Day in the Life of an Idiot

Most of what I've been reading lately are the works of the students in my Loft class, but, on a lark, I decided to try out a free month of the Funimation streaming service, so I've been watching some anime.

The only thing I finished watching is Cowboy Bebop. Believe it or not, I have technically been an anime fan since the American broadcast of Star Blazers / Space Battleship Yamato in 1979, but I had not seen the Cowboy Bebop anime until this week.  Yeah, I have some feelings about it. In case you are somehow like me and have not yet seen this, I will put my thoughts under the cut.  

Despite what you may assume you know about me based on my obvious love for Bleach, I never entirely clicked with Spike. I could see how I was supposed to, but my favorite character by far was Ed. A close second was Jet. Both my favs get out alive, so it's not actually the end that I have all my feels about.  I have a lot of FEELINGS for Ed because I read Ed as a trans boy and/or non-binary. I mean, we know Ed is biologically female since much is made of that by the crew  (too much for my comfort, especially since I don't recall hearing a pronoun used by Ed to refer to themselves and in Japanese it's easy to never need to.) For me, Ed's final episode only really makes sense, emotionally, if read with this in mind-- unless you assume we're just supposed to feel sad that Ed is clearly off on a doomed wild goose chase for a father who clearly is more interested in his crazy mapping project. Which, I mean, a case could be made for that? But we last see Ed dancing off into the sunset with a happy Eid in tow, so I tend to think we're supposed to be happy or at least understand Ed's decision to break off from the crew. Thing is? Even though we learn Ed's deadname from dad, dad is also the one who, once informed of Spike and Jet's relationship to Ed, says, without hesitation: "Thank you for taking good care of my son." Dad then pauses, seems to wonder at that and says, "Or... was it daughter?" Then, he says, "Ah, either way, it's perfect."

For me, this was the moment I knew Ed would be breaking off from the crew. I was like, "Ah! The acceptance Ed has been craving."  

And I think we're supposed to understand that Ed knows that catching up with Dad is a pipe dream, what Ed is really after is the kind of instant acceptance dad offered. 

My dream fan art/fan fic, is where Jet and Faye run into a grown Ed and Ed has grown-up and become (if possible) even more gender ambiguous or a nice young man (surgically/hormonally transitioned or NOT.... and personally, I'd be very down with not) who has found a new made family of people who refer to Ed by whatever it is you imagine is Ed's authentic self, even (or maybe especially) if that remains non-binary. 

I suspect if I posted this to a Cowboy Bebop forum I'd be told I was reading Bebop through a modern eye and therefore my take was ridiculous. Regardless of the fact that I was alive and queer in 1998 and there were not only plenty of trans people around, thank you very much, but movies like "The Crying Game" and "Boys Don't Cry" were already part of the American mainstream. In Japan, anime had been featuring trans characters since the 1980s. But, even if you dismiss all of that, it's not even a stretch to hazard a guess that the authors intended some kind of gender ambiguity in Ed if only viewed within the context of the TV show itself, given that before Ed was even introduced we'd met VT (who was absolutely intended to be visually misgendered, but who was clearly a sympathetic character,) and Glen who was also somewhat sympathetic and explicitly caught between genders. In Glen's case, it was not by choice, but I found it interesting that we were never given much clue as to which side of the binary Glen started out on. There are pictures of Glen with a child, but that could be read either that Glen was the mother or the father (or auntie or uncle for that matter!)

So, it's not like Ed is some kind of complete outlier in the realm of possibilities. 

I decided to hunt down the manga--of which there are two. One is called Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star. The other, the one I'm reading, is simply called Cowboy Bebop, which is further/re-imagined adventures with all our favorites. Since the TV show was written by committee, it's difficult to know how to take either manga adaptation (like, are they canon, since the "writer" of the original anime is not involved?), but I was already annoyed by the character description that labeled Ed's gender. So, who knows how much of the manga I will actually read?

So, that's that one.

The other anime I started watching is called Millionaire Detective: Unlimited Balance. 
It's pretty fluffy, but I'm enjoying it.

I'm also following a show that's being simulcast from Japan. It drops every Thursday and is called Akudama Drive.  This show is initially why I decided to give Funimation's streaming service a try.  I was on the Twin Cities Anime Fan discord and someone mentioned it in the list of shows new this fall. I went to the description and saw the words "a cyberpunk dystopia" and figured that was enough for me, right there. However, the story is kind of intriguing--it started out hyper-violent in a way that makes it hard to recommend to a huge number of my friends, but it has since settled into a heist... which is one of those plot tropes I will always, always watch.  Add to that the main character is a kind of modern day Bilbo Baggins. She gets caught up with someone mysterious (over food, takoyaki to be exact,) and then ends up saying that she's a master swindler/criminal when she is not....and yet every time she needs to use her skills, something random happens that makes her seem like she's absolutely what they think she is. I'm amused by that. Next week is the critical 4th episode were everything could turn on a dime, but right now I'm still enjoying it.

How about you? Read/Consume any interesting media?