"Everything rises, going at it all, all the surprises in a size too small."

[nausicaa83]

The flu is still running rampant through my body, so yesterday I called my doctor. He said I should keep taking my meds and go see him on monday if I'm not feeling any better. I don't have any fever, so that's a plus. But I feel like I were twelve again, catching every single virus at school and spending days at home in my pajamas coughing and sneezing. Oh well. Plus everyone else is sick too (my therapist, my neighbours, my aunt, everyone), so I can't really complain that much. ^^

As always, the good part about being sick and stuck at home is marathoning tv shows. Today I went for a 2011 anime, Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Now, I stopped watching anime a few years ago, when the moe mania started. I just don't like the whole moe thing, and it makes me really uncomfortable. I dipped my toe again with Shingeki no Kyojin, because it was so different from the current trend, and a lot more like the anime I used to watch back then. This one, judging from pictures I saw online, looked like just another moe product. But I kept reading estatic reviews from people whose taste I trust, and it's only 12 episodes, so I thought "why not?". As it turns out, all those reviews were absolutely right. What I found myself watching was a four-hour-long breathtaking movie that took the 'magical girl' genre and completely re-wrote it from the roots up. With fantastic female characters, great storytelling, a beautiful love story and a heartbreaking plot, they made a milestone and at the same time destroyed and gave new birth to the genre.

I can't really talk about the plot because spoilers would completely ruin the experience. What I can say is that there's a magical cat that goes around offering young girls magical powers by granting them one wish. And nothing is what it seems. When it was over my first instinct was to just start it all over again, to see the plot untwist this time knowing what was going to happen, but then I remembered it was aerosol time. ^^" I can definitely say it's a story that enriched me, and that definitely won't leave me anytime soon. It's an experience that I'm very happy I had, even if it made me cry a lot. *_____*

And now, seriously, aerosol time, before I cough up a lung.

Comments

[stardust-made.livejournal.com]

Oh, you poor, poor thing. WTF, virus? It seems like it's not just really stubborn, but it's nasty and wide-spread, too.*glares at it* *makes shooing noises*

I'm glad that at least the weekend of feeling poorly has translated into some nice viewing and reading.:)

I looked through my gifs to find something funny for you; you might have seen it but it always makes me grin - I hope it gives you a giggle or two as well:

[nausicaa83.livejournal.com]

I had seen that gif before, and yet it still sent me in a coughing fit, I was laughing so hard. XD

My therapist and I exchanged a lot of frustrated texts yesterday, complaining and whining and toasting with cough syrup, it was great. ^^

[tati81.livejournal.com]

OMG LOL! Sherlock cat! XDDD

[stardust-made.livejournal.com]

I know, it's brilliant!:D I laugh every time I see it!

[enchanter.livejournal.com]

*ignorant* What's moe?

I've been watching Saiyuki again recently. I'm not really eager to go looking for new productions. :P Sometimes it's good to know there's a fix that will always work when I need it. ;)

[nausicaa83.livejournal.com]

Moe is the reason we, who started watching anime ten years ago, had to stop because new shows sucked. Or to put it in better terms, moe is that new genre where characters are 'cute', with large eyes, colored hair, and mostly prebuscent girls who are over-sexualized, with under-the-skirt shots and so on. For the past few years most new anime has been like that, obviously aimed at a very specific target of horny straight males. And that alienated most of the old audience. This summer two new anime reclaimed us old fans: Free! and Attack on Titan. Free! is a swimming anime full of pretty boys aimed at girls, while Attack on Titan is a good old-fashioned anime with normal-looking characters, many strong female characters with their own agenda and different personalities, and not a single sexualized scene. Everyone went crazy, because for once they were addressing a different kind of audience.

A great read about this moe trend would be the manga Bakuman. It's from the authors of Death Note, so it has its flaws (flat female characters and too much dialogues), but it shows in detail what the anime and manga industry is like nowadays. It's a bleak picture, but very interesting at the same time.

What they did with Puella Magi Madoka Magica was to take what would be 'moe' characters, and write a beautiful, complex story about hope in times of despair, depression, death. At the beginning it's weird, because you feel like you're watching the same crap Japan has been spewing lately, and then the characters start have agendas, complex personalities, they care and they think about their actions and the consequences, they even fall in love with each other, and no one is sexualized, and by episode three you realize you're looking at the destruction of the moe mania and the birth of something amazing.

I've re-watched my favourite anime during this long wait too, but with Madoka Magica and Attack on Titan I'm starting to feel like maybe the wait is over, and these are not exceptions but the start of a new golden era in anime history. ^^

[enchanter.livejournal.com]

Ohh, okay. Thank you for the explanation. :D See, I've been out of pretty much everything for the past few years, having watched some (non-anime) shows on and off with hardly more than passing interest and without getting anywhere near fandom of any kind. Maybe these sentiments are a sign that I'm getting old (:P), because lately I've had this irresistible urge to revisit old fandoms. I haven't watched any new anime since... I can't even remember. >.< So I wasn't aware of the moe trend. Thanks for filling me in. ;)

[nausicaa83.livejournal.com]

Funny enough, moe is also the reason I got into tv shows. With no more new anime to catch my interest, I started watching live-action tv shows instead, and pretty soon I was hooked. But, even with the old anime that are always in my heart, it's nice to fall in love with something new. ^^

[enchanter.livejournal.com]

I'm so picky about the stuff I watch. >.< I get a taste of various shows because Sami watches them; I usually peek at the tv while doing something else and if something catches my interest, I might get hooked. ;) But since he doesn't watch anime, I'd have to go looking for new ones to watch, and I just can't be bothered to sort through all the crappy ones. >.<

On another note, I find it really sad that pretty much all the old anime fandoms are now dead (or, some are still twitching, but in a zombie-like way). At least the old good!fic is mostly still there...

[nausicaa83.livejournal.com]

The only anime fandom that's still alive, as far as I can tell, is the Full Metal Alchemist one, but they only talk about the manga and the Brotherhood anime, while I dislike them both. No one talks about the first FMA anime, sadly, and that's one of my favourites. ^^"

Contrary to tv shows and movies, anime fandoms die very fast. Madoka Magica is a 2011 anime, and yet from what I can see the fandom is already dead. =_=