I'm watching 2001 anime Earth Girl Arjuna. I don't recommend it.
It's a trainwreck environmental-themed anime which lays the message on way too thick, has terrible animation, bad action scenes and character designs, terrible pacing, throws in live action footage of "greenie" stuff and has terribly integrated and very noticeable CGI to boot.
A number of times I've wanted to yell at the show for some of the ludicrous claims it makes about "greenie" stuff. There's too much to go into. I'm up to episode 9 and they're having this blatant bit about how hospitals are assholes because natural births (i.e. home births) are "better". The only reason given is that babies cry less when hugged by their mother right after the birth. So it must be better, right? They're making out that hospitals being sanitary where baby is concerned is somehow sinister and unnatural. It's a good thing the show writers decided to omit any infant mortality figures, which tell the opposite story to their narrative.
This is pretty much the problem with every single "fact" this show presents, for example the show promotes the idea of just randomly throwing seeds around, not doing any maintenance, and letting the bug and weeds just chill alongside the crops and just hoping you can harvest enough to eat as a serious alternative to intensive farming to feed the world. The show claims that one person doing this full time could feed about 10 people. So we "only" need 10% of the world population to do this and all food problems would be solved. Simple, right? All us idiots thinking you have to actually put labor into producing food, we've been so foolish this whole time when the whole 7 billion people in the world can just live of scavenging weeds and berries! Thanks, show.
There was also a bit where they're ripping shit out of the education system, saying it was just "easier" as in - lazy - that the teacher only teaches the same curriculum to every student in the class when they could simply tailor lessons to every single individual student's needs and rate of learning. The implication in the show is that the problem is that the teachers just lack "pep" so they're just going through the motions. So that's the problem apparently - teachers not peppy enough, and don't put in enough overtime designing custom material for each student. The whole bit used the word "easier" as a dirty word for a whole lot of things we do in society, missing the point that "easier" generally means "uses less time and resources".
I mean, all these things have problems but this show's treatment of them all is just idiotic, naive and one-sided.
EDIT: oh boy I should have been blogging this show from the start. Up to episode 11 now. There's a bit that says that basically all medicine is poison because originated as industrial waste, and then says that most diseases don't really need medicine, if fact, you're better off without it - giving the example of a cold boosting your immune system. Then the MC, who is listening, says "medicine builds up toxins in your body". I guess we can throw away vaccines, thanks show. Right after that it monologues into a bit about how at the end of WWII they had all these factories making chemicals for the war (such as explosives) and that rather than tear them down the repurposed them - using evil "nitrogen" from the factories as (spoken with implied quotes) "fertilizer". At this point there was an ominous zoom in to the MC's face as if she'd just heard the worst conspiracy in the world. This is just presented as them spreading poison on fields since the word "fertilizer" is emphasized as if it's a lie. They don't make a single mention that nitrating the soil massively increases crop yields thus helping to end hunger, and hoping that you don't know basic chemistry since nitrogen is almost 80% of the atmosphere, not just a sinister "chemical".
EDIT2: there's also a claim that post-war pesticides were used as chemical weapons during WWI and WWII, and only then turned on the insects. Basic history here, that definitely didn't happen. Arsenic-based pesticides were dominant until they developed DDT. Neither of these things were developed as weapons in the wars. There's just so much made-up bullshit in this show delivered as if it's educating the audience.
Also, there's a character with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, who is fighting against modern society because she blames "chemicals" for her condition. This is at least interesting that they had a character like that, however that's a condition from an inherited recessive gene, not one from chemical exposure as far as I've ever heard. Hell, if chemical exposure was flipping baby's gender you can damn well bet we'd have all heard about it.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3146991 times)