So I’ve been watching this anime, Planetes, for a little while now – to sum up, it’s a hard science fiction series about a group of people who are orbital debris collectors – people who make sure space is clear of man-made junk that could cause damage to the overall development of space. Trying to avoid Kessler syndrome, is one of the main goals. But that’s plot-related, and not quite what I am trying to talk about here.

What I found particularly interesting is that, in order to directly simulate the lack of gravity and fluidity of motion in space, the show’s producers made an active decision to dramatically increase the animation cel count in any shot in space. Considering that anime is, generally, a limited animation medium, this has a powerful effect – it makes the space scenes look more “realistic” (in that they approach lifelike frame and cel counts), and therefore contributes to the overall notion by which the series is perceived as being “hard” science fiction.

The producers made an active decision to change the physical/stylistic norms in order to produce the desired effect; this same decision is seen quite clearly in Madoka Magika when the magical girls go against their opponents, who are deliberately animated and illustrated as being wholly different to the girls themselves.

There’s a point here, which I will get to.

In order for the “otherness” of the enemy to be directly illustrated to the viewer, the producers of Madoka Magika directly illustrate the enemy as the other – they do not look the same, they are not illustrated the same, they are not animated or placed the same. When placed side by side with the girls, they do not look similar – in fact, they look like they should have come from completely different series, completely different worlds. This is an incredibly important detail, as many other series (Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, etc.) draw and animate the enemy as being identical to the girls, in overall stylistic choice.

The act of being in space means the world of the characters in Planetes dynamically changes and becomes more fluid; the act of fighting the other means that the girls in Madoka Magika are directly confronted with a being which is physically and metaphorically the other.

It’s details like these which give an impression of animation being an entirely different medium to normal film, something that (beyond the incredibly important ‘The Anime Machine’) a lot of scholars seem to glaze over in their study. As important as the narrative is, there’s a physicality to anime which needs to be analysed entirely differently to other mediums.

I tried using Document Delivery for the first time, last week, as a particular article I was looking for was completely unavailable online – apparently the journal itself isn’t well-regarded enough to be within the RMIT e-journal catalogue, for some unfathomable reason. Still, I decided to do a request for it, and I encountered some… problems?

I’m just going to quote the entirety of my error report here, and I think with a little detective work, you might be able to figure out where my troubles began:

Hi,

There appears to be a significant error with this document delivery request. I requested the article ‘Beyond Shoujo, Blending Gender’ by Fusami Ogi from the International journal of comic art, and the pdf file uploaded to the DDS service appears to an an article entitled ‘Factor V Leiden thrombophilia’ from the journal Genetics in Medicine.

As useful as this article is to my studies in Asian media and culture, I was hoping I might be able to receive the document I requested?

Sincerely,
Simon Gough

It’s a difficult case to solve, but I think you’ll make it!

There’s a lot of Faustian elements to Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika – the granter of power with his external agenda, the testing, the motivations and tasks that rise from those powers and agenda. There’s also the fact that is constantly references and places Faust (or lines from Faust) as background decoration, but that’s just flavour text. The primary consideration is that Madoka and her friends are, like Faust, offered a chance to assume powers and have their wishes granted in a simple exchange – while the price of their soul is not quite as literally asked for as in Faust, it still exists.

However, it’s important to note that in Faust, this granter of power first came in the guise of a small, cute animal.

Magical girls, as a whole, have an animal companion – Sailor Moon had Luna, the Magic Knights Rayearth had Mokona, Cardcaptor Sakura had Keroberos. What strikes me as important about this, however, is that the animal companion (while generally not the source of their power) is the one who first informs the girls of their power, and also acts as the giver of intent. Without Keroberos telling her what to do, and what her task was as a Cardcaptor, Sakura would not have known her duties; likewise, Luna is the one who needs to inform Sailor Moon about what her task is in the world, and who she is meant to fight.

Without the animal companion acting as the giver of their reason to fight, the magical girls would be lacking purpose, and perhaps wouldn’t even be magical girls at all.

How important this is to my thesis as a whole is still questionable, but I think it’s an important think to note. This idea that the girls lack purpose in the fiction until it is handed to them by a tiny animal is both funny and Faustian in equal measure. It’s just that Madoka extends upon the concept by giving the animal companion an agenda.

One of the advantages of doing Adventures in Asian Popular Culture has been the fact that the final essay is essentially a critical analysis of a pop cultural text of our own choosing, within the scope of one of three potential areas. I’ve chosen to look at and analyse Cardcaptor Sakura through the viewpoint of sex and gender, and there are a multitude of reasons why, primarily to do with my thesis.

The last time I saw my supervisor, I informed her of this assessment and asked whether she thought I should dissect the topic of my thesis, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika. Her reaction was almost explicitly no – she thought it would be a terrible idea to do that, since it would be focusing my viewpoint too much on one particular area. Despite the fact that I am attempting to be perceived as being an “expert” on that show, at least from one critical framework, she thought it would be best for me to look at a different series within the same genre. The reason for this, it was explained, is that it would give me an amount of breathing room around my topic, but also give me a chance to write and research more generally around the area of the mahou shoujo genre.

So far, the outcomes have been pretty good – I’ve been looking at Cardcaptor Sakura specifically, but by writing about this series, I’m forming more and more connections to the notions that create the magical girl as an aspect, which will be extemely useful in the coming months as I prepare my thesis. It’s important for me to be at least slightly pulling back from a single-minded focus on my thesis topic, at least for one assignment, as it gives me a greater perspective on the area as a whole, in addition to giving me new ideas about directions and ways to write.

It also helps that a lot of what I’m writing and researching directly ties in to the broader aspects of my thesis, but that’s just gravy.

So here are my thoughts on the Gantt charts:

I like them a lot!

Adrian seemed to make it seem like the Gantt charts would be a difficult thing to get into, but once I actually sat down and looked at what they did and how they functioned, it all made perfect sense to me. Like, I got what it was setting out to do immediately, and I completely understood how it would be helpful. It is essentially systemising what I try and normally do (which is figure out how much time I have left to do something), but allows a more stratified approach to how the work should be done.

I printed one out and stuck it on the noteboard next to my desk, which means I often forget to update my digital one, but the effect is the same – it is a reminder of what needs to be done, how much time I have to do it, and therefore removes some of the panic and stress from the process of assessment.

A tool I use which I do not think Adrian has mentioned is the Pomodoro Technique for work and study. The basic idea is that you work in 25 minute blocks, with a timer running in the background. Rather than sitting down and figuring out how much time I have to write, I simply start a timer and start writing, and when the buzzer goes off, I step away for the break required by the system, then get back to it afterwards.

In essence it has systemised the way in which I prefer to work – short bursts – but also removes some of the anxiety and clock-checking that I have. The act of knowing that there is a time limit that is, in fact, ticking down allows me to work without that nervous anxiety of whether time is, in fact, passing.

Of course, this is all one thing, but there is also my complete inability to blog. If there is a point at which blogging becomes less of a task and more of an enjoyable thing, I would like to know when that experience is supposed to happen, because in five years of required blogging I have yet to hit that point.

It also doesn’t help that my supervisor has specifically told me not to blog my thoughts and treatises regarding my thesis. She had a variety of reasons, but it was funny to me that the head of the school would essentially tell me the exact opposite of what all my lecturers and teachers have tried to batter into my brain for my entire academic career.

Stefi has requested that I make both a mind map and short series of analyses based on the series overall, and what I think are the “key scenes” in the series that best represent what I am describing as the interrogation of the magical girl genre. Really, what I am trying to coax out are the things which best represent how the series comments/subverts, through its narrative and animation, some of the key tropes of the magical girl genre.

One of these primary details is the depiction of the “enemy”. However, in order to draw that out in a real academic/analytical way, I’ll need to find examples of how other series do the same thing. I have thoughts in my head, but really I need to find episodes/issues of other magical girls series to demonstrate this visual dichotomy.

Another is the sense of hopelessness surrounding idealism like “the power of love”, which again will need key scenes to be brought in to demonstrate this. I think one primary issue when it comes to this, however, will be finding “definitive” examples in other texts – while it’s a pervasive theme in other anime that I know of, I can’t recall any overarching moments where it’s been the prime detail.

However, I need to analyse these scenes from a filmic standpoint, first and foremost!

I’m going to write up episode summaries and post them here, in order to have a better understanding of the series. Probably include some screenshots, as well!

Professor Donald is back in town, it seems, which is good news, because it means I can get some shenanigans sorted out regarding my thesis and relevant proposal!

People have told me that she is going to be a taskmaster, and really push me to do my very best – this is most certainly a concept I appreciate, since I generally need a bit of pushing to get that work done. She’s already wanting me to give her a rundown of my proposed methodologies and what I’ve been reading in order to get there, which means I am hitting the ground running. Handy that both those things are more or less tied in to the task due on Friday!

I am about to get my hands on a copy of a book about media and communication research methods, once my parents get back from the USA, which should be handy.

I’ve decided that, based on Adrian’s advice/berating, that my best course of action will be to completely remove the term “deconstruction” from my abstract, because what I’ve been reading as genre deconstruction is not academic deconstruction at all. Rather, it’s a diluted version of deconstruction that isn’t very feasible.

So what am I trying to do, and how can I re-phrase my abstract?

I suppose the key ideas that come to mind are “how is the show subverting the expectations of the genre”, “how is it demonstration self-reflection of the genre”, and probably the big question following those two: “if so, why is this important to the genre?”

This leaves me in a bit of a pickle, since I am without any real methodology anymore, due to Adrian pointing at my choices and saying, “nope!”

I’m analysing, sure, I’m probably doing comparative readings, but according to the big boss man, I’m not doing a close reading, because a close reading is about 5000 words on a single scene. I’m not doing any form of deconstruction, really, since that isn’t the right term.

So, what am I doing?

Apparently I shouldn’t be concerned, since it’s still only week six, but it’s driving me up a wall because I have had the ground pulled out from under me completely, and now I’ve got no idea what it is I’m doing. The essays and articles I’ve been reading that are analyses of texts have been useful in determining how I think I want to write, but what is their methodology?

And the essay on what we’re doing is due next Friday. Great. Thanks, Adrian.

I’ve been reading through the material my father sent me – specifically, his entry on deconstruction in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. It’s an interesting piece, because instead of treating the term as something that can be easily condensed and defined, he performs deconstruction within the entry in order to get the message and definition across. He does this because, quote:

An encyclopedia is designed to enclose, encapsulate, reduce and simplify its subject matters, whereas deconstruction is oriented towards opening, expanding, amplifying and complexifying them.

The purpose of deconstruction as a method of research, then, is to pull apart a subject and then take these parts and interact with them in a variety of ways. However, it is also a means of interacting beyond the normal levels of scholarly investigation. If our training in life and school is simply discovering the “bottom line”, as Barbara Johnson theorises:

What deconstruction does is to teach you to ask: “What does the construction of the bottom line leave out? What does it repress? What does it disregard? What does it consider unimportant? What does it put in the margins?”

How, then, does this process apply to an animated series, or indeed any fictional work? When someone describes Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika as a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, what does that actually mean?

From this entry on genre deconstruction at TV Tropes (a popular website that analyses the tropes in media), the connection is made readily apparent: a genre deconstruction will take the tropes (aka the bottom line) of a genre, and actively question why they exist, what they disregard, and what it places into the margins.

For Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika, this extends to its depiction of small girls being sent to fight extradimensional beings as completely horrific, as opposed to the slightly-glossy depiction it has received in other works; it means that the girls aren’t excited and happy to be saving the world, but emotionally and psychologically damaged, stretched to and beyond the breaking point, bereft of hope and optimism for the future.

Obviously, there’s going to be more reading required for this to make it to any significant level, but I think I am on the right track.

So I have my first version of my abstract all good and ready, here it is:

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika has been described by the creators and reviewers as a deconstruction of the magical girl genre. The magical girl genre is one of the most well-known and profitable genre of anime produced for both the domestic Japanese and international markets. If the series is indeed a deconstruction of its purported genre, then this will be evident within its narrative, animation technique, and other aspects of production and dissemination. By understanding what makes the series a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, the inherent structures of the genre itself will be more easily understood and elaborated upon.

There’s some big questions in there, but there’s a couple of things that I need to figure out in detail before I can move on:

• What is deconstruction?
• What is genre?

Obviously there’s a lot to dig around in there!

My father (Noel Gough) has already started pointing out a few sources from which I can pull important notes, such as his entry on deconstruction in a researcher’s guide to theory, or some such. He’s also suggested that I start thinking in a post-structuralist mindframe, and therefore stop asking “what” things are.

Time to start reading, I guess!