Tag: gravitation

The Anime Series That Made Me

So I have a birthday coming up and with that, my over two decade career in anime continues on. With that being said, I found anime and manga during a very formative part of my life and thus so many of the series I hold near and dear to me helped form my personality, my ethics, my values and forever shaped how I judge series to this very day. With nostalgia in mind, let’s go over a few of the series that made me, well, me. 

Fullmetal Alchemist

Yes, I have found a way to talk about this anime in nearly every post I have written about the subject but I think that should tell you all just how near and dear to my heart this series is. The long and short of it is that Edward and Alphonse Elric have done a bad thing and the rest of the series is a redemption tour to fix the bad thing. Along the way there’s military intrigue, cool automail stuff and really really fantastic philosophical and ethical questions. I cannot stress to you enough how strongly I bonded with Edward as a teen. I was 15 when I started FMA, I was the same age as Edward when he began the series. I had also similarly lost a parent that meant the world to me and I also was trying to find a way to empirically rationalize my grief, guilt and loss. The soundtrack is fantastic, the dub (aside from one horrible human being that I want to ignore) is fantastic, the ending is great (because let’s not talk about Brotherhood or the movie) and no character is wasted. I went on a journey of maturity with Ed and Alphonse. I recited the mini skirt speech to my friends in high school, the names we gave each other were all from the series. Hell, in my former best friend’s phone I was Izumi for years in homage to Ed and Al’s teacher. To many I was Roy Mustang and I still am so proud of my pocket watch. Fullmetal Alchemist gave me something that I was missing in the shojo series I was meant to relate to and that was a protagonist with a struggle similar to mine. I didn’t have a traditional loving family and no problems at a teen so I couldn’t relate to the average shoujo protagonist: Edward gave me someone who in so many ways was actually like me and watching him struggle, fumble, grow, change and be better gave me the strength I needed to grow and change myself. We all carry the scars of our past, some are literal and others are more metaphorical but we all have two strong legs so we just need to get up and keep going forward. 

Cowboy Bebop

You know, you’d think my family would have noticed that all of my tastes in anime were really dark and heavy. Cowboy Bebop is as close to perfect as I think an anime can get. But immediately there was something about this jazzy, usually mellow serious with bursts of bright action and violence that had me hooked from a very early age. I could go on about Bebop but that seems a little unfair to the other series on this list: I mean it’s about as close to perfect as I think anime can get from the soundtrack to the animation 

InuYasha

There is no single anime that has shaped the fan I am to this day like InuYasha. My love of villains, my tastes in anime music, my admiration of side characters that push through pain and still smile. InuYasha set the bar for me, got me to write fanfic, got me to think about anime critically, got me to start studying the language and learn about the culture and about suffixes and and the history of the land. The image of Japan that is still set in my mind was framed and began with InuYasha. 

Naruto

You know, I may not talk about it a lot considering how badly the series wrapped up but good heavens this series meant so much to me while in high school. I was at a formative age and the large cast and ability to slot yourself into different affiliations and villages always as something special to me. To this day, I am proud of my village designation and whether or not I am Akatsuki. The answer to which is I usually claim Hidden Mist Village, Hidden Waterfall Village, Hidden Rain Village or Sand Village because why the hell not or Akatsuki Leaf or Sand. 

Ouran High School Host Club

Okay, I don’t like shojo. I still don’t like shojo but wow, if you have noticed a type of character I like to cosplay, it was cemented that I liked being the charming host type. Now, in hindsight, this series is hella problematic and I really wish they had kept Haruhi as a boy but being able to have my friends and I slot into our respective roles gave us a language all of our. In my high school anime club, rank mattered and me being a Tamaki and my VP being Kyoya told new members and current members a lot about our personalities, roles, duties and dynamic: without even speaking to us the moment you heard us refer to each other as Mommy and Daddy you knew exactly what kind of club we ran. 

Gravitation

Yes, yes, I’m talking about gay stuff again. But as I’ve said before, I helped figure out so much about myself and my identity by finding the language and world of Gravitation. To this day, Yuki Eiri informs so much of how I live my life and choose to interact with others (for better or worse). I was able to craft an entire other being within myself based on one character and find a truer version of me than I had previously known: if that isn’t influential, I’m not sure what else is. 

I could easily go on (maybe a Part 2?) about more series that formed me. The more I looked at this list, the more series came to mind but for the sake of brevity and sanity, I wanted to get this out the door and to you, my readers. 

Thanks for going down this nostalgic jaunt with me. 

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Make Voice Actors Sing Again

There was one point in my extended complaining about the sub vs. dub debate that didn’t fit neatly into any one category but there’s one place where the sub has always meant a great deal to me and that’s when voice actors really get to have fun either by singing insert, opening or closing themes or the more rare and beautiful art of the drama CD. 

Now, where do I get off “demanding” voice actors become singers? Well, I don’t. I do absolutely think that they’re two different skill sets. I can’t expect a voice actor to sing and I can’t expect a singer to voice act: look at American movies hiring singers and comedians as VO artists assuming that they can do it with oftentimes mixed results. Sometimes we get a Seki Tomokazu who can do both or a Masaya Onasaka who likes taking any chance he can to sing but you can’t always expect for a trained voice over artist to want to be a singer as well. But there is a beautiful power in the moments when that expectation is met. I want to talk about the moments when voice actors using their talents can only add to a piece because I am old and back in my day, such things weren’t as rare. 

If you look at the Bleach drama CDs and character CDs, it was all the voice actors singing their character’s songs (at least, that can be said for the Japanese voice cast) and doing the little skits that made the CDs such a worthwhile buy! Did I need Szayel and Captain Kurotsuchi doing The Science Show? No, but my life is richer for it. Did I need Hanataro Desu? Nope, but I’m so glad to know about my least favorite favorite soul reaper. 

I also really love when voice actors sing opening/closing themes. Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE features a closing theme sung by the Conquest Club and it adds so much more to the narrative when it’s the main villain singing about a long lost relationship because that long lost relationship is (spoiler alert) the crux of the entire plot of the damn show. The same goes for the little insert song in Sarazanmai for getting rid of desire through weird butt stuff: it makes so much more sense that the voice actors sing that song because when the perspective changes (like when it’s Reo trying to save Mabu) it’s so much more valid; it’s his song, his moment. Last example I’ll use is one that’s very fluffy which is Free! because yes, I can tell the difference between all the voice actors and I love the outfits in Splash Free!. It’s just fun. 

Insert and character songs can provide a lot of important information, though, as well as some of the sketches in drama CDs. Its in the drama CDs for Axis Powers: Hetalia that we learn all the countries’ human names and that Prussia lives in Poland’s basement, that England has a tattoo, that Austria is afraid of sea life and so many other facts because I have given up too much of my life to Hetalia knowledge and if I must suffer, you all must suffer, too. Also, stop ignoring France’s birthday, he’s still really sad about it. 

Those CDs are so fun because all the voice actors came back for it and get to tell us this information and seeing it as a DVD extra where it’s just voice actors having fun is inspiring. Hetalia also features something that a lot of newer series have lacked in places where if the country does not match the actor’s country of origin (I’m trying to be polite) that the actor knows enough of that language to make words make sense be it Chinese, French, English or German. Funimation tried their best when they dubbed the series and it was bad. 

But that doesn’t mean I don’t think American voice actors have fun. Here’s where we’re gonna pause because we have to talk about some news.

Initially, when I was writing this post an entire kerfuffle happened over at Funimation where it was found out that some voice actors dubbed over some questionable stuff in character and…well, I’m going to be honest: I’m of two minds about this. The whole reason I wanted to write this post was actually because of a panel I went to with Spike Spencer years ago where he showed a clip of an outtake video he did for Neon Genesis Evangelion where he riffs for a while as Shinji and it’s one of the funniest things to me on the internet. I’ve always admired voice actors having fun. 

So when I first started listening to the Funimation VA nonsense, it didn’t read as that bad. Voice actors do weird stuff like that all the time whether it’s read fanfic or just riff and oftentimes, those clips go into outtakes and are celebrated and praised. 

Here’s where I can agree with the people who were angry post the Funimation VA brouhaha: the content of much of what was dubbed was explicit, crass, politically incorrect and allowed voice actors to use language that is just not acceptable and to discuss themes that are, to be polite, not for everyone. If the content of what was acted offends, I can’t help but understand. Personally, I’ve been on the internet so long that very little shocks me anymore and I mostly just thought it was voice actors having fun: rude and crass fun, but fun. The way it was handled left a lot to be desired and I won’t shame anyone who had a problem with this whole darn affair. Hell, the entire affair put this post on hold.

But I don’t think having fun means being offensive. We could have a whole other post on the fact that people think comedy is dead because of PC culture and this Funimation VA scandal did make me wonder if it was generational. Most of the older fans I knew didn’t have an issue with it; many of us found it funny. It did seem to be younger fans who had a problem with it and maybe its because the newer fans just don’t understood VAs spend too much time in the booth and sometimes that means weird stuff is going to happen. Again, I’m not here to say you aren’t entitled to being offended, but out of all the scandals going on at Funimation, this seemed like one that we didn’t need to focus on.

Some of my favorite convention memories are of me being in costume and reading fanfic in character. Some of my favorite panel moments are watching those outtakes. Some of the information I’ve retained for years has been because voice actors (both Japanese and American) got to have fun for a little while.

I don’t know why American voice actors never really picked up singing. I don’t know why it never really took off: to be honest, I don’t think many of the American voice actors are on the level to handle some of the song chops that the Japanese voice actors do…but there is one example that pains me to discuss because it means talking about Dirty Uncle Vic.

I don’t want to talk about Vic. I really don’t want to talk about him. I don’t want to keep giving him attention and we’ll leave it at I believe all the women who have claimed he’s a monster because it’s what my brothers and sisters in craft have been saying for years. But goddammit, we have to talk about Brothers. Brothers is an insert song in the original Fullmetal Alchemist and when its first sung, it’s in some weird fairy language and you know it’s haunting but unless you find a translation, you don’t know why. So when Vic as Ed translates and sings the song and gives you the powerful lyrics as if they were a ballad or lullaby Ed sings to his brother just…it’s almost too damn good. And you get this song as their childhood home burns and I can absolutely feel all of Ed’s pain. I hate praising Vic but this is good and I have to remove him as a garbage person from the fact that he was pretty much made for this role and literally has done nothing good since then as a voice actor or human person. 

When voice actors sing, it can take a mediocre scene and increase the impact nearly to the max and even if its a little clumsy; it just adds so much more bang for the buck. It’s a worthwhile effort, and one I would love to see return. 

The Soundtrack of a Young Man’s Heart

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I can’t be the only person who gets super pumped to Ready, Steady, Go!. I can’t be the only one still singing Go!!!. There’s something magical about a good shonen theme song. And while there’s one or two shojo that I like and still sing along to, there’s a special kind of magic that is used by the pairing of a good shonen and a theme. So today, in the spirit of the youthful revolution still in my heart, I wanted to talk about what makes a great shonen theme song, why the themes match so well and why I spent most of my high school career learning how to groan into a microphone like Hyde.

Before we even begin, there’s a saxophone playing elephant in the room. I am will not be mentioning any Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo in this post. Why? Is it because I hate Yoko Kanno? Is it because I can’t stand good music? Hell no. I love both of those soundtracks but Bebop is made greater because of the OST so it’s a little unfair to compare Yoko Kanno belting out her heart to the owl-shrieking that is SID during Monochrome no Kiss. The music of Bebop and the way Watanabe uses music in anime could and should be its own post along with the way Miyazaki uses music. I’ll pause for any more indignation despite reading the obvious reason why I’m not mentioning those works.

All done?

Excellent.

Now, let’s get on with the show.

Some of my favorite songs of all time are from animes. Some of those animes happen to be shonen series and while I’ve been very open about my love of the average shonen series, the way they use music really is genius. So much of the animation, style and feel of a show is conveyed just in the theme music. The translations alone should tell you where you’re going: Save the One, Save the All, No Rain, No Rainbow,  Alones, and so many songs titled Rain. They’re moody, they’re deep and most of them are far more intense than the light whimsy of most shojo. And when a shonen goes girly like Yura Yura for Naruto or the other half of the InuYasha soundtrack. Or it was thematic. The more intense song was the opening like Ready, Steady, Go! To the much softer Motherland that it transitioned into from opening to closing. Bleach is probably the most effective at this where you begin with a song like Asterick and close with Life is Like a Boat. By the end of an episode, you probably need a break and what better break is there than a 2 minute melodramatic-fest.

Even more brilliant is when a theme matches the plot. Think about Death Note briefly. The first two openings are Alumina for the closing and The World for the opening. Both are very 90s Japanese metal from Nightmare and they speak more to a benevolent leader who does what he can despite making unpopular decisions. Really, these are the theme songs to an Ayn Rand fever dream.

The fact of piercing through the whitewash will turn into the truth someday

I want to keep believing in it stubbornly; It’s just my faith. The absolute truth.

And that matches season 1 of the series. Light is a strong dictator with a mission but he feels he is doing the right thing. He feels like he is justice.

By season 2 we get two songs from Maximum the Hormone: Zetsubou Billy as the closing and What’s Up People? As the opening. These are about as vulgar metal as you can get. I totally understand why my aunt didn’t like me screaming these at home. That’s okay. Sang these songs in the halls at school because at school, no one understood the collective screeching of the Japanese Culture Club. By Season 2, Light has gone from caring about his mission to full nihilism and self-protection. Light is willing to kill anyone that stands in his way and that is very evident in these songs.

Despair the Billy

C’mon, morals

Go on, the unstoppable EraserRain

Despair the Billy

C’mon, morals

Go on, the unstoppable EraserRain

And both of the sets of themes are taken from artists who wrote around the series as opposed to just grabbing a song from a discography the way Paradise Kiss did with Do You Want To by Franz Ferdinand (and yes, I know this isn’t shonen, I just needed to prove a point).

I think Naruto also does this very well and it isn’t just because Wind is probably one of my favorite songs. As Naruto gains confidence so do the songs from Go!!! And Haruka Kanata and when the show despairs a little with the main as he loses friends and ties are broken you get songs like Wind and No Rain, No Rainbow, songs that reflect that to get anywhere there are things that must be lost.

It was those themes that inspired me so much as a youth and even more so now as an adult. As a teenager, my anime club and friends sang these songs. At home, I obsessed over learning the lyrics and even began to translate them for Gendou.com. I recorded fandubs. I made friends that I’ve kept most of my life. I’ve made new ones running through convention halls belting Ranbu no Melody. These songs, because they were of our hearts, were of our generation and we committed them to memory. There’s a reason when on road trips Amber and I both finish each and every non-sensual groan Hyde does in Ready, Steady, Go! (Actually, Amber usually leaves those to me. I take them on with pride.). So many of these songs were learned in darkened bedrooms, at late hours of the night, in between homework assignments and collectively with friends.

Look at the music I listen to that isn’t from an animated TV show. I still love the themes of shonen that are determination, forging your own way, self-reliance, the importance or friends and making your own family from those that value you. I also adore the way shonen theme songs frame love in a better way. It’s seldom the obsessive cringe-stalking of shojo series or the passive “I watch you while you sleep” of other girl-centric narratives, it’s romantic while also valuing the person you love like this piece taken from a Bleach closing theme.

I will protect you, from everything that makes you hurt

I don’t even care if other people laugh at me

I may not be able to make it perfect but I’ll definitely make you smile

I swear, I will protect you no matter what

Here’s where I’ll pause and let you have your moment of “Well, Amanda, that’s like totally a matter of opinion.” to which then I submit that point only then to remind you that you are in my world and we briefly go back and forth on the nature of reality and why my hair is blonde for some reason.

Sure, it’s all subjective. The stories and themes of shonen spoke to me and amazingly still do as an adult. If I could pin down one reason I never clicked with shojo it probably just was boring storytelling. I didn’t fit neatly into the narrative of “the normal high school girl”. By age 14 I had buried a parent, moved out from my mother’s house, was living with my aunts and was a strict honor’s student trying to balance a host’s personality on a misanthrope’s heart. Tohru Honda didn’t get me. Kagome Higurashi didn’t get me. And while I found disappointment after disappointment when it came to looking for representation in a female lead in anime, I did find my voice, my heart and my spirit in their male counterparts. That’s what led me to shonen all those years ago. Edward Elric gave me my voice. Yuki Eiri gave me my voice even though Gravitation is to shonen anime what a Jackson Pollock is to an upside-down framed toddler painting.

Not to say that there aren’t series that aren’t shonen that don’t get the music right. Most of the shonen ai series that have taken over my heart and corrupted it like a vine to a statue use music exceptionally: they have to. Most shonen ai series have such a shoe-string plot that something has to keep you in. If you aren’t watching Antique Bakery for anything other than watching Tachibana-san struggle emotionally and financially, you’re there for the beautifully mirrored opening and closing that is Life Goes On and that song is even echoed in the series itself. Tachibana’s ringtone to the phone he almost never answers is the slower, waltz-like version of Life Goes On Side D, the very same song that acts as the shows closing theme that is the foil to the upbeat version that seems to follow optimistic Eiji around which is Life Goes On Side K.

Gravitation is centered around a couple of bands so you’d expect the soundtrack to be great and it’s one of the best. Shuichi’s not so annoying when he sings and Anti-Nostalgic still makes me cry on the right day. I could spend hours going on how Sleepless Beauty is a fantastic song (you should hear me sing it) and how Shining Collection confirms that the true OTP of the series is not Yuki and Shuichi. (GASP. Leave me a comment and I will explain the song to you in a way only a person who has spent almost 20 years obsessing over Gravitation can.)

If I have to praise shojo for a moment (a very brief moment), I still know all the words to Sakura Kiss thanks to years of cosplaying as Tamaki and I’m surprised by how much of the dance from Lucky Star I still remember. Let Me Be With You annoys Amber but I like it. Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt doesn’t fit into any one category but it has a fantastic soundtrack. Same could be said for FLCL but when you start with a good base, of course the result is good. (This also could be its own entire blog post but I’d call this one a shonen/coming of age story). 

This was different, wasn’t it?

Let’s do this again soon.