Homestuck flashbacks - Act 6 act 5 chapter 1 intermission 2: the couple pages where you learn about the dreamself ghost pirates at the end of the universe
Koichiro Ito was the producer, NOT the director who is famous for creating those movies. He collaborated with the studio, he did not write or direct the films. Please do not destroy and undermine these beautiful works of art over a single credited contributor who did not create the films.
Further, he was only arrested in February of 2024 so the studio hasn’t even had an opportunity to turn down future collaboration with him.
I was so salty when they gave the Emmy for Best Animated Film to Boy and the Heron instead of Suzume. Absolute travesty and so clearly only because of Miyazaki’s name and art style.
Suzume is honestly my favorite of the three and one of my favorite films of all time. I adore how well all of the fantasy and imagery connects with real human experiences. It comes so close to providing perfectly clear, direct metaphor without actually arriving at it and to me that is the most beautiful type of storytelling: where you can see characters, themes, etc and feel deeply how they connect to your own life but never with a concrete “this thing specifically represents that thing”. You can get really close with Suzume, but it never quite coalesces, leaving you with a powerful story, intense emotions, and a sense of wonder that sticks around long after viewing.
Damn. Sorry it has to be you, but i just can’t remain silent, as this agenda of “the creator of an artpice made horrible things, so the artpiece itself is also horrible and therefore must be forgotten” just drives me so fucking mad. I guess it’s hard to cope this thought, but an artpiece is still an artpiece and should be evaluated such. The author itself could be an absolutely terrible person deserving a death sentence, it doesn’t mean his metaphorical child couldn’t be as beautiful as of others. There’s no guilt in admitting it if you remember that even the creation of the most marvelous masterpiece in the universe cannot be an excuse for the creator’s sins. Not to mention this your way of thinking lots of time works other way around, painting famous creators as idols that cannot do nothing wrong. As soon as there will be both morally good and downright awful creators aknowledged of their particularly artistic skills, the aura of some kind of deities around creators of any kind of art will be demistified, therefore they will be finally judged just as any kind of other people, therefore it will be harder for them to cover up the fucked up shit, some of the hollywood directors are known for for example.
The artpiece should not be forgotten, so the wrongdoings of its creator won’t be forgotten as well. I think its a lot more fair, just and harsh at the same time.
They said they loved it and hoped for more films, not that they were changing their opinion based on the action of someone connected to it, so I assume they’re just excited that there’s chance for more in the future since this dude was just a producer.
I absolutely respect art irrespective of the artist. The problem arises when said artist continues to profit from my respect of the art. Take as a personal example, JK Rowling and her Wizarding World. I grew up with those books. I love that setting. But I’m not buying any of their merch or their video games or going to visit Disneyland to go to Potterworld because I don’t want Rowling getting her mitts on my royalties. She created a series of books that captivated me and many others as children and I respect the hell out of that. But I’m not going to continue to fund her tirades because of it.
Tbh, I think people should know what they are getting into with this, as that was one of the major moments that led me to stop reading it, if felt disrespectful to Hermione as a character and me as a reader
“disrespectful to the character”? I beg your pardon, what!? Characters are the tools in the hand of the author to convey certain plot. Characters themselves have their own, well, character. by writing in
spoilerthe death of Hermione
the author shows inhumanity of a certain character, their cruel nature, because, if you think about it, letting the ogre into the school full of kids is inhumane and cruel, its just that the original author prefered to ignore it, making out of it nothing more than a fun adventure. Not to mention, this is not the first demonstration of how cruel the antagonist is, you just prefered to ignore it as well because it was not about your lovely little girl you read romantic fics about at night. And i’m ignoring the fact that these are de facto complete different characters from ones in JKR’s book, similar names are here only for convenience.
i’m being a jerk towards you because you’re being a jerk towards random people who do not deserve this. I don’t care if you will do my request as the moment when i was angry at your jerkish behaviour has long passed, but you will continue to passively be a jerk towards everyone who never read the book but would’ve liked to. It’s kinda funny if you think about it.
Also, i’m making fun of you because your opinion is immature and dumb and i even said why. If the only thing you caught from my message are insults and belittling then you completely deserve it as your inability to separate emotional and rational parts of a message makes your perception as biased as it could be, therefore making you an idiot. Its ok to be emotional, but anyone should know when emotions should be ignored.
And i’m not gonna lie, i enjoy telling idiots that they are idiots. This is my little guilty pleasure. You can call me whatever you want for this.
Also, often the art itself suddenly changes before your eyes when you review it with a new eye for who the artist has revealed themself to be.
Like the fact the only asian person in the entire set of books is a girl to serve as plot fodder named “Cho”
Or the fact that there’s like 2 times that a girl gets specifically assaulted by a masculine representing figure in a girls bathroom while alone. (Troll attacking Hermione in book 1, and Myrtle by Riddle+Snake in book 2), its one of those “If I had a nickel everytime that happened, Id have 2 nickels, which isnt a lot but its weird that it happened twice” sort of dealios.
The list goes on and on, theres a lot to pick apart in the books if you go back and re-read them. There’s a lot of stuff that makes you pause and go “hmm, what?”
Like perhaps the “goblins” with pointy ears, sharp teeth, glasses, short statures, who strictly only show up working at the one big bank, and are commented on about hoarding money and acting greedy…
(Basically a play by play classic set of caricatures of jewish people the nazi party used constantly to dehumanize them… >_>;)
There’s a lot of issues with Harry Potter and JK writing in general. Even if you want to hand wave the Goblin thing, she also introduces and normalizes race based slavery and only addresses the issue by setting up the only character to have an issue with it as wrong and annoying for even noticing.
HARD disagree. You don’t have to enjoy it, everyone is free to like what they like, but all three films are critically acclaimed and adored by fans worldwide for a reason. And no, not all popular media is good media, but these are not popular enough to fall into that category.
Miyazaki’s movies are more in the “visually stunning but mid” status IMO. Like, Howl’s was great, everything else is meh to me. But I also know that many people love them - including my wife - so I respect that they are good movies.
Castle in the sky is definitely one of his better ones. Wasn’t trying to talk shit either. I know people love them and with good reason. I just don’t think they’re all that. Except Howl’s. That movie rocks.
all three films are critically acclaimed and adored by fans worldwide
You can get critical acclaim for a ham sandwich with the right publicist. And it’ll have fans worldwide with a big enough marketing budget. In no small part thanks to the obscene ad buys for this film and Suzume, they got exactly that.
Miyazaki’s movies are more in the “visually stunning but mid” status IMO
Jesus, this is what I’m talking about. The Boy and The Heron got goose-egg for a marketing budget and people still queued up around the block to see it.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t make it a city block in Tokyo or Seoul without seeing a ten story tall billboard for Suzume. Makoto Shinkai and Koichiro Itou ape the Miyazaki style, but fall far short in the script delivery. They’re riding Miyazaki’s coat tails with all style and no substance.
There’s simply no throughline in Your Name or Suzume. Things just… happen. The characters are never well-developed or distinguishable from their stereotypes. The dialogue is awful. Neither hold a candle to Princess Mononoke.
but all three films are critically acclaimed and adored by fans worldwide for a reason.
You start off by pointing to how popular it is, implying that must mean it’s good.
And no, not all popular media is good media, but these are not popular enough to fall into that category.
And then you go onto to imply that popular can be bad, but because these aren’t that popular (contradicting yourself), it’s implied that that makes them good. Which is, in and of itself, bizarre. . .as if unpopular media can’t be bad.
“popular media that is actually bad” typically involves a formula that panders or a franchise that has hit a critical mass where people start wanting to be part of the “in group”. I don’t feel like Makoto Shinkai’s films fit that type of pattern. That’s all I was trying to say (poorly)
The AI translation argument wasn’t really about whether nor not it would work, it was people voicing their frustration at Western Localizers making large alterations to apply their own personal culture and politics to a work that did not originally have that.
And honestly, I would prefer grammatically inaccurate machine translations over “localized” translations that deviate significantly from the original.
The AI translation argument wasn’t really about whether nor not it would work, it was people voicing their frustration at Western Localizers making large alterations to apply their own personal culture and politics to a work that did not originally have that.
That was not the argument at all. Japanese publishers want this to be able to increase production overseas. That was the argument. Translators don’t want this because a: it’s their jobs, and b: it’s very inaccurate.
Also, the politics insertion is on such a small scale that it doesn’t warrant full scale AI translation in any way. Many of these cases are due to editors anyway and not the translators so AI would not fix this problem. Localization itself is very much necessary. Japanese is conceptually such a different language system to English.
And honestly, I would prefer grammatically inaccurate machine translations over “localized” translations that deviate significantly from the original.
These ‘grammatically inaccurate machine translations’ often are so bad that they don’t even get the subject of a sentence correct, completely changing the meaning. Or don’t have context and as such, writes something that completely doesn’t relate to what was previously written. Calling it just grammatically inaccurate is downplaying how bad it can be in my opinion. Human QA can remedy some of it so that it’s more readable, but that’s not enough to actually fix bad flow, misinterpreted meaning, missing context etc. Having to go back and fix shit is much more intensive than doing it right in the first place.
Yes - there has been some debate around western publishers overly aggressively “localizing” manga and/or changing details to not just make things more understandable to western readers, but deliberately altering social /political content to accord with their own views. The two broad positions in that debate are to continue to depend on western publishers and their translations, or to keep translation in-house - under the supervision of the Japanese publishers.
This debate starts from the position that translation will be kept in-house, and concerns how it will be done - whether by human translators or AI. The publishers want to use AI for one and only one reason - because it would be cheaper. The JAT’s position is that machine translation is so vastly inferior that it will not work, and that human translators must be used.
As is always the case, all publishers need to do is look at the scanlation community to see how things will or will not work, since the scanlators are already doing, for free, what the publishers hope to do for profit. Whatever problems exist and whatever solutions there are to those problems, the scanlators have already discovered.
And if they would only do that, they would discover, for instance, that MTL, presented as a finished product on its own, is so blatantly crappy that it’s essentislly universally derided, with the only split being between the people who might grudgingly tolerate it in a specific case and the people who reject it outright.
There’s no need for the JAT to argue that case when vivid proof that they’re right already exists in virtually every comment section of every machine translated manga.
But instead, the publishers consistently make choices that any halfway decent scanlator could tell them are going to fail to appeal to the fans, which choices then - surprise surprise - fail to appeal to the fans.
It's exactly why I didn't pursue translation even though it's what I really wanted to do. And that was like 15 years ago, when I first did a little translation work. That translation would be taken over by technology was very clear even back then.
May I suggest the app called URLCheck (available on F Droid) . You can decide on which browser you open up links in as well as do many other things. github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker
That’s an interesting angle I hadn’t thought of. There has been a chorus of industry veterans talking about the lack of fresh talent and training for junior roles. This can largely be attributed to the horrid working conditions within the industry…but putting that aside, it does seem plausible to want to acquire a successful studio for the talent it contains just as much as anything else.
Maybe he’s been working hard in making anime for so long, bless him, that he doesn’t empathize with those who grew up playing MMORPGs, which is where that comes from.
Who knows, maybe in a few years we’ll have light novels/manga/anime based on mobile gaming tropes to pander to those who grow up playing those.
I mean we have Blue Archive, Touken Ranbu Kan, Mahjong Kan, which are all mobile game adaptations this season already
But those are direct adaptations instead of exploiting some trope that’s common in all mobile games, like “My Gacha Lootbox Ability Gives Me SSS Rare Girlfriends Every Time”
I don’t think it’s about “everyone”. It’s about production companies picking what’s popular, the currently popular theme, and produces shovelware standard-productions in a narrow, uninspired target-audience checkboxing way. They contract producers and creatives, but restrict them and likely invest so little that it ends up with what it is. The industry as a whole, many titles, end up as forgettable, mediocre, similar shovelware.
Much like Hollywood produced an abundance of hero movies until everyone was sick of it. Or how EA produced the same sports game each year. Or Call of Duty. Or Battlefield.
I agree with there being a lot of sub-par and mediocre productions, and the overpowered, harem, and video game elements are big offenders and indicators of what most of the time end up as bad products.
I enjoyed Reincarnated as a vending machine. Simple formula, very forced, but hilariously absurd.
Most overpowered protagonist anime end up between bad and awful. But The Eminence in Shadow makes use of it as poignant satire. And I remember seeing another series where they made it work through enemy hybris, and the punishment/revelation was satisfying enough that it worked, in large part through direction and production quality.
The most “wtf” regarding isekai I recently saw was when the entire series was not about being an isekai, but - not at the begining nor end - they put a random scene in where the protagonist had a vision from modern Japan city and was like “what is this about?” and that was it. Maybe they included it just so it can have the isekai product tag? I have no idea.
Coming back to the original theme and hypothosis, the differentiation of and popularity of fantasy vs isekai escapism is interesting.
Ghost in the Shell is certainly fantastical. Enjoying or viewing or getting invested in fantastical stories is inherently partly escapism too. Isekai specifically puts a - most of the time - normal modern human into a fantastical setting though, materializing escapism as a fact on the protagonist.
I’m not sure there’s such a hard line to draw though.
Hate is such a strong word. But yes. The real world can get really tiring sometimes.
With that out of the way, off to my tangent. There’s probably two parts to explaining why there’s a lot of isekai works out there.
It is easy to write. It’s easy for the writer to basically insert themselves into their works. That way, they would have a far easier time working through the main character’s motivations, actions and reactions. Isekai also makes it easier for the writer to worldbuild. They can just do an anything goes setting with a god who specifically made the world in whatever way that’s most convenient to the writer. That is, lazy writing. That is not to say this means all isekai is bad, but rather, since it’s easy to write, there’s bound to be a lot of people who’d give it a go.
It’s easy to read. A lot of the isekai works I’ve read so far has been the type where I can just check out my brain at the entrance and dive in. A lot of this has to do with the kind of isekai I read, but with a setting that’s anything goes, and an MC that I can relate to, I can easily snuggle into the work and pretend. Yes, it’s escapism, and I don’t think the genre as a whole has any pretentions otherwise.
As far as I’m concerned, isekai as a genre is like potato chips. It’s unhealthy, even not that interesting culinarily, but it’s also something I would love to indulge in from time-to-time. Add to that a tub of vanilla ice cream as a dip (probably a hot take) and I’m set for a relaxing night watching isekai. (Of course, the next morning, I’m back to the real world and all its shit).
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