Of love, war and form-fitting uniforms

May 27, 2006 19:54


Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality. ~~ Emily Dickinson

I've begun watching a new anime series, Simoun, a speculative yuri drama. While that isn't unusual for me, it is unusual for me to explain my impressions in writing. I have believed that I engage further ( Read more... )

anime, current event, war, sexuality

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Comments 9

futabachan May 28 2006, 04:38:31 UTC
[Chor Tempest] attaches cables between their ships and a crippled member of [Chor Cup]'s to converse with the surviving pilot, apparently because the empire does not have radio. But when they fight the craftsmen later, a group of Simoun execute the same Remergion pattern-trail in unison. How do they coordinate so accurately in battle?

As near as I can figure it, the same Remergion pattern image appears in the gems of all of the Simoun in the choir.

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futabachan May 28 2006, 04:42:24 UTC
As Erie and Neville travel to the spring, Erie considers her choice, saying, "And if I don't choose to become a man, it'll limit what jobs I can do in the future." However, adult women have appeared to hold most political and military positions.

You're mistaking men for women. The entire voice acting cast is female, so men are voiced by female voice actors. In particular, Guragief (the dux of the Simoun choirs aboard Arcus Prima), Anubituf (the captain), and Wapourif (the maintenance chief) are all male. Wapourif in particular looks especially female, as he only went to the Spring two years ago, so he hasn't fully reabsorbed his breasts yet.

So how, if I trust the translation, do the adult men enjoy greater vocational flexibility?

By holding down important jobs: military commands, police, government administration, et cetera. The reason isn't sexism, but an attempt to try to entice enough people to be male to get society to something approximating parity between the genders.

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macguges May 28 2006, 06:38:18 UTC
That does sound familiar, but it also sounds like an idealistic aspiration that would be complex in practice. If the society decides to encourage parity in this way, then they would discriminate clearly and consistently to insure their children consider it seriously. However, an effective policy for parity would also need to respond to changes in actual parity, raising or lowering the rewards of masculinity to compensate for perceived risks to their population. The such actions would create confusion among the candidates for adulthood, or the perception that they could ignore vocational discrimination because its provisions could change again after they accepted maturity.

This makes me wonder if Simulacrum has many chaos mathematicians, or what gender they would be. ^_^

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futabachan May 28 2006, 04:45:34 UTC
Simulacrum has been referred to as 'the Imperial Nation', which sounds redundant and awkward to me. Is there a more accurate translation?

The fansub translation is pretty bad. "Craftsman Nation" (i.e. Argentum, the bad guys with the zepplins and propeller-driven fighters) or Shoukoku is really supposed to be "Reef Nation" in literal translation. "Imperial Nation" or Kyuukoku is really supposed to be "Shrine Nation".

In other words, the war is between the Theocracy of Simulacrum and the island nation of Argentum. (There's also a "ridge nation" that shows up later: the mountain nation of Plumbum.)

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macguges May 28 2006, 06:58:52 UTC
Perhaps a more careful fansubbing group will pick up Simoun. I've seen no lack of translators interested in the shoujo titles, and this series could only become more popular with a good translation. But I suppose we have this season's unusually healthy crop of new anime titles to 'blame'.

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oneplusme June 24 2006, 11:18:16 UTC
Perhaps they will... ;)

(Now here's hoping it doesn't get licensed before we've finished it. (The day afterwards would, of course, be wonderful.))

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Spring anonymous July 18 2006, 21:38:48 UTC
Now I'm confused. They say "djuunana" is it 17 or 19 the age to go to spring?

Kirika

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Re: Spring glazzal July 19 2006, 08:47:18 UTC
I'm confused too. It's fifteen in the manga, seventeen in the anime.

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Re: Spring macguges July 19 2006, 12:45:47 UTC
Oh. This particular wrinkle had slipped my mind. At the time I'd written this post, I had seen only the three episodes released by Doremi, which might've used "19 years", or I might've invented it without thinking. I hadn't been to the Simoun forum on AnimeSuki nor known I'd soon be subtitling this series with Simoun-Fans. I imagine we'll be considering this question soon, when that datum appears in Episode 2.

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