It's An Angel Beats! World, I Just Live In It

My last two blog posts have both tackled some heady subjects with regard to the anime series Angel Beats!. Perhaps the fact that I have elected to write a third lends some hint towards my fondness for the story, its characters and its fascinating setting. Still, after two quite heavy, theoretical posts I felt like I needed to do some clarification. Angel Beats! is currently streaming on Netflix and Crunchyroll, two of the most prominent streaming services if you're looking into anime, so it is not exactly an obscure series that I've plucked out because it is some perfectly crafted philosophical thesis disguised as a cartoon. It's funny. Really funny. Those last two posts probably make it seem like it isn't, that it's some morose depiction of Sartrean existentialism that you are required to do dense theoretical reading to fully appreciate, but that is absolutely not the case. Fundamentally, it is a cartoon with a YA demographic, and best enjoyed as such; no matter what the indulgences of a blogger might indicate.

I have to confess that my recent rewatch was plagued with fears, and I had often put off my return to this series because of them. Something that I watched so long ago, and so early in my exploration of the medium, would surely reveal itself to have been rife with crass humour, bland characters and would be nowhere near as pretty as I remembered it being. So is the case for most people, let alone someone with as notoriously poor taste as I have. Yet from that first episode I was immediately drawn back in with its frantic pacing and unique style. What brings me back to it, ten years later, is this excellency in production values. Its design and animation quality holds up, the English dub is surprisingly effective, but it is the music which is on another level entirely. Unsurprisingly, Jun Maeda, the writer for the series, is a composer first and foremost. Sequences depicting the convergence of score and animation are imbued with an artisans touch and consideration. But the soundtrack shines particularly with the 'fictional' band from the series, Girls Dead Monster, who actually, seriously rule.

A live-action performance of 'Crow Song' pushes the boundaries between fiction and reality.

Still, there was nevertheless one significant change between these viewings: me. I'm a much different consumer than I was the first time around (though I must confess that much of the same idiosyncratic taste persists). This is what motivated me to write these posts and immerse myself more into Angel Beats! as a text, and to treat it with a level of seriousness and sincerity that I just wasn't capable of all those years ago. Still, as a transmedia project, Angel Beats! proves a challenging set of texts to interrogate in this way: its story is told across multiple mediums, each providing additive information to its core setting and cast of characters, but developmental mishaps have plagued much of the production of this project.

One of the first things you'll notice is that the series itself feels rushed, often feeling like it's going to rupture under the constraints of its 13 episode run. It's commonly believed that at least twice as many episodes were originally planned. But, more than this, few of its ancillary works have actually managed to make it to the West intact. The past ten years since the initial release of Angel Beats! has been defined by fan labour: translations, fanworks, guides, DRM workarounds and pirate distribution have become the lifeblood of an ever-dwindling community. As with the most interesting fan cultures, questions of legality arise. It remains a fact that in the West you cannot read the Angel Beats! Heaven's Door prequel manga, beyond its first two volumes, by any legitimate means. Likewise, there remains an episode of the anime itself (released some time after the original series concluded), as well as an alternate ending, which find themselves not only without English dubbing, but without any Western release whatsoever. 

Nor is there an English version of Angel Beats! 1st beat, the visual novel adaptation of the series. Whilst the translation from AlkaTranslations is a stellar piece of work, nigh indistinguishable from an official release, there remains a serious barrier of entry for all but the most passionate fans. Truly a shame, as the 'Iwasawa' route, whilst taking the series' inherent absurdity to new heights, drew from me an undeniably visceral, emotional reaction. In fairness, on that front even Japanese fans find themselves not much better off. The Angel Beats! visual novel project was envisioned to be a sprawling, comprehensive experience, retelling and reimagining the original series through six instalments, of which 1st beat was, unsurprisingly, the first. Since the release of that first instalment, there has been no word whatsoever on the rest of the story. No further releases, no acknowledgment of delay, not even an admission of cancellation. It just seems to have disappeared.

And yet, in spite of this, Angel Beats! has developed into a very rewarding transmedia universe. The work one has to put in is strenuous, but rewarded with real, meaningful content. Throwaway, one-dimensional characters, utilised either for single gags or to usher characters between locations in the main series are transformed into compelling storytellers in their own right. You may find that the character of Yusa, a glorified walkie-talkie in the original series, was, in fact, a misandrist serial murderer or that Chaa, no more than an underground factory worker originally, rages against an unjust afterlife which separates him from eternal paradise with his wife. I often found myself looking forward to scenes and stories concerning Fujimaki, a character whose presence in the series accounts for little more than a couple of lines, or the supporting members of the in-universe band, Girls Dead Monster, who couldn't even manage that. Surrounding these expanded character stories are also further explorations into the nuances and details of the setting: how long can characters exist in it, how long has it already existed for, what is the difference between a full character and an 'NPC', or, more pertinently, is there a meaningful distinction at all?  

What I'm saying is, if there was ever a time for a grand 10th anniversary event then it is now. Announce a comprehensive physical media re-release, announce the completion and translation of the visual novel, the translation and release of its manga prequel. Hell, announce a whole series reboot. And maybe that's all a pipe dream and maybe no one in their right mind would sink so much money into a franchise that has mostly lay dormant for a decade. A franchise so messy and incomplete. Yet still Angel Beats! is one of those rare worlds of originality which can simultaneously feed the critical soul and provide a true escapist joy: Angel Beats! makes me wish I was dead.

I Played Kingdom Hearts 3 And Then I Cried And Then I Wrote About It

In school, I was a massive, embarrassing crybaby. If someone looked at me the wrong way, if a teacher shouted at me or even if I just wasn't receiving enough attention that day I was liable to burst into tears. Yet, for all that sensitivity, I rarely cried at movies. Or books. Or music. Or video games. I didn't really laugh along with comedies and never found horrors all that horrifying. And whilst I still had a deep love for the stories I engaged with, that love was logical and cold. More obsessional than sincere.

Nowadays I cry about 'real' life considerably less. In those terms, in matters solely relating to my own personal experiences, I can think of just one time I was reduced to tears in the past five years. And I was drunk, besides. It would seem that maybe I've totally closed myself off, or gone numb, or just finally grown up. Yet those tears do still come. Only now it is the slightest moment of sentimentality in an episode of The Simpsons that can have me blubbering for minutes on end. Some of the moments when tears have decided to flow have left me incredulous; seemingly mundane, unimpressive shows of hope, optimism and love.

Recently, the media experience that affected me in such a way was during my play-through of Kingdom Hearts 3. I was roughly a year late to the party, but still found myself moved by its sincere performance of the inner goodness of all, the possibility for everyone to be redeemed. Reflecting back, it's almost a sickly sweet idea. But, hey, it worked at the time.

As it turns out, brutal authenticity is the theme of this post.

For those who don't know, the Kingdom Hearts franchise consists of a video games, movies and complex depicting a crossover between the intellectual properties of Square Enix and Disney. Angsty emo teens partake in anime-esque battles alongside Donald Duck, Goofy and Mickey Mouse. It is exactly as absurd and surreal as it sounds. It is that precise absurdity that places the series as a premier space from which to unpack nostalgic sentimentality; this is a franchise most shrewdly and conspicuously designed for you to purchase your childhood back. You might go as far as to say that Kingdom Hearts is one of the preeminent commodities of postmodern capitalism, but people would probably call you boring if you did so.

Throughout the game, you play as Sora, or some other spiky-haired protagonist, chasing after an ill-described macguffin (In KH3, this is the 'power of waking', which apparently isn't just an alarm clock) through the worlds of different Disney movies. Your true goal, of course, is to make the casts of these films happy. It is a simple joy. Dance with Tangled's Rapunzel, take selfies with Toy Story's Buzz and Woody, inexplicably yeet yourself off a mountain because Elsa told you to and so on. The game empowers you to fulfil the happy endings of the movies you loved growing up.

A scene from Kingdom Hearts 2 depicting what I can only describe as 'Goth Mickey'.

So it's a deeply nostalgic experience and its emotional resonance seems indubitably rooted in that nostalgia. Only here we hit upon a certain complication. I wasn't a Disney child. I wasn't even a Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy child. The vast majority of this content I only experienced for the first time two years ago. It may well be nostalgic. But it isn't for me. So why did its follow-up garner from me such a visceral, emotional response?

Of course, no doubt part of it was down to the craft of the game itself. It is good. Really good. The music is heavenly and the fact that the ostensible third game in the series is actually something like the ninth does hold you somewhat emotionally hostage. But that aforementioned delight in optimism, the joy of experiencing a happy ending for a change (you will note that I am writing a blog post about a video game, and not the ongoing Labour Leadership Election), still stops somewhat short of an adequate explanation for me. I feel that it is in the delivery of this sentimentality as much as the message itself. Similar to the viewing of Disney movies themselves, playing Kingdom Hearts is a practice in infantile regression. In that the player willingly takes on the role of a childlike actor and experiences nostalgia not in the literal sense, but as a genre unto itself: we aren't so much feeling the pain of a past that we can never return to, so much as we are entering into that past for the first time.

And is this nostalgia genre not what we are endlessly barraged with, in multiplexes and on streaming services? Texts we know are nostalgic before we partake in them, concerning brands and experiences that we have no investment in. It seems that a key feature of nostalgia today is that the nostalgic text professes to exist, regardless of your own personal investment in it. Perhaps, Star Wars was the seminal moment for this genre. Perhaps this is some inherent form of human storytelling. Still, I think most of us can tell there is some difference between George Lucas' nostalgic pulp space opera and J.J. Abrams' Star Wars by way of Star Wars. 

Whilst I'm not interested in blanket-disparaging escapist fantasy, there is a danger in this wider nostalgia-qua-genre, both in that it's a creative dead end of glorified reruns and in that nostalgic experiences like KH3 are perhaps too sweet, too optimistic, provide too much hope. These are naturally not inherently bad qualities, but in so far as that these sentiments are directed not towards our future lives, or our present conditions, but to our non-existent pasts, they keep our imaginations dull and limited: to hope is the infantile fantasy of Disney movies and video games.

I'm now posed with the exceedingly difficult question of how to end this blog post without adulating the inherent cynicism in these products, without talking down, even betraying, my own personal experiences. Sure, I could lie and say that I've only ever been moved by old social realism films, and that cheap sentimentality produced by unconquerable media corporations has no effect on me, but what would be the point? Instead, I think I'm just going to go and cook a meal with my friend, Remy. The rat chef. From Ratatouille.

Freshening Up

Just thought I'd leave a quick note to briefly explain what's going on with the blog. A slight redesign, to make the posts somewhat more pleasant to look at, and a barrage of new posts are the significant changes.

These new posts, of course, aren't new at all- they were produced as part of my Communication, Media and Culture Masters degree*. Now that I've completed my studies for that, I wanted to bring my posts into one central location. Partially so that I don't lose access to them when my University blog eventually expires, but also so that I can feel marginally better about my productivity when I look back on this year as a whole.

It is a year wherein which I have not published on this blog nearly as much as I'd have liked. That, perhaps, has mostly been down to pride. I am writing and envisioning content that I find myself too attached to for them to be published here. When I was using this blog primarily to rank the releases of  new X-Men comic books, the low reach of the blog was fine. Ideal, really. But as I (and my posts) have become more ambitious, this low reach has grated, leaving me sitting on many completed pieces and letting a great deal more languish in rough drafts and states of half-completion. I'm having to ask myself a lot of questions with regard to what I actually want this blog to be and whether I'm comfortable with it just being a sort of content backlog.

Regardless, I'm hopeful that this post and refresh of the blog can signal a return to more consistent posting. Regrettably, I did say that the last time I wrote one of these personal updates as well. So, in applying a modicum of self-awareness, only time will tell.

*For the nosy, I found great academic success on my MA, achieving a Distinction and yielding a score on my dissertation that I had convinced myself was impossible. It was tough, it was stressful, I was losing hair and skin at hitherto unseen rates, but I made it to the end anyway.

Fanfiction and "Feminizing" My Media Prosumption

After a not-so-restful Winter break and a severely stressful deadline season, my recent piece on The Simpsons has signalled (somewhat) my return to posting incessant nonsense. Over that Winter break though, I managed to produce something I have very conflicting opinions about: my first ever piece of fanfiction. I'm, of course, familiar with Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, but this was really my first sincere engagement with fanfiction. It was a part of a wider project, one that I want to take the time to discuss a little: my personal attempt to disrupt the ways I engage with texts as a fan.

Prompting this is the increasingly widespread sentiment that women, in fan communities, often have to assimilate to male-dominated paradigms and spaces. This is the idea that women, in entry to fandom, are not only changing the products they consume (transitioning to needlessly male-dominated franchises and genres, such as Sci-Fi or Superhero, from the likewise needlessly female-dominated franchises, such as Romance stories or Young Adult fiction), but the way they produce and give back to fan communities. Engaging with this idea as a male prosumer (producer/consumer) turned into a project where I've sought to perform the inverse. Where women are expected to transition from feminine space to masculine ones, I, as a man, would transition from masculine to feminine. The prime avenue for this has been in finally exploring the world of fanfiction, no longer disregarding it as a petulant, juvenile thing (an outdated sentiment held over from my experiences as a teenager engaged with fandom).

You can read the fanfiction here. Frankly, the quality of the story isn't something I'm particularly happy with. I find capturing the voice of someone else's characters remains incredibly difficult, regardless of how much time you've spent immersed in the fictions they're from. It's kind of a punishing sensation, as it never really reflects the research you've done to finish your writing and, in that sense, it's far more of a challenging instance of fanwork than what is purported as its masculine equivalent: the fan theory. Where fanfiction creates new stories, the fan theory intends to further explain or develop existing stories; yet, the word "theory" belies its inherently fictional nature. Whilst these theories are derived from the existing fiction the fan is engaged with, these fictional facts, truths and histories experience much the same kind of mutation as the characters of fanfictions do.

This isn't to say that either fiction or theory are necessarily masculine/feminine pursuits, but rather this is meant to elucidate the gatekeeping that occurs around the conventionally masculine spaces of fandom compared to the relatively more open feminine spaces. Fanfiction community is certainly a (cyber)space which emerged in response to the gendered politics of masculine fandom; the splits of these communities can be traced back to the ideas of geek culture as a sphere inherently for men. Can we not say that the fan theory, as masculine counter-part to the feminine fanfiction, is rooted in this gatekeeping? It abandons character and emotional intuition for methodical, in-depth knowledge of lore, demanding a almost ideological purity from its participants. The discord between supposed feminine and masculine fan spaces can be seen through the response to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Particularly, in its final duel between (female) protagonist Rey and antagonist Kylo Ren.

The comments section of that video is representative of the majority male response. Masculine fandom seems generally more focused on the laws of the storyworld: Kylo receives training in the magic system, this training allows for better skills with the lightsaber and, therefore, he should not lose to the comparatively untrained Rey. The response of feminine fandom was different,  generally more focused on character: Kylo is at a disadvantage in the duel due to some post-patricide emotional turmoil and, therefore, has to lose to the comparatively focused, survivor Rey.

(On Star Wars, is it not telling that the male response to their disappointment in Star Wars: The Last Jedi was to seek funding for someone else to produce their fanfiction ideas? There is such a disdain for feminine elements of fandom, both in its texts and its practices, that the majority of male fans can't even conceive of engaging with the conventionally feminine spaces.)

So, in my work, one thing I was really keen on doing was to move my engagement away from feats, power levels and so on, instead taking a look at emotional, character-driven conflict. I felt it would be counter-intuitive to engage with the fanfiction space and not with its sentiment. Keeping in mind that I don't think I did a particularly good enough job on it, my fanfiction was primarily concerned with what happens to someone's relationship when their preferred method of communication is taken away from them (in that I was writing in response to a superhero text, that method was telepathy).

Something I'm particularly interested in is what I call Critical Fanfiction. Simply, fanfiction that works to change elements of its mothership text to pursue a author/audience resolution. On one level, sure, this is a pretty arbitrary and meaningless term. Most fanfiction serves as this: a fan may prefer Lord of the Rings if it was set in a coffee shop or if it had a crossover with the Game of Thrones franchise, for example. But there are deeper questions to be asked when the fanfiction goes beyond a fan's wish fulfilment and starts to resemble a form of fictionalised criticism of the text. When does slash fiction cease to be fantasy and morph into a critique of the author's heteronormative writing? When does the submissive reader morph into a critical one, and what does it say that this transformation occurs within the immersion of the text itself? A personal favourite discovery of mine has been the Harry Potter Becomes A Communist fanwork; is this not valuable as a response to the politics of J.K. Rowling and the ideas she injected into the franchise?

In our era of ubiquitous communication, this is reaching new, more torrid depths. Where the author once responded to fanfiction with hefty lawsuits, the author is now responding directly to criticism through social media, seeking to retroactively assert their own authorial primacy. Fanfiction is, I think, then a useful tool not merely to interrogate and view fan cultures and communities, but as an act with merit itself. It is caught in battles both between reader and author and between segmented communities. Moving between these masculine/feminine communities and being critical of the distinctions and separations can not only help transform fandom away from its toxicity, but could also see the return of fan praxis. Not the fan activism that seeks to pressure production companies into providing them with more content to consume, but an actual grassroots reclamation of intellectual labour and property. This, and fan studies/IP in general, is something I want to write about in more depth at a later date.

Briefly, I want to return to my place in this process though (and I do consider it an ongoing process). To the end of disrupting my gendered media consumption/participation, tonight I intend to finally sit down and watch Twilight. From its release and time in the spotlight to its eventual fading away, I participated in the vitriolic male response that held it in such disdain without ever seeing it. I think it's wrong to suggest this solely came from a disregard for media texts intended for young women (certainly, women themselves partook in Twilight-bashing), but I also think it's wrong to overlook the significance of it (Lindsay Ellis did a great video on this that you can see here). Do I expect to like it? Not particularly. I'm a long-time Buffyverse fan and have a very specific imagination when it comes to vampires because of that. Nevertheless, it will be valuable to finally form my own organic opinion about it and be able to move somewhat away from the reactionary frameworks that have oft clouded my perspectives as someone who at least pretends to engage with media critically.

A Brief Personal Update

So, after taking a writing break to complete my undergraduate degree, I'm finally coming back to this blog. Hopefully posts will be just as frequent as before, but with more variation, more focus and more of a critical edge. It hurt to be away from more personal, enjoyable writing, so hopefully my final grade reflects that sacrifice. Fingers crossed.

I really want to realise my original intentions for this blog, to address culture at large, and not have it be of single interest/single purpose. I will continue to write about comic books (particularly X-Men ones), but I want it to be part of a wider study of the superhero genre, rather than just evaluating my own personal enjoyment. The Hindsight piece is the kind of model I'm looking at for these kinds of posts. Not entirely academic, but not completely casual either.

So, the gates are open. More posts should follow.

Reflections on "This Week In X-Books"

For just over a month, I had committed to a weekly round-up of the X-Men-related comic books released by Marvel. Now I want to take a moment to reflect on how I feel that went, as I'm now at a crossroads; asking myself the question of whether to continue with that approach to posts or not.

I think, quite clearly I do not. There was a lot of good that came from that structure and I feel that I definitely improved as each week went by. Amongst other things, adding appropriate credits and reaching more interesting conclusions about the texts I was examining were things that I found myself really coming to terms with, but I can't help but feel that this structure was a failure of what I wanted this blog to be. These quickly became reviews, rather than analyses, and, while there is a fine line between the two, I want a consistent blog identity that aligns with my interests. Particularly, I am interested in the intersection between the cultural and the political. Reviews rarely give me the opportunity to delve into the ideologies and discourses surrounding these texts, partially due to how little content is in each issue, but also because I end up examining multiple issues, from different series', spanning characters and genres, in one sitting. I end up looking at how comic book issues work as individual entities, not looking into the wider culture around them or indulging in any deeper form of commentary.

A lot of my ambivalence towards continuing these kinds of posts comes down to turning this whole project into something I feel like I can proudly share across social media and to my peers. Reviews of niche media is not something I think would interest most people in my networks, but posts with more rigour and exciting commentary on contemporary culture should. It may not, but, at the very least, that is the kind of writing I'd like to be seen doing. That isn't to say I dislike commenting on "niche media", rather I want to do so in a different way. Writing pieces that are fewer in number, but of higher quality, should also allow myself to build up a broad portfolio of written work. The blog, in its current form, is currently nothing more than a sample of my writing style.

No doubt the most significant positive thing these weekly posts did for my blog was creating a consistent flow of content, so, with how I move forwards, I'll be considering how a minimum one post a week system has benefitted the state of this blog. I may simply move X-Books of the week down to a singular Book or I may force myself to work on something new and exciting on a weekly basis. I can imagine myself still doing the occasional review post, but I want the main drawing point of this project to be draped in cultural studies.


Those five "This Week In X-Books" posts show development in how I write and construct posts, but it is development in the wrong direction. While I may not completely abandon that format, I want to put more time and effort into creating higher quality pieces that I am more willing to share.


This post could be taken as a commentary on the state of X-Books released this week. 

Writing Is Horrible

Writing is Horrible.

Am I wrong? The process of writing is arduous torture, where you put your soul on

the line and receive very little in return. With every piece of writing I do, I feel that I

lose more and more of myself. It takes your dignity, it revels in your fear, it is

fundamentally humiliating. You take your thoughts out of the infinite expanse of your

own mind and render them naked and vulnerable on the page. Not only do those once

private thoughts become open to every criticism and interrogation that can be placed upon them, but you are forced into convincing yourself that there is some inherent merit to what you have to say. You must come to believe that your senseless screaming into the void matters.

I am terrified of writing. The idea of being narcissistic enough to sit for a period of time

and unfurl the incongruous ideas and opinions that rattle around my skull is terrifying. It

feels antithesis to how I should be and is that not the crux of this issue? That writing, sending out thoughts with certainty and confidence, does feel so unnatural. Sending tweets out into the void is one thing, but putting your thoughts and ideas into a much more direct firing line is a dangerous, intimidating business.

Why then do we write? Why do we do something that so many of us hate and fear?

Certainly, it isn’t because it is easy. I think many of us write because we are no one

without the written word. Writing is fear inspiring, and rightly so, but it is also what

we love and part of who we are. There is a burden to creation, that that which you

dedicate yourself to may, in the end, never be good enough. There is a sense that

what you are doing is futile, as it has been done countless times before you. But

there is hope also. What we write encourages us to be and do better, be that in the realm of creating fiction or in re-evaluating previous attitudes, values and beliefs. There is a faith in the form, a trust that through writing we may find clarity or liberation.

This is something I struggle with as someone who feels like a writer, but in turn does

very little writing. The fear of the blank page, the horrid aftertaste of writing thoughts onto

paper, are the demons that must be slain on my journey towards becoming a writer. Yet

they are only rewarded with further burden of creation. A prime interest of mine, however, is how this burden manifests itself in people other than myself. This blog will be somewhat about my journey to becoming a consistent, proficient writer, but it will be by looking at the creations that come from popular culture. In my view, there is no difference in the burden of creation between the novelist and the comic book writer, and, as such, I desire to analyse and encourage discussion around popular culture on the same terms as we do with high culture.

Writing remains horrible to me, even as I begin to feel more skilled or more accomplished

in it. Every time I sit down to face this challenge I am barraged by the same fears and

doubts that have assaulted me a thousand times. Yet, I think I also forget how fun it can

be, how blessed the sensation of flowing prose is and how it feels to see an idea from inception to execution. That is what I need to hold close to me, as I move forwards: the great love I have for writing.