Arion the anime starts with our hero Arion living a peaceful life with his mother in the ancient land of Thrace. One day Arion’s uncle Hades takes off with him to the underworld so he can use him for against Zeus. Hades has him train for combat and tells that Zeus placed a curse that made his mother blind and the only way to break it is to slay him. Killing Zeus is no small task, as he is the designated ruler of anything land and has a massive military lead by Athena to boot. In and along his way out of the underworld he befriends beast and human, including a child thief that looks up to him as a brother.

Story and characters take bits of themes and character names from ancient Greek mythology. Titans, stories, and gods. I know from not staying at a Holiday Inn, but from watching Xena: The Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys on American television. In stories of many mythologies old gods or god like beings called Titans replace the old and somehow explain how people took over their own destinies. In Arion the mother of Titans is Gaia, but much is thrown out and re-imagined with Titans living with Twelve Olympians names such as Zeus, Demeter, and Ares. Hercules is just a grunt. Pretty sure any mythology buff by now would already nerd rage from that alone.

Surprises come into play with the main characters as the story grows closer to climax. The impactful one for me was as abrupt for me as it was for Arion. Despite dropping clues in language and vocals throughout the movie, it still did not click with me. Disbelief lead to multiple re-watching of its revealing to contemplate how I missed everything. It is not as if I am naive or new to anime, but this time my acceptance of quirks and oddities got the best of me. I am not going to spoil it for those that may take interest in it, but it also might also be out of shame.

There are is a lot of deception in this anime with people having their own agendas. Many of the characters like Apollo are displayed as either spoiled, selfish, or incompetent. Apollo in Greek mythology is the god of mostly positive things like healing and truth. I admire the moments when characters show to be more human like when they are either not fully evil or good. This anime has it and shows it even while under the tight time of being a film. Again spoilers…

I regret to say this 1986 anime and the manga it was adapted from has never been licensed. Good news is that you may have seen anime with similar staff from the era. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko is the creator of Arion and the mecha anime Giant Gorg. He has done character design work for many other anime including Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn and the kiddy anime The Adventures of the Little Prince. Comparison before watching or after for more to watch you may enjoy Giant Gorg for Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, similar set up with Sword of the Stranger, and Adventures of Horus: Prince of the Sun for something classic. Could even say The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok if you are also looking to see Norse mythology and characters snatched ‘n twisted into something new.

There is nothing wrong with this anime for the most part. Nearest thing to a flaw or annoyance would be the musical voice of one of the female characters. She has quite the noisy and loud catching of breath or oooh-uuh sounds.

I am still ashamed and shall take another shower to clean the cooties.

Jura
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EhNani
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Pixiv source for the above image. Any images on the image bookmark sites above have the artist credits in the pages they link to.

Icon Source: rainraven
It is Sai calling someone bro as he did in G Gundam’s dubs. Dreamwidth is a fork of LiveJournal by former LiveJournal staff. There are many forks, but Dreamwidth is the most popular with their users linking between the two sites. Pixiv source no longer exists.

Icon Source: reccessional
Fire Candy has amazing character art with a very wonderful rough style. Above is “manga coloring” and not official art or from a cover.

Icon Source: ukemilk
Original Source: Nico Nico Douga
The icon originated from a Nico Nico Douga video with the Vocaloid Kagamine twins Rin and Len.

Icon Source: kazimierzi
Aventura was a formally licensed and published manga by Del Rey before Kodansha took over their manga publishing. It sported some of the most dreamy and excessive character (especially hair) detail. Safe to say Del Rey had much more interesting manga choices with Q Ko-chan, Alive: The Final Evolution, and Yozakura Quartet. Kodansha’s US division is far too timid and does not bother much with manga outside big hits.

Icon Source: mensenhater
Original Source: momocan.egoism.jp (a little NSFW)
Most of my favorite avatars or what LiveJournal calls icons have action, posing, or a bit of emotion. Just a character’s face is bland and not very creative. It is Ken cross-dressing in what the blond Aigis android is known to wear in Persona 3.

LiveJournal is a giant from a long ago era where people created communities of posting user avatars. Users had the ability to upload more than one icon (avatar) and choose which they wish to use when commenting or publishing a blog entry. In a way the site is very much like WordPress.com in where it is a network of blogs, but community and networking is much more stressed. Users created communities for anyone to post entries to and used them for massive image heavy posts with often a hundred icons. The community may not be Facebook, but it remains active and worth the membership.

Forums Shaped My Reading and Writing
My earliest memories of being online have been with forums and perhaps much of that time has created preferences when online. It could be the other way around and just coincidence I did much foruming, but I would like to think it lead to some of my writing style. Subtle trolling, casualness, playful wittiness at the expense of others, keeping things to the point, and random off-topic derailing as examples of influence. I am known in some communities for my annoying, amusing, and confrontational one liners. At the very least changing things up with having to write more gave time to reflect.

Images Make a Page of Words Attractive
I love great detail and informative treasures, but at times I can find long blog entries of my interest not interesting enough to read. Images bring color to a wad of black text, tell the topic of a post often before any words, grab attention, and break up text. People like purdy thingies.

Episodic Blogging is Useless
Around starting a blog I took peeks at what other bloggers did in addition to the little knowledge I already had. Real soon I learned that blogging each episode of an anime or chapter of a manga makes for poor reading. Sure an epiphany or emotional response to an episode or story arc can be remarkable, but every episode just because is a waste. One could simply go out to watch the particular episode or manga. If one is already following a series they would either decide to keep going or see what they have as not worth it.

Writing, Grammar, and Speling
I am a product of a dysfunctional schooling system where much of my years in school dealt with golf carts chasing ditchers across campus, stabbings, shootings, and bomb threats. There were days where I’ve spent time playing Gameboy Pokemon in front of a teacher’s desk with the teacher there. Jumping into blogging for me meant having to learn as I go without help or guidance. Finding tools for spelling is easy, but the ability to write something interesting, coherent, and styled is a world of error. Proof reading is a friend.

Timing
A lot like a news outlet a blog can get extra traffic and kudos for being ahead of the rest. Knowing when your audience is active online and being first leads to more retweets on fast sites like Twitter and having the most attention from offering something undiscovered.

Casuals and Fanatics
Many people into anime and manga are just into it to watch and read. It is a segment of fans that include those that gain pleasure in critique, analysis, and writing. Some fans find gathering information and opinions useful in addition to the media, but most are satisfied with what their friends suggest or what they stumble across. Just being a fan is okay and I have learned to accept that.

Better Have Something Worth Saying
In real life I hate surprises yet I prefer to do things on a whim. With blogging I write when I have something interesting or an inspiration gained from an experience. With a schedule I would find myself writing just to write without much to share. I take notes in the form of a list of words until I gather enough for a topic or I inspire myself through watching or reading anime and manga when I’m most easily able to concentrate. If I were to kick up my watching of anime and manga, it would translate to better consistency.

Some thanks to Justin of OASG for inspiring this post.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone!

[youtube width=”520″ height=”320″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFhFYTz3yeM[/youtube]

New Zealand protestors are speaking out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership while the latest round of negotiations happen there. This pact between countries is labeled a fair trade agreement in where more trade of goods can be made. In such a pact there is normally agreements made to remove or lessen fees, limitations, taxes, and similar. Drama over the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not so much about lifting barriers, but how the negotiation development is secret and what has been leaked are actually limitations on citizens in addition to business. Imagine many of the ideas that corporations and politicians thought of for SOPA and PIPA Internet censorship, but on a global scale without much public information. Governments and Internet service providers will enforce blocking of websites, removal of Internet access for individuals, and filtering to increase copyright restrictions with what has been leaked. Japan is one of the countries for encouraging to join in this agreement.

Flourishing and frequesntly imported self published manga known as doujinshi are a massive part of the animanga scene and has one of the world’s largest comic conventions devoted to it known as Comiket. At this time those creations enjoy the freedom of remixing characters from copyrighted anime and manga. The doujinshi market offers a way to become known to companies that publish manga and a way to develop their skills, but with TPP it will be hindered by enforcement with fines even without the copyright holder’s request. This agreement will perhaps include steps to make Japan’s copyright laws the same or much closer to America’s laws.

Copyright infringement is the norm for much of the anime and manga fan community around the world with illegal downloads, manga readers, and torrents. Greater regulation may happen rather than breaking down of the language, cost, and availability barriers. Voters and citizens may not know to what extent the agreement may go, as it may eliminate sites, blogs, or perhaps user pages from social networks. A link, photo, download, or a fan work may inspire a crack down on the site or the user of a site with vague or poor language.

The next Japanese general election will be held December 16th, 2012 with 63% of election candidate opposition to Japan’s Trans-Pacific Partnership participation. Action and discussion needs to happen instead of a last moment or brief spark of excitement that happened with SOPA and PIPA. It will not be easy with the passing of time for an agreement that has been in development for years, the secret nature of the negotiations, and the challenge of taking actual action.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTJ24v9LMEs[/youtube]

Earlier this year there was an American anime convention called Otakon that took place in Baltimore, Maryland. There a small recorded panel of two discussed views on sexism in anime fandom and convention gatherings. The primary points covered by the panel and Anime Diet is that new anime is dominated by male targeted anime, harassment of cosplay dressed convention attendees is prevalent, and about how genders are visually displayed in anime. Both panel speakers are openly into feminism and they themselves label their views as feminist.

Amount of Animation for Males
The panel dives into the difference in number of anime that targets male audiences than female with the shounen genre as example. It is difficult not to assume that they suggests somehow separate and privately owned studios and animation companies are obligated to make a more equal balance of what genders should be focused on. While acknowledging fans will watch and read whatever of their interests are in regardless of the boy girl genres, they state that the higher volume of male anime is apart of male dominate culture. The point in running a for-profit business is to create more profit than previously and that would clearly mean catering to a group if it yields more profit and viewership. That leaves others to capitalize on different viewers if they find an unfilled opening or growth in other viewer audiences.

Harassment of Cosplayers
People visit conventions to hear about the industry, shop, and to meet other people of similar interests. A social gathering for speakers, sellers, and the fanatics that may often dress as their favorite characters from anime. Those cosplay fans however are the main bit that is thought of when conventions are discussed. People spend a lot effort and time in their appearance and in better examples their mannerisms. Both of which are visual in nature and done to be seen or to win a cosplay tournament of some kind. To be seen is the key component in this where it is unnatural to think that you would not be looked at with a chance of having judgement of cosplay dedication. While asking politely to take a photo is always polite, it is not realistic to think that your colorful, unrealistic, abstract, cheesy, revealing, or spiked up outfit won’t attract attention and those that will want photos of what made their day special. In the panel they place percentages onscreen to show that this is an issue for both genders, so one would conclude that there is not a sexism issue.

Convention Staff
Just as soon as harmful behavior at conventions is mentioned, it starts with how there are so many female attendees and about an attendee survey on how more so than not convention staff are seen as unhelpful in harassment situations. Enforcement of behavior on one gender and not the other is not fair and is sexist itself. All too often males have nowhere to go or any legal means in handling such kinds of harassment. Take it like a man and quit crying.

Other Notes
I cannot comment on the specific anime or the characters mentioned in their panel outside of Melfina from Outlaw Star, but the anime did have three main females to show various personalities. Sound quality and background noise plagues the video and distracts attention, so perhaps better acoustics can be put into consideration in conventions when recording.

Speaking out on bad behavior is great. Be loud, be angry. Support and demand more of what you enjoy.