this one at the top.

The intensity just kept building and building, all the way until the release. As the ball became a bigger and bigger object in Naota’s sights and Haruko abandoned him, her comment, “This might as well be goodbye” seemed like it just might come true. Of course, our hero swung the bat, his own bat. But it wasn’t over yet. The music had reached its peak, and there was more work to be done. Amarao watched nervously, knowing that it hadn’t been enough. And just as the ball looked to explode and all had been for naught, Haruko made her triumphant return, giving the ball that extra hit to leave the atmosphere.

It was just… awesome. The visuals were spectacular, true to form for FLCL. The way the sky lit up and shimmered as the ball neared its final approach still sticks with me. So does that scene of the moment of second impact, when we were treated to single-color frames of Haruko, Mamimi, and Naota reacting. The explosion at the end, the air pressure pushing apart the clouds and objects on ground, was just icing. Both the music and the music editing throughout the sequence was masterfully handled. Thanks to this episode, Crazy Sunshine was my favorite for several years afterward. Or maybe it was because of that song that I loved this episode so much. Doesn’t matter.

The episode was nearly over at that point, but the serene denouement made for a fitting finish. Naota lying in Haruko’s Vespa, reveling in the feeling he just had, wondering if Haruko feels like this all the time. Haruko, laughing her ass off for no obvious reason. The soft start up to the now-familiar Little Busters. And the final shot of Amarao’s fake eyebrow falling off. It was bizarre, but just like what Naota was feeling at the moment, it was satisfying.

Maybe it was the fact that this episode followed the 3rd, which had left me a little negative on the series. Maybe it was that I had watched episodes 4, 5, and 6 in quick succession, and I had taken all the positive feelings about the entire last half of the show and transferred it to the 4th. I think it was just that one Crazy Sunshine sequence, one that wasn’t topped even by the numerous other excellent sequences that would come in the last 2 episodes of the show. Regardless of the reason, I still consider Full Swing to be the best directed, most entertaining episode of any anime.

Like Naota, I felt spent, emotionally, but also supremely satisfied. I didn't get to sleep between Haruko's thighs, though.

So now I turn it to you, if you’ve read this far. What do you remember about Full Swing? Did it leave as big an impact on you as it did me? Did you like that song, Crazy Sunshine? Do you still like it? Do you think the show did things better in other episodes, particularly in episode 6, the true climax of the show?

Notes

• This episode featured the entrance of characters Amarao and Kitsurubami. Kitsurubami was played by Chiemi Chiba who, along with Yukari Fukui, was one of the few voice actors in FLCL who remained in the anime voice acting industry. This season, she plays side characters in both Star Driver and More To LOVE-Ru.
• If you watch carefully in this scene, when Mamimi gets up to go to the baseball game with Haruko, you can see her underwear being pulled off by Naota. One of the hints at just how far their relationship went.
• This episode revealed that Haruhara Haruko’s real name was actually Haruha Raharu. Also, it explained the concept of NO, which explained why Naota had been targeted by Haruko and why robots had been coming out of his head.

10 years ago yesterday, on August 23, 2000, the 3rd episode of Gainax’s OVA series FLCL was released to DVD. It probably wasn’t until a year later that I first got to watch it. I wrote a corresponding post on the 10th year anniversary of the 2nd episode, wherein I explained how I came across this series. I downloaded Marquis de Carabas only after having downloaded the first 2 episodes together and having watched them multiple times. Episode 3 was downloaded by itself, and it would be another few days before I got to see the last 3 episodes of this series. In retrospect, after watching the rest of the series, I can appreciate this episode for what it did. It set up Eri Ninamori as a proper foil for Naota, to show us a different way that someone going through the same things could act. Eri was a kid at an adolescent phase, just like Naota. Though her troubles undoubtedly manifest themselves in a much more mundane manner. However, at the first watch, Marquis de Carabas was a huge disappointment to me, especially after the incredible first 2 episodes this series had had. My main source of disappointment was that this episode lacked that moment. You know, that moment. When it feels as if all barriers between the director’s brain and your heart have been broken down, and your emotions are his to play with. When you feel as if you are at the presence of something great, that you’re lucky to be watching what you are watching, even if you don’t quite know why or how. It’s that moment that makes you want to watch it again and again, if only to marvel at the excellence of direction. These moments are usually fleeting and short. But they are also the ones that can define a piece of work. They’re the ones you remember later and turn to when you think of why you liked a piece of work. The first two episodes had several. The One Life and Never Knows Best scenes in Fooly Cooly. The Hybrid Rainbow scene and the Little Busters climax in Firestarter. Marquis de Carabas had… well, it didn’t really have anything, which is my point. When I think back to the episode, no singular scene or sequence of scenes stand out. Even the climax, with the rare non-Pillows soundtrack – it was actually a piece called Galloping Comedians by a Russian composer named Dmitry Kabalevsky – wasn’t that well directed, and its transition to the denouement and credits was jarring. In fact, the entire second half of the episode felt shoddy and thrown together. It lacked the polish and tightness of direction that had made the first two episodes so unforgettable. What did stick with me from this episode was the character of Eri Ninamori.

I gotta admit, even the first time around, I thought her in the glasses and too-short pajamas was fucking hawt.

Eri was a tough nut to crack. She had been given a few lines in the first two episodes, but I hadn’t expected her to play any major role. But here she was, ostensibly the main character of Marquis de Carabas. My first time watching it, I was surprised at what appeared to be the entrance of a third heroine. What about all the stuff with Mamimi and Haruko that had been set up in the first two episodes? Given that this OVA was only 6 episodes, could they really afford to add another protagonist and spend an entire episode on her? As I wrote above, I realized after the fact that Marquis de Carabas was important in placing Eri Ninamori into the role of foil to Naota. Her story was that of the divorce of her parents. Like Naota, Eri struggled with what it meant to grow up. Also like him, she perceived herself to be more grown up than the kids and adults around her. This despite her still childlike tendencies that were featured heavily in this episode. She cheated to get herself and her crush roles in the school play. She went for the mild Little Prince curry at Naota’s house. She wore a shampoo cap. She hid her need for eye glasses due to her vanity. All the while, she considered herself superior to those around her. Like her father’s cheating secretary. Or Naota for skipping the rehearsals.

The perpetually bored/disgusted/superior facial expressions of Eri Ninamori.

She was the very reflection of Naota. She showed us the ugly manifestations of Naota’s way of thinking. I don’t know that this episode showed her develop out of that immature phase. We were told that her parents divorced, but her reaction to it wasn’t revealed (until episode 6, that is) beyond her cool demeanor at the school play. Most damning is, of course, the final shot, showing her declare her glasses as being fake. It was a sudden reversal after the initial surprise that she had shown everyone that she wore glasses. To the end (of the episode), she remained a cynic, wanting to pull one over on everyone else. That’s probably why, even though Eri Ninamori stuck with me after I watched this episode, neither she nor the episode as a whole left me very fulfilled. I sometimes have a hard time choosing which of the episodes was my favorite. But I can say without reservation that Marquis de Carabas was my least favorite. Even though Eri and the episode were redeemed by the events in the final episode (which I should be writing about around March 16 of next year), it didn’t meet the standards set by the previous episodes, nor the ones that would be set in the coming episodes.

As to be expected from GAINAX, the fanservice was pretty good. Alas, 10 years ago, like Naota, I was not at the age to appreciate it for what it was.

Do you remember watching this episode for the first time? Was it during the Adult Swim run in 2003 that had made this show so huge in the US? Was it before, when you had to scour IRC or one of the filesharing clients for low quality fansubs? Was it after, on that high quality, though expensive, DVD release by Synch Point? What was your initial response to it, negative like mine, or positive for reasons not stated in this post?

Notes:

• A couple months ago, there was a nice little post made on Anime Diet about the 10th anniversary of FLCL as a whole. It’s a nice, quick little read. I added a link to it after putting up my first post, but in case you missed it, check it out.
• Funimation is supposed to release a Blu-ray edition of FLCL some time later this year. Reports of the Japanese release – out last week on the 18th – indicate that the HD versions of the episodes are mere upscales, and poor ones at that. Shame on GAINAX for not keeping higher resolution masters!
• This episode also featured the triumphant entrance of Naota’s homeroom teacher, Junko Miyaji, played by none other than the wonderfully lispy voice of Yukari Fukui. She went on to make a name for herself with two more works by GAINAX (Aim for the Top! 2 and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann) and remains one of a handful of FLCL’s cast still in the anime voice acting industry.

FLCL is a show that really needs no introduction. In the US, it gained a lot of popularity in 2003 thanks to its airing on Cartoon Network with an excellent dub. But of course, this 6 episode OVA existed for quite a while beforehand in Japan.

In fact, it was 10 years ago today, June 21, 2000, that the 2nd episode was released on DVD. While I didn’t watch it until over a year later, I figured that this 10 year anniversary was a good time to write a little something on the 1st 2 episodes of this show. Why didn’t I do this on April 26, the day the 1st DVD came out? Well, to be honest, I didn’t even think about the fact that this year is the 10th since the release of FLCL until a few weeks ago. But it turned out pretty convenient for me, because I had experienced the 1st 2 episodes together as a set.

I first watched it in the fall of 2001. I had heard about this little 6 episode OVA some months before, but it took me a while to get curious enough to actually download it. This was in the days before bittorrent, and downloading shows still took some commitment, both in time and effort. I managed to find someone sharing it on IRC and downloaded the 1st 2 episodes and watched them, one after the next. Then I watched them again. And again. And again.

Okay, I don’t remember how many times I watched those 2 episodes of FLCL before the 3rd episode finished downloading, some days later. Somehow, those 2 episodes grabbed my attention in a way that no other piece of work had before – or since. I don’t know why then, and I’m not sure why even now. I could tell you why I still consider that entire 6 episode OVA to be the best work of motion picture I’ve ever seen, or how masterful the direction, cinematography, and pacing of the show was, especially in the last half of the show.

But just the 1st 2 episodes? It was an incomplete body of work to me at the time. yet I had already fallen in love. In retrospect, I think maybe the mood of the episodes captured me. Yes, the art, the story, and the characters were unique and compelling. But it was the atmosphere that these 2 episodes were absolutely drenched with that made me feel so strongly about the show.

Note: for the purposes of this post, I chose not to rewatch the episodes. Please excuse and point out any errors I might have made.

It started with the very first scene of the show. Mamimi and Naota together under the bridge after school. Just by the way they interacted in those couple of minutes, I could tell what a plain, boring scene this was for them. It was something that happened every day, and the frustration Naota felt at the constant same old became my frustration. The glistening wavelets on the river and Mamimi’s playful bite of the earlobe from the back looked special, but Naota’s words and reaction rendered them meaningless. And as the camera zoomed out from Mamimi and Naota to show an overview of this boring town that trapped these characters, the haunting tune of The Pillows’ One Life began to play and hit a crescendo. As magnificent as everything looked, it all felt too comfortable, as if it was something that I had seen before countless times.

Another scene that took ahold of me was the well known Never Knows Best scene. Again, the music was absolutely integral to the mood of this scene. I remember feeling very emotional the 1st time I saw it, but I had no idea why. It felt like a beautiful climax to some cute love story, just inserted in the wrong place. The darkness of the night, the faint sounds of the cars passing over the bridge, the peculiar tune of Bran-new Love Song, that dead look in Mamimi’s eyes as she stared at the out of breath Naota. They could have run at each other and kissed, and it wouldn’t have felt out of place.

But they didn’t. This was actually a far more depressing scene, as Naota struggled to tell Mamimi the truth about his brother, and Mamimi refused to face the fact that she surely already knew. It was sad to see them like that, especially given the new information that Mamimi was living off scrap bread from Naota’s father’s shop. To feel so strongly about characters about whom I knew so little, it’s no wonder I felt so confused. And it’s a testament to how well the scene and the whole episode leading up to it had been directed.

Mamimi knew how to make smoking look cool.

There were places in episode 2 that hit me hard as well. The standout scene, the one that I think of when I think of Fire Starter, is the Hybrid Rainbow scene that finished the 1st half of the episode. It wasn’t depressing, but it was powerful. Juxtaposing Mamimi’s discovery of Canti with Naota’s trip to the beach, it was filled with a sense of wonderment.

It was a scene filled with hope. The rain had just stopped. Mamimi was discovering a new idol just as the sun was coming out. And the music came to the front at just the right moment, the energetic, Engrish based chorus shouting out while the rays of sunlight hit Canti as if he were the lion king. In the case of Naota, he was earning his reward for saving Haruko. His monologue showed that despite the fear he showed in the ride to the beach, he had enjoyed it. The scene ended with the shot of a rainbow over the sea that was glittering with the sunlight that had just come out. What joy Mamimi and Naota must have felt from these diversions from their otherwise lonely and plain lives?

Perhaps that made the night scene in the 2nd half of the episode that much more impactful. Right after the show revealed the reason behind Mamimi needing a new pair of shoes earlier – being bullied – it hit me with another depressing scene, in which Naota was following the bare footed Mamimi. Like with the Never Knows Best scene, the darkness felt pervasive. The repeating strums of the guitar in the background was haunting. And as Naota went through his memories sand thoughts to discover that Mamimi was actually the arsonist, I was presented with this sad, bullied, abandoned girl whose sole sources of light were the glow from her cigarette, from the screen on her game system, and from the mass fires she set all over town. The feeling of pity and sympathy was something that stayed with me long after the episode was over.

Besides showing off the excellent cinematography, I feel that these shots perfectly convey the pain of the life that Mamimi is leading.

But I don’t want to present FLCL as if it were some depressing, moody show. Because it’s not. It had those aspects, and it used them to powerful effect. They certainly left on effect on me. But if that’s all there was, I doubt I would have watched those 1st 2 episodes obsessively like I had. And the most common word associated with the show wouldn’t be “lolrandom.” Indeed, I haven’t even mentioned yet the most recognizable character from the show, the very face of FLCL, Haruhara Haruko.

Haruko herself was more of a catalyst than anything else in the 1st 2 episodes, as her character remained shrouded in mystery and unexplained fantasy. She was an enigma, but she made possible the some of the iconic scenes that also fascinated me.

I think my favorite scene with her in those 2 episodes was her introduction. Yes, you’ve read countless times already just how lolrandom it was to have a woman come out of nowhere on a yellow Vespa, trying to hit the main character with a guitar while yelling a variation of “itadakimasu!” But, well, there’s a reason that people remember that scene. Thinking back to it now, I can’t help but crack a smile, even though I didn’t find it all THAT funny at the time. I remember noticing that Haruko was swinging the bat left-handed – I was and am a big baseball fan – and wondering if that was something that would remain consistent or was just based on convenience of the animators (turns out, director Kazuya Tsurumaki had made her a lefty on purpose). The opening scene in which Naota criticized the way Mamimi was holding the bat probably primed me for that thought as well.

And that line, “Stop, the native girl!” I found very funny for some reason. Maybe it was the poor Engrish. Or how it reflected Haruko’s view that she was in some foreign land, whose populace could be called “natives” from her perspective. Or just the physical gag of seeing her hand spin around and around in an impossible manner, something Mamimi clearly took note of. In any case, with the sporty high tempo Runners’ High playing in the background, it was an energetic and wacky introduction to a character who also fit that description. The violent high speed sketched scenes, the Matrix rip-off featuring the kiss (ironic because Naota had just purposefully avoided an indirect kiss), the cut to the trailer in which the “actors” discussed filming that scene – they showed that anything could happen in this show.

Like another well known scene from the first episode, the manga-style dinner scene. I learned later from the commentary that Tsurumaki had done this to make an otherwise plain dinner scene interesting and dynamic. And it had worked on me. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the scene, but it somehow captivated me. It was fast, it was different, and, at times, it was funny. The show had grabbed, no, demanded, my full attention. It is an iconic scene from the series, one that people remember, one that got me watching those 1st 2 episodes again and again.

Perfectly framed shots that stick with me as the most memorable action moments of the 2 episodes.

Then there are the action scenes. They were effortlessly beautiful. That is to say, the production quality was very high, but the show didn’t try to flaunt this fact. Rather, it used the music, choreography, and cinematography to create fun and memorable moments, ones that I wanted to watch over again. Even back then, I knew just how corny that moment was when Canti turned red and stopped the oncoming robot, just as Little Busters started playing. But god damn it, it was still fucking awesome. Despite every cell in my brain telling me I was supposed to be bored, it still sent chills down my spine. And when Haruko ended the 1st fight by smashing Canti in the head with her guitar, Naota’s inner monologue said exactly what I was thinking at the time: “Amazing!” I don’t, and I didn’t, consider the action scenes to be highlights of the 1st 2 episodes of FLCL. But they served as fittingly over the top climaxes to the episodes and provided me with incredible moments that I wanted to experience again.

Maybe in all the drilling into the scenes I’ve done, I might have glossed over the main thrust of FLCL. That is, it’s a pretty straightforward coming-of-age story. Being a growing teenager myself, perhaps I latched onto it as something I could sympathize with. The full story wasn’t told in the 1st 2 episodes, but already, there were changes that Naota was going through. It was seeing him take a swig of the canned coffee at the end of the 1st episode. Listening to him commit himself to Mamimi at the end of the 2nd. Those horns, especially the particularly phallic looking 1st horn, that were so clearly metaphors for an adolescent’s uncontrollable erection. No one will accuse FLCL of being subtle. But I found that brashness refreshing. When something changed in Naota, when his character developed just a little bit, it was simple and easy and, probably due to that, satisfying.

Then there was Mamimi, who was a high schooler like myself. I wasn’t bullied, and I didn’t have to go through the kind of shit she had to. But somehow I could connect with her loneliness. It stuck with me as something universal. The desire to be loved and wanted. Her desperation that showed through her latching onto Naota, then the cat, then Canti. I could sympathize with the dead look in her eyes and her almost forced ambivalence to everything around her.

What can I do for Mamimi?

I cared for these characters. I loved them.

Maybe that’s why I had been obsessed with these 2 episodes. With minimal effort, the show had accomplished in 2 episodes what few shows could ever do. It was a pleasure simply to watch Mamimi and Naota in those 2 episodes, see them interact with each other, with Haruko, react to the things happening around them. They didn’t feel real, but they felt lifelike. Unconsciously, I rooted for them. Unconsciously, I shared their pain, their joy, their confusion. I wanted to feel that again, to understand what I was feeling, and why I was feeling it. Maybe it was just a perfect storm of who I was at the time and what the show was about. After writing this post, I’m not sure I’m any closer to understanding why I had felt compelled to watch those 1st 2 episodes of FLCL over and over again. But I kind of feel like I am.

Anyway, that’s my experience with Furi Kuri and FiSta. That’s my attempt at explaining just a little bit of what I got out of them. I guess if you’ve read this far, my question would be, what was your experience with them? Did you get anything out of those episodes, and if so, what?

Note:

• I just noticed that Anime Diet also had a post on the 10 year anniversary of FLCL.

In case you haven’t heard, a certain anime movie was released in Japan on Blu-ray and DVD on May 26, and it has made quite the splash. Thanks to Japan not having as good theatrical pirates as the US, it was only then that a proper direct feed to the movie became available to us outside of Japan. But it’s finally here, GAINAX’s 2nd entry into the remake of their show from 1995, Neon Genesis Evangelion, easily the most impactful anime ever released.

I myself only got to watch it last Friday, and it’s taken me this long to digest it enough to make a post (ok, I was also pretty busy during that time). And to be honest, I’m still digesting it. I’m going to have to watch it start to finish at least once more, but let me just say, I loved it. It was well worth the wait and was probably the best animated work I’ve seen in quite a few years.

A Love Letter to Fans

That’s exactly what Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance was. If Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone was a nudge and a wink to the fans with its near identical scenes from the show, this was a full on love letter to those who are already familiar with what’s supposed to happen. That is to say, everything was familiar enough to elicit nostalgia, but different enough to keep you on your toes. And your heart pumping.

My favorite such scene was definitely the climax, which merged elements from 3 different iconic scenes from the show and End of Evangelion. Of course, the encounter was an analog to the one against Zeruel in the show. But having Zeruel eat Unit 0 and subsequently transform its body into Rei’s was reminiscent of the end of the fight with Armisael (the glowing white tube) in the director’s cut, in which Unit 0 transforms into a giant Rei. And the final sequence was, of course, a callback to the famous Komm, Susser Tod scene from The End of Evangelion.

Another highlight was the infamous elevator scene featuring Asuka and Rei. I loved the short call back, showing us just a few seconds of that scene that had remained near static for a minute in the show before the conversation actually began. The contrast produced by that quick cut, along with the way Rei defended herself from Asuka, really drove home the point, “this is not the same as the show you watched a decade ago.”

Having the N2 bomb be a missile was a wonderful touch

Visuals

It’s a given that this anime was going to look good. This is GAINAX with an unlimited budget, after all. And the movie followed through on that expectation. A comparison might not be the most appropriate, but I kept thinking of the recent Kara no Kyoukai movies, which were somehow showered with complements for its great animation. I never shared those sentiments; besides a few brief fight scenes in movies 5 and 7, I thought it had been pretty mediocre in the visuals. Watching Evangelion 2.22, I couldn’t help but think, “Now this is what a high budget anime movie should look like in this day and age.” I simply couldn’t find any places that I felt could have been done better or any obvious cost cutting measures.

Given co-director Kazuya Tsurumaki’s directorial credits – FLCL and Diebuster – it came as no surprise that the action scenes were fluid and well directed. Especially with Maaya Sakamoto in the cast, sometimes I felt like I was watching Diebuster in an Evangelion setting. And that is a very good thing.

Beyond the technical impressiveness though were the art and design. Evangelion 1.0 had expanded upon the original Angel design a little with Ramiel – the blue octahedron – being animated with CG for its attacks. They added interesting eye candy, but nothing else to the scenes. In Evangelion 2.22, GAINAX took things a step farther and made the design changes also affect the way the encounters progressed.

Take Sahaquiel (the falling meteor Angel), for example. The movie did the same race-to-catch-it scene from the show. That scene was appropriately tense and exciting and very well animated. The additions of the rising platforms and having Eva Unit 1 break the sound barrier were wonderful embellishments that added a lot to the scene. But the best part was having the Angel come out and defend itself. That was all new, and having Shinji suffer like that made the scene all the more intense. Same goes for fast-moving core defense, which made Rei’s and Asuka’s roles in the scene much more important than in the show.

Could you have imagined seeing Shinji like this 12 years ago? Me neither.

Shinji

And there’s the star of it all, Shinji, who, by the end, was barely recognizable as the same character from the show. Shinji is probably the most maligned character in all of anime for being a timid, indecisive coward. I never really saw him in that bad a light, given his past and where he is in life, but it is true that he has no backbone, to a fault. The transformation we see of him in Evangelion 2.0 is profound and should please many of those people.

I find it hard to quantify how Shinji was different in Evangelion 2.0 compared to in the shows. He still has that insecurity, that lack of confidence in himself that makes Shinji Shinji. But even from the beginning, he seemed more sure of himself as a pilot. Perhaps the success in the fight against Ramiel at the climax of Evangelion 1.0 had given him the appropriate boost in self confidence.

And when he does run away, it feels entirely justified. Heck, even during the unit 4 scene, he seemed less like a pussy. But with what happened to him, his reaction feels right, not over the top or feeling like running away. His return during the fight was similar to the scene in the show, but it was Eva Unit 1′s berserk mode that really showed how different this Shinji was. That is, this was not triggered by his mother in order to protect him, it was triggered by Shinji himself in order to protect Rei – who is sort of his mother.

If you didn't yell, "Fuck yeah!" during this scene, you're a lost cause.

What a reversal! That entire “internal” scene in which Shinji was trying to break into Rei’s cockpit to pull her out gave me chills, and that shot of him finally pulling her out was just… badass. This was a Shinji we could all get excited about rooting for.

Mari

Of course, I’m a little/completely biased, because I’m a Maaya Sakamoto fan, but I fell in love with Mari‘s character right away. To be sure, she doesn’t get enough screen time to give us a good idea of who she is, but what we see of her is pretty awesome, from the fun, almost light hearted romp in the opening scene (reminiscent of Chiko‘s scene at the beginning of Diebuster episode 3, right down to the mecha being destroyed) to the intense beastly transformation at the climax.

My one complaint might be that she seems too similar to Asuka. Asuka on steroids, if you will. She does manage to differentiate herself a bit in that she’s not a complete bitch. Her scenes with Shinji were great, especially that last one which prompts Shinji to turn around and fight. I thought Sakamoto’s performance did a lot to show off Mari as the fun, thrill seeking girl she is. Her role as Asuka’s stand-in in the fight against Zeruel was over-the-top intense and had me wishing she wasn’t destined to lose.

I hope the mystery surrounding her origins and motivations become a bit clarified in the next movie. Who does she take orders from, and why did she parachute into Japan? How did she get access to Unit 2 and learn to have such a lackadasical attitude about piloting? Well, I don’t really care as long as she remains this awesome, but I’d like to find out regardless.

The look in Misato's face at the end looked very retro to me for some reason. Anyone else get the same vibe?

Fist Impressions

This post isn’t so much a review or even a commentary as much as it is just a (partial) brain dump of what I got out of Evangelion 2.22. I just… loved it. Story-wise, it didn’t explain a whole lot, and I doubt someone who didn’t watch the original show would understand much. But at the same time, it was just a good action movie, filled with intense hot blooded moments that GAINAX is so good at creating. It’s easy to forget with all the psychological and political drama, but Evangelion is a mecha anime, after all. This movie shows us that GAINAX certainly didn’t forget.

I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who’s seen the first movie, even if he hasn’t watched the original series.

About a week ago, 2-D Teleidoscope made a post titled The Sexy Otaku Manifesto, in which he wrote about “getting back into shape” and called out to other “geeks” and “otaku” to do the same. 21stcenturydigitalboy wrote a response on Fuzakenna, The Inauthenticity of Nerd Appearances – All of Us Are Slaves, And Most of Us Are Liars that elaborated on the idea further, going also into the mindset that leads otaku to be unfit. He also told a bit of his own story and that of his friends/relatives regarding fitness.

These posts piqued my interest because personal fitness is a (dare I use the term?) passion of mine. I understand their sentiment, more than you can imagine, as I’ll try to show in this post. But something about the posts bothered me. They rubbed me the wrong way. I believe that they got their message all wrong. If you want to engender change in behavior relative to fitness, if you really believe in some “Sexy Otaku Manifesto,” you don’t do it by telling others that they need to change or by calling them liars.

Let me back up. Each of those posters said something about their own personal fitness history or goals, so I think it’s appropriate that I share mine. I’ll start almost 2 years ago in July of 2008. I’m 5 feet, 9 inches (175cm) tall and have been for about a decade now. At that point, I weighed 217 pounds (98.4Kg). For those of you without a BMI calculator handy, that’s a 32.1 BMI, or well into the “obese” range. And even though BMI isn’t the best measure of fitness, believe me, “obese” was the right word to describe me. I was the very image of the fat otaku.

OK, so I wasn't THAT far gone. But believe me, it was pretty bad. I didn't even get Persona 3 until 2009.

I can’t tell you what or if anything even clicked in me at that point. But I decided that I had had enough. I set what I felt then was a reasonable goal: lose 50 pounds in 2 years. By the end, I would weigh 167 pounds (75.7Kg), right under the 25 BMI boundary between “normal” and “overweight,” and that wasn’t even 1/2 pound a week! Piece of cake, right?

I started to eat right. And I started running. At first, I could barely make it to 100m before I had to walk. But if I had to walk, I kept walking until I could run again. I got my running endurance from 30 seconds to a minute. Then to 2 minutes, then 5, then 10. I still remember the first time I ran for 30 minutes. I had just passed the 3 mile marker when my watch finally read “30:00.” I was so busy looking at the watch, I tripped on my own feet and landed face first. Fortunately, I had maintained enough control to fall to the side, onto the grass. The dirt was sweet, and it was September.

Then from 30 to 40. I leveled off at that, spiking upwards only when I really felt good. It was a cold, snowy winter that year, but it only made me more excited. By the time the calendar had rolled around to 2009, I had run more than 50 minutes exactly once, covering 6 miles in 54. And I weighed 169 pounds (76.7Kg). My BMI was pretty much right on that 25 line that I had shot for.

Then came the strength training. I won’t bore you any further with the numbers regarding that. Right now, 1 year 10 months after I had made my choice, I weigh 144 pounds (65.3Kg). That’s a BMI of 21.3, right around the middle of the “normal” range. I can squat 3/4 of my body weight, do 14 pull ups, run a 10K in 42:44 (6:53/mile). I’ve become fit.

What am I trying to say here? Am I trying to brag? Maybe. I do feel proud. But on the Internets, everyone is a tough guy. Everyone is a man’s man and everyone looks like someone from 300 (I wonder how many times that movie has been referenced in relation to fitness?). There is no reason for you to believe me, so I don’t think I’d be accomplishing anything by bragging. Maybe I just wanted to write it down to make me feel good.

On the Internets, everyone's a tough guy.

But the purpose with which I wrote this is to put a proper context to what I’m about to say. When it comes to fitness and weight loss, I’ve been to hell and back (That’s not to say that I’m done. I’ll continually be reaching for more for for the rest of my life). And I did it effortlessly. I never once looked at my plate with dread or despair over the contents. My heart only pumped harder with excitement when it was 20 degrees outside and I had a date with 4.5 miles of road. I got the gain with no pain (well, except for that knee injury I had in spring 2009). I believe that my message holds true even if you ignore my history with fitness, but I believe having it in mind strengthens it. Take it for what you will.

Maybe the ease with which I had achieved my goals fills me with guilt, which is why my sensibilities were offended by some of the content in 2DT’s and 21stcenturydigitalboy’s posts. They have the right idea, at the high level: put your mind to it, and your body can be what you want it to be. And if you don’t care how your body looks, think very deeply about why that is. Are you being honest to yourself? Are you being fair to yourself? I don’t pretend to know the answer for anyone; I can barely answer the question for myself. But if you can say yes, you’ve reached a state of mind that few of us can ever hope to reach.

But it’s wrong to think you can cause behavioral change by simply telling them to change or by calling them liars. At best you’re just insulting them. At worst, you’re only contributing to the cycle of low self esteem that can lead to bad fitness in the first place. Real change comes from within. And no one can control that but the person himself.

And that’s what I’m really trying to get at here. It’s not anyone’s place to tell others that they should look a certain way. We choose to be who we are. Some of don’t prioritize our fitness as highly as others. Some – most – no, probably all – of us lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better. But that’s our choice. It was my choice to become healthy, to become fit, and that’s why it worked and has lasted. Change not of our own choosing is meaningless and cannot survive.

If you really want to see others change, give them the tools, the encouragement, the ideas of change. First, let them understand that it’s possible. Then, give them the choice. Maybe give them a nudge, but don’t push, because they’ll only push back. 2DT himself seems to understand this when he writes, “The people I’d really like to reach with this message will likely never read it, or simply ignore it.”

I had said that getting fit had been easy for me. It’s true. But what allowed that was the biggest change in me, which was in my mind. As my mindset changed, I learned to like – to love – the things that would naturally cause my body to become fit. It was gradual, and I only realized it after the fact.

But I’m not naive or arrogant enough to think that just because I found the change to be easy, it should or will be for others. It was only in looking back that I realized just how much my mind had changed. I had become a different person, and I had barely realized it in the process. It’s pretty daunting to think of at times. I refuse to trivialize it by telling others to simply go do it.

So what really can I contribute? What can I do if I want people to change? If I want others to make the same kinds of decisions regarding their bodies as I made regarding my body? There’s no knowledge I can offer that you can’t find in a million other places. (except maybe this: People on /fit/ are assholes, but they know what they’re talking about. If you can stand the heat, take a gander over there and read some threads, even start one. I take no responsibility for the consequences).

To paraphrase Hitagi from Bakemonogatari episode 12, “What I can offer is my body.” It is yet another example of people changing their fitness for the better. There’s no reason why your body can’t be one too. I’m going to invoke Kamina here, just like 21stcenturydigitalboy did with his post. Not for his perfect body, but rather for his message. Believe in yourself. If you can’t, believe in me, because I’ve been down the same path, and I believe that you can do it too.

What do Archer, Shizuo, and Kamina have in common besides being perfect physical specimen? They got to where they are by doing what they believed in. (OK, fine, Shizuo kinda had an unfair advantage. But you know what I mean).

If you get nothing else out of this post, if this is tl;dr, let me just try to get this one message out: don’t judge. Just think about what it means to be an otaku. Like, how they use the word over in Japan. It’s a term used not only for anime fans, but for hardcore fans of anything particularly niche. It means liking something that few others care about to an extent few others care to understand. And that’s why in order for a community to form among otaku, judgments need to be held at the door. Let others be who they are.