Frieren Would've Done the Same

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is the best anime ever made according to many corners of the internet. It surpassed Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on MAL, has a 100% average on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.9 on IMDb, and has become a social media darling thanks to its eponymous, small-statured elf. After ending last season, the memes of Frieren, Fern, and Stark in modern day swag have kept the series alive until next season. Then, Ruixian Xu stopped a knife attack in Taiwan because Himmel "would've done the same," thrusting the franchise that never quite went away into the spotlight again. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Although our Taiwanese vigilante was obviously using a refrain Frieren makes throughout the series, it's notable that Himmel is dead by the time the story starts. For those who also read the manga, Himmel was both savior and folk hero during his time, making sure to do what little he could for everyone he met during the ten-year journey to fight the demon king. I just think it's odd for fandom to attribute acts of present-day heroism to someone who isn't canonically alive but lives on in the memories (and many, many monuments) scattered throughout the land. There's someone who is far more deserving of this hero-worship: Frieren herself.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

The quirk and charm of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is that the story is rooted in saudade, the wistful memories that Himmel left Frieren with upon his passing. We almost never see Himmel as he lived but through Frieren's recollections. If we use Serie's statement about remembering each one of her disciples throughout her centuries, then I'd also assume Frieren, as an elf, has perfect memory recall. The flashbacks we see of Himmel are valuable as meeting him in real-time. But that's cheating for us as an audience, isn't it?

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Imagine Frieren: Beyond Journey's End without the Himmel flashbacks. The characters would be the same, but the presentation would be more somber, focused on a widow who cares for the children of her best friends as they guide her to heaven. She would recall stories of her lover (a word she doesn't use because elves seem incapable of doing so) and how she became a better person because of him. Instead of flashbacks, we'd watch Frieren's attention shift to a past that was, in elf time, only moments earlier. Her emotionless features may twinge with warm joy and piercing sorrow--until remembering the purpose of her journey. I think that Frieren, the same Frieren who gives herself to anyone in need because of a man we never had the privilege to know, would be someone worthy of our praise. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Kanehito Yamada & Tsukasa Abe. Viz. 

Next time you do a good deed, tell people that "Frieren would've done the same." Thanks for coming to my TED talk. 

Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story

I'm a sucker for a good boy-meets-world kind of story. These tales feature teenagers who often bump into girls with entirely different backgrounds and far more experience navigating society. FLCL, Eureka Seven, and Gurren Lagann are ones that stand out in my mind; the otaku universe has a billion more tales just like them. Call of the Night is in the same vein, but with some contemporary twists I really dig. 

Here's the short version: Ko Yamori loves playing hooky and travels around the city from dusk til dawn. Before long, he bumps into Nazuna Nanakusa, who claims to be a vampire. (I'm ninety-nine percent sure Nazuna Nanakusa is based on Haruhara Haruko from FLCL). Ko, the weird and misanthropic kid he is, wants to become a vampire, too. Turns out the only way to make more vamps in this world is for the human victim to fall in love with their vampire. Naturally, Ko and Nazuna spend their time getting into antics while figuring out what love looks like for them.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

Nazuna loves to drink and play video games. She makes a living by relieving people of their loneliness--giving massages, cuddling, and overall being a kind host. (Although it's tempting to consider this non-sexual business a uniquely Japanese idea, I feel this is more a symptom of isolation stemming within first-world, heavily capitalist and networked societies.) The glancing media critic might identify Nazuna as a manifestation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but Call of the Night front loads almost half the series with an exploration of Nazuna's past and how she fits in (and doesn't fit in) with the rest of the vampire underworld. 

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This uniqueness of character obviously brings her to Ko's attention in the first place. It also shows us the very-real phenomenon of worshipping people we just met before spending any real time together. Does learning more about Nazuna make her more or less appealing to Ko? The problem with IRL romance is that we often fail to appreciate people as relationships grow. Combined with the miserable contemporary dating scene and declining birth rates in the largest economies, any story about successful romance seems like a bold, defiant leap towards hopeful futures. Ko's desire to turn vampire comes from a naive but very human impulse to spend an exciting night with a good person.    

The thing about Ko is that he doesn't actually know what it's like to love. He's only a middle schooler, so that's totally valid, but Call of the Night lingers on this for long enough that I wonder if this is a teenage affect or a literal, chemical deficiency of oxytocin. It's clear that Ko isn't asexual and that he wants to understand the positive relationships some vampires share with humans. But this libido question is tied into the way vampires reproduce: sucking blood is inherently sexual, and converting someone into a vampire requires a love connection. To extrapolate again into real-world context, it's significant to note that teenagers report having less sexual intercourse, but this complicated by evolving definitions of what sexual intimacy and identity look like. In Call of the Night, the vampiric relationship is entirely dependent on consummation via bloodsucking and conversion, which causes trouble for Ko and Nazuna among the old guard when they fail to do so.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This post is titled Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story, but discusses a manga centered around a heterosexual relationship. The manga does explore a few LGBT+ relationships, and these turn out to be significant in Nazuna’s life. Considering the value of sexual reproduction is nearly nonexistent for vampires, this gender indifference makes perfect sense for author Kotoyama to explore. Call of the Night is not a BL or yaoi manga; nevertheless, this attitude towards fluidity is refreshing. It's notable that this manga is part of the Viz Manga app and not the Shonen Jump one, so its target demographic feels broader than just action-loving boys.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

At the risk of making a longer post with more ramblings about the contemporary state of love--a matter in which I am not an expert but can only speak from the perspective of someone married for six years--you should read Call of the Night. I plan on watching the anime as soon as I finish the manga.

Stravaganza and the Strange Case of Monkey Negroes

(NSFW; racism and rape discussion ahead)

In Stravaganza: The Queen in the Iron Mask, Claria must defend her kingdom from a horde of Umber, these mindless gorilla-like beasts who look like Alf with white fur. We eventually learn there’s a poison that infects animals and drives them mad, so the queen sets out to find the source. It’s a dark fantasy tale in the seinen demographic, mixing violence with fanservice. It's not until Volume 2 of the omnibus, however, where this manga hits you with a double whammy of awful content. 

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

The racism starts as soon as Claria ventures into a vertically-oriented city of Reydin built by the Klord, a BLACK RACE OF MONKEY-TAILED PEOPLE. Having read halfway through the series already, I wanted to believe this was some misplaced form of flattery. “Having a prehensile tail can be cool, right?” Combining that factor with the big lips, and names like Tom Tom and Kum Kum, made such a dream impossible. Dignifying this weird shit would lead to a well-deserved loss of my Black card.

And yet, it was hard to look away from the proverbial train wreck.

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

I read on as our blonde heroine is forced to kill one of her Klord hosts in self-defense. (He tries licking her and tearing her clothes off, too, as a perversion of the attraction he had while still sane.) The village constable doesn’t care for Claria's explanation, and doesn't believe she's been traveling around for a poison cure. Claria is swiftly thrown in jail, where she is stripped, assaulted, and whipped for supposed spy secrets. It turns out these Klord really love whipping people? 

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

It would not have taken Akihito Tomi much effort to see how this content might offend. Yes, I understand Stravaganza is fiction. And no, Tomi isn’t obliged to create content anyone agrees with. Most Klord in the comic are nonviolent (until the city is poisoned, that is). In real life, Black people sometimes have big lips and can be quite athletic. But do you see what’s happening here? We can excuse any sort of creative decisions by appealing to tangential facts. What are the relevant facts, then, when it comes to Stravaganza and comic book racism?

Stravaganza Vol 2. Akihito Tomi, Udon Entertainment, 2015. 

While there are other kinds of humanoids in this comic—ogres and giants come to mind—the Klord are the only ones that rely on and reinforce tropes that were used to cause social harms to real people. Now, it’s commonly argued that racism as we know it in America has no cultural context in Japan, so their Jim Crow depictions are abstractions without meaning. I doubt that level of ignorance is possible in 2024, but let’s make that concession: a broader view of racism would at least criticize Tomi’s lazy design choices behind Reydin, the Klord, and their afro-sporting king who looks like he was pulled from a disco party. There’s plenty of contemporary anime and manga that doesn’t raise these flags with its Black characters.

If I finish this series, I’ll use scanlations or something. The idea of paying to read the rest makes me feel icky.