“All of these Shonen shows have exactly the wrong message: violence solves everything… violence and the will to power.” – Scott/Silence, remarking on Buso Renkin

I don’t believe there’s a conspiracy of shonen mangaka and animators out there trying to promote a more violent world. Although that would be extremely cool if that were the case, now that I think about it. It’d also be very shonen, since a lot of these shows have shady organizations that want to change the world. Still, a literal-minded interpretation of a lot of shows does lead to this conclusion.

Antonio Villaraigosa Visits Anime Expo, Fans Ask Why.

via Popular Anime Show Is Made Into Live-Action Movie.

Edit: Doesn’t look too credible. Still — NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
2nd Edit: Yeah, it’s on ANN. Damn.

The character that actually brought this to mind was Hime, who is just a comfortable duel-wielding chainsaws as she is planning her defenses against assassins as she is drinking tea. Stop and think about that for a minute — how
utterly strange is that? Did she have back-to-back martial arts and etiquette lessons? How does she know the traits and weaknesses of almost anything that comes after her — was she simultaneously a hard-core Monstropedia editor?

All of these questions, in turn, lead to unusual questions about the environment. Who taught he all this stuff, and what was her incentive to learn it? Are there monster tutors? We see monster lawyers at one point, so it seems reasonable as a guess. Does this mean that there are monster schools? Monster college? Monster PhDs?

Suppose that it weren’t the case that an unusual character implies an unusual environment. Then, you could throw together any combination of character traits, and it would work. The concept of a zombie-ninja-pirate-robot is funny because you can’t do this in a story — it doesn’t work — there is no environment that would lead to such a character.

More seriously, I once heard a theory about Evangelion that goes along similar lines — in the first episode, Shinji sees Rei, and then dies in the Angel attack. The rest of the series is just in his head. Fun to think about, probably not what was intended.

• This is Kara no Kyokai on drugs, and the depiction of drugs in this movie is… unrealistic. Even to someone such as myself who’s never done anything more illicit than a glass of wine.
• I understand than Mikiya Kokutō is supposed to be good at figuring stuff out, but damn, that guy must have seven dots of investigation on his character sheet. He manages to figure out who the serial killer is, find where said killer is living, locate a hidden cargo container of mary jane; and the only investigating we see him do on screen is talk to a single drug dealer.
• Paradoxically, he’s sort of dumb. There’s a great deal of foreshadowing in this film that something bad is going to happen to him. And he’s warned, explicitly, by pretty much everyone with over a dozen lines of dialog in this show, that if he keeps going on in his investigation, no good will come of it. And, sure enough, something bad happens.
• Sever spoiler in Al-Bhed, Decode only after watching: Ra’c cdyppat eh dra pnyeh! Lmaynmo, ra’c cdyppat eh dra pnyeh vnus ruf taab dra gheva kuac eh, oad cusaruf ra ZICD mucac yh aoa yd dra aht? What the hell is up with that?
• And the ending… could not be more cliche if it tried.

Mind you, the action sequences are good, the art is as solid as ever, Mystic Eyes of Death Perception are an even more amazing super power, and the villain is interesting if creepy. But compared to any of the other movies, it’s a good step or two below.

• Hamyuts Meseta is the best villain ever. And despite the over-the-top evil-crazy of the Church of Drowning in God’s Grace, she is the villain. Also, at this point, it’s clear that the two are not unrelated.
• This show is so someone’s RPG campaign gone awry.

Completely unrelated: Watched the first half of the Statos 4 OVA. I’m not sure I want to see the TV series based on the the production quality, but is kind of “so bad it’s good.”

The Zeitgeist list is at http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/press/zeitgeist2009/index.html