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Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

Kung Fury is one of my favorite things in the universe.

"You're in the Viking Age."

"Huh, that explains the laser raptors."
 
Recently, I've rewatched Akira, the original Godzilla, and watched The Boy and the Beast. My appreciation of Godzilla grows with every rewatch. I didn't pay all that much attention to Akira originally, so I gained a lot of appreciation for it. The Boy and the Beast was overly long, but still pretty touching.
 
I'm struggling to think of the last movie I took the time out of my day to watch in full. I think it may have been either Jumanji or Mrs. Doubtfire.

Sigh, I miss Robin Williams. Great guy.
 
Aaah Godzilla, the walking nuclear explosion that directors seem to forget is a walking nuclear explosion that the very ground he walked on became a radiation stockpile and would destroy indiscriminantly, as well as a tragic figure that was horribly scarred by the Pacific tests. Not some big defender of Earth, as they seemed to make him. Though the Ghidorah fights tend to be cool, I'll admit
 
Aaah Godzilla, the walking nuclear explosion that directors seem to forget is a walking nuclear explosion that the very ground he walked on became a radiation stockpile and would destroy indiscriminantly, as well as a tragic figure that was horribly scarred by the Pacific tests. Not some big defender of Earth, as they seemed to make him. Though the Ghidorah fights tend to be cool, I'll admit
Well, it's interesting to watch, because you can see how Japanese political and social culture changes over time. Initially, Godzilla represents (among other things; the monster contains multitudes) the United States. He's big, he's powerful, he kills indiscriminately (we did drop bombs on huge civilian population centers), etc. Then other monsters (Anguirus, later Rodan) show up and represent the Soviet Union, who had designs on Japanese territory. Godzilla becomes the "good guy" when an even more serious threat arrives in the form of King Ghidorah (China). After this point, Godzilla loses his association with the US and becomes much more clearly representative of Japan: he fights attempts at nuclear proliferation in the South Pacific (Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster), he combats pollution in the early '70s (Godzilla vs. Hedorah), he struggles against commercialization (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Terror of Mechagodzilla)... and then when the series rebooted in the '80s, he lost his political associations almost entirely, instead fully becoming the living embodiment of mankind's foolish hubris in a more general sense. It was with that second series of movies that Godzilla became the "hurricane" type of monster, except he's the hurricane we loosed. He's global climate change, he's nuclear winter, he's the arms race, he's the destruction we wrought on ourselves. Even in the 2014 reboot, wherein he's the "good" monster, he's the most destructive "savior" possible (and I think it's stupid the SanFran news hails him as the "Savior of Our City"... there's no city left you idiot goblins!!) and we're the ones who caused him to emerge anyway...

I have a lot of appreciation for the goofy '60s and '70s movies, and I think they're still important, but yeah, I also prefer the "hurricane" interpretation.

Funnily enough, I think all this is exactly why Legendary is fucking up the whole series. The original King Kong vs. Godzilla was hilarious and smart, but King Kong and Godzilla do not thematically mix. Kong is the monster we conquered, whereas Godzilla is the monster who conquered us.
 
Well, it's interesting to watch, because you can see how Japanese political and social culture changes over time. Initially, Godzilla represents (among other things; the monster contains multitudes) the United States. He's big, he's powerful, he kills indiscriminately (we did drop bombs on huge civilian population centers), etc. Then other monsters (Anguirus, later Rodan) show up and represent the Soviet Union, who had designs on Japanese territory. Godzilla becomes the "good guy" when an even more serious threat arrives in the form of King Ghidorah (China). After this point, Godzilla loses his association with the US and becomes much more clearly representative of Japan: he fights attempts at nuclear proliferation in the South Pacific (Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster), he combats pollution in the early '70s (Godzilla vs. Hedorah), he struggles against commercialization (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Terror of Mechagodzilla)... and then when the series rebooted in the '80s, he lost his political associations almost entirely, instead fully becoming the living embodiment of mankind's foolish hubris in a more general sense. It was with that second series of movies that Godzilla became the "hurricane" type of monster, except he's the hurricane we loosed. He's global climate change, he's nuclear winter, he's the arms race, he's the destruction we wrought on ourselves. Even in the 2014 reboot, wherein he's the "good" monster, he's the most destructive "savior" possible (and I think it's stupid the SanFran news hails him as the "Savior of Our City"... there's no city left you idiot goblins!!) and we're the ones who caused him to emerge anyway...

I have a lot of appreciation for the goofy '60s and '70s movies, and I think they're still important, but yeah, I also prefer the "hurricane" interpretation.

Funnily enough, I think all this is exactly why Legendary is fucking up the whole series. The original King Kong vs. Godzilla was hilarious and smart, but King Kong and Godzilla do not thematically mix. Kong is the monster we conquered, whereas Godzilla is the monster who conquered us.
Say what you will about Legendary's movie, but the fact is that its success revived the franchise. I heard rumors that Toho was actually going to retire Godzilla until this movie came along. Heck, Toho officially approved Legendary's take on Godzilla and was so happy with the result that they started working on their new Godzilla movie.
 
Say what you will about Legendary's movie, but the fact is that its success revived the franchise. I heard rumors that Toho was actually going to retire Godzilla until this movie came along.
It was more of a break, they were gonna leave the series be for a decade or two. Some companies do that, to let people have a break before bringing it back in a big blaze of glory.
 
So Ash is going back to school in the new Sun and Moon anime.

Looks like the Pokemon Academy sub-genre of fanfic is about to explode.
 
I just saw that and internally cringed. I had a dream that they might use Alola, the soft reboot in the games and the fact the 1000th episode airs next year to transition into a new anime, but the fact they are doing this is almost unbelievable. Just let Ash and Pikachu go out with some dignity and bring in some new people, and maybe also accept that teenagers and adults probably love the series more than little kids do?
 
I think it's time that the adult fanbase accepted that the anime just isn't aimed at them. It's not going to transform into a standalone shonen longrunner overnight, no matter what big arbitrary milestones come along. I won't reprise my usual argument about assuming too much from forum demographics, but suffice to say, Pokémon isn't and has never been the exclusive province of twenty-somethings.
 
Ash? The resident idiot hero of Pokémon going to school?! This might end up becoming a miracle in the making or a disaster before it even begins!

*Ahem...

Anyway, it would be a nice change of pace after 7 arcs focusing on collecting badges for nearly 20 years. We'll have to wait and see how this will go.
 
I quite like the idea of Ash returning to Kanto, meeting Oak's strange and shifty cousin and being sold on the idea of a Hawaiian paradise. Or being sent to school as punishment for not winning a league yet again.
 
I think it's time that the adult fanbase accepted that the anime just isn't aimed at them. It's not going to transform into a standalone shonen longrunner overnight, no matter what big arbitrary milestones come along. I won't reprise my usual argument about assuming too much from forum demographics, but suffice to say, Pokémon isn't and has never been the exclusive province of twenty-somethings.
With the ads aimed moreso at kids in Japan, it does feel like GameFreak or whoever is very much set on making this is a kids franchise, and a school-based move does seem to be a very firm statement on their thoughts on it. It is a missed opportunity though, given the renewed interest in the franchise. If they were to 'Westernise' their thinking around things, specifically such a huge milestone as 1000 episodes, it would benefit the franchise more. If they went all out and did a big anniversary thing, used it to retire Ash and relaunch the anime, and used the media to their advantage, it would be better than all the other animes that relaunched and they faded away into nothingness really.
 
Doing a relaunch for the benefit of a disaffected adult audience is a big risk. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that there really are more adult fans waiting for an "adult" anime than the current audience, there's no guarantee that it would take off. Why take the risk of the fickle fanbase dropping it once the first season's hype fades away when the tired (Pun intended) and true formula is working just fine?

I have no doubt that if an "adult" (The reason for the quotation marks is that it wouldn't be an adult anime at all, it would be a younger teenage anime) Pokémon anime were to air, people would watch it. What I'm not at all sold on is the idea that it would be some kind of renaissance moment. Pokémon has the advantage of being a big name with a big loyal fanbase, but still, juvenile battle anime are ten-a-penny. Grabbing an audience and keeping them for season after season is not at all easy.
 
So Ash goes back to school, spends a year there, learns a thing or two about how to battle properly and with superior strategy...

And instantly forgets everything he learned and Pikachu returns to level 1 the second they step off the plane/boat in the next region.
 
And then they somehow have it that Pikachu can semi-evolve into an Alolan variant Raichu, gaining Psychic-abilities as a result. Because they pulled that crap with Greninja and that not-Mega Evolution crap that I still don't get...
 
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