Izetta Eps 6,7,8,9 etc… Dropped

I give up!

Shuumatsu no Izetta is a tolerable action-adventure yuri-exploitation alt-history WWII exercise, but I might as well throw all pretensions to the wind and instead follow Brave Witches, the latest loli-fanservice installment of the Strike Witches franchise. Or go whole hog on that thing with girls as battleships (or is it battleships as girls?)

After Episode 9, all that remains is for clone-witch to capture and mash on Fine-hime. Then Izetta will go nuclear and decapitate clone-witch-bad-“lesbian” with a flying fire extinguisher, because we all know that’s how its done from Shojo Sect.

Feh!

I’m bored, I can’t get the Genshiken summary pieces to write themselves and the Nanashi no Asterism compare-and-contrast to Hanamonogatari essay is getting to be too long to read, its arguments too tenuous to follow. Fortunately, per recommendation of a senior blogger, I found a neato free online course on Modern Japanese Sub-Cultures, where I am making a pest out of myself (I hope not) by posting follow-up bibliography links in the class comment section. So far the instructors haven’t stomped me and I have lots of links to neato somewhat peripherally interesting academic papers from five-years of this thing.

And no, NOT spamming the course to drive readership to this site. Well behaved, I am trying to be. Learning something too. Never knew that studies of early shoujo manga had subtypes. One called “otometic” seemed to deal with ever-repeated “grow up, accept who you are and find affirmation in being your mundane self” bromides delivered to girl readers in the 1970’s and 1980’s. I suspect, given the shitty, no-happy-ending-ever nature of proto yuri tales that these old heterosexual chestnuts are being reworked in contemporary non-exploitative, sympathetic “story-A” yuri manga. Needs more research.

Meanwhile, I love how well Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name is being received, Here is a short Shinkai-produced Cram-School TV commercial that I fell in love with. A mini Your Name, minus body-swapping, all in two minutes:

Wow!