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Uncertain Principles

Physics, Politics, Pop Culture

Saturday, October 15, 2005

The Death Star is Round

We've been watching a whole bunch of Japanese cartooooons at Chateau Steelypips recently. Most of these have been DVD's via Netflix, with a couple of things loaned to me by one of my students, though we've now moved on to episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist recorded from Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network.

The DVD sets all come with trailers for other cartoon series, which are... interesting, and I mean that in a "Go away Japanese id! You are scary!" sort of way. The number of borderline sexualized schoolgirls-with-guns stories being pitched on the Fullmetal Alchemist DVD's is really scary. I'm not what you'd call a McKinnonite feminist by any stretch, but this stuff kind of gives me the creeps (and yes, I'm aware that this is only the shiny, happy, family-friendly stuff). I pretty much gave up on Hellsing, in part because the miniskirt-and-go-go-boots uniform given to the main character (the men all get to wear pants) was just a tiny bit over the top.

So there's some creepy stuff in the Japanese id. And then, there's also the deeply goofy, such as the Japanese lyrics to the Imperial March from Star Wars (via Diane Duane).

And we won't even talk about the pop songs that run over the credits on Fullmetal Alchemist...

(Recommendations of other cartoons to check out are welcome in the comments. Bonus points for recommending stuff I can get via Netflix.)

Posted at 9:54 AM | link | follow-ups |