Anime & Donghua

Adam Neely did a great video on AI generated music recently, and one of the interesting things he teased out is that people who use AI to "compose" don't cite any influences—AI or otherwise. Personally, one of the most gratifying things about music is understanding it on a deeper level—both from analyzing the notes/techniques/textures themselves purely in the context of the song, but also tracing the lineage of musical ideas: "Oh, that kind of chord voicing comes from X composer" or "That lick is definitely a reference to Y's solo" or "That production technique was made popular by Z". This gives the listener an idea of the unique blend of music that shaped the composer's style, and can point to more things to listen to in order to broaden their musical palate and historical perspective.

Well said. I hadn't thought of it that way before.

from what I've heard, it's a recap with a bit of new animation, no?

Basically. The new animation is pretty much just at the very beginning and end, though, as I understand it, and the ending diverges a bit from the original series.

so I'm curious to know what you mean but I think I prefer to keep it a mystery

I guess it's difficult to put it into words, but I want to say that it felt "lazy" to have the dog talk. Which I guess makes sense when they're making an episodic TV cartoon, but like…… if Courage could only communicate through regular dog noises, the way the writing would have to compensate in order to convey Courage's thoughts, feelings, motivations and overall character, that would've been interesting. It would've been like the Tom & Jerry of horror, right? That's something I'd like to see.

but I've heard that the music (courtesy of prominent Japanese composer/producer TeddyLoid) is pretty great.

♫ Heaven, please sing for me a song of liiiife ♫ has been going through my head regularly since Clara started showing PASWG. It's yet another song in the growing pile I'd like to write new lyrics for and karaoke. PASWG is also often said to be better dubbed than subbed. My first time watching it was basically just me trying to get into something a classmate of mine liked, but it didn't work out.

Another thing that stood out to me about PASWG is how much of Kill La Kill's "DNA" clearly comes from it. I vaguely feel like I've also heard something about how Cutie Honey from the '70s is sort of the progenitor of "magical girls but with sex and/or nudity", but I don't know much of anything about that, so it would be interesting to see if I could recognize some of PASWG's DNA there.