Sunshine Challenge 2019 #3: Wax Canonical

[silveradept]

sunshine_challenge's third prompt asks us to talk about a show, series, or media piece with special significance to us, or one that we think doesn't have the fandom that it deserves.

Most of us here have at least one movie/book/tv series/comic book/and more that speaks to us on a special level. Here is your opportunity to wax poetic on those things!

We want to hear what new canons to investigate. Tell us why that thing is cool. Tell us why you enjoy it so much. Tell us where to start if we want to get into it too (and how to find it if it’s not something mainstream that’s easy to find everywhere). It can be difficult to find fandom friends with shared interests sometimes, but this is your chance to cultivate a shared interest!

This particular question goes on very different directions depending on how I choose to interpret the important parts.

For instance, I was the target demographic for a lot of the animation reinvestment that started with the era around Batman: the Animated Series. It also created the thing that could have sunk the reinvestment entirely while it was still getting its legs, Cartoon All-Stars, an anti-drugs PSA broadcast on every network at the same time that was a massively multi-property crossover of the toys in a kid's life animating to keep him away from doing drugs, like his older brother already was.

And right as animation was coming into existence, Saban appeared in the United States, taking footage of Zyuranger, a Super Sentai franchise, and spinning an entirely new story of "teenagers with attitude" to work around it. Which has since become a storytelling feat worth admiration, whether you like Power Rangers as a concept, because the suit and mecha material it used for the first few years (at least) was already determined and a continuing storyline was woven around those pieces. (I'm not sure how much of the current series of Power Ranges uses its Super Sentai counterpart's suit footage. And there's at least a couple of welds across series that have to be written in to keep the storyline going.

Once animation stopped being solely for young children, and someone found a working model for a Sentai show, then the market flooded with a lot of anime, and the increased availability of broadband connections made it easier for fans of the "suits and monsters" shows to find broadcasts or to have releases subtitled for new audiences. And from there, we get an entire sequence of shows, from Gennedy to Lauren and Rebecca, that are entirely worth watching and wouldn't exist at all if, arbitrarily speaking, Kevin Conroy's Batman hadn't been a massive hit. (Which is not to say that it all came ex nihilo. Nothing truly exists in a vacuum.) Or the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast didn't decide to do an animated show about statues that came to life at night. Or that a show about a wallaby, a heifer, and a turtle could get away with so much crap in the animated medium without being as in your face about it as, say, Ren and Stimpy. That it was a novel concept for two boneheads to make fun of music videos. And so forth.

And that's one small fragment of one facet of the canon I've consumed, in animation, video gaming, live action material, books, music, and so forth. Picking one (or a handful) out of all of them and saying "these ones are the road map of my fannish journey, watch these and you will understand all" is trying to find one needle in a stack when all you have is a neodymium magnet.

Because half the fun in science fiction shows is spotting someone who played a similar (or very different) role in another show. You often have to go by voice, because the makeup department is trying to make you believe it's two separate characters. It doesn't make any sense to say "holy fork, Spock is the Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts, and the Joker gets to play the good mentor guy across from him" unless you know the various roles that Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill have done over their careers.

(Skip the fifth season of Fringe, unless you really have to know what and who the Observers are.)

Sometimes you hold what seems like an odd opinion, only to find plenty of other people share the same. I think Escaflowne and Fushigi Yugi are magical girl anime, even though they don't have the transformation trinkets or the outfit changes that often accompany more standard shows in the genre. (They weren't relatable stories, in the sense that I have never had to deal with a harem of attractive men throwing themselves at me. But their worlds are fascinating and have lots of places for someone to put a transformative hook into.)

Then there are the things that you think will never work, and then they succeed beyond what you could imagine. Disney and Square-Enix making an RPG together? Hello Kitty's company is making an anime about a salarywoman with an actual chauvinist pig for a boss and many of the workplace concerns that come with that (and the other women in the company that help or create their own problems for her)? Seth MacFarlane is making a science fiction show? This movie is going to tell a story about magic and eyes and the moon, it's all stop-motion, and it's going to be scored with Beatles music?

(If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see and hear, no matter how unusual it may seem. And please be warned, if you fidget, if you look away, if you forget any part of what I tell you, even for an instant, then our hero will surely perish.)

And, yeah, then there are the ones that are personal. The show that sells itself on big action sequences, but keeps you there because it doesn't pull punches on how messed up the relationships are between many of its characters, especially the nominally parent-child or teacher-student ones. And in the middle of that, still shows them standing up to their abusers and staying functional despite the trainloads of trauma they've suffered. And finding and keeping friends who stick with them through all of it.

I don't talk about them in those terms. Because they're that personal, and talking about them that way means talking about the reasons why my personal life made that series special.

(I know that I could do so much, if I could just believe in me.)

So it's kind of hard to say "this canon deserves more love, and all y'all should watch it." Because ultimately, the thing I want you to watch is the thing that you're interested in, but might not have seen before. And even if it's a re-watch for me, all that means is I get to pay attention to the details and the things surrounding that I didn't get on the first pass. Or I can pay more attention to the music and sound to see how well it fits together.

(If you push really hard, you'll find that I have a dear fondness for a book called Villains By Necessity, by Eve Forward, because it's a great story about what happens when Good finally wins and decides that nobody is ever going to do evil again. There's an identity reveal that hinges on a delightful pun, and it's great for anybody who has some familiarity with fantasy tropes. But we'll probably find something well before then.)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I have been recommended Villains by Necessity before and I do not think the rec came from your direction. Wasn't in any Delaware library (isn't in either library system hereabouts either), and I kept deciding it didn't seem worth $25 on Amazon for a used copy. (Apparently it is now on Kindle for $5.23, but, you know, I have $0.93 in Amazon money rn.) Is there a copy around here somewhere?

[silveradept]

Not that I know of. I think it was interlibrary loan when I read it the first time and similarly terribly priced. The other possibility is that it's with the books at the house of family, but that's also several states away.

[alexseanchai]

Thanks

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Or the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast didn't decide to do an animated show about statues that came to life at night.

Ha!

Re: Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[silveradept]

It always felt like it was their side project, or the work they did over summer vacation between seasons of Trek, like they enjoyed each other's presence so much, they didn't want to leave. Even though I knew that voice work is usually individual, and they don't see each other at all.

[mythicmistress]

I'm planning on reading Villains By Necessity, just as soon as my hold at the library comes through.
I also liked the little references to different animated works through the post.

[silveradept]

And here I thought this was a rare book that would need tracking down.

I can't not make references to things. It is apparently a part of my fannish identity.

[mythicmistress]

I was surprised to find that copy of the book at the library, I honestly thought I would have to shell out a decent sized chunk of cash to be able to read it!

[silveradept]

I'm pleased at its availability for you. Might have to see if they'll ship it out to a library closer to alexseanchai so they can read it, too.

[nyctanthes]

I love a rec post that is actually a meta post.

:)

Also, Batman the Animated Series will always be MY BATMAN.

[silveradept]

I apparently cannot do anything else, as my recs are often entirely tied up in my meta. Which probably makes the recs part of it more difficult to follow.

I'm not old enough for the Adam West Batman to have seen it live, but it's equally as much my Batman (if not more so) than Kevin Conroy's. I enjoy them both for different reasons.