Asagiri's Database Consumption Diary

It may be a bit late, but here are some of the stuff I watched or read in the month of July. Watched Watched Shinzō Ningen Casshan episodes 5-22. I'm noticing that although the premise is a war against misanthropic robots, the show's episodic conflicts often involve the hero in conflict with humans, who range from people at odds with his ways of opposing the Andro Force in some ways, to outright traitors to humanity. An episode is critical of the absolutist pacifism a city mayor insists on to survive against the robots, as in the end a genocidal force will find reasons to slaughter people anyway even if they surrender unconditionally. While it may feel heavy-handed, in the context of postwar Japan, there's something to think about such a theme being brought up in a TV show like this. Watched Princess-Session Orchestra episodes 12-15. This show is quite capable in making the villains appealing characters. Seeing their interactions is one of its enjoyable points. St...

I went to see the new Superman film at the end of last July. Since people like to praise things as 'absolute cinema' these days, I had kind of thought to disturb the implicit media hierarchy in such kind of praise by instead complimenting a theatrical live action film like this as 'absolute comics' or something. Though, maybe to really reach the 'absolute' territory, it would have taken more animetism at play. But it is one of the films that doesn't shy from being 'comic book-y', what with the hero making some SPIN TO WIN moves in the climatic fight, or the choice to take the setting where superhumans have already been a fact of life, or the extradimensional online troll monkey farm... . But there is something else I've also been thinking about regarding the film that I wish to talk about. This concerns the controversial Jor-El and Lara's recorded message for the son they sent to Earth to escape Krypton's destruction. Early in the fi...