I did not watch too many of the numerous anime of Gundam franchise. They seem to make another Gundam every single year.
However opening sequence and music of Gundam Wing and Gundam SEED are great. Not only they are good to listen on your own, but they also showcase what this anime is about.
Original Naruto Anime has a surprising array of differerent songs that accompany it.
It has all sorts of songs from action packed to eerie and dark to light and plain.
First the Opening, I think it sets the stage perfectly and showcase everything this anime has to offer.
Orochimaru theme, this one is clearly inspired by the Toccata and Fugue, but it is much darker and more wicked that the Bach's one. It has creeping awesomeness to it.
Fate/Zero has really good OST, it fits the story really well.
This OST is full of heroic hymns, similar to Sabaton but without metal. However, it has other types of songs as well.
The Battle is for the Strong. Let the Stars Fall Down, Dogfight, Babylonia, Dream Fades Before Dawn, The Beginning of the End, Tragedy and Fate, World is Tumbling Down
Both I and Gilgamesh are wise, just, eloquent and refined Kings.
Gilgamesh is capable of both cruelty and mercy. He killed his master Tohsaka Tokiyomi for using command spell to stop his fight with Berserker and for planning to use another one to make Gilgamesh to commit suicide for the sake of his 'search for root' cause. However he also spared life of Velvet Waiver as he found his loyalty to Iskandar commendable. He would have no reasons to kill weebs.
He is also capable of cunning and shrewdness as well as psychoanalysis. He psychoanalyzed Kotomine Kirei and found what kind of pleasure from life he desired.
Then he convinced Kirei to kill Tokiyomi and take over as his master.
Gilgamesh is well respected as King by various people in F/Z, including Iskandar who as the same time refused the same dignity to Saber.
Surely Gilgamesh is not your stereotypical good guy, however world is not run on your good vs bad (black and white) morality. All that 'good' you speak of s nothing more than naïve misunderstanding of how world really is. The world is cruel and Gilgamesh simply adapted to function in this reality.
I myself seen a fair share of cruelty, unfairness and sadness in the world and that shaped me towards a man who prioritizes my own happiness and protection above some moralistic nonsense, people like my parents and other Christians like to preach.
I do not want a life of a saint, who suffers for the causes of my parents or Christian Church or progressive SJW.
My justice is of different kind.
I think some of Chirs de Burgh really reflect well on personality. Just as the man himself a fellow Libra with 15 of October DoB
He has sophistication, culture, civility and fanciness. The kind that I like. I think I am similar to him in many ways.
And some songs.
When melancholy strikes (for those who do not know what melancholy is, that is), though I prefer to drawn my sorrows in music and anime rather than vodka:
When in love, though I prefer to call them slave girls and for them to wear all black rather than red. Reference my demon girl pictures.
Now this is the most important one, the Revolution.
I, him and Lelouch do not fight for social justice and other woke shit, we fight to take back what was stolen from us. I reckon that was a lot.
Finally, this, there is a little bit of everything in this song.
I guess what I like about Lelouch and CC is that kind of unique understanding that possible only among some people who lived through the same kind of unique and unusual life full of complex intrigues.
I felt like TrueHellDei could understand me. May be that was because her own life was complex in her own unique way and that allowed her to understand me.
Or maybe it is something simpler, like both and I and she wanted protection form that cruel world around us and we managed to find understanding on that ground.
However, I do want someone to protect me from all this shit this world has to offer. World is full of bad things. Someone out there has to prevent it from hurting me. I can only get along with a girl who can understand and relate to that.
I wrote a really long backstory about CC, so it is only fair if I write a similar one for Lelouch. His one will probably be shorter, but it is nevertheless important.
Lelouch is a victim of the social and political structures that exist within Holy Brittanian Empire. He saw them firsthand to understand them and was disproportionally affected but worst HBE has to offer. In fact, the very ethos and values of the country threw him and Nunnally towards certain death as sacrificial pawns.
HBE royal family is a complex structure with complex web of shifting alliances, assassinations and so on. Lelouch position was dependent on that of his mother and favor of his father. When Marianne was alive it all was normal. However, her presence at the court got in the way of several powerful figures within the HBE, particularly VV. Thus, VV ordered her assassination. Nunnally got caught in this as well.
Even if Charles really loved Marianne, he only cared for her children for as long she was alive. Once she was dead, he did not care anymore. Even by HBE standards Charles was very uncaring father.
He did not protect her possibly because he could not.
He, however, put Lelouch and Nunnally in danger knowingly and willingly. Because political advantage of doing that was more imprtant for him than lives of two of them.
In Japan during Sengoku Jidai there was so called hostage diplomacy. If two daimyos would enter an alliance, they would also exchange hostages. Typically it would be son or a daughter. One relative of daimyo A will go living with a family of daimyo B. An equivalent close relative of daimyo B will go live with the family of daimyo A.
That was done because daimyos could not easily trust each other. Without hostage daimyos could easily betray each other and attack their ally from the back when they least expect it. They will not lose anything and have everything to gain from doing it.
However, if your ally daimyo has one of your relatives as their hostage, then they can kill this relative in a retaliation for treason. Thus, daimyo who exchange hostages would be much less likely betray each other as they will not want to lose their sons or other relatives.
Back before Brittanian invasion into Japan, Japan was concerned if HBE has any hostile intentions against Japan. To convince Japanese that HBE is not planning to invade them, Charles opted to send Lelouch and Nunnally to live with Prime Minster of Japan. As a ruse gesture of good will.
With Lelouch and Nunnally in their hands, Japanese were convinced that HBE will not invade them as doing so would put Emperor's own children in danger. Thus, with sacrifice of two children, Japanese concerns were placated, and Japan got its guard down and was unprepared for a coming invasion.
Of course, that turned out to be a faint. Once Brittania was ready to invade it did so against unprepared Japanese and won easily.
As for Lelouch and Nunnally, they HBE government did not even searched for them and simply declared them dead.
That kind of experience of being used as a disposable political pawn by his own country and his own father made Lelouch hate them both. That also made him relactunnt to return to them on their own accord as he would suspect they will send him somewhere else with a similar suicidal mission.
He wanted revenge against both his country and his father.
Eventually he developed a radical worldview that this is wrong, and world should not be like this.
For that cause Lelouch became Zero and eventually conquered the whole world.
"Destroyed it and created it anew."
I personally can actually relate to this I often get a feeling that my parents do not care for me and only use me in their complex political games with their relatives and friends.
The way they treated me felt this way. It was not like a typical abuse parents family, but rather this complex upper class social maneuvering.
While CC backstory covered in the show, I guess some of the details of the pozzle are somewhat left out. While observant viewer can put the pieces together, some less observant ones might miss the idea altogether. Here I will tell her story in an appropriate detail.
Early on in her life CC was a normal human girl. From the looks of it she was born no earlier than 19th century, but it could be anywhere between Middle Ages and 19th century.
She was a slave, hard to tell if she run away of someone killed her owners and left her on her own. She wondered on her own and eventually fall from exhaustion. She probably also suffered from malnutrition and other issues.
However to her luck she was found a a nun who offered her a power in exchange for grating a nun one wish later down the line. The kind of deal CC herself offered to Lelouch, Mao, Marianne and possibly many others.
CC accepted and got ger geass from that nun. CC's geass allowed her to make people fall in love with her. She needs just to look at the man who interst her and activate it. And he will fall in love with her and pursue her. I wonder how many girls would like to have exact the same power as this one.
CC used this power very frequently, that made her life much easier and happier as it made people act nicely towards her, shower her with affection and presets. She had a lot of fun as she grew up using her geass. She attendant balls and other facy social events.
Eventually however that power went out of control. Just like Mao and Lelouch after that incident with Euphemia, after certain point she was no longer able to deactivate her geass. That power started affected everyone around her and brought her too much unwated attention and affection. Eventaully she hid from them all in the monastery with the same nun who gave her this geass.
She complained to nun that this power is not burden on her and she does not want it anymore. Nun said that it is not a problem, she can solve CC's problem.
Then nun revealed to CC that she only have CC geass so that later down the line she could push onto her Code of Immortality and then kill herself. Now, that CC's geass spread to her other eye and now in both of her eyes, she finally able to take Code of Immortality.
Thus nun transferred her Code of Immortality to CC and killed herself. Back in the days CC could not understand why nun would do something like that, but later she herself decided to do the same thing.
Code of Immortality made CC immortal: unageing and unkillable. However it also too away her geass power. People who used to love her get disenchanted with her and decided to kill her. They tried to kill her many times but she always survived because of her Code of Immortality.
Eventually she escaped them and then wondered the earth, meeting various people, falling in love, making enemies, living in every meaing of the world.
However everyone around her eventually aged and died and she alone remained. Over time she grew too tired to keep losing people who used to be dear to her but were now dead of old age while she was still alive and as young as she was back when she received the Code of Immortality.
Thus she decided that she too wanted to die and end this accumulation of sad experiences of missing dear ones.
However, because of her Code of Imoortality she could not die of old age. Nor can she just kill herself as all her wounds would heal, always preventing her death.
Her only option was to do what that nun done to her and find some people, form counteract with them and give them geass.
Thus she went on, looking for people to give geass to. Hard to tell how many people formed contract with her in total but they include Marianne, Mao and eventually Lelouch.
Marianne died before her geass developed into both eyes. Mao went insane before that happened.
In first season of Gode Geass Mao had geass in both eyes however CC probably thought it would be too cruel to subect someone like him to immortality. As much as she resolved to kill him, she could not do it as she is rather soft person on the inside.
Each of their geass was different as geass always reflect the individual's strongest innermost and dearest wish. For CC it was to be loved. For Marianne to cross into people's minds and for Mao to read other people's thoughts and memories. For Lelouch to give people orders they cannot disobey. CC did not had any control over what power they will get. Nor could she know in advance what kind of geass they will get or how it will affect them further down the line, other that it will changed them.
Eventually she was captured by Clovis, who was very interested in her immortality and wanted to study it in order to find out how aquire it for himself. CC had immorality because of Code of Immortality, but Clovis could not know something like that. He probably would not have believed the truth if CC would just tell him this. So he studied her like lab subject.
Eventually she escaped and formed contract with Lelouch.
At first she wanted to be strictly practical with him because she did not want him to die before he could take over Code of Immortality.
However, overtime she grown attached to him and his cause and started to help him with his rebellion and other things.
As show progressed, she became increasingly more cordial and warmer with him. Their love truly developed over the course of the show.
During Black Rebellion she helps him a lot.
By the second season she was even willing to give on her original cause of passing the Code and dying and bet it all on Lelouch.
In the end this all developed into one of a kind very special relationship built on very deep underlying connection that is not so apparent to observers.
This relationship is special because their unique experiences allow them to understand each other like no one else and truly value each other.
Overall rating 7.0 out of 10 - Great anime with a few issues here and there.
I recommend watching.
I wrote a separate blog post about girls of Chunibyo, you can find it via the following link.
About Girls of Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!
However, this show deserves a proper overall review.
Overall, it is rather gentle and cozy show in best traditions of KyoAni.
It does however tackles rather serious psychological questions and gives different points of view regarding so called Chunibyo or 8th grader syndrome.
Rikka's sister, Yuuta and Nibutani oppose it believing in being 'normal'. Though Nibutani and Yuuta relent in the end of the show and embrace Rikka's way of life.
In contrast Rikka clings to it to escape cruel reality that has nothing in it for her but pain and misery.
I do not like that is it about her father as I hate my parents. If if was over some other issue I would have probably given this show 8.
However, the point is pretty clear, as clear as her phrase 'Vanishment This World'. For those who are too dumb to look up the dictionary what vanishment is, it means disappear. Thus the phrase mean to convey that she wants this world to disappear. She does not like it and has good reasons to.
I am very sympathetic to her for this. I think that you should not fit into shit you do not want or like just to be 'normal'. You should strive to change the world to feet your vision of how it should be. Or engage in escapism if you have no power to do so.
After all these so called 'normal' rules were simply made up by old men to suit themselves and they do nothing good for younger generations.
So we should simply destroy their rules and replace them with ours better rules. Then we can strive and prosper in our own unique way. So we should not listen to old people's vile lies and their useless ways that will get you nowhere. I am actually telling this from experience as almost everything my parents used to say were nothing but lies that does not work in real life.
Of course later as we get older, we in turn will defend these new rules, we have created, from our own kids. Because history repeats itself after all. However that is a separate issue.
Back to the show, Rikka of course has no any real power to actually change the world. In Lelouch's terms she is a powerless corpse pretending to be alive. The only thing she can do is, to quote Revy from Black Lagoon, "think happy thoughts" and pretend to be Wicked Eye.
That said Kumin handles the world best of them all. She openly naps in school to keep herself well rested. She does not give a fuck for being 'normal', but simultaneously never gets in trouble with anyone for anything she does. She looks at the stuff that is going on from a safe distance and enjoys herself as much as she wants/can.
That is what I call a well adapted person. The way Kumin dodges all sort of shit that life could possibly throw at her direction is really great. She is a small target to begin with.
I would like a girlfriend who can just like Kumin help me dodge various rules and problems with other people. My friend Fedya was able to do that really well back in the days. With someone like Kumin I will be able to do whatever I want when I want and how I want.
In fact CC is a higher incarnation of the Kumin's basic traits. She solves problems on much greater scale in much grander fashion.
Surely, I want a Revolution and a complete change of how this world works. However in the meantime I can settle of someone who works out cheat-sheets to this shit and helps me dodge the problems.
I have a number or anime characters that resemble me for one of another reason. Here I would like to list them all and explain why they are like me.
There are few of my friends that actually resemble certain anime characters. In fact, it seems the entire anime series were made about them.
First is Fedya with whom I graduated from High School and later went to Russian Uni together.
He is the kind of intellectual with rather radical ideas, like for example he can talk in length how explosion is a form of Art. He would talk about that and other philosophical and existentialist themes with me.
He is very smart and into computers and technology as a career but also out of personal interest about fondness of tech.
He also likes video games and Japanese culture.
I think given enough time he will be able to invent something even more radical than microwave that sends D-mails.
He is fan of Elon Musk.
I met her in Uni in Russia.
She was not very pretty and was very sad about it.
Despite that she was very obsessed about sex and talked about it a lot.
She was also very misogynistic in many ways. Probably because she was jealous of women who are prettier than her and hated them for that.
I could kind of sense how much she suffered from her appearance and kind of liked that tragedy of her and felt some sympathy to her. I guess I generally like tragic females.
I was almost tangible how much she cried and suffered on the inside. Photo related, Tomoko there looks very sad indeed.
Though I would say she was not that ugly.
Also, she managed to indicate that she likes to be a BDSM slave.
There are some other friends I would like to mention, like for example Tsukasa, but it would be hard to connect them to some particular anime character.
I got this idea recently that what people call 'smart' is entirely subjective and can mean basically anything.
However, my fundamental aims are much more complex and sophisticated.
I want to create a better world. A kind of technogenic utopia.
Trying to restore this ridiculous world or some pathetic moral and ethos of that era is ludicrous.
Yet because some nostalgic morons who love how things were in the past or who love nature and other 'green' stupidity we cannot fully embrace the future.
Because of that we are stuck in this festering disgusting ugly greenwashed world where braindead eco-morons want to abolish plastic bags.
I think we should abolish eco-morons instead of plastic bags.
We need to embrace plastic, technology, steel, aluminum and glass. We need to use these materials to create a sleek, clean, comfortable and convenient world.
We should not bow to the nature or crawl the earth like some filthy animals.
We should lord over nature and make her our slave. We are higher.
We humans are pinnacle of the world. We should live in high-rises that tower over the earth high in the air.
In this future world we should rule over all things in this heaven and earth as the only true and undisputed masters of it all.
Everything that stands in the way of this vision must simply be scoured from the face of the earth. If some morals, religion, eco-sentiment or some admiration of pastoralism gets in the way of this future, then we must simply destroy it and burn it to ash.
Then we can build this new glorious, better future on top of the remains of the old shitty ugly, muddy order.
This better future is clean, beautiful, sleek, cozy, comfortable, ergonomic, convenient and beautiful. It is the only future we need.
Mawaru Penguindrum has plenty of good side characters and their stories who make this show for me. However the main cast of Kan, Shou and Himari are really annoying and do drag show down. For just main cast alone I would have given it 2 or 3 at best.
My favorite character from Penguindrum is Tabuki, I found him very relatable. https://penguindrum.fandom.com/wiki/Keiju_Tabuki
That is the same with Ikuhara other anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Utena herself is not likable or interesting at all, with exception of that episode where Akio made her girly. I would have dropped it if it was just about Utena.
However, most of the other cast is really awesome and they make this show for me. My favorite from there are Akio, Anthy, Saionji, Miki and the shadow theater girls.
Yes, and a lot of them.
Half of Guilty Crown cast is like that. Actually more than half, more like nearly all of them
In fact most characters there does not have any redeeming qualities about them at all.
I pity male MC Shuu for having to deal with any of them.
He is probably the only one I do not hate there, though I do not particularly like him either. He should have forgotten about Inori, moved on and refused to interact with Undertaker on their terms. It was clear enough she is into Guy and not him.
I also hate Lil Mayer from Ergo Proxy. In fact all female cast there up to episode 5 is as bad as in Guilty Crown. I dropped it after episode 5 even though technological future theme overall does interest me.
I also hate Sohara and Mikako from Sora no Otoshimono, I dropped it because of two of them even though I like Ikaros a lot, she is one of my favorite waifus.
Ibara from Hyouka, Kikuri from Jigoku Shoujo, Lizzie from Black Butler, Yumina from Isekai with Smartphone, twin tails from Another, Flay from Gundam SEED there are too many of them
see the list of waifus I trashed here https://mywaifulist.moe/user/119935
they all suck and that is probably not all the waifus I hate since I likely forgot many of them. For example from Monster Girl encyclopedia I only picked likes and did not trashed anyone, however if I start trashing monster girls from the encyclopedia then my trash list will exceed my likes list.
Then there is also lots of anime I did not watched. Some I am not aware of and others I do not want to watch. They too probably has many trashable waifus.
In fact I think that I can like a girl if there is nothing to hate about her. Nothing that I hate about her that is.
