Author: bodellyt

*Takes deep breath* Okay… we’re really doing this? Today I’m going to talk about the controversial topic of loli characters. Before the impending shitstorm ensues, I’m not here to pitch up a tent on either side of the current debate surrounding lolis (or shotas), but I will talk about the origins of the term and what’s caused the aforementioned shitstorm.

A few disclaimers before we begin:

  1. I am the one writing this; not Ayano, not Tsubaki, not Alexie, but Bodell. I’m not planning on expressing opinions but know that anything I say does not necessarily align with the thoughts or opinions of the rest of the Panda Gang. Ayano is checking to make sure this post is acceptable, but that doesn’t mean that this represents her thoughts on this topic.
  2. This discussion will delve into the concept of loli porn, and of course the accusations that it reflects child pornography. If this makes you uncomfortable, I urge you to not read this post.
  3. If you feel strongly on this subject on either side of the debate, I ask that you do not try to force this opinion on others down in the comments. If you wish to discuss this, please be respectful or do it elsewhere (I know that most of you guys will be respectful, but I felt the need to mention this just in case).

original

So, let’s begin. What is a ‘loli’? A loli is a female character that either is or has the qualities of a child. Typically, they are short and cute, but their in-fiction age varies drastically depending on the series and its art style. That’s all we’re going to say on age for now, but I will come back to it later in this post.

But before I get into the debates, let’s discuss the origins of the term ‘loli’. ‘Loli’ is short for ‘lolita’ which has two distinct meanings in Japanese. The first being what I’ve already mentioned, and the other being the Edwardian style fashion you see some Japanese girls adorning, think Harajuku fashion and you’re on the right lines.

I don’t know how lolita fashion fits in, but the term ‘lolita’ actually comes from outside of Japan. In 1955 a Russian-American author, Vladimir Nabokov, wrote a book called Lolita in which a middle-aged man becomes sexually involved with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, nicknaming her ‘Lolita’. The book is extremely well regarded, to the point that it’s been branded as one of the best books of the 20th century by many. However, when adopting this as a term to describe young-looking female characters, it’s almost impossible to not draw the lines between these characters and paedophilia (yes that is how it’s spelt in Britain). The term ‘loli’ was seemingly always set up to fail.

Dragon Loli

However, if you say something for long enough, it begins to lose its original power. This is why discussing things like sex were taboo years ago, but nowadays no one really cares. I believe a similar thing has happened with the word ‘loli’ in the anime community, as we no longer fully consider where the word originates from. The word has taken on a new meaning.

Loli now refers to a particular character design within the anime/manga sector of the medium of cartoons/animation. There are so many loli characters that we universally love and enjoy watching, these characters often aren’t sexualised but the term has become a blanket that often just means a moe girl that’s young-looking. As I said earlier, loli characters vary drastically in in-fiction age, with the term “legal loli” arising referring to characters that are over the age of 18 but are still lolis. So, if these characters are legally allowed to be engaging in sexual activities in universe, what’s the problem with watching them?

Taiga

Two words: pseudo photography. Once again, I’m going to remind you that I’m not expressing an opinion, but what I understand the controversy to be. Also, I would like to state that I learnt this from a personal friend who works in computer forensics. It is this man’s literal job to scan seized devices and catch people who are up to no good, including paedophiles. I’m sure you can guess where this is going.

In UK law, loli porn is 100% illegal… especially if the character is under 18 in-fiction. And this is because of what I said above, pseudo photography. A drawing of a child is treated similarly to a picture of a real child because, in the eyes of the law, a sexual attraction is still being formed between someone of consenting age and someone who is not.

I can’t believe I’m actually researching and writing about this, but child pornogrophy is graded in catergories, the most severe offences being A grade, the less severe being C grade. A is exactly what you’d expect, I’m not going to describe it because I don’t want to conjur unsavoury imagery for you. C, however, can sometimes be photos that seem innocent, pictures of a child fully clothed, maybe even with some family. It depends on the relationship between the child and the owner of the pictures, and the context surrounding the case. Psuedo photography comes in when this imagery is rendered through drawings, animations, video game cutscenes, etc. It’s not real but it represents something that is.

Megumin

Now, does that make someone who watches loli porn a paedophile? Some would say yes, some would say no. It could be raised that someone who watches rape porn isn’t a rapist and doesn’t necessarily plan on becoming one; equally someone who watches incest porn doesn’t necessarily want to sleep with their actual family. There’s the possibility, that part of attraction is the taboo surrounding it, the rush of doing something wrong. However, others see that roleplay between consenting adults is different to that of an adult and a child, and that the fact that this kink exists is enough to warrant imprisonment.

The laws on this are less strict in the USA and in Japan (hence why Japan makes a fuck tonne of this stuff), and its arguable that Japan’s laws on paedophilia are also less strict in general. You might remember the situation surrounding the author of Rurouni Kenshin in 2017 when it was discovered that he owned DVDs of naked underage girls. This, obviously, went public and the current arc of Rurouni Kenshin was stopped. This culminated in a $2000 fine and his manga resumed in June 2018 in the same magazine. If that was in the West, he’d be ostracised by society and would likely never be allowed to publish in that magazine ever again.

I think we mostly can agree that this is problem, because these were images of real girls. The issue we have in the community right now is that some people believe that fiction is fiction and it doesn’t hurt anyone, whilst the opposite side believe that fiction is based in reality, and if the reality is wrong, so is the fiction.

Senko San

Okay this is pretty heavy shit so I’m going to end it here. This is where I’d normally ask you a question but today I’d just like to wish you a nice day. I’m going to fuck off to Japan for 2 weeks so I won’t be reading any comments, but I will still be posting as I have a few scheduled for the next couple weeks.

-Bodell

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I’ve always been interested in people’s anime ‘origin stories’, and that’s probably because mine is a little different. It feels like most anime watchers my age or a little older watched a lot of the 90s kids shows like Pokémon, Digimon, Dragon Ball Z, Yu Gi Oh, Sailor Moon, and Beyblades; and whilst I watched most of these as a kid, I didn’t move onto the popular 00’s anime like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. In fact, I had never heard of Bleach or One Piece until after I started watch anime as a medium.

I don’t remember exactly when I started watching anime, but I know it was either late 2012 or early 2013, but once again, it wasn’t through a popular show at the time… like Sword Art Online, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, or Attack on Titan (a little later in 2013). I started watching anime because of a certain visual novel.

I would never claim to be a visual novel buff, or even really a fan at all… I’ve played a few, and only completed like 2. That being said, this particular visual novel was completed by myself multiple times. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve completed it to every single ending, and I guesstimate that there are 11… yeah, I was fucking obsessed.gree

What is this visual novel? Why was I so addicted to it? And how did this lead me to start watching anime?

Let’s set the scene a little here. I was 15 years old, going to senior school everyday and playing video games every night, apart from one night a week when I’d see my girlfriend at the time who lived in the next town over (she’s irrelevant to the story, I just want you to know that I was a stud at school). A few friends of mine watched anime and were raving about it over Xbox Live and I ignored them because fuck that weeb shit, I just wanted to play Halo: Reach.

All of a sudden, they stopped raving about anime, but moved onto a ‘game’. Now I had always played a lot of games… so this was more in my territory. They told me that this was a game called Katawa Shoujo.Katawa

I’m expecting one of three reactions out of you after seeing that name:

  1. What’s that?
  2. I remember that, it was great!
  3. FUCK THAT SHIT!

I won’t deny that Katawa Shoujo is a bit of a weird visual novel… literally meaning ‘crippled girls’ in Japanese. And don’t get me wrong, I was definitely wary of this visual novel going in. I knew that this was a dating sim, I knew that the girls had a whole spectrum of disabilities, but more than anything else, I knew that there were sex scenes.

I started the visual novel up and began reading through it. From what I knew, it was actually quite well written and interesting. It was a new experience for me, and it was doing a good job of holding my intrigue, but it wasn’t amazing. That was until something important happened… that was until I had my first waifu (also I wrote a post about the word waifu a few weeks ago, so click here to read!).Emi

Her name is Emi and this pout still stops my fucking heart every time I see it (which is apt as your character’s medical condition is arrythmia – a problem of the heart). On top of this, she’s a really fun character to spend time with. From the moment I first saw her I was caught hook, line, and sinker, and now this ‘game’ was the best thing since sliced bread. I became addicted.

After wasting about a month of my life smashing through the various storylines in Katawa Shoujo and avidly recommending to all of my friends, the friend who initially got me to play it said the following sentence: “If you liked Katawa, you’ll like Darker Than Black.”

At the time, this made perfect sense to me, so I set off to binge the first season of Darker Than Black, then going on to watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Death Note. In hindsight, Darker Than Black was not a very good recommendation if all you had to go on was that I liked Katawa, it’s an action series with only light hints of romance, rather than a full-blown high school romance experience like Katawa.DTB

In any case, here I am 6 to 7 years later, writing for an anime blog and making anime videos. I never thought that what was a ‘weird game’ that was randomly thrust upon me would shape my life so drastically. When I look back on Katawa Shoujo, I always remember it fondly and I think I always will. This game made me who I am today, and I honestly don’t know what I’d be doing right now if my friend had never recommended this weird porn game to me.

What was your intro to anime?

-Bodell

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Welcome to Bodell’s Bizarre Adventures where I do shit and tell you about it! This is my first blog in this ‘series’ and they will come out as and when I do more shit (so hopefully more to come in September when I get back from Japan)!

Last weekend and friend and I drove down to London to visit some friends of ours who moved down there a few months ago for work. We had a great weekend, visiting the city on the Saturday and then going back to the house and having a bit of a party. I distinctly remember standing at the top of stairs watching two of my friends trying to put a third friend to bed whilst he stood in his doorway, wearing only his underwear, arguing… but at no point during this 5-minute argument did he stop dancing. This culminated in the very drunk friend breaking the door handle to his bedroom, which wasn’t great because the landlords were due to inspect the house on Monday.

Party stories aside, on the Sunday, we took the tube into the city and visited the British Museum as it currently has a manga exhibition running (unless you’re reading this after 26th August). We took our time getting to the exhibition, but once the three of us that went entered, my inner weeb couldn’t help but get a little excited… okay it was very excited! Typically, I’m more of an anime watcher than a manga reader because it’s easier for me to become invested that way, but I always love learning about all areas of both mediums.

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The entrance had videos of various people in the manga industry talking about the medium and what it means to them, the first being Osamu Tezuka who is fondly known as the godfather of manga. Once you passed this section, you could see that the front and back walls had giant prints of various manga characters, along with picture frames containing original pages that the respective mangaka illustrated. I then moved left to find what almost felt like an indoor courtyard with walls surrounding it with various manga pages and TVs playing the anime adaptations of the manga.

After you leave this section there are various walls which were dedicated to different genres, such as sports, horror, sci-fi, and even a wall on homosexual relationships as shown in manga. Oh and there was also a massive fuck off colossal titan head.

 

As you approached the far wall, you come across an Ghibli exhibit which is playing clips from various movies on one screen, and clips from the Studio Ghibli documentary film, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures of this so I can’t show that image, so here’s a GIF of my favourite scene in The Tale of Princess Kaguya which caused me to stop and stare blankly when it came on.

Kaguya

Behind the Ghibli exhibit, there were three pieces of artwork created by Takehiko Inoue (creator of Slam Dunk, Vagabond, and REAL) which were each of a character from REAL that inspire him, specifically for the exhibition. If you haven’t heard of REAL, it’s a sports manga following wheelchair basketball and what Inoue-sensei is currently working on. I’ve never read it myself, but I took time to take in the draftsmanship that went into each masterpiece. Alongside the works was a video of Inoue creating the artworks along with a paragraph about the series and the characters. Unfortunately, we also weren’t allowed to take pictures of these either so you’ll just have to get yourself over to London if your a big Inoue fan… or just wait because I’m sure they’ll become available somehow.

There were also two bookshelves filled with manga in both Japanese and English for you to read freely, as well as multiple QR codes to get free manga if you had the Shonen Jump app (which I don’t, and I had no internet to be able to download it).

I bought the exhibition’s book which was supposedly exclusive to the exhibition (although I’ve seen it on Wordery for cheaper) and been slowly working my way through it. It goes through the origins of manga and Japanese history so if that interests you, see if you can find it online! It looks like this:

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I had a great time at the exhibition and recommend it if you’re able to get yourself to London, UK before 26th August 2019. If you want to book tickets, click here.

-Bodell

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A week or so ago, I shared a publication of mine (that wasn’t posted to this blog) with a friend who doesn’t really watch anime. Despite not being particularly invested in this medium, he will often critique my work bluntly and honestly which helps me strive to improve.

We discussed what I’d said in this publication for a bit, but what he was most interested in was the word ‘waifu’ and the concept behind it. I’m sure he could make the connection between the words ‘wife’ and ‘waifu’, but he was unsure as to what ‘waifu’ actually means, which is actually quite understandable because it doesn’t really make much sense at a cursory glance. Have you ever tried to explain waifu culture or best girl wars to your normie friend? It’s a surprisingly difficult task to do the topic justice and not make it sound incredibly creepy.

So that’s what I’m here to discuss today, what is a waifu? I haven’t done any specific research on this topic because I wanted this to be my personal opinions and thoughts translated into a well thought-out piece of prose.

Writing

So where to start? Let’s start with how the word ‘waifu’ came to be. If, like me, you’ve spent time studying Japanese, you will likely have come across a category of words which are known as gairaigo (外来語) which means “loan word” or “borrowed word”. If you can read kanji, then you’d know that the first character (外) means “foreign” or “external” (gaijin = foreigner), the second character (来) means “next” or “become” (mirai = future), and the final character (語) means “word” or “language” (nihongo = Japanese language). So if you put these together, you get something external becoming the local language. These are words like orange (オレンジ) and computer (コンピュータ), which are pronounced orenji and konpyuuta, respectively.

Now the interesting thing here is that there are actually multiple Japanese words that men use to describe their wives (and I won’t get into the gender politics behind some of them), but from what I understand it is not common practise to refer to your wife as waifu (ワイフ). This is why I’m not sure if the word was actually borrowed by the Japanese and then re-borrowed by the west, or if the western otaku community just made it up so it would sound Japanese; and I don’t think it really matters because the point is it could be Japanese thanks to other gairaigo words. This then lends itself to the anime community as an in-joke they can use to describe their favourite cartoon characters from Japan.

Miku

And now we get to what a waifu actually is. Typically a waifu is a female anime/manga/game character that the spectator has strong feelings towards, and this is where shit can get creepy for the people outside the community.

It is true that anime has some weird sexualisation. The most prevalent issue that keeps coming up is that with loli characters. I’m sure you know what a loli is, but just in case your weeb friend sent you this post so I could explain this shit to you in lieu of doing for it themself, a loli is a female character that either is or has features of a child (although typically it’s an 800-year-old demon lord or some shit). And let me state now that loli characters are not always sexualised and there is nothing actually wrong with these characters, which is what people commonly misunderstand. The problem arises when they are sexualised and when loli porn is made, and I’m not going any further down that particular rabbit hole in this post.

Getting back on track, there are anime characters that are designed to cater for specific and niche kinks, which may garner the sexual attraction people associate with waifus. And trust me; you get some fucked up shit, just like you do in real life.

Monster-Musume

This is where the second aspect of waifu culture comes in, and that is to fill an escapist fantasy. These characters are drawn to be attractive. When my sister (who doesn’t watch anime) and I watched Death Note together, she blatantly had a crush on Light. He’s attractive, cool, and confident… he’s also a fucked up mass murdering psychopath but love knows no bounds. The anime community is full with people who feel misunderstood and shunned by the society that surrounds them, and when the see a beautiful girl accept a protagonist they identify with, then just maybe they also feel accepted. I think this can help the development of the weird kinks I mentioned before, as someone becomes more engrossed within the medium, they may seek more radical and strange entertainment. However, once again I must state that this isn’t exclusive to anime and people do this in real life.

Light

This last part is the most important part of this, and the part I’d like everyone to take away. As much as there might be an underlying sexual attraction between an anime watcher and their waifu, there’s actually a lot more to it than that.

These characters can be funny, exciting, dangerous, or just plain adorable. There’s an aspect to just wanting to spend time with these characters because we enjoy them for who they are, and not sexual attraction. I believe that part of the reason tsunderes are so widely loved is because of the feeling we get of breaking down someone’s walls as they become more comfortable with them and begin to show their true self.

The desire to protect these characters kicks in, and because it’s not purely sexual as people initially presume, you find that people that aren’t sexually attracted to women have a waifu.

Taiga

Thank you for reading. Who’s your waifu? Also after writing this, Ayano said that she had posted something similar all the way back in 2017, so please give it a read if you’re interested in the topic! Click here to read it!

Also if you’re interested in the other publication I mentioned, click here, but know that it has nothing to do with waifus, I just say it a few times.

-Bodell

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Hey guys,

Bodell here!

I know Crimson was supposed to be writing today but due to unforeseen circumstances I’ve had to step in literally last minute to type this. I’d never watched this show or heard of this character before so please bear with me as I’m writing this at 1am UK time to get it out for you in time!

This part is in collaboration with Ayano’s first post. Make sure to start there if you haven’t yet! You can do so by clicking here: https://kawaiipaperpandas.com/2019/07/28/clue-collaboration-fan-favorite-froppy-found-frigid/.

As I leave the library, I realize that Ferid Bathroy must be the first vampire I’ve spoken to, let alone interviewed as a suspect for a murder. I feel a shiver run through my spine as I consider the man’s barbaric diet, and just how open and charming a gentleman he was considering this fact. I also can’t shake my interest in this Frau fellow so I think I’d better interview him next.

After a small (unplanned) detour, I find my way to the cafeteria to discover a tall blonde man in a navy-blue coat sat alone, smoking a cigarette. Leaning against the table next to him is a tall scythe, matching Ferid’s description.

As I approach, he watches me with a serious expression, he seems to feel some level of concern at the current situation. Now I just need to deduce whether he’s concerned about the murder or concerned about being caught red handed.

“You must be Frau? Yes? Do you know why All Might invited you here today?” I ask politely, something tells me that I don’t want to get on the wrong side of him.

“I don’t know why that hero invited me, but I’m here representing the Barsburg Church,” he tuts in response, “I’d much rather be talking to a cute girl… that damned Quent having a go at me for talking to that cute Kumiko chick.”

“I’d heard you two had butted head earlier, is that all it was?” I probe.

“Yeah, that’s really it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that old fool did Tsu-chan in. She was trying to break up it up and I may have snapped at her and walked away,” I see that he bites his lip. Despite his somewhat scary exterior, maybe he’s quite a nice person internally, “I really wish I hadn’t done that; she didn’t deserve it.”

“You seem genuinely upset, what exactly happened when you snapped?”

“Look, I didn’t kill the girl! She was way too cute for that! I just said a few words I regret and walked back into the room… and then next thing I was surrounded by darkness and a suffocating silence.”

I quickly glance over at his scythe which, just like all the other weapons I’ve seen tonight, looks clean. He catches me and meets my gaze, before slowly picking it up and handing it to me, “you need to test this, right? Here you go.”

I offer him a quick thank you, before calling in support to collect the weapon for tests. I turn to him again, “if you didn’t do it, who do you think did?” I think I’m placing a little too much trust in him here but I’m keen to hear his perspective.

“I want to say that old man, but it doesn’t feel like he did it. The vampire would almost be too obvious, but that girl I was talking too was acting very shifty. It can’t possibly have been me making her uncomfortable by talking to her, which is what Quent was saying. Maybe she has a guilty conscience?” It does sound like he’s grasping at straws a little here, so he’s not completely in my good books yet, we’ll see what comes back on that scythe.

“Thank you, Frau, you’ve been very helpful. I’ll keep you updated when I learn more.”

I slowly stand and begin to walk away, as I hear him light another cigarette. Does he normally smoke this much, or is it down to stress?  I shake my head trying to wrap my head around this case. All I know is I need to find my next suspect. I believe Frau said her name was Kumiko. I head in the direction of the student dormitories hoping to find more answers along the way.

Once again, sorry I’m not Crimson and that this is probably a little shorter than you’d like. You can find tomorrow’s post by Scott here!

-Bodell

On Friday 19th July, me and my family all went together to see The Lion King (2019) and whilst I enjoyed it thoroughly, I couldn’t help but compare it to a similar film I remember from my childhood, a film that my siblings and I grew up singing and quoting together. This film was called The Lion King (1994). I know that these names are similar, so I’ll make it easier by referring to them by the years that they came out, so 1994 and 2019. Despite the names being so similar and their plots being almost identical, these two films are not the same!

Okay, let’s drop the act a little here so I can drop a slight spoiler warning. I’m going to be talking about all aspects of both films so I’ve you’ve not seen 2019 and don’t want to know what’s different, maybe watch the film and then come back. However, I can promise you that if you’ve seen 1994, you don’t really need to avoid this post.

2019 is the latest film in Disney’s money-grabbing scheme where they make films they’ve already made, but in live-action. This is something I find quite baffling in the case of The Lion King considering that every single character in 2019 is fucking CG animated because animals can’t actually speak English and aren’t the best at acting. Okay, now to put my British cynicism aside and actually talk about what I did and didn’t like about 2019.

Although, beforehand, I’d like to say that I love that Disney have gone out of their way to cast more people of African descent for a film set in Africa. I love the increase in diversity in their works, and if you have a problem with Ariel being black…please fucking fight me! 

 Let’s start with the positives.

This film is abso-fucking-lutely breathtakingly beautiful, the crew have definitely utilized some incredible vistas. I love that 2019 gives itself time to slow down and focus on lovely moments. Moments like watching the mouse run around before finding itself in Scar’s cave, or seeing Simba spend time playing whilst moving between story beats; specifically between Mufasa’s “everything the light touches” speech and Simba talking to Scar about the aforementioned speech.

The performances for Simba and Nala (whilst not as I remembered) were solid and enjoyable takes on these classic characters. I respected the use of traditional African languages with Rafiki, reflecting the stage production, which I recommend you experience if you haven’t. And as we’re talking about performances, the new Timon & Pumba saved this film for me! I was worried that the electrifying chemistry that I remembered wouldn’t be present in this retelling, but thank goodness it was! The two bounced off each other and Simba in a hilarious way, and whilst their relationship was different to 1994, they certainly stood alongside their 1994 counterparts unlike any other characters in 2019.

Also, the scene where Timon & Pumba sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight was even better than before as all their various critter friends join in to create an aural acapella delight, before being rudely interrupted by Nala trying to catch a bite to eat.

Unfortunately, that’s probably all I can say in terms of positives, and now onto what I think didn’t worked so well.

Firstly, let’s touch upon my biggest disappointment, and that’s James Earl Jones’ return performance as Mufasa. Let me be straight, if I were directing 2019 the absolute first thing I would’ve done is contact Jones to offer him the chance to reprise the role, so I don’t think this was a mistake on the production team’s behalf. However, he doesn’t capture the sheer weight behind every word of his prior performance, and at times it feels as if he’s just reading words off a script rather than a giant lion talking to his cub. The same goes for John Oliver’s piss poor performance as Zazu; his lines fall flat and he just sounds snide and entitled whilst Rowan Atkinson’s 1994 performance has a sarcastic (very British) nature but his heart is always in the right place. It feels like they just said “let’s find a snarky Brit with a broad appeal” rather than look for someone with actual voice acting talent.

Now, whilst I was disappointed in Mufasa’s performance, the portrayal of Scar and the hyenas is what ruined 2019 for me.

Let’s start with the hyenas. The three core hyenas in 1994 are evil, eccentric, and lovably stupid. They were constantly telling jokes and cackling away to themselves, this bringing out a duality in Shenzi who is also has a secret cunning side, and is more capable and intelligent than she initially appears. In 2019, Shenzi is a stoic ‘badass’ who is serious 24/7 and never walks on the goofier side. Banzai and Ed are replaced with Kamari and Azizi, who just have one bad joke and no definable character traits besides being lazy and dumb.

And Scar… Scar was such an incredible character in 1994, his seething hatred escaped in every venom-coated word. He didn’t only want power, but he believed it was owed to him, and he only felt disdain to everything around him that contradicted that belief. Despite this, he was also relatable and cunning, easily controlling the stupid hyenas in promise of greatness. In 2019, Scar is just entitled, and is only able to come to an agreement with the hyenas rather than brainwash them with his silver tongue. Oh and Be Prepared is turned into more of a speech than a song and that really pissed me off, that’s like my favourite fucking scene!

A minor gripe I had is that the character designs were very samey for the lions and hyenas and at times it was hard to tell which character was which in the more intense action scenes.

With this being said, I did enjoy 2019 but I’ll be showing 1994 to my kids when I one day have them. It was an extremely important film for me and of course there’s a bias involved, but the expressiveness that was present in animation is lost in ‘live-action’, and that’s what matters to me. Moments like Simba sinking into the grass due to being scared of getting a bollocking from his dad are lost. Put simply, 2019 is lacking in these simple characterisations that littered 1994.

I know this is an anime blog so I’m sorry this is first post is somewhat anime-adjacent rather than actually about anime itself, I promise I’ll be talking more about anime in the future! What did you think? Are you team 1994 or 2019?

-Bodell