Message-ID: <018d01bf3f11$8d871f60$4f11a8c0@ngalyod> From: "Sam the man" To: Subject: Re: Top ten anime gals Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 00:12:00 +1300 Reply-To: megami@ML.usagi.org X-ML-archive: http://www.win.ne.jp/~doi/ML/ Precedence: bulk Note: Badly written and unnecessary off-topic self-centrement follows. Keep away if you think I'm a git. #1 - Belldandy. I can't really come up with anyone else. She is, to me, perfect. This is going to sound pretentious but when I first read an issue of AMG (the first tankoubon, with only the Japanese I'd picked up from an ex-girlfriend) the Belldandy character seemed to just crystallise things I'd always been attracted to and fascinated by. She's how I'd always thought of an angel, but with the depth befitting such a real character. In my more intellectual moments (note: I hate those and would far rather be stupid and happy) I perceive that I like Belldandy formost as a concept, as an ideal, as a metaphor for perfection and reward. The same with the series, no separation. This is normally about the point I'll get drunk. OK, problem. I can't come up with nine other anime gals I want in this list. I could've done so a few years ago before discovering AMG, but my tastes have changed. ^_^ Therefore I'm going to try to remember the sort of gals I would've put in a list like this in the days before coming across Belldandy. Most will be of the sort that appeals to teenaged boys since that's what I was. Most won't be anime. Sorry, as I said this was at least one taste iteration ago. Bear with me. ^_^ Zealot. Anyone remember the comic WildCATs? First Wildstorm comic, early Image, Jim Lee's reason for breaking from Marvel? The Wildstorm universe, at least in the early days, was very well done. Only thing that actually got me buying comics. They did a great job of coming up with a background with a real sense of history and inter-character relationships. The backbone of this was the excellent Team 7, but my own personal soapbox was WildCATs, and specifically the character of Zealot. Tall lass, long white hair, tight fitting (aren't they always?) red suit, two swords, stern warrior attitude, thousands of years old (survivor of a humanoid alien race known as the Kherubim whose presence was, according to the Wildstorm universe, responsible for all the Greek and Roman myths and gods) and the ex-leader of the Coda, a warrior sisterhood. Most of my friends (who were all into Wildstorm comics at the time) thought her a frigid and overly aggressive bitch but I was absolutely obsessed with her (in a sad, fanboy way that only someone who's been introduced to geeky things for the first time in his life can be). I was very much set on her relationship with the Grifter, ex-Team 7 and the most popular of the WildCATs, and brought this defence of a relationship with me when I came to AMG and applied it to the Belldandy/Keiichi relationship. (She rescued Grifter and trained him as a Coda.) Let's see. Other Zealot related fanboy information? Her real name is Zannah. She went under the name Lucy Blaze in the sixties. Zealot is rumoured to have had at least one child in the last few thousand years; the leading candidates are, in order, Backlash, Winter (Stormwatch) and Christie Blaze (Divine Right). (Yes none of this will mean a thing to people who don't know Wildstorm. Oh well.) I no longer have any of my Wildstorm comics, since I purged them all from my life (and more realistically my room :o) when I found AMG. Otonashi Kyouko. Hey, someone from post-AMG-discovery! This is kinda in opposition to what I said above. Oh well, I'm just jotting these down in the order that I think of them. I find MI to be sweetly sad, something that has always attracted me. Kyouko is wonderful. Very human. She's one of the only real seeming characters that Takahashi Rumiko has ever written. (I think I'll say that much as I'm fond of her other work I don't think any of her, for example, Ranma characters seem in the remotest bit real.) I'm also finding writing about her problematic. Angela. Damn, another comic book character. Sorry. Spawn was, uniquely amongst mainstream comic book universes, devoid of the comic book "babe" characters. Neil Gaiman had never written a superhero comic before. Todd McFarlane asked Neil Gaiman to write issue nine of Spawn for him. Neil took the opportunity to, in an obviously amused way, write in a vehicle for an infinite number of these so-called comic book "babes" to be introduced. Namely, he brought an angel into the picture. Neil Gaiman's take on the "bad girl" craze that was sweeping comic books. A babe, bad-girl angel from a Heaven full of them. Here to hunt Spawn as she had hunted so many before. In a smart-ass way. And with a costume that, while as gratuitous as all these comic book female costumes always are, actually had a reasonable reason for being like it did. From her introduction Angela was a sensation, far outstripping even Spawn himself in popularity. After issue nine Neil was invited to come back and do a three part Angela miniseries. Which he did. And it was great. Death. Didn't see this one coming. Talking about Angela reminded me. Before introducing a major female character in issue nine of Spawn who was instantly more popular than the main character, Spawn, himself, Neil introduced a major female character in issue eight of Sandman who was instantly more popular that the main character, Morpheus, himself. Morpheus' elder sister struck a chord with almost everyone. I can remember a friend of mine commenting that there was something very 'right' about Neil Gaiman's Death. Everyone read Sandman. Don't forget, Neil Gaiman scripted the western release of Princess Mononoke. (And he lives in Minnesota now. Hi Carole! ^_^) Lady Piercing Blade. Ooh, I feel the need for spoiler space! The odds of someone having heard of *this*character, and even if they have the odds of them actually recalling her, are exceptionally slim. Lady Piercing Blade was a character from the one and only Star Trek novel I ever read (TNG #8, "Masks"), read on a train going from Sevenoaks to London in 1990. She was from a planet still in a medieval tech level, a world where everyone wore elaborate face masks signifying what they were, were being without a mask was equivalent to being naked. She was a swordswoman and warrior (given a later fascination with Zealot I think I can see a trend appearing in my pre-AMG tastes :o) and I thought she was really rather grand. I really must find a copy of that novel and read it again. It's been a suitable amount of time. Matsu Tsuko. The Daimyo of the Lion Clan from Legend of the Five Rings, a background by John Wick that was used for a collectible card game, a roleplaying game and many stories. Tsuko, I'm now realising, appealed in the same way that many of the characters in this list have. ^_^ A serious, warrior-like, honourable swordswoman. I found her part in the Clan War storyline the best, and her Death gave so many of the following actions so much meaning. Despite having quit L5R numerous times I'm still very loyal to Clan Lion, enough to get angry at people in certain circumstances. Damn. I'm having a real problem coming up with more characters. This is partly due to having blocked out a four year teenaged period in England and Tauranga, and before then I was young enough that the only possible contribution I could've made to a list like this would probably have been along the lines of someone like She-Ra (oh man, anyone remember THAT eighties show? :o) or Helen Slater's portrayal of Supergirl from the self-same movie (which I can remember being rather impressed with at the time). I KNOW that there were many characters and images that contributed to my recognition of Belldandy, but given that they were almost certainly all one-offs I can't place any (also I'm sure I've overwritten most of them in my head with Bell-chan). This is annoying. Doubt I'll get any sleep tonight now. ^_^ Come to think of it now I think I *could've* done a top ten anime gals list without too much of a fuss but, with the exception of Kyouko, there were none that I could put in a list with Belldandy due to a problem with thinking in comparisons. Hence this attempt at a list of gals I would've named a few years ago that Kyouko happened to sneak in to. ^_^ An anime list would've included other AMG gals, Sakura Taisen no Sakura etc, I'm sure you can work out the types. If I'd continued listing along the comic book line (it's what I was doing in the year and a half before AMG) you would've seen a bunch more, along the lines of Voodoo (from WildCATs), Shi, Psylocke etc, I'm sure you can see where these are going too. (This reminds me: X-Men fans, Zealot can be looked at as Jim Lee's next iteration of the character he "invented" with Psylocke.) Oh, and I hear that Scott Lobdell and Travis Charest are doing a new series of WildCATs, not as a superhero book (which it never really was and attempts to pull it and others in as ones were the sort of thing that screwed Wildstorm after the first few years), but as a "This is what's happening to these characters. They have lives. Watch them." Now my WinAmp playlist has arrived at a track named Icelandic Cowboy, all this typing has gotten me annoyed, and I have a guitar lesson early tomorrow morning. See you guys around, Sam the man (pushing the envelope in stream-of-consciousness off-topic uber-posts)