On the Passing Scene III

Random thoughts. Mainly concerning my recent interweb searches.

• I had previously assumed there aren't any good anime out this season—by which I mean in Japan. I watch shows streamed, and then if they come out here I buy them (looking forward to Needless, by the way—think it's out around Valentine's Day, which is just wrong).
  
  But seriously, what was I smoking? Aside from this season having the second half of Star Driver, there's Dream Eater Merry (which, if I had to describe it, would be "Mayoi Neko Overrun meets Shakugan no Shana") and Kore wa Zombie Desu ka (which is, um, actually Mayoi Neko Overrun again, but this time crossed with Monster/Resurrection Princess).
  
  Anything where a dismembered zombie asks a girl, "Could you bring my lower half over?" and she calls him a pervert, is okay by me.


• Turns out I wasn't looking in the right places for criticism of Firefly. You know who'll give that show the business? Asian Americans. It's not hard to see why: mangled, inaccurate Chinese, the trappings of various Asian institutions without their essence, the lack of any speaking parts played by, y'know, Asians, and, oh yeah, Inara.
  
  I have discussed Inara, the Mandarin swearing, and the treatment of things like Buddhism more than adequately. But the casting really is somewhat problematic, and it's odd I hadn't noticed. But then again, given how he handles female characters (that just sounds wrong), Whedon could not be trusted to have an Asian character as anything other than a token. He can write blacks, indeed Book and Zoe are two of his better characters, but the thing about black Americans is, they're culturally Anglo. I've never seen him demonstrate even basic competency with any non-Anglo culture.


• You know what? Sinoviet, in Halo, is not only less orientalist than Firefly, it's better cultural setting, too. It's a jointly owned company, I suspect, involving China and Vietnam, hence the name—and it makes heavy machinery, including, apparently, frigates like the Grafton, the Savannah, and the Forward unto Dawn, if the hologram in front of their offices is any indication.
  
  Apparently they never got rid of state-ownership there (does China have "design bureaus" the way the Soviets did, or is it more a mercantilist model?), which is admittedly somewhat plausible (state industry has a longer pedigree in the Sinosphere than, well, anywhere).
  
  And that office building, in Reach, is decorated like how such a building might well be decorated—apart from the question of whether they're okay with the royalist implications of the dragons on the fountain.


• In my SF books, I have a bunch of Japanese and Korean characters, and many of them are members of revived samurai and hwarang classes. But I go into the history of the revival, a little, and they act like actual samurai (though their code incorporates some of the Strictures of the Shinsengumi, to keep dueling to a minimum), not Hollywood samurai. They were, in part at least, originally a less orientalist iteration of the "street samurai" in cyberpunk.
  
  And, me being the anime maniac (not otaku, thank you very much) that I am, they're based on certain individual Japanese tropes and character types—i.e., they're individuals. I've got a tsundere and a lazy, droopy-eyed smartass and a scholar-nerd with weird hobbies (who's taken a vow of non-harming!) and a yojimbo who talks existentialism mixed with Zen, while challenging people to fights a lot. The two main Koreans, both hwarang, are something of a screwup, and his twin sister, a prim, proper, professional, but also somewhat shy and naive heiress...who's also a shaman (Buddhism, and therefore also Shamanism, had a revival). I don't think any of those things is particularly orientalist, do you?
  
  God, it's almost like if you know something about a culture you're not reduced to writing stereotypes of its members. Counter-intuitive, I know.


• On a related front, Whedon said Marvel's angst-wankers were better than DC's characters because, quote, "they're more identifiable". Maybe it's just my Czech hysterical streak, or maybe it's my anxiety disorder (who knows if those are related), but I'm prone to angst myself. Why the hell would I want to read about that?
  
  I think, Whedon being only semi-literate and all, that he's made a fundamental error. Two, actually. One, DC's characters are plenty identifiable, they're just also somewhat idealized. I've never heard of audiences being unable to relate to idealized characters, but then, I'm acquainted with more than 3 decades of literature. And two, people aren't really reading comic books to see the psychological exploration of "identifiable" (because they suck just as much as you do, apparently) characters. People read comics to see awesome people do cool shit.
  
  If that has managed to evade Whedon's notice, I fear there is really no help for him.


• So the German military use of Jäger intrigues me; it, like French chasseur, basically means "rifleman". Probably because most of the early ones were just some woodsmen that some bright officer realized were probably pretty good shots. Is that Jeff Cooper's ghost I see, saying "told you so"? I think it is.
  
  But it occurs to me: doesn't that mean the USMC are the biggest Jäger unit ever fielded?


• Speaking of Jäger, the unit 901-ATT "Gespenst Jäger" in Pumpkin Scissors is a neat idea, but there's already a name for that kind of unit. They're called Forlorn Hope (from Dutch for "Lost Massed-troops"). Apparently the French army gave officer commissions to anyone who survived.
  
  How about 901-ATT "Gespenst Pusch"—a trench warfare "push" is essentially a forlorn hope tactic. Their war was kinda WWI-y anyway, and the 901st aren't really Jäger anyway. Their gun isn't really a rifle.