TV Show Review: 'Schoolhouse Rock!'

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School is or was a reality for almost all of us. We learned the basics like math, history, language, science, and so forth. For some of us, learning these subjects were hard. It could be difficult understanding things like multiplication and the three branches of government. Where could we turn to when we needed help? Other than tutors and family members, children living in the 1970s onward received aid in the form of animated television shorts known as Schoolhouse Rock! These music videos, which aired between programs on ABC, taught a generation how to multiply, how bills became laws, and how conjunctions function, among other things.

An interview with creator George Newall included in the complete series DVD box explains the creative genesis and impact, which I will reproduce here:

Q: HOW DID SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK GET ROLLING? 

A: It all started in 1972 on a horseback ride in Wyoming where my boss, David McCall of McCaffery & McCall Advertising, heard his young son, who couldn't begin to remember multiplication tables, singing Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead lyrics. When Dave got back to New York, he commissioned Bob Dorough to set the multiplication tables to rock music. Bob responded with "Three is a Magic Number." The lyrics were so visual that my partner, Tom Yohe, drew a storyboard and met with Michael Eisner, who was then ABC's Vice President of Children's Programming. On the recommendation of the legendary animator, Chuck Jones, Eisner bought it on the spot. All it took was that one meeting. And that first song is still my favorite.

Q: LOOKING BACK, WHY DO YOU THINK IT WORKED SO WELL?

A: We never wrote "down" to kids. And we weren't in the television business. We had good paying day jobs and didn't worry about whether or not the shows would be picked up for the next season. Most importantly, we had the music of Bob Dorough, Lynn Ahrens and Dave Frishberg. Their songs gave Tom a creative leg up to start with. It was their music made visual by Tom's enormous talent for animation design that guided Schoolhouse Rock. Who could ever forget that "...sad little scrap of paper sitting on Capitol Hill"?

(Third question relates to one of the shorts which I will not spoil; thus I will skip it.)

Q: WHEN DID YOU BEGIN TO REALIZE THE IMPACT YOU WERE MAKING ON YOUNG PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD?

A: We'd been off the air since 1986 when, in the early nineties, Tom got a call from Dartmouth College asking him to participate in a symposium sponsored by the senior class. Expecting 30 or 40 kids in a classroom, Tom was shocked to find himself in the largest auditorium on campus overflowing with 900 students who were boisterously singing our songs and clapping along -- before he showed a single film. A year or so later, while giving a seminar for the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, a student stood up and said, "I don't think you guys realize that Schoolhouse Rock defined my generation." No, we hadn't realized that.

-- May 21, 2002

Is This a Stereotype? Regarding Aunt Jemima and Land O'Lakes

Recently a news story broke out that the famous syrup Aunt Jemima will be changing its name since it's a racial stereotype. This comes days after George Floyd's murder and the protests and riots that have occurred since.

Earlier this year, Land O'Lakes stated they would be removing the Native American girl from their products since it's also a stereotype...or is it?

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In the former example, the name change is justified. Calling a black person "aunt" or "uncle" is a reference to American slaves who lived in the house on plantations and enjoyed many privileges that other slaves did not have. Honestly, I'm surprised the name change did not occur sooner.

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As for the latter example, the girl on the front is anything but a stereotype. In fact, the artist who drew her was Native American himself. The artist's daughter stated as much on Twitter.

That's the air of political correctness that has infected society. We think everything is "-ist" or "-phobic" or "appropriation" even when it isn't. There's a difference between stereotyping, representation, or even a light-hearted joke. Society needs to recognize that. We also can't pretend these stereotypes didn't exist, because then you run the risk of repeating them, as the saying goes.

Video: "Netflix SHE-RA Was a Multi-Million Dollar FANFIC"

To follow up from my last post, I present this video. Kneon and Geeky Sparkles from Clownfish TV on YouTube discuss She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Turns out there were issues present in the series long before the finale. Let this be a lesson on how not to reboot existing IP.

"Catradora:" More Evidence of the Homosexual Agenda in Children's Media

If I didn't know who these were, I would've sworn Catra was a dude. Source in the link below.

Welp, they've done it again, folks.

In the fifth season of Netflix's She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, a long-running fan ship "Catradora" was made canon when the main lead Adora and former villain Catra kiss. More info can be found in the link below, courtesy of One Angry Gamer, though I'll warn you that the ads and some of the comments are NSFW:

Netflix's She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power Turns She-Ra Into A Lesbian

I didn't bother with She-Ra (not even a fan of the original), but honestly, I'm glad I didn't, and I'm not surprised in the least. The show already had so-called "queer representation" when one side character had two dads and one character identified as "non-binary," though at least in the latter, the character wasn't human and could shapeshift. What makes this egregious is that this is a reboot, and Adora was interested in men in the 80s. It reads like bad fan fiction and is a slap in the face of the original. Even if I don't give a flying fudge about this show, I can't help but be reminded that this is just one of many recent entries in the world of children's media that showcases and glorifies homosexual relationships, and it isn't slowing down anytime soon. Quite the opposite, actually.

Video: "Fuwa Fuwa Foof OP"

Today I present to you a YouTube video entitled "Fuwa Fuwa Foof OP," a theme song for a fake cartoon series of the same name. Based on an idea by ExtraordinaryCircus, this is a well-animated short about a cute rabbit named Foof who decides to leave her former occupation of gang leader. Her old subordinates Giri Giri and Kiri Kiri constantly try to lure her back to her old ways, but Foof resists and tries to be a good little bunny.

This is very impressive with a great song to boot. (Though, like many modern songs, it has a thumpin' beat but a bad message contained in the lyrics.) And I'm not the only one who loves it; as of this post the video has over 4 million views. I would like to see this fully realized as a real show; it looks like it has potential.

Manga Review: 'Revolutionary Girl Utena'

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As the current coronavirus plague rages on, keeping most of us cooped up at home, I thought it a good idea to snuggle up with a good book.

Today's subject will be the manga of Revolutionary Girl Utena. You're probably more familiar with the anime series. This is a classic shoujo (Japanese: "girl") story that, in lieu of its name, revolutionized the genre, similar to how Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion changed the magical girl and mecha genres respectively. In fact, Utena is basically the love child of both those shows since the director is a Sailor Moon alumnus and a good portion of the staff worked on Eva. Utena went on to influence other media for years to come, some prominent ones including Scott Pilgrim and Steven Universe, the latter having recently finished.

The manga was written and illustrated by Chiho Saito, character designer on the series. Both the manga and anime were made at the same time, but the manga was released first in 1996, a year before the series. It served as promotion for the show, not unlike the manga version of Evangelion. While both versions started at relatively the same place, they each went in different directions in terms of story and characters, as I will discuss later.

Anime Review: 'Akira'

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Earlier this month at my local comic-con I bought myself a used copy of Akira, the landmark anime film that started the anime boom in the West. I had actually seen it a few months earlier online, and after seeing it I wanted to own it. So here we are.

The famous bike slide scene

Akira is based on the manga by Katsuhiro Otomo. Interestingly, the manga was still being produced when the film adaptation hit theaters in 1988, finishing in 1990. Otomo himself even directed the movie. What sets this film apart from other anime is that it is animated at 24 FPS (frames per second) and it shows the characters lip-synching, meaning that the voice acting had to be recorded before the animation. While this is normal for a Western animated feature, this isn't for anime; animation is mostly limited and audio is recorded after animation. Because of this, the film was the most expensive anime production until Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away in 2001.

Movie Review: 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (2020)

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I saw Sonic the Hedgehog with my sister and her friends last Friday, and, similar to Detective Pikachu from last year, I think it is a well made film. Not groundbreaking by any means, but still enjoyable.

There is an interesting story surrounding this film's production, of which you should be aware. Last year, the first trailer came out and Sonic's design was...less than accurate, to say the least.

Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me. Source

People online were furious that a big budget Sonic movie would portray him this way, and they complained and memed for days on end. This got wind of the director who, realizing that the film would flop if Sonic's sucky design remained, decided to change the release date from November to February and give Sonic a much needed makeover. The result is a better-looking design for the little blue hedgehog.

Much better. Source

Blu-ray Review: 'Neon Genesis Evangelion'

A week ago, I was browsing around online for home video releases of Neon Genesis Evangelion for the heck of it. Then I stumbled upon a link that caught my attention almost immediately. The website (that shall remain anonymous) listed a Blu-ray set of the entire Evangelion TV series plus the 90s films, all for $89. There were only 11 left in stock at the time, so I went ahead and bought it a while later.

Today I'll be reviewing the Blu-ray set itself, not Neon Genesis Evangelion. If I did, I would have named this post "Anime Review." I suppose in the future I can go over the series and films proper, but that's for another time.

As you can tell from the above image, this is a set of two Blu-rays. And I'll go ahead and say this right off the bat: these are bootlegs. As of this post there is no official physical media release of Eva in the West, excluding the Rebuild movies. There were DVDs made in the early 2000s, but those are now out of print and are outrageously expensive. And yes, I am aware that the series is on Netflix since last year, but it has a new dub and altered subtitles and excludes "Fly Me to the Moon" from the ending theme, because apparently Netflix can't get the rights to the song (despite the fact that they were willing to spend $100 million to keep Friends on their platform a while longer). Because of that, I prefer to stick to the original sub and dub. Ergo, why I bought this in the first place.

Anime Review: 'Princess Tutu'

One of the best anime series I've ever seen! Source

I recently finished the 2002 anime series Princess Tutu. After getting the complete series on Blu-ray for Christmas, I began watching in earnest. I knew this was a good show by reputation beforehand, but man, I had no idea how good it was!

The premise is as follows: a yellow duck named, well, Duck, sits in a lake all by herself. Then she sees a boy dancing nearby. She wishes she could dance with him, and a mysterious old man appears granting her a red pendant. When Duck puts on the pendant, she becomes a human girl. Afterward, she enrolls in an arts academy in a walled town and enters the ballet division. It is there that she meets her two friends, Pike (pronounced "PEE-kay") and Lillie ("LIH-lee-ay") who are also ballet students. Other characters soon appear: Mytho ("MEW-toh" for some reason), Rue, and Fakir. Duck soon finds out that Mytho is a prince from a story called "The Prince and the Raven" who shattered his own heart so that the raven could be sealed away. Because of this, he has no emotions. When Mytho falls from a building trying to protect a bird's nest, Duck rushes in to save him, and her pendant transforms her into Princess Tutu, another character from the aforementioned story. Rue and Fakir are also important, but I don't want to give away too much, so I'll just leave it at that.

Many people view this anime as the spiritual successor to Revolutionary Girl Utena, another magical girl anime that utilizes fairytale aesthetics, surreal visuals, menacing men that seem to control things in the background, and a mysterious plot that is fully revealed at the end. After seeing this, I can definitely see why viewers would draw that conclusion. Now that I think of it, there is another similarity: both protagonists have pink hair.

The series takes obvious inspiration from fairytales and ballets such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, even going so far as using music and naming episodes on those plays. Heck, the main villain's name is Drosselmeyer! Apparently a real ballet studio assisted in production, so the dancing you see is the real thing. The town seems to be based on Germany, with signs being in German. Not surprising since many fairytale stories we know and love come from Germany. The citizens of said town are a mix of humans and animals; one such anthro animal is Mr. Cat, the ballet teacher.

The characters are endearing, especially Duck, and the story will suck you in in no time. As the plot progresses, you will find out more about the characters, their motivations, and what exactly is going on. This is something you won't forget long after you've finished it. Do I recommend this anime? Absolutely with a capital A!

Quality Rating: 10/10
Content Rating: 13+