A Quick Word About FEMM’s Brand of J-Pop

Tags

analysis, far east mention mannequins, femm, j-pop, music, review

I do not remember how I stumbled across FEMM.

It must have been on one of those nights when I was trapped in a YouTube black hole trying to find new content to absorb. I just remember stumbling across a song called “Kill The DJ” in my Recommended Videos column and before I knew it, I was watching two expressionless women in latex belting out a catchy bit of braggadocio.

They caught my attention from minute one:

Within moments, I had binged all their songs.

FEMM is an electro-pop duo whose name is an acronym for “Far East Mention Mannequins.” They are a gimmick band in much the same vein as acts like Gorillaz, or Lordi, or Genki Rockets. FEMM’s shtick is that they are living mannequins named RiRi and LuLa, and are portrayed by Emily Kaiho and Hiro Todo respectively – who also portray their “producers” Honey-B and W-Trouble (Do you …Do you get it?). According to FEMM’s own lore (which I don’t fully get but here you go anyway), the band came together to liberate “dolls” and unite the world while asking two important questions to the public: “Do dolls have feelings? Do their songs move people?”

This is going to be important later.

Watching FEMM is like watching a Bizarro Universe version of Perfume. Now, I’m not going to throw shade at Perfume. Their music is catchy and energizing, their choreography is impressive, and I’m totally going to fly to Japan and marry Nocchi and become a stay-at-home dad so I can raise our 2.5 dogs and white picket fence. However, the content of their music is very light and playful (look up lyric translations and you’ll see what I mean). Conversely, to them and to the safer and friendlier veins of most J-Pop, FEMM’s music tends to be more aggressive and adult.

Consider the following: at the time of writing, Perfume’s most popular song on their YouTube channel is “Flash,” followed by two tracks innocently titled “Magic of Love” and “Pick Me Up.”

Presently, FEMM’S most popular song on their channel is titled “Fuck Boys, Get Money.”*

What I like about FEMM isn’t just the music, although many of their songs can get me through a long day. I like how they are musically in direct opposition to most J-Pop.

Everything about FEMM clashes strongly with their whole “doll” and “mannequin” motif. When we think of dolls, we think of fragile cutesy things meant to be cared for and doted on. Mannequins, as per FEMM’s namesake, are supposed to be stiff and lifeless blank slates we project the trends of the times onto. FEMM challenges this regularly. Not only are their lyrics more mature, but both halves of FEMM run around in latex bodysuits and fright wigs, do provocative and complex dance moves, and make it clear they’re not just pretty faces. What’s more, the pair sing in much-deeper tones than some of their more popular J-Pop contemporaries (AKB48, I am looking at you), which arguably make them more womanly.

There is also the matter of the two questions FEMM poses to their audience: “Do dolls have feelings? Do their songs move people?” The second question is answered easily; taste is subjective. However designed-by-committee a song or artist’s image is, such songs can, will, and do resonate on a personal level. I imagine there are still people who listen to Milli-Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson, despite the artists themselves being outed as frauds who lip-synched on stage.

That first question, however, must be answered. Do dolls have feelings?

It’s an important one to ask because it feels like a question being asked of the music industry with regards to its talent. Pop stars like Ariana Grande or One Direction (or anyone else over the past century, really) are viewed as eye candy that can sing and move in ways that are pleasing to the general audience. But how do they feel being up there? Rather, how do we make them feel?

It is scarier in Japan in some respects. Idol Culture, as it’s called, deifies talented people to the degree that any mention of personal involvement outside your career can mean life or death. Remember AKB48? When one of their members was discovered to be in a relationship with a boy, from another pop group no less, her managers forced her to call it off. Then, in penance for daring to have a life outside music, she shaved her head and gave a tearful apology on YouTube. It doesn’t just extend to music; one voice actor, Hiroshi Kamiya, had to apologize for being married with a son, and actress and singer Aya Hirano came under fire for having older boyfriends and for confessing to dating multiple people.

Is it worth it being in the spotlight when children and alleged adults lose their minds over the goings-on of their idols’ personal lives? Do we not treat them like dolls in the hands of brats? Do people not become obsessive or possessive over people that they have claimed for themselves?

Do dolls have feelings?

Clearly. We just aren’t allowed to know that.

And in Japan, where FEMM’s message of liberation is being broadcasted from, “dolls” get punished for expressing them.

* Yes, I removed the censoring and I am using proper pronunciation here. Otherwise, “Fxxk Boyz Get Money” sounds like a brag that insufficient men are surprisingly wealthy.

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“Ghost In The Shell’s” Major Mistake

Tags

cinema, ghost in the shell, masamune shirow, rupert sanders

Disclaimer: This has spoilers for the new Ghost in the Shell movie. Do you care? I don’t.

I ended up seeing Rupert Sanders’ Ghost in the Shell and boy howdy was that ever a movie someone made. I know the biggest talking point being thrown around is why the main character isn’t an Asian woman, and maybe the movie would have been better if they cast a Japanese actress to play the Major, but visibility is the least of this film’s problems. Take it from someone who actually saw the bloody thing when I say that an all-Asian cast could not have saved this film because it is dull and has very confusing characterization.

This review is coming to you from someone who saw both films and Stand Alone Complex. I haven’t powered through the manga yet because it’s, like, enormous, and there’s a lot of material from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell universe that I haven’t touched yet. While I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this franchise, I also feel like I understand enough about GITS to know what its core ideas are.

At its core (unless I’m mistaken), the GITS series is about transhumanism and AI ethics, all wrapped up in a cyber-noir thriller that name-drops different theorists and philosophers like mad. It asks what defines a human in a world where people can plant their brains into synthetic bodies and where anything from comfort droids to AI-controlled tanks could gain sentience and start making demands. It shows us how quickly that world would fall apart, the cracks that would form in such a society, and how people can take advantage of the memories and lives of others.

Rupert Sanders wanted nothing to do with any of this. In fact, in an interview with Vanity Fair, he was quoted as saying “I locked Masamune Shirow in the basement and I’m not letting him out! Anyuck-nyuck-nyuck.”

…Excuse me.

Let’s get this out of the way: yes, the movie is very visually impressive. The CG is nice and the aesthetic is well-realized. The monolithic holograms and neon lights of this new Tokyo the characters explore are all intricate and interesting to look at, and there are certain scenes and images that do stand out on their own. Furthermore, some of the synthwave that plays in the background is, yes, atmospheric, but ultimately utterly forgettable. Seriously, I tried to recall one track from this movie and all the memory centres of my brain could give me was a long and drawn-out hum.

As for the actual movie part of this movie, well, that’s where Goat in the Shill: Scarlett Johansson Complex falls apart. A lot of visual set pieces from the first film are revisited for the sake of reminding people that this is a Ghost In The Shell movie – the Major’s body being assembled, a naked-esque Major cloaking and shooting up a room full of dudes, the fight with the amnesiac truck driver, the night diving scene, and the fight with the spider-tank – but the nuances are stripped from them. They’re loaded down with slow-motion shots and the cool professional demeanour of the Major Kusanagi we knew is replaced with Scarlett Johansson’s standard cop-on-the-loose character.

One of the scriptwriters for Goat in the Shill commented that the film had about seven writers working on it, and can I ever believe it. The quality of the script jumps around, the story’s the most basic thing you could do with the setting, and the characters’ decisions don’t always make sense – like, why did our main villain Cutter decide to take control of the spider-tank himself? Isn’t he the president of a huge company? Shouldn’t he have employees who do that for him? At what point was it ever established that Cutter was a man who liked to get his hands dirty? It’s true that GITS Actual doesn’t have much room for character exploration, which is itself another identifier of the show. However, the opportunity to maybe address that was given to the filmmakers, and they fumbled hard.

What we have is a film that’s as much of a betrayal to the source material as the Wackowskis’ adaptation of V for Vendetta, which notoriously took a story about life under the Thatcher era and explored the ideas of anarchism versus fascism and turned it into a “George Bush is bad” film. That same boiling-down of basic ideas is present here. Gone are the deep questions of whether a machine can be human – or, indeed, if a human can be human – and what would happen if machines attained sentience and, say, a desire to procreate. What we have instead is a Jason Bourne movie. We have the bog-standard plot of “an evil corporation stole my identity and memories, and now I am out for revenge.”

Then there was the matter of that identity the villains of the movie stole, and man alive did they shit the bed with this one. In the film, we learn that the character of Major “Mira Killian” was not a refugee whose parents died in a boating accident, but a Japanese anti-technology activist named Mokoto Kusanagi who was abducted by Bad Corporation Hanka, had her memories wiped, and then placed into the synthetic body of Scarlett Johansson. So, yeah, she’s literally been whitewashed. And then after the president of Hanka is killed by Aramaki (“Beat” Takeshi Kitano) AKA The Only Interesting Character In Goat In The Shill, Kusanagi keeps the body that was forced upon her for a year and symbolizes the destruction of her old self.

See, that could have been interesting. The idea that Kusanagi’s identity was actually destroyed by a rich white corporate-type and she ends up on a mission to become herself again could have been an interesting character arc. Hell, it would have even been a good jab at the Hollywood bigwigs who wanted to keep Kusanagi as Scarlett Johansson because the idea of Black Widow in a flesh-tone bodysuit sounded more bankable to them. It would have been a great admission on Sanders’ part, as if to say “Yeah, we know this was divisive and sorry for deceiving you.” Then you could turn it around at the end and have Motoko played by Ellen Wong or Tao Okamoto or Anna Akana or whoever’s free for a weekend of filming.

So this film was a bust. A pity. At the very least, we hope can hope for a Japanese studio’s rebuttal to this boilerplate mess. And if we do get it, it better be the version we all were asking for: ninety straight minutes of Rinko Kikuchi in a body-suit breaking dudes’ assholes and shouting Marshall McLuhan quotes over kabuki music.

Motherfucker, I wouldn’t leave the theatre.

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What Happens On Skull Island Stays On Skull Island

Tags

cinema, king kong, kong skull island, legendary pictures, movies

Reader, I come to you with a broken heart. Have you ever invested so much into something that it consumed you? Have you ever felt a passion so strong that you genuinely believed that the object your affection was something that could define the rest of your life?

Do you know what it’s like to have that, and then lose it? Watch it slip through your fingers and make you ask yourself “Dear god, what did I do wrong?” Well, I do. I know that feeling all too well. And I’m here to share my story with you.

Kong: Skull Island is … a little mediocre.

Yeah, that’s what I get for being on the hype train. I was hoping that Legendary Pictures was finally going to be doing something interesting with this IP, especially since the Good-to-Bad Kong Movie Ratio, or GTBKMR, is so staggering even by giant monster movie standards.

Why, though? My theory is it’s because of pedigree. The original 1933 King Kong was a science-fantasy special effects rodeo designed to distract viewers from the fact that there was a Great Depression going on. It was built on the same grounds as jungle-themed adventure fiction, complete with popular themes from that era such as battling animals in harsh environments, cruel and weird pastiches of native groups, and blonde white women being in peril so they can be rescued by blonde white men.

King Kong survived as a film, however, because of its special effects and brutally-choreographed fight sequences between fantastically-animated prehistoric monsters. It was a fine movie, to be sure, but it was a product of the time, and so it’s hard to make that lightning strike twice in different eras. They did try, mind, but outside of the two King Kong movies produced by Toho Pictures, King Kong’s filmography is little more than a sequel (Son of Kong, also in 1933), two remakes (from 1976 and 2005), and a sequel to one of those remakes (King Kong Lives, from 1986).

This is, of course, to say nothing of the various family-friendly animated series based on Kong, as well as the one direct-to-video animated musical which no doubt bombed the moment someone at Warner Brothers uttered the words  “direct-to-video.”

My excitement for Kong: Skull Island came from the fact that they weren’t just going to be retelling the original film’s story again. The idea of a King Kong movie where we do not leave Skull Island until the very end was an exciting prospect. That was, really, the best part of any King Kong movie.

I’ll give credit where credit’s due. Kong: Skull Island’s basic trajectory and cinematography are good. A lot of thought was put into the world-building and development of Skull Island itself. Everything pertaining to the monsters and the monster-fights were well-crafted and choreographed, and whatever music that wasn’t pilfered from someone’s Best Of The ‘70s mixtape is atmospheric and striking. Even the weird natives who are there to be weird natives had some interesting elements to them.

So what went wrong? Well, our protagonists are plagued by beasts far worse than swarms of monsters and giant gorillas: bad characterization, half-assed acting, and appalling dialogue.

Poor acting and bad dialogue in a giant monster movie are both par for the course, mind, but you can still have a great movie without them.  Sadly, we have several big-name actors phoning in their lines or speaking with the grace and subtlety of a palm tree spearing a helicopter. The only two actors in the film who were of note were probably Corey Hawkins and John C Reilly, but they were forced to play off of the rest of the cast. Samuel L Jackson and John Goodman might as well have been playing caricatures of themselves, Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson fell flat, and Jing Tian spent most of the movie staring into the distance or delivering what few lines she had like she was at a library.

Then again, quality acting couldn’t have saved the film from its overloaded script and clumsy characterization. Kong: Skull Island’s dialogue is Age of Ultron bad. Firstly, I could have mixed up 90% of the characters’ dialogue and nobody would be able to notice. Secondly, and here’s some screenwriting 101 for you, when dealing with audio-visual storytelling medium where the audience’s role is passive, one has to ask “should a character be talking at this moment and if they do, then will it be important?” Instead, the editing team seemed to say “a character should be talking at this moment and it doesn’t matter if they say anything important.” Characters will just express what they’re thinking or feeling, rather than just showing it to the audience or demonstrating it in a clever way.

Now, that could have been done right. If Kong: Skull Island’s dialogue was properly-cheesy, it would have probably flown better. Cheesy dialogue is charming and light like a good Jack Kirby comic, or over-the-top and nonsensical like Deep Blue Sea. Bad dialogue is droll and heavy, and worst of all it is distracting.

Look, I didn’t want Kong: Skull Island to be high art, and in many ways I’m glad that it’s not. I just didn’t want it to be, I don’t know, average? And I feel like that’s what the studio settled for – a well-designed world bogged down by a boilerplate cast and half-assed writing. At least with Peter Jackson’s King Kong, flawed though it was, we got more of a sense as to who our protagonists were and felt some level of empathy for them when they were eaten by monsters. Carrying over some aspect of that to this film – with either a smaller cast struggling to survive or a larger and better-defined cast getting whittled down – could have made the experience on Skull Island more exciting, and it would have made the tense moments all the more tense. Instead, I found myself going “who died and why do I not care that they’re dead” every time a monster ate or crushed someone.

Despite all my harsh words, though, there is this weird trepidation that I’m feeling. It’s almost as though warning friends and colleagues and strangers on the internet about this film is somehow treasonous. At least this film is far more visually inspired than half of the other remakes, adaptations, and reimagined properties floating around out there. I mean, have you seen the trailers for the Power Rangers movie? It feels like I’m doing the world a disservice by not recommending this film. Yes, the acting and writing are painful and most of the cast is indiscernible from one another, but by god is this movie colourful, creative, full of life, and damn good to look at. I almost want to recommend it to my fellow kaiju groupies to spite the grimdark tones and Twilight-style colour-coding of modern adventure cinema. So, I am going to recommend it. I have to recommend it. But I’m also going to tell you to catch it on a half-off day at the theatre, or get it when it’s released at home and just leave the room whenever the human characters start talking.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that. I feel …strange and bloodless now, and my heart is ever-so heavy. I need some time alone. I invested so much energy into this, and I don’t know what went wrong, but I need to heal and see some other movies. Maybe some time apart will help, and maybe there’s a chance of reconciliation later, but right now it feels like Legendary Pictures made a monkey out of me.

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Go Big Or Golion: “Voltron’s” Legendary Remake

Tags

dreamworks, joaquim dos santos, lauren montgomery, voltron, voltron defender of the universe, voltron legendary defender

Disclaimer: some spoilers for the first two seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender ahead. Be warned.

PREAMBLE: IN THE SKIN OF A LION

Voltron: Defender of the Universe was one of those series that never did anything for me as a child. The show was one of the many Japanese exports brought over to English-American television and altered heavily to take out all the swearing, blood, and boobies. Canadian and US television did not have an anime boom in the way Mexico or South America did, but we had our (edited and highly sanitized) share.

Voltron was the Americanized name of the Japanese mecha anime serial Beast King Golion, and had a plot that was simple enough to follow. Set in The Future, it follows five soldiers caught in an intergalactic war between the good planets of the universe and Emperor Zarkon’s/Daibazaal’s forces from Planet Doom/The Galra Empire. Said soldiers land on an alien planet and meet Princess Allura/Princess Farla, keeper of five giant robot lions that form into a colossal mech called Voltron/Golion. Six episodes in, one of Voltron/Golion’s pilots is gravely injured and unable to fight/straight-up murdered, and Allura/Farla takes up his seat. The remaining forty-six episodes of this epic involves our colour-coded pilots beating up Zarkon’s/Daibazaal’s armies and towering Robeasts/Beastmen once a week.

I remember finding a VHS containing four random episodes when I was a child, but never seeing – or really wanting to see – anything past what I saw. The animation from the end of two episodes was repeated, the monster designs weren’t anything to write home about, and I couldn’t wrap my head around a giant combining robot where all its parts were basically the same vehicle with a different coat of paint. The fact that all of those vehicles were lions, whose heads made up the feet and hands of the same robot was particularly jarring. Is it practical to have mouths instead of digits?

You can imagine my surprise when I’d heard from a couple of sources that the new series being produced by Dreamworks was actually watchable. It wasn’t the first remake of Voltron that I’d heard of. Mike Young Productions put together an animated series called The Third Dimension that nobody remembered, and Nicktoons was responsible for a remake that …Well, look at it. I was gun-shy at first, but when I learned that two of the executive producers were Justice League Unlimited and Avatar: The Last AIrbender alumni, I got curious.

After watching both seasons, I can confirm that it’s good.

Not just watchable-good, but good, as a show and as a remake. Here’s why!

PART ONE: WE BUILT THIS KITTY ON ROCK AND ROLL

A good remake is one that draws from the original source material as much as it acknowledges the changes in the cultural zeitgeist that happened since it first came out, taking the best elements of that original property and creating something new and fresh. Legendary Defender does that in spades, pulling from both Voltron: Defender of the Universe and the original Beast King Golion. Not only do characters share the names of the original Japanese cast and their American counterparts, but it’s also not afraid to go into some dark territory while never losing its light-hearted side.

See, Japanese media didn’t experience the same moral panics as the US and never had much of their content edited or censored. For decades, Japanese children grew up with some pretty brutal stuff, and the mecha subgenre had its share. Major characters would die, monsters would get ripped to shreds in really gory ways, and a fair bit of sexual situations would find themselves onscreen. Not enough to warrant a blue rating, mind, but there was certainly enough cheesecake to fill a pervert’s bakery. This isn’t to say that American animation didn’t have its more adult moments. Secret of Nimh ended with the main antagonist getting straight-up stabbed in the back. You would just be hard-pressed to find something like that on television.

Netflix, however, isn’t cable television, so the rules of engagement are different. This means that serialized shows can tackle hairier topics that network television doesn’t go near, like a superhero serial where the protagonists fight the embodiment of male privilege or an LGBTQ-friendly prison drama (which shat itself in Season 4 but that’s another article, really).

This is, in part, because of pedigree. Showrunners Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim dos Santos worked on Justice League Unlimited, which killed half of its antagonists in a deep-space explosion, and Avatar The Last Airbender, which tackled themes of genocide and abusive parenting. Both of these shows were able to introduce some heavy ideas to Saturday morning cartoons, sensibilities that were brought into Legendary Defender with gusto. For a start, nobody “goes into exile” or is “recovering on a planet somewhere” like they did in Defender of the Universe; people die and whole planets are destroyed as Zarkon expands his empire.

Despite all this, everything about Legendary Defender feels fresh and fun. The art direction is slick, making a humanoid robot made of lions not the most out-there idea in this universe. Voltron itself is well-realized, given a smoother look and lacking that huge family crest that frankly looked really clunky. The synthwave/orchestral score are incredibly atmospheric, and mixes well with both the fight sequences and the more relaxed moments. The writing’s surprisingly good, and the character beats are particularly strong.

Moreover, this new series shakes up its own genre. Legendary Defender pulls from the past thirty years of science fiction pop culture, coating it in a thick Voltron paint. This goes beyond the show’s use of alien metric and the occasional reference to popular anime; Legendary Defender takes the Voltron set-up and converts it into a space opera like Firefly or the remake of Battlestar Galactica (speaking of references, Emperor Zarkon’s sentries and drone ships are very Cylon-esque). This is a universe rife with alien civilizations, dark and mysterious magic, and – of course – giant monsters, and Legendary Defender is eager to explore every corner of it. It is still very much a toy commercial, as all mecha series invariably are, but one that abandons the monster-of-the-week formula in favour of building a world of intrigue, espionage, and a full spectrum of mortality. Not every agent of Zarkon’s is necessarily evil, not every antagonist has evil intent, and not every good guy is good at being a good guy.

PART TWO: DRAMATIS VOLTRONAE

There’s a lot to like about Legendary Defender’s interpretation of the main cast. They take the basic moulds of the Voltron/Golion characters, as well as archetypical characters in shows like these, and throw in one or two new elements to make them more appealing. One look at our pilots alone illustrates this well.

Forming the head of Voltron in the literal and metaphorical sense is Takashi Shirogane, AKA “Shiro,” a no-nonsense born leader and all-around Good Guy. He’s the straight man of the unit; even-tempered, precise, and never one to screw around. What sets him apart from other generic Hero Team Leaders, however, is that he suffers from PTSD after being tortured by the Galra for a year. His memories of his time as their prisoner fighting in their arenas has made him wise to their ways, but has also hindered him greatly. So much so that he’s actually made serious mistakes because something will set off a traumatic flashback.

Forming Voltron’s arms are Pidge and Keith. Katie Holt, AKA Pidge Gundersson, is a huge nerd with huge nerd hobbies but capable of holding her own in a fight. Despite her geek tendencies, she’s so dedicated to finding her family, other captives of the Galra, that she develops some lone wolf tendencies that put her on par with actual lone wolf Keith Kogane. Keith himself attempts to fit the “too cool for this trash” mould, being the token cold and distant loner, but his lack of self-control makes this difficult to manage. His patience is tested constantly, and he fails that test often.

Making up Voltron’s legs are Lance and Hunk, who play double-duty as capable gunslingers and comic relief. Lance McClain clearly fancies himself a Captain Kirk-type lothario and man’s-man, but lacks the authority and charisma, and with some insecurities that he needs to work out. Hunk Garrett is the heavy-set goofball, but is a bit more grounded than Lance and wears his heart of his sleeve. He’s also a capable scientist, a skilled chef, and a great judge of character.

What helps make the pilots stand out is the fact that the weapons formed by their bayards – Voltron Paladin-issue tools – reflect some aspect of themselves and how they function in the team. Hunk and Lance use firearms because they tend to work from the sidelines. Theirs are support weapons, which also work because they form the legs – parts of the body used to the support the rest of it. Since Pidge and Keith make up the arms, they utilize melee weapons. Keith’s longsword illustrates how he puts people at arms-length. Meanwhile, Pidge uses a katar attached to a retractable cord, alluding to her hacker sensibilities (since it, y’know, uses a cord) but also the connection she still feels to her family despite them being so far away.

Shiro’s bayard is in Zarkon’s hands until the end of season two, but he has his own weapon – the mechanical arm the Galra outfitted him with during his time as a prisoner of war. It doesn’t have any forms, but on its own it’s capable of carving through steel. Among the Galra, Shiro was known as “Champion,” and served as a pit fighter for their amusement. Such a tool was probably intended to mark Shiro as one of their own and make him into a more formidable fighter. Shiro now uses it against them, being sure to get right in close and show them what they’ve made. He has taken this symbol of his servitude and their mistreatment of him and weaponized it for his own gain.

Rounding out our team are Coran and Allura. Coran is less mature than his original version, but fills the role of “huge goofball who’s the voice of reason as needed” neatly. Allura is really worth talking about, though. Legendary Defender’s princess takes the best aspects of the original Allura/Farla and amps them up. Legendary Defender’s Allura remains the chief matriarch of the crew, but is depicted here as a confident and capable ship captain and military commander. The original Allura was extremely girly and prone to needing rescuing, whereas Legendary Defender’s Allura is a bit more hardened.

This Allura is as much of a fish out of water as our Earthling protagonists. Ten thousand years passed since she and Coran froze themselves in cryogenic sleep and parked their castle-ship on a distant planet. Now they’re the last of their kind and fighting what looks like a losing battle against her fathers’ arch-nemeses. She’s wary of whatever new allies come her way, even and especially when they’re ex-Galra soldiers, but she has good reasons. Ten thousand years have passed and she doesn’t know where the lines have been drawn. Despite all this, she’s able to put her skills in diplomacy and strategy to work, knowing when to take the fight to Zarkon and when to pull back.

Speaking of Zarkon, the upgrade to the villains is particularly noteworthy. Zarkon’s sorceress Haggar (known in Japan as Honerva) has gone from being a mincing Witch of the West knockoff to being a shadowy mystic commanding an army of black-clad druids in skull masks. Zarkon himself has been given a considerable upgrade. No longer clad in a devilish toga and comically-large crown, Zarkon’s new look screams Video Game Boss from his bulky layered armour to the colossal mech with wings made of swords that he pilots at the end of Season 2. As for who he is, there’s something about the fact that Zarkon was originally one of Voltron’s pilots that tickles the mind as well. Obviously, the show’s not over yet so we don’t know why he turned evil, but it puts him on an interesting level that goes beyond Standard Space Despot.

It also makes him a good parallel for Shiro, the current Black Paladin. He’s an image of power overtaking morality. Shiro is The Goodest Boy of the Paladins, so looking at Zarkon shows how he could turn out if he ever lost his way.

There’s a little more to Zarkon’s character than this, but in order to delve into that we have to take a look at how this show handles the Robeasts.

PART THREE: LARGE AND IN CHARGE

Whether you’re talking about Sailor Moon or any given super sentai serial, the core problem with the monster-of-the-week scenario is that it’s very predictable after a while. The protagonists have a problem, a monster comes in and either contributes to or represents that problem, and then everyone comes together and defeats this elaborate multi-armed metaphor with friendship or a huge gun or whatever. Legendary Defender does the unthinkable by throwing the monster-of-the-week angle out of the reboot of a series known for having monsters every week – and it’s great.

While each Robeast fight in both seasons of Legendary Defender certainly have a Boss Fight feel them, something else came to mind. You see, horror movies (bear with me) understand that the appearances of a monster have little to do with the creature itself. The makeup of a monster is incredibly important in highlighting how alien and bizarre it is, but overall what their appearances in the narrative mean for the characters matters more than how many times they appear on screen.

This was how I felt watching the Robeast fights. We were always teased with their appearances here and there, building up to these huge monster-on-robot fights that Voltron is always known for, but each fight came with so much narrative weight. The battle with Myzax the Gladiator solidified the team’s ability to come together, but also contributed significantly to Shiro and Pidge’s character arcs. Drazil was this ultimate manifestation of toll being taken on the living planet Balmera, which had been mined for its crystals to the point that it was on the verge of death. Finally, Prorok’s appearance as a Robeast not only established Galra rebel group The Blades of Marmora as a trusted ally, with one sacrificing himself to stop Prorok’s rampage, but told us so much about what Zarkon wants out of his soldiers.

Originally a Galra commander, Prorok acted out of loyalty to Zarkon but went against him thinking Haggar was using the Emperor for her own gain. Turning him into a mindless automaton establishes Zarkon as someone who doesn’t want generals who think for themselves, but yes-men who obey his wishes. That’s why so many of Zarkon’s soldiers are robots. Disposable robot footsoldiers being destroyed en masse is cathartic for the viewers who don’t want to think about whether their robot wives will miss them. On the other hand, it shows Zarkon’s not up for debate. He has an empire to run, and dissent of any kind – even if it might be in his best interest – is not to be tolerated.

Plus, there’s something to be said about this affinity for these giant hybrids of machine and animal held together with dark magic. Zarkon and Haggar could easily just plant a bomb in a cat and release it in Allura’s castle, but instead they settle for sending out the equivalent to sentient dreadnoughts. Each colossal Robeast they send out exudes power and deadly intent, and the fact that Zarkon has some level of control over them is telling. This especially works when he arrives on the scene at the end of Season 2 in that aforementioned mecha suit. Does this tell us something about Zarkon’s nature? Does he somehow miss the feel of sitting in the pilot’s seat, being in command of something a thousand times more powerful than his puny self? Is he reflecting on his halcyon days as he is recovering after that battle where his castle was trashed and the Black Paladin’s bayard – his bayard – was finally taken from him? Time will tell.

 FINAL WORD: THE PRIDE OF DREAMWORKS?

 Of course, I could be reaching with this three thousand-word post about a reboot of a giant robot cartoon from the 1980s. On a base level, I like it because the designs are fun and it has space and monsters and mecha with swords slitting things up. It appeals to the anime nerd/kaiju groupie in me and, really, I could say just that.

Instead, I found that there’s something to be said about this overall theme of a dynamic group of individuals taking on a despot and his drone army. This was one of the principal ideas behind Star Wars that made it so popular. The Empire and the First Order were led by fascists in jackboots commanding armies of uniformed thugs devoid of any discernable identity, challenged by teams of deeply complex citizens from other worlds and cultures united by a need to free themselves of tyranny. It’s a pretty universal story, one that gets retread fairly often but worth retelling every time.

So, yes, this is why I was so keen on Voltron: Legendary Defender. It’s exciting, funny, engaging, and has a few more layers than its predecessor. Go check it out.

Oh, and consider me excited for Season 3. Apparently, we’re going to get Prince Lotor, Zarkon’s handsome douchebag son, and I can’t wait for the throngs of fans to get all cow-eyed over him and forgive all of his war crimes because he is a hot boy who is misunderstood. Bonus points if he’s voiced by Tom Hiddleston.

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A Quick Word About “John Wick’s” Folklore Trappings

Tags

action, analysis, baba yaga, cinema, folklore, john wick, john wick chapter 2, keanu reeves, neo-noir, noir, review, the wild hunt

Some possible spoilers for John Wick and John Wick Chapter 2 ahead. Be advised.

The neon hellscape of the John Wick films is a fast and brutal love letter to the noir genre and world mythologies. While both films have very basic premises, there is much to be said about their themes and framing. Well beyond the heavy soundtrack, wild action sequences, and the idea of there being a bizarre set of rules and codes of conduct shared among criminals and assassins is this unifying idea about the mythologizing of underworld activity.

It is no mistake that folklore, mythology, and superstitions feed into the world of John Wick, that the concierge at the Continental is named after the Greek afterlife’s ferryman Charon, or that Ares, Santino’s chief enforcer in Chapter 2, shares her name with a god of war. John himself is nicknamed The Boogeyman, a monster believed to share its name with the hobgoblin, an Old English house spirit. The current interpretation of this figure is something that abducts and eats children who misbehave. He feeds into his Boogeyman role well, disappearing in and out of shadows and spending both movies hunting after naughty young mobsters.

Among members of the Russian mafia, however, Wick’s given the nickname of Baba Yaga, an old witch who lives in a chicken-legged house and rides around in a mortar and pestle chasing after anyone who crosses her path. One interpretation of Yaga is that her home, hidden deep in the darkest woods, is surrounded by a fence of human bones. This is a fitting image, given that John Wick lives in isolation, and is an old hitman with a lot of red on his ledger.

When the connections to folklore started becoming more and more prevalent, it occurred to me that even John’s dogs and car carry strong imagery. In Western Europe, there were a multitude of stories about a force called The Wild Hunt, black-clad huntsmen led by the old god Wodan AKA Odin, accompanied by massive dark hounds and riding on great black or white horses (depending on which interpretation you read). The Hunt itself was supposed to be a herald of disaster, war, and plague, and that anyone who witnessed them would likely die. Wodan’s Nordic counterpart Odin was said to be accompanied by two wolves and rode an eight-legged horse.

Though John is named after the Boogeyman and Baba Yaga, much of his appearance borrows from the Wild Hunt. John wears a lot of black, which matches the colour of his car, a 1969 Mustang (the mustang itself being a breed of horse). What’s more, John is accompanied by two dogs, albeit at different times in his life – a beagle, a type of hound bred for hunting hares, and a pit bull, a dog bred for blood-sports. What’s more, John is more than a silent killer. Like war god Wodan, he is a violent harbinger of destruction, murdering anyone who gets in his way and sparing only a select few as it suits his needs.

The overall look of both John Wick films does more than add an eerie aesthetic, contributing to the mysterious world of the films’ hoodlums and killers. Dark hallways with hints of blue light, gothic antechambers illuminated with candles, faded orange glows in old buildings, underground bathhouses coloured like blacklight paintings; notice how these lighting and colour schemes often appear as John Wick is out on missions or fraternizing with other ne’er-do-wells.

This interplay is perfect for the dark and colourful world of criminal activity. Criminals and folklore creatures are sometimes predatory in nature, or seek out those who bother them in their domain, or are bound by rules or codes of honour. There is even a shared language here; the realm of criminal activity is openly referred to as an underworld, a place depicted in myths and religions as a subterranean den for the dead and damned, ruled over by hosts of devils and horrifying deities. As such, it’s like John, our good psychopomp, descends into the underworld itself during these moments.

Criminals and bandits occupy a similar space in our minds when we think of impossible-to-believe figures. Consider Adam Worth, the inspiration for Professor Moriarty, a bank robber who escaped prison and became the anonymous founder of a massive criminal syndicate; Irish-American gangster Hell-Cat Maggie who filed her teeth into fangs and fought with brass claws; or Australian gangland queens Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, whose exploits were depicted the great historical comic series Rejected Princesses. This is to say nothing of criminals like Charles Manson or anarchist hacker Joseph “Doctor Chaos” Konopka, who themselves almost seem like comic book supervillains.

Hearing stories about gangsters and murderers brings us into the same world of terrifying creatures and mischievous spirits. We can hardly believe that someone could rob a bank or commit some kind of horrible crime, that someone is capable of leaving their empathy at the door. As such, we call these people monsters and animals, and try our hardest to distance ourselves from them as much as possible.

John Wick tells us we can’t. John Wick reminds us that these monsters do not exist in the realm of the metaphysical. They are as human as we are, and that is a difficult thing to believe.

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A Quick Word About “Atlanta’s” Surreal Humanity

Tags

analysis, atlanta, atlanta (tv series), donald glover, hiro murai, television

Disclaimer: The following contains spoilers for the first season of Atlanta. Proceed with caution.

The old adage goes that truth is stranger than fiction, and all one has to do to prove that point is look up pictures from any given Burning Man festival. Chances are that you, good reader, have that one friend who seems to be a shit magnet and attracts trouble wherever they go. My own father grew up poor and worked as a travelling musician and has seen his share of dive bars, close calls, oddball encounters, and human misery throughout his life. What is great about these people is that these experiences season them, and they are always willing to share them with you.

Writer, musician, and actor Donald Glover is that person in your life. Anyone familiar with his stand-up sets like Weirdo and the more out-there tracks produced by his Childish Gambino persona knows this well. His new television series, Atlanta, is a love letter to the strange and scary side of life. Glover himself commented that the events in Atlanta were based on things he and the staff experienced in their own lives. The end result is a show that is both highly surreal but also deeply human because of those aspects.

Atlanta follows Earnest “Earn” Marks, a Princeton drop-out struggling to support his on-again off-again girlfriend Vanessa and their daughter Lotti. While at his job at the airport trying to sign people up for credit cards, he learns that his cousin Alfred has become an internet sensation and independent rapper named Paper Boi, and teams up with him in a bid to improve both of their lives. On its own, the premise is a rags-to-riches story we know, love, and can relate to. However, it’s what orbits that premise that makes it so distinct.

The series utilizes certain key tropes popularized by what’s known as the screwball comedy genre. Screwball Comedies were a popular type of farcical cinema during the Great Depression, designed to invert the principles and values of regular cinema and comedies. The standard screwball comedy would show upper-class people as snobby and inept and romance as rife with troubles, all with a script full of sharp dialogue and humour that sometimes ventured into out-there territory.

We can see aspects of this genre as early as the first episode. Much of the humour is dark and even a little heady, and makes it clear that this series is not exactly a laugh-a-minute comedy. Earn and Vanessa have a strained relationship, with Earn sleeping at Vanessa’s place despite her planning a date for the night. A mysterious and sinister stranger on a bus who is aware of Earn’s circumstances comforts our hero shortly before violently demanding Earn take a bite of a Nutella sandwich he prepared while talking to him. The show is even willing to tap at its own fourth wall as Lakeith Stanfield’s character Darius comments on a moment of Deja Vu in the cold open which repeats (if partially) at the end of the first episode. The criticisms of classism prominent in traditional screwball exist here, too, with a dose of racism mixed in for good measure. This is especially shown with the white DJ who Earn uses to promote Paper Boi’s career, one who’s all-too keen to casually drop pejoratives in front of Earn despite not using them in front of any of his black co-workers.

Opening episodes are meant as primers for telling viewers what they can expect later in the series. They lay out the themes and style of the series, the basic structure of each episode, who our protagonists are and what kind of characters we can expect later. Atlanta sets this up expertly. The themes of classism and racism are revisited with Earn’s harrowing experiences in police custody in the next episode, and in Episode Nine when he and Vanessa attend a Juneteenth party hosted by a rich couple that fetishizes the plight of black people. Vanessa and Earnest’s tumultuous relationship is explored further, showing the both of them struggling to work things out and fall in love again. Earnest and his friends go on a series of exploits that are as entertaining as they are deeply unnerving.

What’s more, that strangeness is revisited time and again as well, from satirical commercials to choices of targets at a shooting range, but whatever experiences the characters have are not outside the realm of possibility. Even the invisible car from Episode Eight seems like something that could be made, given the push to develop invisibility tech. This is all to say nothing of the mannerisms and observations of the Human LSD Trip that is Paper Boi’s friend Darius, who is basically the spirit of the series made manifest. Darius is regularly cracked out and seems to operate on moon logic, but does have one foot on the ground at all times.

Other series will skirt around the edges of difficult subject matter and oddball situations, but won’t take the plunge for fear it will turn into an extended PSA or the later seasons of Family Matters where Urkel builds a machine that turns people into Bruce Lee. Atlanta’s willingness to get raw and enter bizarre territory without overdoing it makes the show more uniquely human and adds something to the struggles and perspectives of our protagonists. By embracing this, Atlanta becomes more than a show worth binge-watching and blossoms into this poignant and beautiful serial about the odds stacked against black youth, the struggles of becoming an entertainer, and what it really means to need another human being.

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Why I Never Saw The Goonies (Until Now)

Tags

cinema, richard donner, the goonies, the hardy boys

Disclaimer 1: This post is going to contain some spoilers for the movie The Goonies, which apparently everyone saw. On the off-chance you were like me and haven’t seen it yet, then proceed with caution.

Disclaimer 2: This is also going to be a bit more personal than some of my other works, which sucks because I didn’t want it to be, but I feel it’s important to do so. So, be advised: it might get real.

PREAMBLE: I NEVER SAW THE GOONIES

The above statement is something that I’ve often said at parties or among fellow hobbyists, and something that I’ve had to constantly explain and excuse myself for.

To be fair, there are a lot of films or shows I haven’t seen, books I haven’t read, games I never played, and celebrities or athletes I don’t know and cannot identify. I didn’t know who Matt Sundine, Maple Leafs hockey giant, was until the day he retired from the league, despite him apparently being a sports superstar for fifteen years. I’ve never seen Saved By The Bell or Friends or Full House or most of the other ‘90s sitcoms that aired back then, although I was familiar with Fresh Prince of Bel Air and, for some reason, Blossom. I also didn’t own a video game console year-round because that shit was expensive and my parents didn’t care for it, so I never grew up struggling with Mega Man bosses the way many of my contemporaries did.

For many of my friends, most of these minor offenses are pretty appalling, and not seeing The Goonies is the icing on the extremely disappointing cake that had been baked for me.

Let me clarify something: I knew of The Goonies. I’d seen bits and pieces of it on television, and I was aware of the premise, but what I knew about the film was never enough to make me want to watch it. My reasons were simple enough: it didn’t interest me. As a child, I was more likely to watch Rankin-Bass’ The Hobbit or Enemy Mine, something with a stronger science fiction or fantastical element. Stories about real people in real (or real-ish) situations never really appealed to me until I was in high school and university. And yet, I’d avoided the film for years. By then, I was (allegedly) an adult and I told myself that I didn’t have time for any of its tomfoolery.

Finally, several of my friends announced that they were sick of my shit, and I sat down and watched the whole damn thing. I did this partly to get it off my list of things I had to watch, read, or experience in order to prove to my friends that I had blood in my veins. I came at it from my usual perspective, asking myself why the film hit so many high notes for people of my generation. I rode in on my high horse and began my usual stubble-stroking pretentious analyses, picking apart the film and drawing parallels between it and several cultural landmarks from that era and the times before it.

Then, something else happened. When it was all over, I came across a deeply sad revelation about myself. That must sound like the hokiest claim I’ve made thus far. How in the hell can a thirty-two year old man(child) have an existential crisis after watching The Goonies? That shouldn’t even be a sentence, let alone an idea!

Well, you’re about to find out why, so let’s go digging for some buried treasure.

PART ONE: I DON’T GET IT

One thought I had when finally watching this film was “When will these idiots shut up?”

The dialogue in The Goonies is perhaps the one thing I dislike the most about it. The characters are, to be fair, distinct in their own ways, but it’s hard to get a clear sense of their characters sometimes when they spend much of the film shrieking over one another. In a weird way, it helps the film as much as I find that it hinders it. Children’s energy is a hard thing to contain and sometimes comprehend. Many children and teenagers don’t know how to be quiet and contemplative. Patience is a concept that they have to learn. As such, it’s interesting to see that aspect of simply being a child represented in cinema.

There is a charm to it – except it wears off.

We end up with a lot of scenes where the protagonists’ dialogue is drowned out by everyone trying to get their lines out. For instance, while Brand and Andy are trying to get their romantic subplot going, it’s hard to tell at first why they decided to follow the rest of the Goonies into the abandoned restaurant’s sub-basement or why they tried to kiss each other so early into the expedition. Even though it’s a neat touch, so much characterization gets pushed to the side because of it.

To be honest, I didn’t think much of the film as I was sitting through it. It was the “local children discover something kuh-razy” plot I’d seen before in Flight of the Navigator and Explorer, and several other films from the 1980s. I’d found myself back to where I was when I was trying to comprehend this movie as a child. Then it dawned on me that this film just might be a parody of The Hardy Boys.

Edward Stratemeyer’s The Hardy Boys is a decades-spanning book series and franchise about two brothers and their friends having adventures together in and around their hometown of Bayport. So much of the Hardy Boys library involved solving mysteries, uncovering strange secrets, and thwarting dangerous criminals (who were sometimes racial and ethnic stereotypes).

From there, we can see the parallels between the two. We have Mikey and Brand, a pair of brothers and their mutual friends who get pulled into an adventure involving a trio of convicts and a treasure hidden in their hometown. The filmmakers even kept the ethnic stereotype theme going with the antagonists. The Fratellinis are Italian stereotypes down to their core: a pair of brothers being bossed around by their squat mother as they bicker and eat pizza. One of the brothers even sings Italian opera on occasion, because why not.

The parody begins when it’s implied that the heroes have had other “adventures” in the past, but it’s also pretty strongly implied that the titular Goonies spent a lot of their time goofing off. This made sense, really. How many mysteries could they have solved in a town of thirty-thousand people? Astoria doesn’t look like the kind of place smugglers would wind up in on a regular basis. This idea is demonstrated with a sequence near the beginning where one of the characters sets off a Rube Goldberg Device (one of many) to open his front gate rather than just walking up and opening it. This shows that the Goonies do have a lust for adventure and are clever in their own rights, but are tied down by a boring day-to-day life in a dinky port town and therefore trapped in a big-fish-small-pond situation.

As for the Goonies themselves, the boy Goonies lack the “ideal American” image Stratemeter wanted children to aspire to. Chunk is loud and overweight, Data’s a gangly science whiz, and Mikey’s an asthmatic with braces. The two boys who are closest to that are the regularly-emasculated gym rat Brand and the obnoxious Mouth. Not much can be said about Andy and Stef, though, who are relegated to being Girl Archetypes A and B from minute one and are stuck like that forever.

However, the Goonies as a whole are more raucous and foul-mouthed than the clean and conservative Hardy Boys. They act out, are impulsive, and are generally close to how actual pre-teens and teenagers would behave if they discovered a pirate galleon under their town.

There’s something else at work, though. Something else we need to pick at.

PART TWO: MAYBE I’LL NEVER REALLY GET IT

Camaraderie and whimsy were two of the biggest themes that glued The Goonies together. The latter point is most obvious in the way everything is framed. Confrontation between the heroes and the villains is comical and laden with slapstick. Silly sound effects and fight choreography straight from a Popeye cartoon removed the tension from each scene.

Moreover, death is something that happens off-screen. Plenty of characters are dead in the film – the FBI agents the Fratellis kill, the previous explorers who tried to find the treasure and failed, and the pirates on One-Eyed Willy’s ship – but nobody dies directly in front of them or the audience. The protagonists never witness an actual murder (witnessing two soon-to-be dead federal agents walking to their doom barely counts), and none of them bite the dust themselves. Whenever they are close to death or are about to be mauled, they are saved by their wits, or the direct and indirect actions of their friends. No matter how horrifying or tense the circumstances were, the main characters were more or less immune to it, or propped up by their friends.

That sense of companionship that the heroes call on is particularly strong. Despite sometimes being occasional thorns in their friends’ sides, they do help and support one another and genuinely worry for each other’s safety. When Data falls into a spike pit, the team looks scared for him. Another scene involving an organ that causes the floor to give out when they hit the wrong notes features the main characters reaching for each other and trying to encourage Andy, who’s manning the keyboard, to think back to her piano lessons. They crack jokes about their situation, which is surely meant to break up the tension for the audience, but you get the sense that they’re also trying to alleviate pressure their friends might be experiencing.

A visual theme that I picked up on when watching Goonies was that of the Rube Goldberg Device. I counted four: one at the Walsh house, a second in the hall where Chester Copperpot’s body was found, a third at the bottom of the wishing well, and the last one on Willy’s abandoned ship. Rube Goldberg Devices are interesting because they use seemingly-disconnected things to set off one another and accomplish something, such as opening a gate or raising an anchor. To me, this is the best metaphor for the Goonies’ companionship. The misfit main characters exhibit a cohesion together that allows them to function as a single unit, and that which pushes the protagonists towards their goal. The device is featured prominently because that’s what the Goonies are as a collective.

When I consider these aspects, the idea of the film’s success – particularly among younger audiences – is more than apparent. These components bring the idea of an adventure to children and make it accessible and easy to understand, all the while promoting the idea of good company and being there for one another. It was easy to imagine children and teens going to see this movie with their friends, and entertaining this idea of going on one huge adventure together, figuring out which of your friends was the Chunk or the Data or the Stef.

And this was the moment when I realized why I never saw The Goonies – not only as a film, but also as a concept.

Because I simply could not see myself in that situation.

PART THREE: I DIDN’T HAVE A CHILDHOOD, YOU SEE

I was always sick.

There was a loose flap of skin in my heart that didn’t close until three days after I was born, and I was afflicted with breathing problems that manifested into a sickness that was at first diagnosed as asthma. I was medicated and on a respirator until I was six or seven years old. There are holes in my memory from when I went into a coughing fit so severe that I blacked out and went to a hospital. Later, I learned that I was likely misdiagnosed, and that the medicines I took most likely gave me asthma-like symptoms that hindered me for literally years.

Additionally, I had problems understanding my peers and connecting with them on a social or psychological level. I was diagnosed with a learning disability when I was young, something that was at the time called Asperger’s Syndrome before the Autism Spectrum expanded and my condition went from being a named thing to something completely different. Mine is a brain with cognitive and motor function problems, one that can be efficient or fast but never both, and one that doesn’t work well with stressful situations – like socializing. This would later play off of the moderate anxiety disorder I ended up developing later in life.

Much of the media I’d consumed growing up was usually themed around monsters or horror because I understood them. Films like Dark Crystal or Enemy Mine featured protagonists who were in unfamiliar territory, being forced to tough it out alone or with one other companion. Alien and Predator involved a big cast of characters that would get slowly whittled down to one or two people by the antagonists. The Sinbad trilogy and Godzilla films had rotating casts, and even the titular characters did not look the same from movie to movie.

Monsters were easy to understand. Monsters were big and strange and beautiful. Lone protagonists were more appealing because that’s how I saw myself. I didn’t understand the idea of a group of people doing stuff together. Perhaps this was also because a lot of my bullies had banded together and formed their own cliques. It was easy for them to pick on someone who was often by himself. As a child, you’re supposed to build relationships with others and make your own squad of people so as to protect yourself, but I couldn’t do that. Other people were frightening to me. I was worried that if what few friends I had somehow came together, they’d turn on each other – or me. When I was eventually dragged kicking and screaming into my friends’ other groups and forced to converse with different children, I was described by them years later as being standoffish and defensive.

Eventually, I would force myself to become more social and tried to invite myself to more events. I had to. I was outnumbered. I realized later in life that I didn’t want to be alone forever. It was anti-evolutionary of me to be alone. Ours is a communal species, and companionship is incredibly important. Yet, the damage done to me in those formative years left their mark. I still have days when I feel like that kid in the schoolyard walking alone by himself, when all I want is to be stuck in an empty room with my thoughts, a sketchpad, a monster movie, or a bowl of ice cream. I still have days when I can’t stand other people or the things they value.

What’s worse, it’s almost become a point of pride.

This was, to be sure, a puerile and unnecessarily bitter decision on my part. It’s a barbed and wicked thought that has evolved into something deeply troubling. For years, I thought it was placed on me by other people. That might have been true, but it’s taken me ages to realize I left it there.

This is why I couldn’t get into Goonies, and why it took me so long to finally sit down with it. It’s why I couldn’t get into so many other series or films about youthful companionship that many of my peers were exposed to growing up. I couldn’t imagine myself with friends, or at least human friends around my age, let alone going on adventures with any of them. I didn’t think I would ever have them, that I’d end up dead or in jail before that ever happened. I couldn’t imagine children my age as being anything other than cruel or manipulative. I opted out of that level of wish fulfillment – that need for friendship – and I traded it in for worlds I’d never see. I chose instead to expose myself to raw, cruel, and alien landscapes.

And I think I’m all the worse for it.

FINAL WORD: NOW WHAT?

To be honest, I’m not sure what this all means.

At the time of writing, it’s been thirty-six hours since I, a lonely eccentric D-list author and media critic, have seen The Goonies in its entirety. Like Richard Donner did with the film itself, I’ve been writing this article sequentially, rather than jumping back and forth between my key points. I’m trying now to lay out what it was that I gleaned from this experience.

I’ve been urged by a couple of friends to make this an ongoing series where I go back and watch all the films and shows I missed out on. I’m not sure if I can do that, now. A children’s film has forced me to confront a very ugly side of myself, and I’m not sure if I can get that same visceral revelation from watching something like Sixteen Candles.

One thing is certain, though. I think I understand why people like The Goonies. Not just that, I think I understand why it matters to so many people. This wasn’t a film for children so much as it was this almost utopian vision of children. This idea that children are meant to be rambunctious and inane, but ultimately that they were smart and capable of great things, especially if they stuck up for each other. It’s not so much a film about friendship so much as it is one that promotes empathy. I find it interesting how the only real “bullies” in this film about children are the much-older Troy and his two bratty jock buddies. There’s no gang of other ten-year-olds on bikes who call the Goonies losers and throw things at them, but three teen boys who get snubbed by Andy and Stef at the end of the second act. It’s a gesture that almost tells its audience “Whatever you do, do not become like them. You are great and you are wonderful, but only if you are those things to other people – for them and for yourself.”

So …I think I get it.

And, if you’re one of the people who’s been urging me to finally watch this film…

I think I get you.

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Godzilla Was Always The Bomb [2/2]

Tags

godzilla, kaiju, kaiju cinema, shin godzilla

The following post is the second part of a two-part analysis of the Godzilla franchise. Go read Part One here.

Spoilers for Godzilla (2014) and Shin Godzilla (2016) ahead.

PART THREE: RETURN OF THE KING

We come now to the new set of films, and the new visions of Godzilla that they bring to the table.

The first is Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla, brought to us by Gareth Edwards, a director best known for his work on the 2010 science fiction romance film Monsters, and screenwriting newcomer Max Borenstein who was drawing from a plot by Expendables scribe David Callaham. Edwards’ take on Godzilla reintroduces some elements from Monsters, namely a romance plot and some strong military imagery. This film focuses on a soldier whose scientist father discovers the presence of nuclear megafauna returning to the Earth such as Godzilla, an “alpha predator,” and the murderous MUTOs who terrorize cities and steal nuclear warheads.

Edwards’ Godzilla encapsulates some core elements of the franchise, namely the idea of Godzilla being this destructive force that battles more villainous giant monsters. This is perhaps best demonstrated when Godzilla first arrives in Hawaii to battle one of the MUTOs, his presence heralded by a tsunami that floods the city as he surfaces. This is further hammered home in the final brawl between this monster, whom we shall call Legendary Godzilla, and the MUTOs, wherein all of San Francisco is wrecked to hell for hours. Then the MUTOs are beaten, the dust clears in the morning, and Godzilla rises again before leaping back into the ocean.

Let me just say that there is this strange sense of triumph that comes with this ending. Between the swell of the music and the heavenly rays of sunlight that illuminate the scene, the whole thing almost plays out like we’re watching the Lone Ranger riding off into the sunset. Except the Lone Ranger never destroyed an entire city just to kill two cattle rustlers. I think.

Two years later, Toho films released their own film Shin Godzilla, helmed by industry veterans Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi. Anno is known among anime nerds for his involvement in the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise, a deeply philosophical (and also somewhat bloated and pretentious) mecha series. Higuchi also worked with Anno on Evangelion, but he’s also known for directing the live-action Attack on Titan films and serving as the special effects director for Shusuke Kaneko’s most-excellent Gamera trilogy.

As a film, Shin Godzilla is a completely different beast, largely because it’s dealing with a completely different beast. The film’s premise is simple enough: Godzilla lands in Tokyo, leaves, and then lands again, and every-time he shows up he causes massive amounts of property damage and death, and tracks lethal amounts of radiation through the city. Fearing for the lives of their citizens, the Japanese government brings together experts from every department and calls in international envoys to try and curb the damage being caused by Godzilla. Eventually, they learn that Godzilla is not only a walking nuclear reactor but also functionally immortal, and that the only way to stop his rampage is to freeze him using a special coolant.

This film brings Godzilla back to his roots, and returns to the core element of social commentary that was absent in so many other films up until this point. It’s also important to note that this Godzilla – whom we’ll call Toho Godzilla – is Legendary Godzilla’s opposite in every way. This is not a Godzilla we’re rooting for, but one to run away from. Tanaka would be proud.

Now that we know what these films are about, it’s time we dug deeper and see what these films are about, if you catch my meaning.

PART FOUR: KAIJU ANATOMY 101

Let’s start our analysis with Godzilla’s design. Legendary Godzilla is a great hybrid of bear and crocodile bursting at the CG seams with rippling muscles. Designer Andrew Baker of WETA Workshop commented that the team drew inspiration from eagles and birds of prey when designing his face, so as to make him look “noble and majestic.” His image evokes power and strength, like if Dwayne Johnson put on a skin-tight lizard suit. Even in the posters, we can see this demonstrated. The theatrical poster itself makes Godzilla look like some kind of action hero, with his back turned to the camera as marches into the ruined city.

The fact that Legendary Godzilla’s face is modeled to resemble and eagle’s is pivotal, I think, especially since the bald eagle is one of the United States’ national animals. On the one hand, it demonstrates the assimilation of a Japanese character by giving it a more relatable American identity. There’s also the idea that eagles are noble and majestic, which is not what Japanese audiences would have called Godzilla in 1954. I’m also fairly certain voles and rabbits wouldn’t call an eagle majestic, but that’s me.

Meanwhile, Toho Godzilla’s skin is scarred and raw, and his teeth are jagged and don’t quite fit in his mouth. Hi body is malformed, with giant legs and a torso that narrows out as it grows closer to the head. Plus, Godzilla’s tail is this long serpentine thing that’s almost as long as the rest of him. What strikes me the most are his hands; they are open, and their palms are facing upward. It’s a gesture that reminds me of someone begging for help, as if he’s pleading with the world for the pain and the horror to stop.

Then there’s the matter that the version of Godzilla we saw in the trailers is one of his forms, as Godzilla adapts to whatever environment he’s in. In the first act, Godzilla takes on this very lopsided and uneven shape that stumbles mindlessly through Tokyo, but quickly adjusts to be able to move on land. I was reminded of the frilled shark that turned up off the coast of Japan back in 2007, with the same vacant look, slacked jaw, and swollen gills oozing with blood, a lost and confused emissary of nature come to remind of us of the destruction we’re causing.

The human element of Godzilla films has been notoriously hard to pin down, especially since the first one did such an excellent job of it. Legendary’s Godzilla had an excellent opportunity to tap that with the presence of Ken Watanabe and Bryan Cranston’s characters, but shoved them aside to focus on a stock jarhead character. This is the core problem with Edwards’ film, I find. While the trajectory of the film is fine, the fact that our focal character is yet another dime-a-dozen military man who wants to be reunited with his family but is pulled away by his duty to his country (nay, the WORLD) like we’ve seen in countless other films makes Edwards’ Godzilla sink.

Conversely, the human element of Shin Godzilla is more incidental than anything else. I was reminded of the characterization in the original Law and Order, where everything we know about our protagonists is told in passing. We get little snippets here and there, with one character’s lock screen being a picture of his family, or the blunt rapid-fire comments of ministry biologist Ogashira and how they contradict with how carefully she pours tea for herself. That’s because who these characters are is and isn’t that important. While I would have liked to have seen some of the more important characters in the film get a bit more exposition as to how they got to where they were and what made them that way, I also recognize that the film doesn’t need it.

What these films both share, however, is something of a nationalistic bend. Edwards’ Godzilla has the kaiju king being supported by the American military in the final act of the film, with the jarheads heroically trying to fend off the giant monsters and later helping destroy the MUTO nest. There is even a moment where Godzilla and Ford collapse near each other and they seem to lock eyes, with the subtext being that Ford and Godzilla both having a moment where they realize that they’re fighting for a common cause.

Shin Godzilla, meanwhile, takes time to satirize the Japanese government by depicting it as bungling and weighed down by its need to follow protocol while also patting it on the back. This is hammered home with these almost pornographic shots of the Self Defense Forces rolling their tanks through the streets and setting their copters loose, complete with loving close-ups of all their artillery firing rounds at the kaiju’s face. In the end, though, the world is saved because the Japanese government pulls together and hashes out a plan to freeze Godzilla in place thanks to the mobilization of every department they can think of, from public works to the Tokyo transit system itself.

Lastly, we must ask ourselves what both of these films set out to discuss. With Edwards’ film, that’s pretty obvious. His Godzilla is basically the kaiju equivalent to a modern-day superhero, swooping in to stop evil by smashing up large metropolitan areas. This is a Godzilla similar to Zack Snyder’s Superman or Christopher Nolan’s Batman, one that goes about endangering peoples’ safety in order to make the world a better place. Much like his caped counterparts, he is at first reviled and feared by authority figures shortly before garnering their support as an even bigger threat looms. In essence, Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is a by-product of American disaster cinema and big-budget action films.

Shin Godzilla, meanwhile, is straight-up about Fukushima. Much of the destructive imagery is drawn from the flooding and destruction caused by the tsunami, and the radiation Godzilla tracks through Tokyo is very reminiscent of what happened when the reactors leaked. Moreover, this film is about how badly the Japanese government mishandled the 3/11 disaster. I recommend watching Al Jazeera’s piece on the people living close to the blast zone and how it’s slowly killing them to see what I mean. In the film, the government’s first reaction to this monster on their doorstep is to jump from conference room to conference room trying to find ways to put the public at ease and save face. Everyone in a position to do something trips over themselves to slap together a quick fix as the creature is causing more and more damage.

In both cases, the original Gojira’s atomic spirit is still attached to the franchise, but in the end the directors of both of these films have different attitudes about these creatures and what we need to do about them. Edwards’ Godzilla is the destructive anti-hero humanity tells itself it needs, a beefy alpha predator that destroys whole city blocks for a good cause. This makes sense for an American audience because they’ve never been on the business end of a nuclear holocaust before. Anno’s Godzilla is a Godzilla that gorged itself on radioactive waste we left buried behind and washed ashore as a mangled and mutated mess. It is a monster that stumbles madly through the streets indifferent to our presence like the earthquake and tsunami that would trigger the Fukushima disaster.

Both directors know that Godzilla cannot be destroyed, not without destroying part of ourselves in the process. Edwards proposes that Godzilla be embraced and praised as king of the monsters. Anno suggests freezing it in place before it destroys us all. Either way, both films make it clear that we can’t run from Godzilla. He’s still out there, waiting for us to slip up yet again, or waiting for another monster to fight.

Godzilla is something we are forced to live with

FINAL WORD: SIC SEMPER TYRRANOSAURUS

I hope you can all see how apparent it is that something else is at work with these films. Even during the 60s and 70s, when Toho’s big-wigs were probably thinking of ways to design and market toys to children and obsessive weirdoes, the spirit of the original Gojira continued to haunt the franchise. I’m surprised that the American films didn’t touch on the number of nuclear accidents happening within their own borders, but the U.S. has rarely felt fragile in the same way the countries they’ve victimized have. Having a stockpile of nuclear warheads ready to drop on anyone who looks at them funny probably had something to do with that as well.

I repeated myself a lot in this post, but I maintain that this is a point that bears repeating. I’ve seen so many people in the kaiju fandom argue that Godzilla films are ultimately about dumb guys in suits rolling around through cardboard cities. Seeing the timeline of the films paired up with the rise of nuclear energy in the world tells me a different story.

Each film is a séance that conjures Gojira’s vengeful spirit from the Pacific. No matter how goofy Godzilla becomes, no matter how many monsters he punches through high-rises, and no matter how many forms he takes, he’s still going to be this grim reminder of humanity’s most dangerous decision. No matter what happens, Doctor Yamane’s warning from the end of the very first film in this franchise becomes truer and truer:

“If we keep on conducting nuclear tests, it’s possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world again.”

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Godzilla Was Always The Bomb [1/2]

Tags

gareth edwards, godzilla, hideaki anno, shin godzilla, shinji higuchi

DISCLAIMER: This is going to spoil a lot of plot elements for multiple Godzilla films, including the most recent two produced by Legendary Pictures and Toho Films. You have been warned.

PREAMBLE: BIG AND BEAUTIFUL

I love Godzilla films.

In general, I have a fondness for giant monster movies and daikaiju cinema, but Godzilla hits home for me. I have strong memories of watching the haunting and tragic Godzilla: 1985 when I was a child, and re-watching Godzilla versus Monster Zero (known as Invasion of the Astro Monster in Japan) an unknown number of times. I enjoyed watching him team up with other megafauna like Anguirus or Rodan in order to lay epic beat-downs on foes like Gigan, Megalon, and Mechagodzilla. I cried during Godzilla versus Mothra when Mothra died and her two babies, fresh out of the egg, had to stop the rampaging Godzilla all by themselves. I even have some level of admiration for the widely-despised Son of Godzilla, and you better believe I was a mess during that final battle against Destroyah.

There’s a lot to like about the Godzilla films, and there’s also a lot to criticize. It’s easy to write them off as dumb kid’s films where guys in rubber suits perform wrestling moves on each other, and in a way that’s what they are. There’s also the matter of the constant reboots and the nonsensical timeline connecting the films.

Many people will tell you that the franchise deviated greatly from the first film, which was about the terror of the Atomic Age and H-Bomb testing. This is largely because the films that came after were known for being a bunch of creature features where property damage was not this harrowing and human thing but part of the backdrop of giant monster wrestling matches. There was also the matter of Roland Emmerich’s clumsy Jurassic Park knock-off and Japan’s inevitable (and as ludicrous) rebuttal in 1998 which kept the franchise going until it died under the weight of its own silliness in Godzilla: Final Wars.

I would argue, though, that the film series never really stopped being about the Atomic Age. Sure, the H-Bomb metaphor was gone but Godzilla continued to be about this Pandora’s Box that we’ve opened in 1945 that we now cannot close. Ten years passed before a new Godzilla film was greenlit, and since then we ended up with two movies that were not only fun rides (as far as I’m concerned) but also spoke to some of the basic themes of the franchise while also addressing some aspect of the current zeitgeist.

I’ll get to these films in a minute, but before I do, we need to step back and see where the series has been before we see where it is now.

PART ONE: BORN OF FIRE

Godzilla in a scene from the film. © Toho Co. Ltd. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Any kaiju scholar worth their salt will tell you how the first Godzilla film came to be. Eight years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were baked in atomic fire and Tokyo nearly burned to the ground, Japan was in a delicate state and still reeling from the Americans’ assault. It was around this time that film producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, after having been rejected from making a film about Japan’s incursions into Indonesia, started planning the film Gojira. The original film was based on Eugene Lourie’s giant monster flick The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms and the tragic fate of the Lucky Dragon 5 (AKA Daigo Fukuryu Maru), a Japanese fishing vessel which found itself on the business end of an H-bomb test.

There’s a lot to unpack with a pedigree like that. The destruction of Lucky Dragon 5 at the hands of atomic testing must have hit home for the people of Japan who were still coping with the massacres at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a grim reminder that the burning spectre of nuclear devastation was still hanging over their heads, ready to strike them down at a moment’s notice.

Then there’s Fathoms. There are a lot of similarities between Fathoms and the first Gojira, but major themes and cultural sensibilities set the two films apart. Both are movies about massive dinosaurs awoken by atomic testing who cut a swath of destruction across a major metropolitan area. Both monsters not only cause property damage and death, but their mere presence in the world hurts the people around them. In the case of the dinosaur, it’s because his scales and blood carry an unknown disease that slowly kills the people around it. In the case of Godzilla, it’s because he’s actually straight-up radioactive and being near him poisons you.

Then there are the parallels in the conclusions, and the differences in the message. In both films, these monsters are brought down by a combination of military might and scientific endeavours, but with a different set of values attached to both assaults. In Fathoms, the protagonists realize that the only way to kill the beast without releasing the virus was to fire a radioactive isotope into an old wound from a previous battle. They succeed in their attack and watch in awe as it collapses dead just before the credits roll. In Gojira, the scientist Doctor Serizawa sacrifices himself to kill Godzilla using an experimental weapon called an Oxygen Destroyer. With his death, one character – another academic – laments that unless humanity changes its ways, another Godzilla will surely rise.

The subtext here is screaming at me.

See, America was in the middle of the Cold War at this point, with the Truman Doctrine promising an end to Communist expansionism. Plus, the United States had been playing around with nuclear power since the Manhattan Project, and the first nuclear reactor to produce electricity in the U.S. was in 1951, two years before Fathoms hit the theatres. This is all, of course, to say nothing of the stockpile of nuclear weapons that was being developed to keep the Red Menace at bay.

Japan was telling a different story. There was understandable reluctance to use nuclear power after the bombings. The budget for their nuclear program didn’t get laid out until 1954, the same year Gojira aired in cinemas. Fear and panic about nuclear weaponry itself was widespread; some believed (though this was later debunked) that the atomic bomb could burn up the atmosphere, and that they were building an oxygen destroyer, as it were. With regards to the death of the chief scientist character, it’s widely considered in Japan that suicide is more an act of taking responsibility for one’s mistake. What greater mistake is there than creating a doomsday weapon?

What I’ve just described is the gulf between The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms and Gojira’s overall message. In Fathoms, we are treated to a pulse-pounding action sequence ending where the scientist and a marksman climb a roller-coaster to deliver the final blow to the creature they awakened. The monster’s death is treated as a victory, as American ingenuity and military might win out against impossible odds. In Gojira, the ending is more solemn, and full of human misery. There is victory, but it’s at a cost. And we are given that final warning; that threat – that promise – that says another Godzilla will rise. In Fathoms, the message is that science is great and America is great and you should support the military and your local power plant today. In Gojira, the message is that this is a cycle that we are doomed to repeat unless the arbiters of our inevitable destruction step up and end it.

PART TWO: DESTROY ALL FRANCHISES

Godzilla’s return to the Japanese pop culture scene was part of what became known as Japan’s Kaiju Boom. Despite critics lauding the film for speaking far too frankly about atomic warfare and its harrowing depictions of a ruined Tokyo, it gained a following big and sturdy enough for Tanaka and his comrades to make a sequel: Godzilla Raids Again. Raids stands out in the franchise as being the first film to feature monster-on-monster combat. The film, and the others that came after it, would feed into several decades of giant monster movies and television serials. This proved especially true with the production of giant hero series like Ultraman and its underrated predecessor Ultra-Q, both of which used re-purposed costumes from other Godzilla films.

During this period, kaiju films proved to be incredibly popular with younger audiences. As a result, many films in this particular sub-genre were designed to appeal to children. This, for many people, would be a dark period for the Godzilla IP.

Plots about alien invasions and undersea civilisations rising up to conquer Earth overtook the grim tone of the first film. Newer movies were stuffed with stock footage from other films to save time and money, with glaring inconsistencies such as Godzilla’s costume changing from shot-to-shot depending on which city he’s in or which giant monster he’s fighting. Godzilla acquired a squad of tag-team buddies and regular partners in kaiju crime, including Minilla, Godzilla’s adopted son and (possible audience stand-in, given the number of children watching these films).

This would all change in the 1980s when Tanaka produced Gojira: 1984, a darker film that returned the giant monster to his roots as a destructive force of nature. Even with the inevitable monster team-ups and kaiju slap-fights that followed, the overall tone of the franchise until Tanaka’s death was more sombre and sullen. The last film of this era, Godzilla versus Destroyah, illustrates this beautifully, with the destruction of Monster Island and Godzilla slowly being killed by that which powered him, facing off against the physical embodiment of that which once destroyed him.

Then Godzilla 2000 came out and it felt like everyone didn’t read the memo Tanaka wrote back in 1984. The films came with a bigger budget and higher production values, but that seemed to be where it ended. This was the era of films that opened with the catchphrase “There’s a little Godzilla in all of us” and ended with Godzilla: Final Wars, a big kaiju brawl akin to Destroy All Monsters but with an even more ludicrous alien invasion plot and Matrix-style fights. There were a few reboots in this period as well, including one film where Godzilla was actually an amalgamation of Japanese World War Two veterans’ souls. The original allegory for nuclear terror was gone, and replaced with goofy costumed beat-‘em-ups.

How gone was it, though?

Remember that Japan’s attitudes towards atomic power were changing during this time. People around the world were prospering from nuclear energy, and the first plant opened its doors in 1966, two years after Godzilla had been established as an anti-hero in Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster. In the following year of the plant’s opening, Godzilla’s son Minilla was introduced to the franchise and there came a long line of movies about a goofier, kid-friendly Godzilla. Godzilla changed because Japan’s attitudes towards nuclear power changed. Nuclear energy was, to be sure, this horrible death phantom that plagued Japan in the past, but now it could power whole cities and was useful in advancing the medical field.

During a lull in the franchise specifically between Terror of Mechagozilla in 1975 and Gojira: 1984, America suffered thanks to the Three Mile Island incident, when high levels of reactor coolant began leaking and caused a full-scale meltdown in a Pennsylvania-based reactor. Then, a reactor in Tsuruga, Japan spilled 16 tonnes of radioactive cooling water in the March of 1981, an incident that was covered up for forty days. Tanaka saw this as an excellent turning point, and brought Godzilla back to his original nightmarish self.

In 1986, three years before Godzilla versus Biollante was released, Chernobyl became an irradiated wasteland. In 1997 and 1999, as Godzilla: 2000 was being produced, two separate accidents happened at the Tokaimura power plant. In the year 2000, three top executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO for short) resigned after it was revealed that they had covered up cracks in several nuclear plant steam pipes. One year later, a new version of Godzilla as a manifestation of the angered souls of dead Japanese soldiers from World War Two appeared in Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, otherwise known as GMK.

What? Oh, no, my tinfoil hat is quite comfortable, thanks.

Anyway, this article ran a little long so I’m actually splitting it into two parts. In Part Two, I bring us into the modern day and take a scalpel to the films by Gareth Edwards and Hideaki Anno. Stay tuned!

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Much Ado About Malachite

Tags

analysis, animation, steven universe, television

This post is going to be loaded with spoilers for Steven Universe so continue at your own peril.

PREAMBLE: WE ARE THE CRYSTAL DISCOURSE

I’ve been catching up with Steven Universe lately, and I’m not regretting it. I was curious about the Sailor-Moon-but-with-Serena/Usagi’s-dorky-son premise since the pilot dropped years ago, and finally got around to watching it en masse last year. Overall, as an American answer to the magical girl subgenre, it’s a good series. Its appeal seems to come from the fact that it’s both a children’s show and an adult show told from a child’s perspective. While it’s easy to get swept up in the vibrant visuals, comedy, and action the series has to offer, at the core there’s a story about war, genocide, classism, and loss, with a clueless child protagonist forced to carry on his mother’s legacy at the centre of it all.

Normally, this would have been a trash series where every main character constantly angsts out because of some long-standing trauma that never gets resolved. What we have instead, however, is a series that’s actually surprisingly colourful and optimistic. It seems to be a trend in Cartoon Network’s shows over the past few years to present complex and frightening themes to young audiences, and that’s great. Children are more resilient than we give them credit for, and as they get older they have the capacity to understand how deep and nuanced their surroundings are. Having media that doesn’t treat them as emotionally and mentally fragile sub-entities is incredibly important.

Unfortunately, what we end up seeing more often than not are alleged adults fighting for supremacy over the fandom that particular show births.

There is merit in arguing over the themes and ideas presented in art. Art, after all, means something different for different people, and it’s worth discussing. If I didn’t think that, this WordPress account would not exist. There is something to be said, however, about people who look at Lapis and Jasper’s relationship, and say that Jasper was the victim in that scenario.

I’ll give a quick recap: Steven Universe is the story of a half-alien boy whose mother led a rebellion against her own people in order to save the Earth, and is presently being raised by her three remaining generals. Towards the end of the first season, the antagonist Jasper makes an appearance, bringing with her the character Lapis Lazuli (and yes all the aliens are named after gemstones because they’re all supposed to be sentient gems that take on humanoid appearances). Lapis is a Gem with self-esteem issues and obvious signs of shell-shock who was trapped on Earth for a long time and escaped to her home-world, only to get dragged back.

In the last episode of the season, Lapis is manipulated into fusing with Jasper in a bid to become a stronger, more powerful Gem called Malachite. Lapis uses this opportunity to drag Jasper to the bottom of the ocean, where they spend the entire next season battling each other mostly off-screen. In season three, they re-emerge and are forced apart by the heroes, and midway through the season Jasper reappears and makes a plea to form Malachite again – which Lapis outright refuses.

Many have already compared Lapis and Jasper’s situation to that of an abusive relationship, or at the very least an unhealthy one, and as such it would be very easy to dismiss the people who dump on Lapis’ side of the “relationship.” One can accuse the claims as being the opinions of manchildren rushing to Jasper’s defense because she is the most masculine-looking out of all the Gems, or are bored teenagers trying to get a rise out of the fandom’s overly-sensitive chapters. It is possible, however, that there are some people who do see Lapis as the actual villain, and have their own reasons for it. Whichever side of this fence you do sit on, however, it’s pretty apparent that having Lapis and Jasper fuse together again would be a very bad idea – at least at this stage.

There are some big questions circling the whole Jasper/Lapis situation. Who’s in the right? Will they ever form Malachite again? Should they ever form Malachite again? In order to answer these questions, we need to ask some different ones. We need to look at who and what Jasper and Lapis are, as well as what the concept of fusion means.

Let’s dig deep, children.

PART ONE: INTRODUCTIONS ARE IN ORDER

You can tell a lot about a character based on their introduction. In much the same way the first sentence of a book is meant to drag a reader into the story, first impressions in other forms of storytelling are incredibly important. To give you an idea of what I mean, let’s run through some examples within Steven Universe’s own first episode, Gem Glow.

When we officially meet the titular Steven, he is crying to his friends about the Cookie Cat brand of ice cream sandwiches being discontinued. His first lines of dialogue are: “No! This can’t be happening! This has to be a dream!” It’s an unnecessarily dramatic reaction to such a development, but given that Steven appears to be about ten years old, we expect this. In the same scene, he laments that people seem to prefer the rival brand of Lion Lickers, stating “Kids these days, I tell you what.”

After being presented with the special fridge Cookie Cats were stored in by his friends, we follow Steven home and are introduced to the Crystal Gems, his adoptive mothers. Here, we see the Gems engaging in combat with a hoard of monsters, acid-spitting creatures called centipeetles that disappear into clouds of smoke when they’re hit hard enough. We’ll get back to Steven in a minute, but for a moment let’s meet the Gems. Their fighting styles here tell us a lot about them, so let’s deconstruct them a bit further before moving on.

First, we meet Amethyst, catching one of the aforementioned centipeetles with her whip just before it tries to eat Steven, greeting him briefly before she nonchalantly hurls it over her shoulder to an unknown fate. This is a good way to introduce Amethyst’s reckless abandon and her relationship to Steven. It also shows us that Amethyst has a lackadaisical approach to life, and that she puts the people around her in peril, a theme that will come up often.

Next, we see Pearl, artfully dispatching creatures in a manner that reminds one of both ballet dancing and shaolin kung-fu. During the fight, she is positioned near the back, standing atop the warp gate the heroes use to travel around the world. Pearl is a character defined by grace and discipline, serving as the stuffy nanny of the group who tries to maintain some semblance of order around her and keep Steven out of trouble. As such, it would make sense for her to draw her foes as far from the others as possible, while also blocking the only other exit out of the house – the one that leads to the more exciting parts of the planet.

Finally, we have Garnet, the cool-headed bruiser of the group. Garnet catches an airborne centipeetle and breaks it over her knee, using to club a second before knocking aside a third and a fourth. The fifth lands on her head, and she proceeds to pull it right in half before casually walking away. Here, we have an image of Garnet as being brutal and powerful, but also in control of that power. Nothing seems to faze her, and it’s very true that throughout the show she seems to be one of the more seasoned Gems, and it will make the moments when she becomes emotional shocking and gratifying. Garnet pulling apart a centipeetle is also great foreshadowing for the big reveal that she’s a fusion, and the moment when her two halves of Ruby and Sapphire are forced to separate.

Getting back to Steven, his involvement during this display is to marvel over the monsters infesting his home, sad that the Gems have to get rid of them. When Garnet proposes going on a hunt for the centipeetle queen, he expresses excitement and wants to tag along, only to have the thought shot down by Pearl. Not long after, he discovers that the Gems bought and hoarded a bunch of Cookie Cats for him to enjoy. His immediate reaction is to break out into song, and recite the jingle/rap ballad of the mascot’s life, a quirky but extremely tragic story of war and abandonment.

In four minutes, we know what kind of person Steven Universe is. Steven is a child who becomes incredibly attached to the things around him, no matter how fantastical or mundane they might be. Whether it’s an ice cream sandwich or an acid-spitting monster, all of these things are beautiful to him and need to be both preserved and protected. He wishes to be seen as wiser than he really is, and be better respected by those around him. Plus, coming back to this episode wrapping up the first season shows viewers that his connection to the spacefaring refugee Cookie Cat might be deeper than we think. Did Steven perhaps see his mother in a snack food mascot? That’s another essay.

Anyway, so now you know where I’m coming from, and that means it’s time to ask what Lapis and Jasper’s introductions tell us about them.

PART TWO: HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER

We’re going to start with Lapis because she turned up first.

When we meet Lapis, she’s been trapped in a mirror for who-knows how long. Once Lapis is freed, we get this chilling back-shot of her materializing in front of the ocean. The colour scheme here is dark, adding to the air of mystery around this new Gem, and sets the tone for the sadness of her character. Lapis lands on the beach just before the angle shifts to show Steven staring at this bizarre woman that has appeared before him.

That first angle where Lapis’ Gem floats in front of the ocean is incredibly telling in of itself, because no-one else is in the shot with her. These seven seconds of animation tell me everything I need to know about Lapis: she is a dark character drawn to the water because that is her elemental power, who is an elegant but ultimately lonely figure.

This is immediately hammered home by her first lines of dialogue to Steven, who had been protecting her and vouching for her up until that point: “Thank you. You didn’t – You actually talked to me. You helped me.” Gratitude, hesitation, and genuine surprise that anyone would care for her plight. That’s Lapis’ arc in a nutshell.

Jasper, meanwhile, presents us with a completely different type of character. Jasper arrives on Earth in a warship shaped like a massive hand, a complex symbol if there ever was one (although the FLCL reference was not lost on me). The pod containing her, scientist Gem Peridot, and the reluctant Lapis rolls onto the ship’s index finger, which slams onto the shore with a thunderous noise. Jasper immediately stands out here, because she’s the only Gem we haven’t met up until that point, but mostly because she is enormous and towers over the other Gems.

Then we have her first lines of dialogue – “This is it? Looks like another waste of my time.” – spoken as she descends onto the beach and surveys the site with a dissatisfied look, with the eerie green lighting adding to the dangerous ambiance and aesthetic of these first shots.

Already, we see Jasper as a proud warrior, disinterested in battling anyone that doesn’t pose a threat to her. Once Steven reveals himself to be Rose’s scion, Jasper suddenly lights up, and her desire to fight the Gems comes through. She delights in battle, and is way too happy to split Garnet apart and head-butt a child, all the while with a wide, predatory grin on her face.

When we first see Lapis and Jasper together, it’s because Lapis is cowering behind the warrior Gem’s colossal form until Jasper grabs her by the arm and drags her into the scene. This not only further characterizes Jasper as something of a brute, but also sets the tone for her relationship with Lapis – and their fusion.

Fusion in the Steven Universe, er, universe is a tricky topic. The way it works is that Gems have the ability to combine together into a singular entity. Said entity not is only an amalgamation of the Gems’ powers but often has its own personality, which is itself born of its components. What’s interesting about these fusions is how they seem to represent the relationships these characters have with each other. We can see that in the surreal sense of beauty found in the greater fusions of Opal, Sardonyx, Sugilite, and Alexandrite. Their massive, many-armed forms remind one of Hindu deities like Kali or Durga, powerful and destructive protectors of humanity. However, they are able to move and function with ease. This tells us that, in spite of whatever deformations they have, they understand each other and are able to work with one another. This is what a positive relationship looks like. It isn’t perfect, but there is synergy here. It simply works.

And then there’s Malachite, who looks like a Bloodborne boss.

Let’s break down her design. Malachite has this wild mane of hair that sometimes obscures the two sets of eyes she has. Said eyes sometimes alternate in shape between sharing Jasper’s serpentine wickedness and Lapis’ perpetual wide-eyed wonder. Her canines are pronounced, which makes her mouth look considerably more bestial. While having an otherwise human torso, her lower half is most notable of all. Four arms spring out of an oblong thorax and provide the legs for the monster.

All at once, I was reminded of two things when I saw this design in full: the first was the centaur, the half-man half-horse of Greek mythology who were a notorious band of warrior-rapists that roamed the countryside; the second was the praying mantis, an insect that eats its sexual partners. Given that we’re talking about a fusion between an aggressive and forceful soldier and her broken but deceptively deadly water elemental companion, those comparisons are clear as day to me. In any case, Malachite’s appearance is monstrous and animalistic, lacking in the war-goddess looks channeled by the Crystal Gems’ fusions.

There’s also the fact that Malachite does not develop her own personality or voice, and if we follow the aforementioned comparison between fusions and relationships, this is important. Whatever relationships we form with others, be they romantic or platonic, there is a certain code or set of concepts that make up what that relationship is. These take the form of in-jokes, nicknames, a certain familiarity or understanding of one another’s needs. That which defines you remains, but there is a distinct dynamic that manifests. You become known as a unit.

Among the healthier fusions, this is demonstrated by having a separate voice actor. Garnet, for example, is voiced by Estelle, rather than Charlene Yi and Erica Luttrell talking over each other. She also has her own personality and opinions, her own likes and dislikes, and a unique temperament. She can get angry; she can be the voice of reason; above all else, however, she remains herself, and it’s in those times that we can see her components, Ruby and Sapphire, hard at work in maintaining their connection.

Malachite doesn’t get her own voice actor. That’s because with Malachite, there is no cohesion or compromise. There is no shared language. They are just Jasper and Lapis spliced together into an abomination. This is demonstrated perfectly in the episode Chille Tid, when Steven astral projects himself into Malachite’s dreams and witnesses Lapis and Jasper chained to each other, trying to keep their heads above water in an endless green ocean. As one rises, the other sinks deeper into the water, and Steven is forced to leave them there, fighting for control of this monster they’ve made.

PART THREE: TOGETHER AGAIN OR NEVER AGAIN?

Let’s go back to the questions I asked right at the beginning and answer them properly based on what we know.

First question: Who’s in the right?

First answer: Nobody.

Well, okay, Jasper did seize Lapis by the leg and slam her into the earth before proposing that they fuse together, and Lapis did accept the offer, only to cage Jasper in a watery tomb for months. I’m inclined to lean on Lapis’ side, and that’s not because she’s probably my favourite character in the show and I have a strong urge to defend my sadgirl aquawaifu. Although that’s totally why I’m on Lapis’ side.

Let’s be fair, though. Yes, Lapis and Jasper have done some odious things, but for different reasons. Lapis stole the world’s oceans, broke someone’s leg, and sold out the Crystal Gems to Homeworld, but being stuck in a mirror for thousands of years, unable to free yourself and see your family again would make you a little messed up. Jasper, meanwhile, knocked out a child, merged with Lapis by saying everyone else was out to get her, and then spent season three either stalking Lapis or assembling an army of Corrupted Gems. And yet, remember that Jasper was raised to be the best of the best, so every act of evil she performs feels like it is done more out of desperation and a need for validation rather than actual malice.

Second question: Will they ever form Malachite again?

Second answer: Not anytime soon.

Lapis already made that clear in Alone at Sea that she doesn’t want to be with Jasper, and Jasper only wants to fuse with someone because she feels weak without someone else’s support. It’s a bad idea. They hate each other. It wouldn’t end well.

However.

Third question: Should they ever form Malachite again?

Third answer: Maybe?

Forgiveness is a theme in the Steven universe (Ha! I knew I was going to do something clever with that). Steven’s mother Rose Quartz believed all life was precious and should be preserved. In flashbacks, she’s seen destroying Gem’s forms rather than shattering their stones, which would effectively kill them. Steven himself carries that spirit, showing empathy and love for everyone and everything around him, no matter what they are and what they do. He and the Crystal Gems reformed Peridot, helping her acknowledge how strange and wonderful the Earth actually is, and have been hard at work making Lapis feel loved and wanted.

This means it’s only a matter of time before Jasper gets redeemed.

If that were to happen, two things could transpire: they never form Malachite again because they’re simply incompatible, or they form again, but create something completely different. If that latter scenario were to come, maybe Malachite would take a different form, and look a little more complete and less monstrous. Remember, Garnet in the episode The Answer looked nothing like the way she does now. Her colours were off, one foot was bare, and there were holes in her garments. Perhaps Malachite 2.0 would change in much the same way Garnet did.

Or maybe it won’t be Malachite at all. Maybe it’ll be something else. Whatever it is, it will have to be on Lapis’ terms.

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