Shortstack #5 (she calls them that, I'm not sure why.)
LOGIN NAME: Xanadu 22
PASSWORD: **********
A beam of light dropped from the sky, Hale’s character coalescing where it hit the ground. His bulky red wizard’s robe hung razor-stiff at his sides for a moment before the physics rendering kicked in, causing it to billow wildly about before settling in to a subtle, lifelike rhythm. As textures popped one by one onto the blurry trees about him, he opened his magic tray and began idly rearranging his spells. A chime sounded in his ear and the words “Hail From User: Damien Gourdslayer” appeared by his head. He waved his hand underneath the alert, swatting the green “accept” orb.
“Hey, Rob, what’s up?” he said to the air as he shifted Stinging Curse Ray to his active spells.
“Hey dude, going after Tooth Canyon tonight. You want in?”
“Sure,” Hale replied, closing the tray. “Where we meeting?”
“Stony. I have shopping to do first.”
Hale pulled his Wayfarer’s Compass out of a belt pouch and twisted the dial on it until it read “Stone-Shod Citadel – Bazarr,” and pushed the gem in the center. The world around him greyed out and froze as the new area loaded, the billowing lightshow he caused at login repeating a moment later. Roy’s character stood waiting for him, the two jade rapiers at his belt clashing badly with his bright red swashbuckler’s jacket. They walked together through the stalls circling the crumbling citadel, Roy casually shifting through each shop’s menu without slowing down.
“Tooth Canyon has lots of mobs with high damage resistance – crag dragons and the like. I don’t think we can get through on our own.” Hale said.
“Yeah, that’s why I was glad to see you were on your new Wizard toon.” Roy replied, tapping the “Buy” button at the armor stall they passed. New boots shimmered in to place on his feet.
“This isn’t a nuking Wizard, it’s a buffing Wizard. This and a DPS-statted Swashbuckler like you won’t do more than minimum damage on crag dragons.” Hale said.
“Hm…isn’t Shana’s main character a Cavalier? I bet she’d be up for it.”
“But Cavaliers can only tank. They lost all their nuking skills in the last patch.”
“Nah dude, they just need the right equipment.”
“Well, problem is,” Hale said, looking over his shoulder, “She’s been brushing me off for a few days now. I’m getting kind of worried.”
“You’re getting what?” Roy put a hand on his forehead. “Dude, don’t tell me you’re gonna get dewey-eyed again. You don’t even know that girl.”
“I’ve known her for months now, man!”
“I meant offline.” Roy stopped and took Hale by the shoulder, turning towards him. “Look, it’d make sense if you got worried about me not showing up, because we actually know each other. But saying you’re falling in love with someone you’ve only met in a video game will get you funny looks. Especially when she’s probably like twelve.”
“She’s not twelve, man. She said she’s eighteen.”
“She sounds like she’s twelve. I’m sorry to say it, but she sounds like a preteen.”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Hale said, pulling out of his grasp. “Everyone uses voice mods nowadays, anyway.”
“She acts like she’s twelve too.”
“No she doesn’t. She told me she’s eighteen.”
Roy groaned and trailed behind Hale. “Look, even if we assume she’s using a voice mod, that just makes things even more dubious. For all you know, she could be a guy.”
Hale blinked and stared off the side of the terrace. The sun, bigger than an outstretched orange, sunk slowly in to the sea, a slightly pixilated line of birds drifting over its face.
“Wouldn’t be a deal breaker.” He said, turning back to Roy. He rolled his eyes.
“You’re pathetic.”
“I’m in love.”
“You’re in love with a girl who can’t keep up a conversation for more than a few minutes, never pays you back for anything you give her, and constantly goes AFK without telling anyone. Even if she is around your age, you have to admit she still acts like a damn kid.”
Hale opened his mouth to rebut, but was cut off by a familiar notification chime sounding in his ear. He waved his hand, causing his Friends Scroll to appear and unfurl. Roy rolled his eyes. He couldn’t see Hale’s menus, of course, but he could guess who was cutting him off.
Hale’s eyes brightened when he scrolled down to “Shana4545” and saw “Logging In” blinking next to it. He tapped the “Call User” button. The connecting icon spun a bit jerkier than usual. After a moment, the scroll blanked, the menu replaced with the words “User has blocked contact from your account.”
His hand slowly sunk. Roy wandered off to another one of the stalls, pointedly ignoring him. A flag set into the terrace billowed dramatically against the deepening sky, a graphical glitch causing it to clip right through the pole. Hale leaned back in his chair, pushing the VR visor up to his forehead. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, right up between his eye sockets, in that spot that always ached when he played games too long. He stared at the little nubs of plaster in the ceiling.
“Hey dude, I just thought of something,” Roy’s voice buzzed over his headset, “This guy I know from work has a tanking Cavalier. If we had him to soak damage, you could focus on upping my attack and sapping enemy defense. We could get through the canyon with a bit of luck that way.”
“Yeah,” Hale said. “Yeah, that sounds like it would work. Call him, it’s worth a shot at least.” He pushed the visor back over his eyes.
This next thing is a short article I wrote for my own amusement, about something I noticed about this obscure anime franchise. I asked the president of the Otaku Club to post it up on their website, but no one ever reads that so I figured I'd put it here as well.
So, the other day I stumbled upon a collection of the openings to the various entries in a little-known (in the U.S.) franchise called Cutie Honey. What struck me about them, beyond the fanservice and the terrifyingly ingraining theme song, is how the intros to this long-running franchise, when viewed in order, effectively sum up nearly half a century of anime. As a campy, humorous series, the four Cutie Honey shows were shamelessly cliché, and as a result displayed a lot of the style and mechanics that were popular during the time they were made. Thus, like differing layers of rock strata at an excavation site, they also give us a good view at where the industry has been, and perhaps where it’s going. Let me show you what I mean.
So, first, an introduction: Cutie Honey first appeared as a manga in the mid 1970s, with the anime starting later the same month. It was masterminded by a guy you may have heard of named Go Nagai. He is better known for Mazinger Z and Devilman over here, I think. The story of the original series, which is duplicated by all the later entries in the franchise, starts with the vaguely defined villainous organization Panther Claw killing the scientist father of our heroine, Honey Kisaragi. They were looking for a device he had invented, with the vaguely defined power to create and destroy matter. It is ultimately revealed that Honey is actually an android built in the image of her father’s deceased real daughter, and that her body contains the only working model of this device. Effectively, it allows her to change form, giving her a panoply of instant disguises, including the eponymous Cutie Honey, a powerful sword-wielding heroine. With the help of a cast of side characters that tends to fluctuate between series, Honey fights Panther Claw to avenge her father and prevent them from carrying out whatever vaguely diabolical plans they come up with.
Cutie Honey is notable for having pioneered a whole lot of anime tropes: Honey is the founding example of what became known as the Magical Warrior subset of the Magical Girl (as expanded by TV Tropes here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalGirlWarrior). Though originally conceived as a Shojo series, time slot politics made Nagai re-envision it significantly, making it the first Shonen-like show to star a female character. It was one of the first animated television shows to have fanservice as a major draw (to the point that it was ultimately cut over its racy-ish content). It was ALSO the first fanservice-heavy magical girl show to generate a sizable female fanbase despite itself.
Anyways, let’s have a look at the first intro. This one from the original 25-episode 1974-75 show. In case I haven’t emphasized this enough, the fanservice level in most of these videos is over nine thousand. Thou art forewarned.
Catchy, no? So, what stands out here? Swirly psychedelic imagery, stilted animation, and an art style that makes everyone look kinda like Speed Racer. This is pretty much typical of the time period, though again the level of fanservice was somewhat unique. The backgrounds in the actual show were only slightly less stylized, incidentally; there was a vaguely Hanna Barberra feel to them. Indeed, we also see that the character designs and animation style were still heavily influenced by western studios at this early point in anime history. Now that anime is popular, of course, we see western studios borrowing heavily from anime now. There’s probably some sort of moral in that. Oh, and finally, did the Grecian architecture and murky sky towards the end remind anyone else of certain sequences in Sailor Moon? Well, remember that, it’ll be important later.
After the first series ended, Cutie Honey sat around for two decades; it was a pretty big franchise in Japan, but one that wasn’t really going anywhere. Then, in 1994, Toei released an eight-episode re-imagining of the series called New Cutie Honey. Let’s have a look.
We see a few resurgent motifs here, most notably the bubble bath, in which the “target” is changed from supporting characters to the viewers themselves. This speaks of a changing dynamic in sexual interplay and audience identification that I’ll over-analyze later. Beyond the fanservice, premise, and more obvious tropes, however, Honey has now been completely absorbed by the new era of animation, both stylistically and in terms of the animation technology. This show was terribly cyberpunk; you don’t see much of it in the intro, but the series itself had a very dark aesthetic. Obvious cybernetic modifications abound and all the buildings were of that organic Geiger-esque dark blue stone style I associate with Aliens, Chrono Trigger and the tournament arc of Yu Yu Hakusho. There is a rad guitar tune! Shiny foil backgrounds! A totally awesome street bike! TRON GRAPHICS! It’s all terribly 80s-90s, don’t you think?
Now, the next show is where things get more interesting. Cutie Honey Flash was released in 1997 and had 39 episodes. Pay close attention, and ask yourself if it reminds you of anything.
(Is that tune stuck in your head yet?) The Fanservice is gone! Well, not gone so much as toned down to a dull roar. There are lots of flowers! And a guy with long white hair! And everything is very, very pretty! It should come as no surprise that this is the show which filled Sailor Moon’s timeslot after that series ended. It was aimed far more intentionally at young girls than the earlier incarnations, and while you can feel a bit of the campy flavor of the original series (mostly in that awesome big band music), this intro is mostly aping shojo tropes to take advantage of Sailor Moon’s popularity. This is really interesting when you remember that the 1970s Cutie Honey basically pioneered the sub genre Sailor Moon owes her existence to.
But, what does all this say of the modern age of anime? Well, the series was reenvisioned yet again as a three-part OVA in 2004, under the title Re: Cutie Honey (Note how the title of this turn-of-the-millennium series uses a turn of phrase associated with the internet). Let’s have a watch, shall we?
Ah, so that’s why Flash didn’t have nearly as much fanservice; they were saving it all up for next time! You know how people are complaining that Hollywood never does anything but remake old stuff nowadays? Based on this alone, it seems retro is the defining modern feature in anime too. The music in Re: is vaguely disco, and though the massive jump in animation quality may disguise it, the intro (and, presumably, the show itself) is heavily inspired by the original 1974 Cutie Honey. Watch it again, you’ll see what I mean. What’s more interesting, however, is how this series differs from the original. Notice that Honey now has a female foil in the form of a policewoman named Natsuko, who appeared in most of the earlier incarnations with a much, much different role (she was essentially Honey’s uninteresting best friend). What’s most fascinating, however, is how the love interest-guy’s design is clearly referencing his incarnation in the seventies, yet his personality has completely changed. He’s, well, hornier, as is the other non-villain male character we see. Indeed, the mechanics of the intro suggests that the audience is more lewd now as well; notice how the black-and-yellow checkerboard hand is back, but seems to take its job much less seriously now?
Let me try and wrap this up by getting a bit more academic. Though the Cutie Honey franchise always has had a significant periphery demographic, its main target was, and is, heterosexual guys. Thus, the perspective we get, both from the mechanics of the shots (the “male gaze”) and the male characters we’re expected to identify with, is of a man fantasizing over a woman. This honestly isn’t a problem in and of itself, but notice how much the dynamic between Honey and her audience changes over thirty years. The intro to the original show suggests that Honey’s relationship with her generic boyfriend-guy / audience identification figure is vaguely awkward and mutually flirtatious. In Re:, on the other hand, he becomes flat-out randy, and she has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot suggesting her rejecting him because of this. Also, her relationship with the camera becomes subtly less flirtatious through the years while remaining just as fanservice-laiden; in short, she looses much of her initiative and becomes less sexual and more sexualized. The new dynamic feels less gregarious and egalitarian, not that of a willfully sexual heroine playing with the audience so much as that of the audience placing the reluctant heroine on a pedestal of sexualization. I guess what I’m getting at is, do we think maybe Re: Cutie Honey, for all its retro coolness, didn’t borrow from its precursors enough?
No comments:
Post a Comment