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Anime medievalism.
There's a pattern:
- Take some core conventions from the Middle Ages, such as class structure, modes of warfare and a very broad approximation of spiritualism.
- Skip the Renaissance.
- Mostly, use architecture from the Early Modern period, except when you need an exceedingly intimidating castle.
- Likewise, you may use styles of clothing from this period.
- For the most part, knights and princesses are to be your most morally unassailable characters. When they're not, it's debatable whether they're actually princesses or knights. If they are either of those things and still morally questionable, they are misunderstood rather than evil.
- Beauty equates to goodness.
- Except when there are notably different kinds of beauty; good-looking people with angular features may be evil.
- Armour is to be worn fashionably, and many pieces are optional. Only the upper chest, thighs and shoulders absolutely require protection; items such as helmets, gauntlets, greaves and so on are optional.
- If your sword isn't well adorned, you're probably not the protagonist.
- Unless it's too well adorned, in which case you are almost certainly the antagonist.
- Whatever kind of sword you have absolutely must match your personality. If you are graceful of movement, only a rapier will do. Strong men will only use two-handed swords, which are under no circumstances appropriate for women. A one-handed sword of the regular European double-edged type is appropriate for anyone.
- Unless you are wielding a rapier, never, ever thrust.
- Anyone who is over the age of eighteen is past their prime and is destined to be defeated or surpassed by a younger equivalent.
- If it ain't pretty, it ain't magic.
- It is considered socially acceptable to refer to others by class descriptions.
- Hell, it's almost rude not to systematically categorise others.
- Having a wide variety of proficiencies is taboo.
- Your parents are dead.
- Siblings have a 50/50 chance on that count.
- In any context where a protagonist is a commoner, they will eventually be knighted or revealed to be part of a noble line.
- If not royalty.
- Especially if the work deals with class-related themes and disparages feudal social systems.
- Inns will serve modern dishes on spotless white plates. Expect to be treated to some wonderful seafood. Especially inland.
- What the fuck is a "Muslim"?
- "Juice" isn't a kind of people, dude.
- Standard issue armour for archers is 15th century plate harness. They will, at all times, keep their visors closed.
- Knights are not and never were cavalry.
- Except during tournaments.
Add your own!
Comments
To be fair, western fantasy writers do a lot of these things too and don't have the excuse of appropriation.
That said, I think some of them make perfect sense, especially having a weapon type that visually matches a character's personality. In visual medium cohesive superficial cues are important to understand the character quickly. People often forget that visual design and action can be used to characterize just as well -if not moreso- than dialogue.
No arguments there. I'm just poking fun. If anything, I prefer anime appropriation to Western content creators getting things wrong under the guise of realism or grittiness. Anime medievalism seems to know exactly what it is and I'm pretty happy for it to be that way.
Although the weapon-personality is a pet peeve in some contexts for me, but I'm not surprising anyone there. If nothing else, there's more that could be done with it. Europe had/has its own array of martial arts that could do the same job. The LotR films actually did a pretty good job in this respect with certain characters, particularly Aragorn. We all remember his vertical two-handed sword guard and it became "his" thing. You could do the same for a number of characters and still be perfectly "accurate" (if that's relevant to anyone), because a number of different guards hold the same essential purpose.
Like so:
Three different guards that basically do the same thing, each of which could be given to a different character as a matter of expression, even if they had the same weapon.
I mean, I totally get what you're saying and you're right -- but it's not the only way to spin it is all.
Question.
Are you familiar with Vinland Saga, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?
I read the beginning of it.
As far as I can remember, it was a pretty strong effort in terms of getting things reasonably accurate. I suppose I could nitpick if I went back over it, but I don't particularly remember finding anything egregiously wrong.
Ah, okay. Good to know.
(how far is the beginning? this is a series with a 56-chapter prologue)
(Uh, I don't remember.)
>No arguments there. I'm just poking fun. If anything, I prefer anime appropriation to Western content creators getting things wrong under the guise of realism or grittiness. Anime medievalism seems to know exactly what it is and I'm pretty happy for it to be that way.
This is partially why I dig a lot of anime takes on western fantasy, even if they aren't very good objectively, like The Sacred Blacksmith. I don't want twenty pages of your anachronistic-ass government system, I want to see swordy-heroes, fireball wizards, and ninja-rogues.
Speaking of which. The first Witcher book is seven bucks on Kindle. Should I get it?
>Although the weapon-personality is a pet peeve in some contexts for me, but I'm not surprising anyone there. If nothing else, there's more that could be done with it. Europe had/has its own array of martial arts that could do the same job.
The problem I see here, has to do with knowledge bases, much like people who think horses make clippity-clop sounds. People fall back on universally recognized weapons because they're assured to get recognition.
You should most definitely read Vinland Saga. Also, have you ever continued Demon Knights?
Absolutely. If nothing else, it's only seven bucks. But for another thing, the first Witcher book isn't a novel but a series of short stories. If you don't like one, you'll likely enjoy others. For my part, there was only one of the short stories I didn't really like, and at least two of them were very exceptional to my mind.
I should. And I haven't. Mostly because I was kind of offput by the visual pacing and felt confused as I tried to link things together logically. Apparently that was a common problem with the New 52?
True facts, but everything is to do with how well-established the hypothetical new "status quo" is in the work itself. Kurosawa films are good at this, and not just in terms of how they created a wider set of visual indicators that later films used -- even within themselves, they establish a visual combat language despite the fact that everyone is using a variation on the same sword. Kurosawa films could be forgotten gems of the 20th century rather than well-regarded masterpieces and their internal visual language would still make a lot of sense.
>Absolutely. If nothing else, it's only seven bucks. But for another thing, the first Witcher book isn't a novel but a series of short stories. If you don't like one, you'll likely enjoy others. For my part, there was only one of the short stories I didn't really like, and at least two of them were very exceptional to my mind.
Excellent. As soon as I finish Dexter in The Dark, I'll get to it.
>I should. And I haven't. Mostly because I was kind of offput by the visual pacing and felt confused as I tried to link things together logically. Apparently that was a common problem with the New 52?
Demon Knights was better than most, believe it or not. It takes an issue or two for things to get oriented, but considering it's an ensemble book with mostly new characters it actually fairs pretty well. There are some things it could have communicated better (I didn't realize the horsewoman was lame for awhile) but it makes up for it with the way it ends up handling characterization and the mutability of the Arthur legend.
Here's another:
29. There is only one kind of Christianity: Semi-Catholicism.
^Eh, I've seen too many Crystal Dragon Jesuses. (Jesii?)
^That's not a kind of Christianity. That's a kind of Totally Not Christianity.
Also, 90% of the time the Church will be evil.
Oh and Malk, one thing about the Witcher translations into English is that as much as the core content of the books is great, the translations weren't particularly graceful.
As a piece of trivia, apparently the Spanish translations were absolutely fantastic.
Eh, I doubt they're particularly worse than the awkward first Haruhi book and I got through that.