week one: 4KOMA

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week thirteen: the fall of hetalia

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This week we talked about Hetalia and comedy in anime. I will use this blog post to talk about the fall of Hetalia in popular culture and the many flawed aspects of it, from its use of racial stereotypes to its fetishization of WWII. Now, Hetalia isn't the first anime to use WWII as either an implied inspiration or the exact setting (such as Grave of the Fireflies and Joker Game), but it is probably the worst anime to do it. I've never been particularly engaged in Hetalia, though I knew a few people in middle school who were fans of it. This seems to be the case for most people: they enjoyed the lighthearted, ridiculous humor as kids, but then grew out of it as they became adults and gained higher standards for themselves and the mediums they enjoyed. A big, jarring red flag for me was its usage of Axis Powers in the title. I never really paid attention to it, and during class it was pretty much the first time I realized how horrible it was. It was called Axis Powers ....
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week fourteen: satoshi kon

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I love Satoshi Kon. His films are wildly inventive, with stunning camerawork. I first watched Paprika in high school, maybe when I was fourteen or fifteen, and I FLIPPED OUT. It was one of the coolest anime I'd ever seen at the time, right up there with Summer Wars. It was so different and  weird  and fantastical. There's a beautiful level of artistry Kon has with his films, and Tony Zhou from Every Frame a Painting really sums it up the best. He uses space and time in ways that are insanely creative. From cutting frames down to give just a glimpse of action that will register in the audience's consciousness, to using editing to reveal answers to a question in a non-linear way. Match cuts, jump cuts, seamless background transitions, breaking the 180 rule. All aspects of why Kon is rightfully considered a master filmmaker who pushes the medium to exciting new places. I agree that American films have... been "inspired" or perhaps "stolen" Kon'...
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week three: gekiga

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This week, we read Cigarette Girl by Masahiko Matsumoto. It's drawn not necessarily in the style of gekiga - the style is really simplistic and cartoony - but the themes are surprisingly mature. Gekiga is a style of manga meant for a mature audience and drawn more realistically to lend itself to that serious vibe. When David defined the term of gekiga, the first things I thought of were seinen and josei manga, or manga aimed at older men and women. The typical style of the 60's gekiga reminded me of the 1988 film Akira, a landmark Japanese adult animation film. The same with Ayako from the first week of reading, Cigarette Girl sort of threw me in a loop. What I expected from the art was NOT what I got from the thematic elements. I think the one about the woman getting the abortion made me the most sad, because of how... realistic it was. The poor girl was essentially tricked into sleeping with her boyfriend, who leaves her because she's pregnant, and her new husband i...
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