Let’s talk about Christopher Handley for a minute. I don’t really want to, as I don’t much care to advertise my views on the matter. But there seems to be, as Anime Almanac’s Scott VonSchilling notes, a bit of an imbalance in popular opinion of the Handley case. Which is fine, of course, but it always bothers me when the underdog side of an argument isn’t standing on a solid foundation, as seems to be the case here.
So, if I may, I’ll make an effort at clearing things up a bit.
I have not forgotten about pontif.us again. In fact, I redesigned it; see? Marvel at the simplicity!
Anyway, I’ve been reading Bakuman — I’ve read all that’s currently available, actually. It is, in a word, good, and it stands out in its self-referentiality in terms of art itself more than fandom. I could talk about that, but I won’t, as it’s plain enough to any reader, and you really should read it. I will, however, talk about the following segment.
Baka-Tsuki hosts a partially-complete translation of the Fate/Zero light novels, and I suppose I’ll read them at some point. I might’ve started earlier today, but, while looking through the associated media, I got to thinking.
Well, I’d already been thinking — specifically, about the things that define the reading experience, textual presentation and prior knowledge and such; I suppose that’s sort of my thing now. It occurred to me that the promotional and “peripheral” media associated with a core anime/manga work will often include information about the characters and setting, information that doesn’t show up in the work itself.
But to what end, I wonder?
From this post:
I’m not sure if this train of thought is common or not, but when I witnessed Rika’s weakness [Honey and Clover] for the second time, when I saw her damaged body and even more damaged mind, when I saw how she didn’t want Mayama to get hurt and how she couldn’t forget the pain of her loss…when I witnessed the spectacle that is her character, I realized something.
I realized that, in every sense of the word, she should be moe. She should be the girl that the viewer want to protect, that he wants to be with.
But she isn’t. Because the cruelty of her situation is far too severe to be made a mockery of using cute catchphrases and excessive snow.
