What is a Pterobat?

What is a Pterobat?

So, my blog name. It's the result of trying to change my Internet Name after over a decade of using it. It finally occurred to me that "Incisivis" wasn't the easiest thing to spell, pronounce, or remember, just as it eventually occurred to me that "Dragonclaw", my previous one, was uncreative and probably made me sound like a dopey furry. Being that way, I eventually settled on "Pterobat".

"Pterobat" is obviously a combination of the words "pterosaur" and "bat", two of my favourite things, and it has a certain ring to it. I started using it to refer to a certain style of wing found on the characters of Disney's Gargoyles series: characters who had tiny hands on their wings and a single supporting rib, but with the wing's edge being notched to suggest there was further, "invisible" ribbing. I never used it this very much this way, and so repurposing it was easy.

Today, I think of "pterobat" as referring to that certain kind of biologically inaccurate pterosaur which has batlike wings (hands included or not), usually also mixing features from different species. I also kept thinking of alien animals from the Transformers cartoon that might be called pterobat-like.  Shrikebats, first mentioned in the movie, and depicted in the episode "Chaos" of the original TV series, and a similar, smaller creature called Groyle is also seen in the episode "Madmans Paradise".

Picking the name rises from my pterosaur obsession, which I've had since childhood. I collect pterosaur junk and know a few things about things, and also wait for the day when a pterosaur-based fictional character doesn't suck. I don't know why I like pterosaurs like I do, but I don't mind pterobats at all.

The current blog header is derived from a piece of art by Edward Newman, and it actually is an early attempt at depicting a pterosaur. According to his Wikipedia entry (*sigh*) this was Newman interpreting a pterosaur as a mammalian creature, a "marsupial bat", and he published this in an 1843 edition of The Zoologist. Interesting if true, since it makes my header selection pretty on-the-nose, when I didn't know the origin of the art at first.

Pixar's "Brave": Questioning the Rebellious Princess

Brave is not about a Rebellious Princess who undergoes an awakening into heroism. Instead, it's about a Rebellious Princess who puts a spell on her mother in order to break out of the role, and must right her wrong. There's also a lot of comic relief, an impending clan war, and an evil monster bear.

There were some good parts to this movie, some parts that didn't work, and an it overally defines the term "mixed bag", and thus leaves a viewer wanting a little bit more, for it to stick to what it established.

Because Merida ends up turning her mother into a bear as a result of the usual "spirit not letter" wish, and then refuses to admit it is her fault, the movie places Merida's mother, Queen Elinor, on the moral high ground. True, Merida and her mother both must reconcile their dislike of each other in order to break the spell before it becomes permanent, but Merida is further in the wrong right from the start.

Merida's objections to stifling protocol and an arranged marriage are played like the carping of a spoiled brat, and her objections never feel as though the narrative takes them seriously. She is also the one who cast that damaging wish, and clan war starts brewing over her defiance of that arranged marriage. When Merida must finally fight a monster, all her crack shooting with arrows becomes completely ineffective. This all makes it clear that Brave wishes to tell a story that questions the value of the cherished fantasy archetype.

In the end, however, Brave becomes hesitant about any of these things. Despite all the dumping on Merdia, the narrative still decides to stick with modern values. Merida declares that people can choose who they love instead of engaging in contests for her. It feels like lip service, since the implication is that the three clan princes are still all she can choose from, and of course because Brave was, up till that point, not celebrating female rebellion.

The best thing to come out of the film is the relationship between Merida and her mother, Elinor. It's rare that a mother/daughter relationship is at the centre of an animated fantasy film, and the reconciliation between the two is honest and heartfelt, but it only begins when Merida tries to make good on her mistake.

 Elinor is also not a strawman, since her desires are instead connected to current practical need as stemming from tradition. However, developed characters does not mean a movie is neutral, and it is exactly because Elinor's concerns are justified that Brave appears to challenge the Rebellious Princess myth.

Another false impression that Brave gives from the trailers was that it would be a more dramatic and earnest film than it was. As it happens, there is a lot of comic relief, which isn't grating if a viewer expected it, but it's disappointing when it seemed Brave was to be going in a more straightforward direction.

Most of this comic relief comes from the entire male cast. Merida's father King Fergus is a ferocious warrior and loving father, but he's also there to be "the fun parent" and "the goofy dad". Queen Elinor is clearly the one who wears the "pants" in the castle and the only one concerned with making sure it's running smoothly. As a result, Fergus is just comic relief, and stacked up against his wife's emotional growth, is a weak character. When Pixar movies are usually so good, to see such a lazy dynamic between the parents is disappointing.

The other clan heads and their sons are even sillier, which makes the threat of impending war harder to take seriously. Because they are such silly characters, one could think that this is a concession to the championing of western values, a knock on arranged marriage, but it's difficult to shake the impression given by the main storyline. There is still potential war going on, however comical it looks.

Add to this Merida's little brothers, who are only named once and no lines at all, it seems like the movie built up its central female dynamic and just decided to call it a day, instead of creating a fully fleshed-out cast of both genders.

However, there's also a lot of slapstick coming from the female characters. The transformed Elinor refuses to get rid of her crown or dainty behaviour, and communicates through pantomime and anthropomorphic expressions. The forest witch also sells bear carvings, with an entire hut full of quirky wooden automatons, and also puts on a welding mask to use her cauldron, which also functions as a voicemail. There's a maid who always screams and is tormented by the princes. It's all just a little too goofy.

Another problem is the antagonist Mor'du, the monstrous bear of legend. Mor'du was once a man, fighting his brothers for control of a kingdom. He wished "for the strength of ten men" and became a giant bear instead. There are reasons for him to be in the film: he appears in the cold open and took Fergus's leg, his legend is what Elinor uses to try to teach Merida a lesson, and the forest witch implies she was responsible for him, too. His fate reinforces the notion that you must Be Careful What You Wish For, and reminds viewers that Elinor's transformation could become permanent. However, Mor'du only appears at the beginning and the middle of the film.  He is connected to the story, but it's a weak link, because when Mor'du is not there, his presence is not missed.

In fact, because the film already has the mother/daughter conflict, the need to break the spell, and the need to reconcile the hostile clans, Mor'du feels like a fifth wheel, maybe added only because of the false expectation an animated family film must have a villain.

In the middle of this muddle, viewers might ask why the film is called Brave when it's not about a heroic rite of passage. The most likely explanation is Merida is "Brave" for admitting her mother could be right, and that the spell was her fault and not the witch's. In addition, Elinor and Merida are both "brave" for reconciling themselves to each other's worldview. If this was the intention, however, the theme does not hang strongly enough. As mentioned above, it obvious that Merida needs to change far more than Elinor does, and the film still waffles, unable to commit to the criticisms it makes.

Many have compared the film to How to Train Your Dragon, but the similarities are only surface, coming from their visual motifs. There is a fundamental difference between the two movies, which is that Hiccup learns he can be himself instead of being the Viking boy his father wants him to be, while Merida learns that being the princess girl her mother wants her to be isn't that bad. How to Train Your Dragon also sticks absolutely to its theme and makes it clear, while Brave backs off.

The overlaid comic relief, the fifth-wheel antagonist, are also problems. As a final cap, the movie also feels derivative and predictable. Much of Merida and Elinor's arguments have a familiar ring, as does the fact of wishes that backfire, and the sitcom dynamic between husband and wife. Many events are easy to call before they happen.

These facts are as disappointing as they are aggravating. Brave represented a change for Pixar, its first attempt at heroic fantasy and its first film with a female protagonist, and it could have been much better than it was. This doesn't represent a permanent step down for Pixar, but it is a sad thing.

Yumi Tamura's Basara

If this manga could be described in one sentence, it would be "heroic fantasy as seen through a feminine lens". The structure of Basara is a familiar one: a hero rises from humble circumstances to change a world that is under the thrall of an evil king. Yet this version is also heavily inundated with romance (by both the classical and modern definition) and melodrama. Many tears are shed on all sides and by both genders, and the central conceit is that the heroine and hero are actually on opposite sides of a war…but they don't realize it when they fall in love.

Technically Basara is science fiction, as it takes place in a post-apocalyptic Japan that has become in large part a desert. But to the initial eye, these characters seem to come from the distant past, with robes and swords and ancient-looking villages. The exact nature of the disaster is never explained, with the present-day story being far more important.

Japan is under the rule of King Ukon, who has divided his territory among his chidren: the Black, White, Red, and Blue Kings. In a small desert village, a pair of boy and girl twins have been born, and one is prophesied to be the "child of destiny" that will save Japan. Everyone assumes it is the boy, Tatara, and he is celebrated while his sister Sarasa grows up in his shadow.

However, when a raid by the Red King's army leads to Tatara's death, Sarasa disguises herself as her brother, and sets out to gather allies, overthrow the dynasty, and bring peace to Japan. Sometimes she  goes to bathe undisguised at the nearest hot spring, and there she meets a handsome boy named Shuri. They fall in love, meeting at hotsprings and communicating long distance. However, neither realizes they are Tatara and the Red King, sworn enemies.

Basara  is an epic in the truest sense. Unlike some other long manga series, each volume, except for the last two, feels like a single novel split into multiple parts, with the story gathering momentum through each book, and the scope of the world gradually revealed. No space feels wasted, and more importantly, though it is wide in scope with a large cast, Basara remains focused on the emotion and characterization, which makes the larger plot compelling.

Also like most good stories, Basara does not proceed in a straight line to the ending its characters anticipate. Shuri and Sarasa discover the truth in the middle of the story, and King Ukon is not what they would expect when the audience finally meets him.

The girl-disguised-as-a-boy is a classic trope, and thankfully Basara doesn't keep it a secret from her allies until the very end. Sarasa is a compelling heroine, one of those who is obviously destined to win, but shows enough weakness and indecision that they are "human" while still obviously a hero. Sometimes the emotions involved may seem a bit over the top, but that is the nature of this genre of manga. Shuri is also a worthy match, fierce in battle but easygoing out of it, and able to question himself and his role. Both of their characters change and develop over time, and other cast members also change.

And, if you're searching for progressive ideals in fiction, one could do much worse than Basara. It's the sort of story where some concession is made towards a realistic depiction of the status of women in a "medieval" country, but female characters are given plenty of opportunities to shine in both feminine and masculine roles. The story also doesn't suggest that Sarasa secretly pines to return to her "proper" role as a girl. Any moments where she wishes to "just be a girl" are attributed to normal stress, and are about her young age more than her gender.

The art is shojo art, consistent with its manga genre. The young adult characters are often lean and androgynous, with similar bodies once the hair, skin tone, and clothing are taken out of account. However, Tamura can also draw characters of other body types and ages. "Cute" characters such as babies and Sarasa's pet owlet Shinbashi are drawn in a cartoony, scribbled style, which creates an inconsistency. Backgrounds are often amorphous and can make it difficult to see what is going on in the worst cases. However, the costume designs are great, and the art isn't actually bad, it's just a style that may be difficult to get used to, since by 2012, it might be considered "old-school".

The actual story ends at volume 25, while the material continues to volume 27. These last two volumes are a disappointment: Tamura's short comic strips about her characters are fun, but the rest of it, the series of short stories, add things we don't need to see or don't want to see. There are revelations and sequel content that are too cheesy, or too unnecessarily bleak. They can't bring down the rest of the series, but they are disappointing volumes.

Basara is neither a story about the large conflict or the small conflict. Both blend together, both are important, and this gives the series a richer feel than it otherwise would have. It is a crying shame that this series is currently out of print, with volumes 18-20 suffering from enormous price inflations on the secondary market.

Diagnosing Loki Fangirls

Well, I've been away from blogging for a while, and there's no excuse but that I somehow lost the mojo, which is easy to do since this is a hobby and not the job I intend to have. It's why I can be so lazy to begin with. So, let's get to it.

I saw Thor a while ago, and it was a fun movie--to me, it read like a better version of The Lion King, with a more compelling arc for the lead, a consistently threatening villain, and a more palatable take on all that fantasy racism. I also saw The Avengers before that, feeling I knew enough of the continuity to get by, and I was right. Both films have the kind of spirit I hope my work to have someday: ultimately gimmicky fun, yet also capable of some heartfelt emotion and never losing a sense of humour.

Something I want to talk about, though, is how many fangirls Loki has, and the fan boy "theorizing" as to why it happened.

I want, and try, to make room in my worldview for multiple interpretations of fictional characters, but at a certain point the notion that a character who commits evil deeds isn't a villain becomes something I can't get on board with. Regardless of the reasons these characters have for turning to evil, no amount of sympathetic backstory or understandable motivation can wipe their records clean. Writers should still try to give their villains these two things in order to create a richer world, but usually the roles of hero and villain are usually still clear enough.

The weird thing is not that female viewers have a crush on Loki, but that some of them insist he's not a villain. All of this has been attributed to some kind of hardwired female masochism. Women are inclined to throw themselves at dangerous guys in reality or fiction, trying to change them, trying to interpret them as Not Such a Bad Guy. This is the nasty gender stereotype explanation most often floated for villain fangirls, and it's not supposed to end with fiction.

It suggests women suffer from a fundamental lack of perception as to what a character is "really" like, i.e. a bad person, and that they always desire to "change" a man, an enterprise that would be useless and ultimately hurtful were the character real, but dammit, those silly little women would just keep trying. It's all implied to mirror a drama carried out in real life, a dramatic role that has nothing to do with societal expectations of women, but just the way women are. Women like to hurt themselves by being attached to assholes, whether in reality and fiction.

It's pretty disgusting to see over and over again, and because of this it's tempting to view the stereotypical "villain fangirl" as a straw(wo)man, designed to prop up these myths of female masochism. Yet evidence for this type of nerd exists all around us, so to a point it's real, but the explanations may not be.

Goodbye.

Yesterday, Ray Bradbury died. I had spent the morning remaking one of my old short stories, and later saw the news on Neil Gaiman's blog feed. As soon as I saw Bradbury's name in the header, I knew what had happened. I sat there numb for a few moments, before seeing what other sites had to say. Their memories were all fond, coming from various eras and locations, but all full of reverence.

My earliest Bradbury memory was reading Fahrenheit 451 in high school, which I had taken out by special request from our classic lit mini-library because the main library didn't have it. I didn't, and still don't, share Bradbury's distaste for new technologies and the way they eroded reading, something Bradbury would later claim was the main narrative thrust of the novel. I can't see this as the main focus over the book-burning and censorship analogy, but the distaste for technological entertainment is still there.

I was disturbed anyway, by the idea of the loss of so many books, the active destruction and even that only the "great" books would survive, since there were only so many to memorize them. Some always wish for a world in which only the greatest art is always produced, but in truth, we need the bad and the mediocre to help define greatness, not to mention value is often not connected to quality.

Since that day, I read more and more Bradbury, needing no encouragement. There was never any shortage of novels and short story collections at the library and used bookstores. I loved them. I loved his tremendous imagination, his breadth of genre, his eternally distinct voice, the prose that was so evocative--with a few simple words you could feel something exactly, and it seemed to tap-dance across the page.

The Martian Chronicles is my favourite of his works, its creativity and emotional engagement outshining the fact that it's from a bygone era of solar system interpretation. The Mars of Bradbury's imagination never existed, but we like to visit it.

A voice in the back of my head reminds me that this reverence may seem odd, when Ray Bradbury's work is also steeped in boyish Americana, and a nostalgia for a time that may never have existed, or only existed in a child's mind. I have never been male or American, and I'm not a reactionary, but somehow I still "got it", even if he never intended me to.

From reading his non-fiction, I also get the impression that Bradbury was one of those men who saw women as serene beings, "complete" onto themselves and concerned only with the practical business of daily life, while men were creatures of dreaming and imagination, deprecatingly viewed as not "whole" when compared to women, but nonetheless responsible for every fantastical desire. It's a view I can never totally forgive Bradbury for, but my interest in him remains.

If anyone has ever wondered why I post so sporadically, it's because I want to be a fiction writer, and am currently trying to bring several short stories and novels up to par so that I can start. Ray Bradbury was one of my literary inspirations, and I wish that I could have had the chance to meet him. He was not everything I wanted to be, but he was many of those things, with his skillful writing, his extreme earnestness, and love of dinosaurs and the written word.

Princess Jellyfish: Ambiguity and Fashionable Geekdom

I love this series because it is sweet and entertaining, but it's also got depth, refusing to offer simple scenarios or simple answers. Also because it hits a little too close to home in both a good and bad way, and far more directly than any other anime that I can make that claim about.

Tsukimi Kurashita is an eighteen-year-old girl who moved to Tokyo to become an illustrator. However, she has not gone anywhere yet, and is living in a small apartment block with "The Sisterhood": four slightly older women, and one female manga artist who is never seen and communicates with notes under the door. All visible members are "otaku", characterized by obsessive focus on a single thing, and with the typical social awkwardness and unfashionable dressing this suggests.

For Tsukimi, her "thing" is jellyfish, which are also connected to nostalgic memories of her deceased mother. When she makes the regular trip to the pet shop to talk to her jellyfish friend, "Clara" (a play on "Kura", as in "Kurage", the Japanese word for jellyfish), she sees Clara's tank now has another jelly species whose secretions are poisonous to her/it. Tsukimi tries to muster up the courage to talk to the hip clerk in the closed shop, but can't succeed…before a glamorous girl shows up and demands Clara for Tsukimi. Shocked at the kindness of one of "The Stylish", Tsukimi takes Clara home with the girl in tow.

This girl is actually a boy: Kuranosuke Koibuchi, the illegitimate son of a powerful political family. Kuranosuke regardless lives with his father, and cross-dresses to come off as too crazy for politics, and to reconnect with the glamorous mother who was pressured into giving him up. Kuranosuke genuinely likes living with the Sisterhood, keeping up with a disguise that only Tsukimi knows is false, which is good, because the apartment is a "nunnery", with no male tenants allowed.

Kuranosuke also wants to be the one to get them dressing better and acting better, especially because their apartment block is threatened by redevelopment, and they need to become respectable to protest it. Furthermore, they are going to try to raise money to buy the building. They start out with the flea market, and end up trying to create a line of jellyfish-themed dresses for sale. Oh, and in the middle is a very awkward love triangle between Tsukimi, Kuranosuke, and Kuranosuke's older ("legitimate") brother, Shu.

Shu catches sight of the first made-over Tsukimi and is immediately smitten, despite their being over a decade of age difference (Shu is thirty). It takes a long time for Shu to realize who Tsukimi is, seeing her several times in her regular sweats, and assuming the made-over Tsukimi is a different girl. The age difference is, I guess, supposed to be overwritten by different cultural standards, and the fact that Shu is a virgin who's never been kissed or been on a date, putting him on a "young" level and equivalent to Tsukimi's inexperience, but it's still a little creepy.

There's a fourth person who has the potential to get with nobody but Shu: Shoko Inari, a woman involved with the area development. She slips Shu a mickey and tries to convince him they had sex, in order to blackmail him into supporting the project to Shu's father. There are some genuinely poignant moments at first, when Shu comes staggering home with his clothes rumpled, and then goes to Tsukimi's just to hold her hand, but the rest of the story is played mostly for comedy.

Inari fancies herself a femme fatale and expert manipulator, but is prone to explosive, cartoony rages and behaving like a child. When Inari starts following Shu around to get her blackmail, it's played as comedic rather than disturbing. To make it worse, it eventually looks like Inari might be falling for Shu genuinely. Neither the anime nor the manga has anything happen between them, but the direction creates further discomfort. It's not entirely okay for Shu to be in love with Tsukimi, but this isn't the best alternative.

A series about female geeks, in large number and without male counterparts (though one could argue that Kuranosuke is a "fashion geek", and his family has a chauffeur named Hanamori who is quite obsessed with his Benzes), is something unusual. That it's unusual is not surprising, given certain perceptions of gender, but it's good to have something different, anything that demonstrates that female characters can be flawed in that very real way, without pulling back. Though Tsukimi has the most development, you would know people like every "Nun" if you hang in geeky communities. The only exception might be Mayaya, obsessed with the Three Kingdoms, who becomes a "cartoon" by yelling her sentences and making vaguely martial-arts poses and hand movements.

Of course, few pieces of popular fiction remain static as their story progresses, and these characters must change from what they were. The use of makeovers does mean the story is simply about the female characters learning to be "normal", however. There are many layers to the presentation, so that the audience is not left with a simple understanding of what Tsukimi "ought" to be.

Sometimes there is the sense that Tsukimi should break free of her otaku bubble, with her friends being potential dead weight because they have weaker characterization and less ambition. The major exception is Chieko, invested in traditional Japanese dolls and clothing. Her mother owns the building and she functions as the "den mother" and is also a wizard at sewing, meaning she has some skills and practical intelligence to offer. Chieko helps to make sure Tsukimi's friends aren't just obstacles to her becoming "normal".

Yet at the same time, Chieko is not as complex as Tsukimi, and the rest of them (Bamba, Mayaya, Jiji), are far less competent. They are eternally reluctant to help out and easily distracted, by their obsessions, their laziness, some good food, or by their fears and persecution complexes in regards to the fashionable elite. So the picture is not rosy either.

Tsukimi also keeps switching back and forth in her appearance, and Kuranosuke in fact surprises himself by being happy the first time he has seen Tsukimi changed back. Tsukimi's musings also include questioning of whether women truly do need to become "princesses" to be happy.

Kuranosuke also starts to perform his technique on all the other "outside" girls except for Chieko (whose signature kimono can blend in with the fashionable), and they continue to be unchanged in other ways. When Kuranosuke takes them all out to a cafe, Bamba is watching for trains and Jiji is watching for old men, their respective obsessions. Furthermore, Tsukimi's love of jellyfish, the main characteristic of her geekdom, becomes fuel for artistic creativity, meaning that not everything about her needs to be changed. The popular presumption that a makeover will make a character automatically more poised is therefore challenged, but it could go other ways than just to make it so that fashionable dressing is no big deal.

Before this, it is also made clear that the Sisterhood has a persecution complex/fear of "The Stylish" that at first seems ridiculous once we meet the friendly and glamorous Kuranosuke, whom everyone but Tsukimi are unjustifiably abrasive towards when they first meet him. Yet Inari and others also confirm their implied fears, that "The Stylish" are not only different from they are, but predatory and nasty.

This is what I mean by Princess Jellyfish offering no easy answers, and audience reaction to it is bound to be equally complex. While a story isn't obligated to be politically correct, it's always harder to get viewers on your side if a story has the already-looked down on groups of society do as they are already encouraged to do in real life. And where is the line between taking care of yourself and arbitrary standards of beauty? It is convincing when Kuranosuke tells the Sisterhood that to be taken seriously in protest against the development, they must dress respectfully, i.e. fashionably, but Kuranosuke, as a disguised boy, can also reject the trappings of femininity anytime he wants, while the Sisterhood, as women, are asked to consider them obligatory rather than a personal preference. One's interpretation of what this series is doing may depend largely on their personal experiences.

One could argue that Princess Jellyfish involves pandering to its audience, with what is technically a story about a plain girl (potentially) getting a beautiful boy. Yet pandering is fine if it's not obvious, and the quality of the main characterizations, and the constant shifting the series undergoes makes Princess Jellyfish at least look objective. The makeover plots have made so that Princess Jellyfish can't be a total reversal of the "plain guy gets beautiful girl" plot already, either.

However pandering, romantic, or comedic Princess Jellyfish might become, though, Tsukimi's awkwardness and fears feel extremely real for anyone who has ever undergone something similar. ANNCast even made note that Princess Jellyfish is a series that is about a fundamentally female experience, or at least, a contemporary, urban "female experience" rather than a universal one. It maybe Japanese, but I, as a North American viewer, still "got it". It's not about Princess Jellyfish being a "chick show", but something more about the day-to-day living as a young woman whose life didn't follow the script, both by accident and design. Yet anime fandom was raving about this series, so it must speak to male viewers as well.

Princess Jellyfish is not perfect. As I suggested, the focus is on Tsukimi, and while the other members of the Sisterhood  have character, they don't change or develop as the plot progresses, and often serve as just comic relief or sewing machines. While the makeover plots mostly do a good job of justifying themselves, Kuranosuke's desire to get rid of Tsukimi's glasses or saddle the girls with high heels brings slight physical crippling into the mix and is harder to accept.

I also have a slight preference for the original manga version. The anime isn't bad, but in the name of finishing off a series while the manga is still ongoing, the characters' outward problem is solved too quickly, as Chieko's mother shows up and tells them she isn't selling the building after all, and the love story is still left open. It's better than if the series went on longer and added more of its own off-the-cuff material, but it means the series is not as fulfilling as it could have been. The manga version takes more time to flesh out the story of characters trying to solve their money woes, and probably will finish off the romantic aspect in some way. Unfortunately, only the anime is officially available in English, while the manga is confined to scanlations.

Aesthetically the series is also successful, though the realistic setting dictates everything be low-key. The dubbing is good, so is the original Japanese acting, and the score is okay. The animation in the TV series is decent, and the artwork is great. Every character looks distinct, which is especially good for the female cast, because female animation designs rarely have that same sense of character that male designs are allowed. All of the Sisterhood looks different, and though tiny, afro'ed Bamba and lanky, square-jawed Mayaya might seem too unfeminine for some viewers, it's refreshing to have this difference.

The opening is cute, with the characters acting out western pop culture references, but the song is the singer's plea to live a gentle life without frustration, and one wonders if it is meant to be critical of the main cast. The closing series has child versions of the Sisterhood and Kuranosuke playing in a park, depicted with a lack of outlines and a slow camera pan, and it's cute in a different way.

This review is so long because Princess Jellyfish is just that great. In some ways it's a different kind of series, and the progression isn't obvious or easy for anyone involved. Tsukimi is easy to relate to, but the writers aren't afraid to let her change..yet without removing what makes her interesting. A lot of things remain anyone's guess, and if the elements described have intrigued anyone, the series is worth your time.

The Last Robotech Novel [That I Read Out of Order]

I have an ambivalent relationship with the series of Robotech novels, based on the 1980s anime mash-up. On one hand, some of the novels introduced concepts that helped to soothe the various issues I had with the way other continuities handled my favourite characters and things, and also provided me with fanfic fodder. On the other, the novels are generally poorly-written, and also do horrible things with my own favourite concepts. It's a conundrum.

Because of this, I dragged my feet on finding the last two "Lost Generation" Robotech novels, the trio of "midquels" written when James Luceno was the only living half of the "Jack McKinney" duo. The other "Lost Generation" novel, The Zentraedi Rebellion, is, as I've said before, one with which I've made lemons out of lemonade, and which was founded on a solid concept.

However, The Zentradi Rebellion suffered from the same basic problems as the other two novels, which are excessive "grittiness", and redundancy. I'm sure they also mess with continuity, too, but I'm not so invested that I would spend time figuring out how exactly they do.

Recently, I managed to find the last of the "Lost Generation" novels, The Master's Gambit, in a used bookstore. It actually precedes Before the Invid Storm, which I read beforehand, but my apathy should be a clue as to why that doesn't matter too much. I read The Master's Gambit in three days, feeling the urge to wash my hands of it but unable to stop reading. It's one of the few times I've succumbed to that nerd disease known as completism.

The three novels roughly correspond with each "generation" of Robotech, and this one is parallel to the middle-segment Robotech Masters series. A lot of its content is supposedly based on Robotech: the Untold Story, a movie combining the anime film Megazone 23 and other footage to create a Robotech movie that never saw a wide release. I cop to not seeing either Megazone 23 or Robotech: the Untold Story, and look at this novel in terms of how it fits into the overall scheme of what I do know.

While others may not accept the spot-welding of three unrelated anime series, the world portrayed in The Master's Gambit seems even farther afield from the common ground the original series supposedly had. The more familiar world of military politics and impending alien arrival, is combined with a story about hackers, information trading, and neo-yakuza in future Tokyo, sending readers off-balance.

What The Master's Gambit does add to the plot and characters is almost universally, unrelentingly, bleak. This is a problem of all three "Lost Generation" novels, and I might as well re-articulate it here. The mainline novels already tried to up the sexual and violence quotient from the edited anime, but the Lost Gen novels go up higher, and add so much cynicism to them.

For example, there is the portrayal of Dana Sterling as a "wild child" which includes "seducing" the older Terry Weston, which is pretty wrong and horrible. An older man doesn't get "seduced" by a teen, okay? I don't care what erotic fanfic you like to write. Terry Weston was the protagonist of a minor Robotech comic series, so I'm not caring about the stain on his reputation, but it all sounds like something added to make the novel "edgy" without larger consideration. It simply doesn't compute with the world of Robotech to have this type of storyline, nor does it match with the cheery, peppy Dana Sterling of the animated series. Pair this with the very broken understanding of statutory rape, and we have a barrel of fun here.

(Another odd thing about the novel is that Luceno likes to pepper the Japan sequences with Japanese terms and phrases, most of which are translated, but it still reads like a bad anime fanfic. There is also a character named "Misa", which might be a reference to the original Macross.)

This is totally unsurprising given my Zentradi obsession, but the extremely dour perception of what would happen to the Zentradi stood out the most to me. However, even if you don't have any particular sentimental attachment to the Zentradi as a concept or as characters, their fate nicely shows the underlying problems of the "Lost Generation" novels, and is the example of lazy writing.

Yeah, the main series of novels did stupid things with the Zentradi, too, but the last two "Lost Generation" novels really do exceed them. They portray a world in which the humanity and human contact that the allied Zentradi wanted, everything they defected for, has completely gone to shit, due to a combination of xenophobic government policy, and the Zentradi's own inability to escape an ennui that comes with no longer being warriors. To that end, they have all self-exiled themselves to the non-functional Factory Satellite, where they basically sit around and wait to die, their only action taken being to become a sacrifice to protect the Earth.

Now, plenty of stories have been written to end in absolute failure, usually to make a larger philosophical statement. And I can see where Luceno might have gotten some of his ideas from: the later episodes of the TV series do show Zentradi having problems adjusting to human life, including turning on their allies and being unable to know what to do with their lives. However, there are still the questions of tone and quality to consider.

Macross is, even in the Robotech-dubbed form, a series about hope and sweetness and taking silly things seriously. It doesn't shy away from displaying the darker aspects to life, but that is only to bring its idealistic nature somewhat back down to earth. A grim tale of failure doesn't organically follow from a series about love triangles and giant alien fanboys. Problems with the Zentradi come off as bumps in the road, nothing to define the entire allied race or their future.

Furthermore, if a bleak ending is not justified by anything deeper than "Life's a bitch and then you die", it just seems like the author ran out of things to actually do with the characters or ways to build up their world/plot, and decided to just be lazy instead.

Conveniently, the only Zentraedi who could give lie to this perception of their race's future are either gone or dead. I'm still sore about Rico, Bron, and Konda being killed off due to an unexplained illness, but at least they were treated with some level of sentimentality and respect. The last two Lost Generation novels name-drop these characters but without any of that sentimentality, or dwelling on how their actions (spearheading a rebellion against their oppressive military structure and never being a danger to humanity) might contradict the views seen in these novels.

The basic idea is instead that even if the Zentradi thought they wanted freedom from the military lifestyle, their own instincts betrayed them even more than humanity's political backlash did. There is even a scene where Rolf Emerson, Dana's surrogate father and caretaker, actually pauses to wonder if Dana's temperamental behaviour is the result of her Zentradi genes, and the "gentle" genes from her human father helped to temper them. And this is supposed to be a heroic character? It doesn't manifest in his treatment of Dana at all, but it's still jarring.

It is particularly shocking because the Sentinels novels, which run parallel to these books, but were written before, have a much more sentimental treatment of the canonical Zentradi characters. There are several wrong-headed moves made, such as Breetai sacrificing himself to end a karmic cycle of violence, and Miriya quitting the military, but a reader gets the impression we're meant to care about these characters, and they're meant to be happy/doing the right thing. I wonder if these ideas were the product of Brian Daley, and Luceno had the darker vision of the Zentradi?

Another place where this is evident is in the portrayal of Exedore, my favourite character in the whole thing. In the Sentinels novels, he is presented as a benign figure, participating happily in scientific and social endeavours and having an amicable nature. In The Zentradi Rebellion, he is cynical and harsh instead. Now, I decided to interpret this as his jackassery being intentional, but a result of stress and an over-applied pragmatism, plus the mean streak that he already displayed in "Blitzkrieg", all that he eventually learned better from to become the nicer Sentinels Exedore. However, now I can easily see that these are simply two different views of the same character, without any intention of progression.

I might be generous and say that as far back as Carl Macek's original plans for a Robotech sequel, which these novels are based on, he wanted to suggest the Zentradi were very low in number, and that, due to the speed of novel production, Luceno just came up with something on the fly, without considering the larger implications involved. Even so, the results as well as the circumstances should be looked at critically.

And anyway, if the line is that Robotech is all one series, why try to get rid of elements from the first "season" when these elements could be integrated into the whole with a novel version, enhancing that perceived unity? It doesn't make sense. (An alternative explanation is simply that Macek was considering the total proportion of Zentradi, allied and not, who died, which in this case, the remaining defectors would be smaller in number, in comparison to the original intact, living army).

Are there any good things in this novel? Actually, I thought that Luceno's world-building, his little allusions into how societies and social hierarchies have changed after the near-apocalypse were interesting, actually feeling as though they were part of a developed setting that offered enough glimpses to make a reader feel satisfied without overwhelming them with exposition. The military and political manoeuvring would have been fascinating to read about if it did not enhance the character relationships in the TV series, and really didn't have that large an impact on the overall narrative. Nor does the part of the story with the Robotech Masters offer anything more about the race's vaguely-explained backstory. If the narrative had gone more places with these things, it would have been more fulfilling.

I would like to think that even if I had read these two novels while working through the strongest stages of my Robotech obsession, I would still be able to use the good things the other novels provided for me with a clear "conscience". However, I wouldn't like to try out that hypothesis, and am glad they were both encountered later, because god only knows the vast quantities of nerdrage they would have inspired when my interest was at its peak.