Stuff consumed September 2018

[alias_sqbr]

Animated:

Classmates: a cute and well made m/m romance anime movie about two boys in highschool. Understated and charming.

Cells at Work: Mostly a cute and surprisingly educational comedy about the lives of anthropomorphised cells inside a human body, focussing on a hard working but klutsy female red blood cell and a quiet, earnest, and incredibly violent male white blood cell who keeps rescuing her. At first I was worried it would gloss over the ways the immune system can mess up (a subject of much personal relevance), but it does go into that a little. What actually bugged me was the constant messages about Always Following Orders and Destroying Anything Outside The System. Like, I do want my actual blood cells to do those things, but once you make them sentient it gets a bit unfortunate, especially with cancer cells who were Born Wrong And Thus Must Die. On the upside, while the writing and character design sticks very much to traditional gender roles there's no indication that the characters care about gender at all, so it's all "she needs protecting because she's a red blood cell" not "she needs protecting because she's a girl". I haven't seen any signs of them having a concept of sex or romance, either, so while the show obviously ships Red Blood Cell/White Blood Cell they just see themselves as friends.

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: aka that Chinese wuxia m/m. I already talked about the book, but am now up to date with all 9 translated episodes of the animated version and it's good! Thus far they've managed to keep in most of the slashiness, too. The plot's been simplified but they've actually added some nice little extra characterisation moments, and seeing all the fight scenes animated is great, lots of elegant whooshing with swords. The CG is sometimes a bit gratuitous but mostly works.

Mob Psycho 100: A surreal supernatural comedy about a sweet, quiet, repressed 14 year old boy with mindblowing psychic powers and the bizarre events that occur around his attempts to be nice and normal and not destroy things. Has an inventive willingness to step around narrative causality, and a compassionate heart. The art is kind of ugly and intense and took some getting used to. It's very rooted in shonen fighting anime tropes, and although it subverts as many as it follows it barely remembers girls exist. The male friendships are fantastic though, I wasn't expecting to have feelings but I do. The first few episodes are a little rough.

Manga/Comics:

Ashita no Ousama: an ok shoujo about a young woman from the country who falls suddenly and madly in love with the theatre and refuse to let the fact that she can't act stop her from following that dream. The romance didn't really click for me, but both of them think theatre is way more important than romance and have nice professional fulfilment arcs, so it still mostly works.

The Young Lady's Chauffeur: mildly femdom romance fluff between a high class girl in early 20th century Japan and her devoted chauffeur. I enjoyed it a lot but there's not much to it. Also there's the typical "female friend who has a crush on the protagonist but eventually respects the love protag has for her male love interest" subplot, sigh.

My Boyfriend is a Jinyiwei: enjoyably tropey Chinese supernatural/time travel/reincarnation m/f romance. Starts with the love interest, a 14th century nobleman official, unexpectedly landing in modern China and meeting the protagonist as a 7 year old girl. I had to double check with the person who recced it to me that it wasn't going to ship them at this point, because they do become pretty close, but the actual romance doesn't kick in until after some more time travel shenanigans mean they're 17 and 20. And then there's cross dressing and past lives and the hero getting topless for Reasons. It's still ongoing but they're basically together and already made out a bunch. There's some playing around at the edges of incest and very large age gaps that managed to not QUITE squick me but ymmv. Also he's that variety of tsundere Old Fashioned Nobleman that will ping some people as unbearably sexist or even abusive, it worked ok for me because she pushes back and they obviously love each other.

TV:

Nanette: Hannah Gadsby's confronting and well made standup/talk about being a lesbian standup comedian and the nature of comedy and sexuality and STUFF. I didn't love it as much as some people but still really liked it and it made me think a lot.

Movies:

Antman and Wasp: this was a lot of fun! If you liked the first Antman you should like this. Gives the women a bit more to do, has some weird race subtext but mostly means well.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before: Cute m/f fake dating highschool romcom. The protagonist is Asian American, which is nice, and the romance is sweet, but it made some annoying rom-com-y choices that undercut things a bit for me.

Games:

Dissembler A well made and pretty puzzle game about rearranging squares that didn't click for me because I am not very good at physical/visual thinking. I had an ok time until it got too hard for me.

Books:

Encrypted by Lindsay Buroker: A m/f romance/fantasy. I was enjoying this asides from some major race issues with the worldbuilding (the protagonist comes from The Only Nice Country, a tropical island with cane sugar plantations where everyone is white), and then the couple got together and for no reason I can put my finger on, even though I'd been enjoying the mystery/adventure threads as well, I suddenly VERY MUCH WANTED TO STOP READING. I flipped forward to the end and came across something talking about like..."savage aborigines" or something and I was done.

The Devil's Submission by Nicola Davidson: I bought this because it was romantic femdom regency romance (and on special) and I made it like 2 pages in before the weight of regency romance cliches got to me and I had to give up. If you are ok with a Feisty Chit swapping barbs with a Devilish Man Who Runs A Hall of Vice you might like it?

Comments

[hebethen]

Yeah, the whole "people who are different = cancer! kill them!" angle was uh..... weird, to say the least. I had seen I think an AniFem writeup that mentioned the fascist history of the "people as parts of the nation-body" metaphor and shrugged at it, but that particular episode really made me wonder what the heck was the agenda here, because besides being eyebrow-raising as theses go, it's also biologically completely incorrect? Cancer isn't "mutant cells", it's specifically cells that heedlessly divide and divide and grow and grow, invading their neighbors, etc etc etc... if anything it would better serve as a metaphor for imperialism or for, idk, fuckin late stage capitalism????

but they chose to go with "people who are different = cancer! kill them!"

what

[alias_sqbr]

OH GOD IT'S NOT JUST ME. I've seen other people discussing this anime around the place and it was all just "yay these characters are cute" etc. And they are cute but ALSO KINDA FASCIST.

And yes, exactly! Mutation in and of itself isn't necessarily bad, let alone dangerous. They deliberately chose to frame it that way regardless.