One of the things I've often been told to capital-C Consider is my capital-A Audience, which means you. You, the reader, and those who, like you, are reading this blog at this moment for whatever reason, all lumped together in one statistical bundle, where you might find yourself sharing your personal space with people who do not yet exist, mere hypotheticals who may or may not read these ramblings in the future, but have the potential to do so. Like Schroedinger's famous feline, we will not know unless we actually take a look.

When I started this anime blog, I had in mind an Audience of One, namely myself. This was supposed to be just a repository of all the random thoughts about anime I happened to have, where I can actually wax enthusiastic about my primary hobby and interest, without appearing too creepy to the non-anime fans on my Livejournal friendslist. (There are a few, surprisingly enough. They know of anime, but they're just not interested, and I can understand entirely.)

Almost twenty months later, I have to finally admit that there are actual flesh-and-blood people out there who are interested in what I have to say. I'm not sure what you see in this blog, and I'm not sure what I'm doing right (or wrong), but it's pretty good for my ego.

Now that I have an Audience, I must Consider this. I could just ask "so what are you here for?" and sift through the comments, but apparently this will be a biased sample, of only those who care enough to leave a comment. Also, I've been told that this method is too anecdotal. I dunno, I never scored very well at Statistics.

So we'll just have a look at what Wordpress.com Stats tells me. This will presumably include the hits by spambots, so there's the grain-of-salt thing and all that.

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Being that I completely forgot to mention it in my last post, I actually meant to lead up to a rambling of sorts on the feasibility of importing various cultural norms from the 97th Non-Administered World into the Midchilda setting of post-StrikerS Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.

The gist of the matter is that going by Hard Science, there is no reason whatsoever for our holidays and traditions to turn up in any recognizable form for the native denizens of Midchilda. And yet, from the squishy softness of the sci-fi of MSLN, it somehow seems plausible for the characters to be celebrating Christmas or some such, albeit possibly by another name.

And seeing as this is, at base, an anime made in Japan for predominantly Japanese consumers, the holidays featured would be Japanese ones, as well as Japanese interpretations of international occasions. The canon has not, to my knowledge, dealt with this in any depth as such; there's the post-A's O-Hanami in the Sound Stage (third one, I think), which involves mainly the Uminari City set of people, the Wolkenritter (who've probably gone native), and the crew of the Arthra (who might conceivably have picked up on Lindy's slightly warped Japanophilia). Tanabata will probably be given a pass, since it'll be fairly obvious to all that the stars on Midchilda will probably not look the same as on Earth.

Yet, the possibilities for fanfiction are tempting. We could use Nanoha's knowledge of her own culture to introduce Vivio to the joys of Hinamatsuri; Subaru and Ginga could have picked it up from Genya, and Caro from Fate (who, in turn, probably learned of it from Lindy or the Takamachis). Christmas-analogues are so common among the softer edge of speculative fiction, especially those marketed at a mass enough audience, that it is within the realm of Keeping To The Spirit of the Nanoha-verse to include something like it, particularly as Christmas is seen as a primarily romantic holiday in Japan. The religious aspects might be interpreted through the Church of the Sankt Kaiser, which could lead to some awkwardness on the part of Vivio.

All of this (and the previous post) was actually inspired from something which I took for granted when writing anime fanfics: Valentine's Day. The complex interplay of Will She Or Won't She, shading into Is She Or Isn't She, revolving around the one emotion which makes it all indispensible: hope. On a less dramatic note, there's always the puppy love image (although with the Three Years Later of the SSX sound stage, the dynamics have gotten more… interesting) of Caro and her handmade chocolates presented shyly to a furiously-blushing Erio. Of course, if we're willing to break the mood with some comedy, Lutecia could be standing by with her own handmade chocolates, Ensuing in Hilarity.

Which is still quite tame, compared to the potential of my favourite StrikerS duo.

Teana: Just so we're clear, this is obligation chocolate, and nothing more! Obligation chocolate! There's no deep or hidden meaning in this, okay?!
Subaru: ^_____^

The Time-Space Administration Bureau of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha oversees at least 97 "non-administrated" worlds, since Earth is number 97. The title of "non-administered" is distinct from "uninhabited", so we can assume that all of these worlds have some sort of population. The number of "administered" worlds is unknown, but is probably more than one. Depending on how accurately certain sources have been translated, the highest number I know of offhand is either 12 or 61.

Judging by events in the series, the Prime Directive is loosely enforced in the case of the non-administered worlds, and there is no injunction against revealing the existence of the TSAB when necessary.

Due to MSLN's position on the scale of sci-fi hardness at a general consistency of ketchup, we have yet to have any problems with language barriers, much less culture shock.

It's a bit hard to decide the traits for a brand new character who's supposed to seem a bit "foreign". Foreign to where? Japanese elementary school children can converse perfectly well with magical artefacts speaking in English, and do battle complete with banter with magically-constructed beings from several thousand years ago, who wield weapons speaking in German. Later, all of them head to an alien world where everyone speaks Japanese. We may postulate the existence of translator microbes, or some sort of magical equivalent, but That Way Lies Madness, where the soft sci-fi of MSLN runs head-on into the hard sci-fi tendencies of fandom.

For the sake of our collective sanity, we'll leave out of our considerations the creator in-joke of naming almost every significant character after a motor vehicle or associated aspect. This does provide for some odd mental images when I see an ad for the Nissan Teana.

The core media of MSLN is the anime, and it clearly eschews physical, sociological, and anthropological barriers in order to tell a Cool Story. Later, the extra materials of the Sound Stages, the manga, the DVD informational booklets, and random creator interviews attempt to explain away the inconsistencies after the fact, but these usually raise more questions than they answer.

Thus far, I've had to completely discard two entire fanfic uberplots due to canonical incompatibilities that have, in the anime, all the emphasis of a passing mention, or a single medium-sized manga panel. (Indeed, the first attempt was shot down because of a single manga panel, which I had hitherto not seen before.) Altering the plot is inconceivable, quite literally; an odd quirk in the way I formulate stories means that these uberplots are extruded whole, a complete work requiring only filler text to be presented as a finished item. On the upside, everything is tightly-plotted, and the guns of Anton Chekhov sound off in perfect time. On the downside, it's all a house of cards, and I don't think that I should continue the bizarre metaphors any longer than necessary.

All of this has given me a sort of blase attitude towards writing MSLN fanfic. While I try to scrutinize every aspect of my Card Captor Sakura fanfics for inconsistencies, the ever-changing canon explanations for How Things Work in the Nanoha-verse has led me to fall back upon the default answer of "Because". I shall have Vivio and several friends attempt a school project, botch it horribly, and then try to hide the results from Grown-Ups, at least until Nanoha-mama comes home and wonders why Zafira has grown thirty times his usual size. Is Vivio even able to do this? Isn't she supervised closely by the authorities? Would her accidental mischief be allowed to go that far? What of the laws of conservation of mass? I'm certainly open to suggestions, but as long as I can present a given quantity of fun, regardless of what readers think afterwards, then I consider my mission well and truly accomplished.

And yes, I have been criticized for this already. Not my stories, but my belief in just letting things be. The slippery slope is brought up quite often, as well as accusations that I have completely done away with Common Sense. I have yet to truly grok why the debating techniques used are so… antagonistic.

It'll make you happy like an old-time movie.

It's not entirely clear how old Chacha is: she seems to have the mental age and education level of a seven-year old, but her class also consists of Shiine, who's a lot smarter, and Riiya, who's… not. Marine the mermaid looks fourteen, and while she's in a different class, she seemed to have expected to get put in the same class as Riiya. I suppose "seven" is a good guesstimate.

Which makes it seem all the more wrong to keep thinking that Magical Princess Holy-Up is amazingly, incredibly hot, especially if this is what Chacha would actually look like grown up. The existence in the cultural consciousness of the Hikaru Genji Plan does not help matters.

I might go into Akazukin Chacha in a bit more detail if the mood strikes me, or perhaps a rambling on nostalgic anime in general, since the trigger which got me rewatching this was listening to the opening for Goldfish Warning. Several years and Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha later, I still have a soft squishy spot in my already-mushy heart for brightly-coloured magical girl anime. I know Goldfish Warning isn't a magical girl anime per se, but after Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, I can't help but look at Wapiko and the titular goldfish without thinking "… Unison Device?"

One of the things I've been working on when not fiddling with high explosives my computer is something I've temporarily titled "MBHC". The idea is that one day, I might finally get off my lazy posterior and learn how to create a game in Renpy. There is, of course, that tricky obstacle of learning how to code that. (Just because I effectively taught myself Java in a week doesn't mean I liked it.)

The basic premise is that the player character, who is a Typical Visual Novel Protagonist Guy (TVNPG), is from Somewhere Else, and has come to Earth to find a suitable candidate to be a magical girl. There's a lot of stuff about the Champions and Adversaries of Balance, the Bureaucracy of Destiny, so on and so forth.

But nobody really cares about that. The main point of a story which is depicted as a bishoujo game are the female characters; everything else may as well be lorem ipsum for all the attention that will be paid to it. I am, in fact, counting on this, as would a craven coward who tosses a juicy piece of meat at a ravening dog in order to make good his escape. While readers (or players, possibly) are otherwise distracted with their mental images of the moe-blobs in the story, I get to experiment with writing a whole-hearted, non-parodic, celebratory magical girl story.

The primary stumbling block I've come across is actually an old one, which has tripped me up in other original stories I have written: namely, if a story is to possess an anime feel, should it be set in Japan?

There's the old bromide about writing what you know, which doesn't really work for my habit of using a fictional locale: Singapore, being a tiny island nation, does not have any leftover space in which to place another fictional city. Placing it in Actual Singapore would alienate the majority of English-speaking readers culturally, especially if I have to make the decision whether to consider the pidgin of Singlish a separate language, and thus eligible for translation into proper grammatical English.

The only other real-life experience I have which maps over to most of the rest of the world's, thanks to the United States being the primary force in globalization in the latter half of the 20th century, is that of an American University. This is a cliche in itself, considering the sheer number of Wacky Hijinks webcomics or original stories set in an American University, most likely the author's own. Besides, I don't know much about most of the US anyway; Americans who've met me in Real Life will remember how culturally shocked I always seemed to be, as well as my catchphrase.

In a case of Damned If I Do/Don't, if I set the story in Japan, I will base it on anime, and I will get accused of being an ignorant fanboy. If I set the story in the US, I will get almost everything wrong, and I will get accused of being an ignorant foreigner. To make a hollow laughter.

I never know why the desire to move to Japan is shouted down as shallow; I have a desire to move to the US, mainly because you people seldom have to pay international shipping fees, and this statement is often met with general approval. I suspect a double standard.

It's the third time in recent memory on the City of Heroes official boards that I've come across a "recommend an anime to me" thread, and once again I find myself stumped.

There's a sort of balance one has to achieve when recommending an anime to someone who's not quite convinced that they should be spending their Copious Free Time watching it. Too enthusiastic, and we may well end up putting them off. Too many caveats, and it'll sound like we're asking them to watch something we're not even sure is good.

And for someone like me, who has been in Deep Fandom for over a dozen years, there is always the risk of alienating the supplicant by sheer unsolicited geekiness. I may wax eloquent on the virtues of the meganekko, and how the twintails on a character marks her as a tsundere with a propensity for zettai ryouiki, while the nekomimi dojikko speaking in kansai-ben is clearly quite moe, because snorfle garumphagus rethornicum, for all the sense I appear to be making to someone unfamiliar with the terms.

Were I to describe the appeal of Pani Poni Dash to the Casual Fan, I will effectively be speaking in gibbering infernal tongues that drive mere mortals mad. Or in C++, which amounts to the same thing.

There are always the "safe" anime to recommend, which seem to have a wide appeal. Cowboy Bebop is bandied about often. Evangelion, Elfen Lied, Ghost in the Shell. The field appears dominated by Fighting Action or Deep Serious Contemplation, which strikes me somewhat as an attempt to introduce anime as something that is Mature and For Thinking People. And not just for people who can Think, but people who can Think and look impressive while doing so. Something you can write a thesis about, possibly.

On the other side, we have the Shounen Action approach: Rurouni Kenshin and Trigun for the classics (making me feel at least a little old), Bleach and Naruto (admittedly, most of the Naruto recommendations specifically mention Shippuden or something) for the more recent series. There's probably a reason why these shows are particularly popular, but I haven't found the common factor yet. (For example, I like Rurouni Kenshin, but dislike Bleach. So it goes.)

And I am left with a stupendous list of anime which I'd like to recommend, but which I am painfully aware are considered at least somewhat niche. I could hold up Card Captor Sakura as my all-time favourite, but I then have to admit that it is technically aimed at little girls, albeit with a sizeable bonus for older viewers. (Also, it's out of print.) I could mention The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, except that to really appreciate the humour, one has to be passingly familiar with certain anime tropes, or the reason Haruhi forcibly recruits Mikuru into the SOS Brigade might turn out to be incomprehensible. And if one isn't really interested in romantic dramas, then KyoAni's Key adaptations oeuvre is pretty much out of the running.

Gods forbid I even think about Lucky Star or, as mentioned, Pani Poni Dash. I suppose Dokkoida isn't that obscure to the average viewer, or perhaps Sgt. Frog (aka Keroro Gunsou), but the element of risk remains.

I should probably compile a list of "safe" anime to recommend whenever the topic comes up. Obviously only titles licenced in R1 are valid, since not everyone is willing to deal with all the issues inherent in fansubs. (And for the most part, R2s probably won't be of much help.) Despite what I mentioned earlier, I'd still throw in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya into the pile, since one can look at the pretty animation, if nothing else. And then there's Read or Die for the superheroic feel, this being the City of Heroes forums. Card Captor Sakura gets mentioned for those looking for something kid-friendly, which leads to Princess Tutu. If they're interested in slightly more action of the tournament variety, Angelic Layer might be a good bet. For something magical girl but with a little more bite, Lyrical Nanoha (as I'm told Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha is being marketed in R1). Fantasy-wise, Slayers (specifically Slayers NEXT) is almost always welcome. Soft science fiction would suggest Stellvia, slice of life brings up Azumanga Daioh.

And if they express even the tiniest hint of interest in high school romantic comedies, oh, what fun we shall have.

About the point I would have to bow out of the discussion is if it turns to talk of dark (invariably with the additions of "bloody" and "gory") anime, or of Mecha. My interest in such may be measured with negative scientific notation, much less my experience and knowledge.

Nevertheless, the recommendation of anime to another sentient being remains, as always, a black art, based largely on gut feeling, and mechanically quantum: after all, despite known tastes and suspicions, nobody knows if they'll love or loathe an anime, until they actually watch it.

It requires a bit of discipline, or at least a healthy amount of guilt, in order to stick to even the vaguest schedule for blogging. Best-laid plans and all that, however, expecially when one is laid low by Real Life and illness, thus reducing the available time for Deep Thoughts about anime. I could regurgitate yet another Nanoha GamerS comic, or a quick one-liner with regards to some new facet of the Summer Season in the 2008th Year of our Lord and Saviour Sephiroth the Pretty, but that feels a bit like cheating. So I'll shift one square to something in the general proximity of anime in general, even if it is not exactly blogging about anime as much as blogging about stuff related to anime.

In this case, anime fanfiction. Yes, again.

I'm still working on several pieces of fanfiction at the same time, in an astonishing display of multitasking that probably would be more impressive if it weren't about sock-puppeting fictional characters owned by other people into some semblance of plot and drama. One of these stories is, as has been mentioned before (and which I am too lazy to link to), something set in the universe, nay, multiverse of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, post-season three. I have a large and unfeasibly detailed timeline of events which spans one thousand and five hundred years, albeit clustered with specific dates in the periods where the stories actually take place. The cast stretches to, if not thousands, then at least Far Too Many to be comfortably introduced without the reader feeling like they've stumbled onto a Baby Picture conversation. (You know the type.)

This is considered par for the ficwriting course for me. What struck me hard enough to trigger a seed of blog post inspiration, and this is not very hard at all, was the assertion that since I have so many original characters, this was no longer a work of fanfiction, but original fiction instead.

I can, with some effort, understand the claim: after all, for the most part, fanfic readers wish to read about the canon characters, rather than the diseased creations of an amateur author's fevered imagination. What they want the canon characters to do is best left for another discussion, especially since I'm trying to keep this blog at least somewhat family-friendly. The gist is that since the canon characters take something of a backseat to the action in the fanfic, it is no longer worthy of that "fanfic" label. What it is to be called now is anyone's guess.

And yet, I cannot quite tell the story I wish to tell without both using the world of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, as well as relegating the canon characters to the sidelines, at the same time. This is not for lack of trying, but just that the story requires several character types who do not appear in a major capacity in the canon. In fact, the only one who qualifies is Yuuno, who was carefully set aside to the relegation bench from a large part of StrikerS, possibly due to possession of a Y chromosome.

The Nanoha-verse is large, varied, intriguing, and almost criminally unexplored. There is a great deal of background information in the setting that we simply Do Not Know, a limitation which apparently Seven Arcs share as well, considering how bizarre some of their explanations have been. (How many moons are there over Midchilda?) And the large majority of the canon character show absolutely no sign of interest in exploring these mysteries, preferring instead to blow things up. I have created my original characters almost by necessity, for lack of anyone else to act as the Watson to Yuuno's Sherlock.

If anyone else has any better idea on how to proceed, I'm certainly open to suggestions. Or, to be honest, I will be once I get over this accursed virus.

I have mentioned before that I've been trying to create various magical girl concepts, if not actual established characters, in the HERO System. Since I've had the point hammered into me with great force that I shouldn't try to stat existing characters without compromising their stated abilities, I've been trying to create my own original magical girls from scratch.

Now, I could turn this into a series of posts about What Makes A Mahou Shoujo, but I'm not sure anyone really wants to read endless ramblings about the Creative Process, which is largely ugly, incoherent, and should not be seen by the light of day. Instead, I'll just shine a narrow beam of illumination onto one aspect which struck me as blog fodder.

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I have to give massive props to Princess Tutu for doing it right.

We've all had our discussions about how anime can be Art, or at least be in the same general vicinity as Art. Princess Tutu falls in at least the latter category, and I believe that it makes a very strong case for the former: the composition of each scene, the musical background, the plot, all of it is suffused with the essence of Art-ness. I would not hesitate to recommend this anime to those who would like an anime that makes them ponder the deconstruction (and, possibly, reconstruction) of fairy tales.

And yet, with all its Art-ness, Princess Tutu never forgets to entertain. I can watch it and analyse the roles of the Prince, the Princess, the Evil Villain, and how they're just roles rather than characters, an unfortunate fact that said characters are fully aware of. Or I can watch it and enjoy Ahiru being, well, Ahiru, the happy-go-lucky naive-but-charming little girl who isn't very good at much, but who still tries her best.

Princess Tutu is the best proof I have right now that anime doesn't have to be Serious and Edgy to be thought-provoking. It can be fun, and it can be art, all at the same time.

Also, I've always thought that Saint-Saens's "Les Carnaval des Animaux: Aquarium" would be perfect for a Creepy Eerie Revelation BGM, and Princess Tutu has done exactly that.