Peni Parker in Spiderverse
Jan. 30th, 2019 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soundofwonderNow that I had have time to think about it, I do think into the spiderverse is a great movie, but I find that more thought should have been put into how Peni Parker was presented in the movie.
As a disclaimer I haven't read any comics where Peni Parker is in and am basing it only off the movie. Now Peni Parker comes from neo-Brooklyn or neo-[some US place, I can't remember] and has japanese heritage. So obviously they decide to animate her in the so called "anime" style. (Of course, japanese animation isn't monolithic and there are individual styles across the medium, etc. etc.)
But to me, said anime style seems to be outdated. As in stuck in the 90s outdated*. I would have given it a pass if not for the fact that the movie, to me, seemed to have a meta message of "animation can do great things!".
And with how it can be felt that the animators did put a lot of care and love into the movie, I just feel the way that Peni Parker is depicted is simply too stereotypical, and it's not the good kind? She's basically reduced to the typical "young genki japanese girl" you see in mainstream western media? Her origin story felt like it was hamfisted in too, like they had a 5 minute gap and just have to fill it somehow.
I didn't read the comics she was in, but the way she's depicted there is drastically different, and I would have vastly preferred that visual. Also the comic!SP//dr robot is inspired by NGE, which I think is a more reasonable reference to japanese animation, even if non-anime watchers won't get it.
And this is purely just me thinking too much, but the typical negative associations of anime and Peni Parker's name...doesn't make me comfortable either. (Blaming Gerard Way for that. Yeah he's one of the people who created Peni Parker. I just really want to ask "Why Peni? WHY???" )
*tbh I feel that the way Peni Parker is animated has more of a resemblance to 2000s flash animation than anime.
tl;dr: Peni Parker deserved to be treated better than she was in the movie. (Or maybe I'm just jaded and cynical at how anime is portrayed nowadays lol)
As a disclaimer I haven't read any comics where Peni Parker is in and am basing it only off the movie. Now Peni Parker comes from neo-Brooklyn or neo-[some US place, I can't remember] and has japanese heritage. So obviously they decide to animate her in the so called "anime" style. (Of course, japanese animation isn't monolithic and there are individual styles across the medium, etc. etc.)
But to me, said anime style seems to be outdated. As in stuck in the 90s outdated*. I would have given it a pass if not for the fact that the movie, to me, seemed to have a meta message of "animation can do great things!".
And with how it can be felt that the animators did put a lot of care and love into the movie, I just feel the way that Peni Parker is depicted is simply too stereotypical, and it's not the good kind? She's basically reduced to the typical "young genki japanese girl" you see in mainstream western media? Her origin story felt like it was hamfisted in too, like they had a 5 minute gap and just have to fill it somehow.
I didn't read the comics she was in, but the way she's depicted there is drastically different, and I would have vastly preferred that visual. Also the comic!SP//dr robot is inspired by NGE, which I think is a more reasonable reference to japanese animation, even if non-anime watchers won't get it.
And this is purely just me thinking too much, but the typical negative associations of anime and Peni Parker's name...doesn't make me comfortable either. (Blaming Gerard Way for that. Yeah he's one of the people who created Peni Parker. I just really want to ask "Why Peni? WHY???" )
*tbh I feel that the way Peni Parker is animated has more of a resemblance to 2000s flash animation than anime.
tl;dr: Peni Parker deserved to be treated better than she was in the movie. (Or maybe I'm just jaded and cynical at how anime is portrayed nowadays lol)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 11:27 pm (UTC)And I mean, it explains if she's based on a comic canon that I never knew about until I googled her, but the magical girl genre is the closest Japanese comics get to the American superheroes. Making a shoutout to Japan with a young girl secretly saving the city as a mech pilot just seems - well. It makes it seem like the only anime you've seen is Eva and Gundamn Wing, honestly :/
no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 03:02 am (UTC)IMO they totally could have done that since their incarnation of Peni barely has any resemblance to the original comic version. And not this emoji mech that reminds me more of Baymax than japanese mecha lol.
makes it seem like the only anime you've seen is Eva and Gundamn Wing, honestly
Yeah, comic!SP//dr is heavily inspired by NGE, which explains that, but then again, since they were diverging so much from comic!Peni, why not just make her an entirely different character?
Also, Gundamn is such an appropriate typo for the franchise, honestly :P