GOOD NEWS!
North Korean Defector Song Dae Rin is being allowed to stay in Canada after all, rather than being deported back to North Korea where he would be executed as a traitor like his wife was when she was tricked into going back.
So, one silly decision by Immigration and Refugee Board member Bonnie Milliner, whom considered him a "war criminal" for working for the North Korean government
(even if he was a Wheat Board member just trying to buy grain for his people, and even if every North Korean works for the government, North Korea being a Communist state), won't make 6-year old Chang-Il an orphan after all.
I'M LOVIN' IT! AND THE NUTRITION GESTAPO AIN'T GONNA STOP ME!
Ooh, here's another good reason to go to McDonald's this weekend, Friday, March 5th through Sunday, March 7th, from 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. local time.
They're giving away 15 lots of $1 million dollars each! In American dollars! And not just in American McDonald's but also Canadian McDonald's, and in Aruba, Guam, Bahamas, Curacao, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, St. Maarten (where I'd love to go to
this beach), St. Thomas, Saipan, Suriname, Trinidad, and U.S. Virgin Islands!
The catch is, of course, that you don't know at which McDonald's restaurants they're going to give out the prizes, nor what their selection criteria are.
Go to
the McDonald's website for full details.
And, while you're there, ask for the floor manager to serve you, order a meal, super-size it, and then tell the manager that McDonald's should listen to their customers and not
whiny activists whom never set foot in a McDonald's, and, as long as some customers still want Super-sized meals, they should offer it.
As
I wrote on the AnimeNation board, in a paragraph I should have included yesterday but forgot, "Now that McDonald's has caved in to one of the activists' demands, are the activists going to fold tent and go home? No, they'll just "mau mau" McDonald's into removing another popular but unhealthy menu item, until, eventually, McDonald's is like the Rush Limbaugh parody commercial lawsuit-proof fast-food franchise Bun n' Run, "Nothing but the bun!"."
THE MIDDLE EAST NEEDS AN ENEMA UPDATE
Well, it's been a while since I've done one of these, but, first, I think it's time to look at some "Actual Items".
Our crack research team, not "a research team on crack", looked through newspapers, magazines, circulars, university campuses looking for mistakes and odd things in advertisements. And the best thing is, you can't make this stuff up. You wouldn't want to make this stuff up.
Here's a flyer for an anti-war protest from Concordia University in Montreal.
Notice anything wrong? The protest is March 20th, right? Yet the flyer says 20/04/03-20/04/04. Umm... March is the third month, not the fourth month, you fricking idiotarian morons!
And didn't the war start on Saint Patrick's Day, March 17th?
Also, this flyer says that they're meeting at Dominion Square, which has been offically called "Dorchester Square" since the early Nineties, when the Quebec government officially renamed Dorchester Boulevard "Réné Lévesque" but still wanted to honour
Guy Carleton a.k.a. Lord Dorchester somehow, so they renamed Dominion Square. However, I'm someone whom is generally pro-colonialism/pro-imperialism (as long as it's beneficial to those colonialized) ;), so I don't mind seeing Dominion Square being called by its proper name (and bring back "Dorchester Boulevard" while you're at it).
Let's see what else it says...
ONE YEAR OF WAR
Yes, because it's all the American's fault that we're at war in the Middle East and Iraq would be a socialist paradise if we hadn't interfered in the first place. (Roll eyes...)
ONE YEAR OF LIES
Mainly from the anti-war crowd, heh heh. At worst, the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" thing was a successful feint, since the good guys sometimes do need to tell lies in order to get big things accomplished, like how Reagan's "Star Wars" feint ultimately led to the breakup of the Soviet Union because the Communists knew they could no longer compete with America's technical superiority in the arms race. But I'm still not convinced no WMD's will ever be found, but it's really not that important. Getting rid of Saddam was a needed objective in and of itself for his terrorizing his own people and his support of terrorism elsewhere in the world. Let us not forget
Salman Pak... And why the fuck should we have a dictator in charge of the oil supply? What's the benefit in that?
ONE YEAR OF RESISTANCE
Well, I guess "resistance" is always something to be celebrated, so you all must be celebrating the
bombings of the shrines in Baghdad and Karbala on the Shiite Holy Day, killing at least 143? That's "resistance", and it's against the Americans and their "collaborators" (re-non Islamofascists, including many of fellow Muslims) therefore it must be celebrated! Islamofascists pigs...
Global Day of Action Against the Occupation of Iraq
Well, if they use the word "occupation", then it must be a bad thing... How about the Americans just pull out and then there would no bombings of Shiite shrines (since Saddam's cronies would just reassume power again and murder the Shiites and the Kurds using the authourity of the States, while the other bloodthirsty terrorist regimes would know that Americans back down). Great idea.
In other news,
Hillel Concordia is having a
special guest speaker:
Hillel Concordia is Proud to Present: Voices from Within
A series on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
March 10th from 5pm-7 pm featuring
Walid Shoebat
From PLO terrorist to Zionist - From hate to love.
A story you want to hear from the man himself. Not to be missed!
"The world does not see the truth about what's happening in the West Bank," Walid Shoebat told a Toronto reporter. "My purpose is to tell the West that they aren't getting the real picture, that what they're seeing is propaganda. I know the truth because I was there, I was part of it. And the truth is, we wanted to kill Jews long before the occupation. I wanted to kill Jews. Indoctrinated in the PLO as a child, Shoebat was involved in many anti-Israel riots, terror, and violence against Israel, and was imprisoned in Jerusalem's central prison. After a period of self-study and reflection, Shoebat rejected his previous life of terror and intimidation, concluded that hate and violence will not further the cause of Palestinians towards a stable future. He has dedicated himself to fighting hatred and achieving a just peace in the Middle East.
Read more about Walid Shoebat here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3430077.stm
I'm not even Jewish, and I want to see that guy. He sounds cool. And you gotta love that title, "From PLO terrorist to Zionist", which is an extra "fuck you" to the SPHR-types.
Oh yeah, since I forgot to mention it before,
Palestinian 'splodeydope Mohammed Zaal, whom splattered himself in a bus in Jerusalem on February 22nd, killing eight innocents, is spending his 13th day burining in Hell. And, aww, his family, instead of receiving a big fat cheque from Saddam, got arrested. Shucks!
In fairness to Morgan Spurlock, when
Adbusters magazine unveiled their oh-so-clever
"Corporate US Flag", the one with corporate logos instead of stars, he left the following message on their
responses page.
"Now more than ever we need to raise old glory and not some vocal outcry at corporate America. Join together with your fellow countrymen ... there are enough people in this nation who are quick to criticize yet never act on the words. I am disgusted by it, especially now. Be proud, stand together and make a difference in your community. That's where real change begins and that's what is needed.
Morgan Spurlock, New York, NY"
Well, the last two lines can be interpreted in all sorts of ways, but the first line proves that he isn't a total "Idiotarian", on the level of
Michael Moore.
Though I expect, now that he's marketing his movie mainly towards the radical chic types that watch the sort of documentaries he produces
(re: ones with a definite anti-corporate agenda, not the sort of documentaries most ordinary people watch on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel or the National Geographic Channel), he'll kiss up to
Adbusters, since their readers are pretty much the same core audience.
(Oh yeah, something else I was going to mention in my original piece on
Supersize Me back in January, if you want to see a brilliant spoof of the sort of people whom are the primary audience for that sort of documentary, it occurs in the final few minutes of Todd Solondz's criminally underappreciated
Storytelling, when Scooby (Mark Webber) sneaks into the premiere screening of Toby Oxman's (Paul Giamatti) documentary film about his life, finding the audience laughing at him, since all Oxman was really filming Scooby for was to make fun of him, since bashing middle Americans in flyover country plays really well to the "limosine liberals" on the coast.)
SUPERSIZE ME UPDATE
On
Friday, January 30th, I had started writing about the new documentary film
Supersize Me by one Morgan Spurlock, whom limited himself to eating three meals a day at McDonald's for a month and filmed the results.
I didn't finish what I had intended to write, but it would have been basically just an extended rant mostly going over the same points I had already covered, and I think the gist of how I feel about Spurlock's "grand accomplishment" is in the following paragraph, which I'll just cut-and-paste, since I don't feel like paraphrasing myself to say the exact same thing.
"Except... except, here's something I can't seem to find mentioned even once in the Roeper piece: the word "moderation". Any food can be unhealthy if eaten in large enough amounts, though, admittedly, overconsumption of greasy fast food gets to be unhealthy a lot quicker than, say, overconsumption of kiwifruit; I don't deny that. However, see, here's the thing... most people don't eat three super-sized meals a day at McDonald's every day. As long as you're fairly active and don't eat an overabundance of junk food the rest of the week, one or two meals a week at McDonald's isn't going to hurt you. Really, this stunt proves nothing, other than, as I mentioned before, "overconsumption is unhealthy" (and this is the human equivalent of a laboratory rat-level consumption, when they're overstuffing rats to prove something will give you cancer if eaten in unrealistic amounts, make no mistake). This is almost a David Letterman "Stupid Human Trick", and all this guy really deserves for his troubles is a "fucking medal", as in "What do you want? A fucking medal?""
(By the way, and this is something I would have mentioned before but I forgot, I've seen a near-identical "Stupid Human Trick" done over a decade ago* on
Street Cents, the CBC's consumer awareness programme for children and young teens, except the teenagers participating in the experiment weren't limited to McDonald's, and it was three meals a day for a week, not a month. Not that I'm accusing Morgan Spurlock of ripping off
Street Cents, which is rather unlikely since he's not Canadian, but I'm just pointing out that his stunt has been done before.)
Anyhow, what really ticks me off about the reaction I've read to the film is the implicit, condescending, assumption about the sort of ordinary American that likes to eat at McDonald's that they're all simple-minded indivduals whom are unable to say "No" when asked if they want to supersize their meals, even if they're not feeling hungry enough to eat a supersized meal.
In January, possibly to preemptively curtail criticism of McDonald's sales techniques in advance of
Supersize Me's release expanding onto more screens, McDonald's quietly ended its policy of asking customers if they wanted larger portions. That was a fair enough compromise, making McDonald's appear to be more concerned about the health of its customers whilst still giving those customers whom wish to purchase larger portions the choice of buying larger portions.
Fair enough compromise... until today, at least, when
McDonald's announced that it will be phasing out the supersize menu entirely.
That's right, in an effort to appease the McDonald's critics, most of whom like to think of themselves as being far too urbane and sophisticated to ever set foot in McDonald's (and a large number of whom have a radical vegan agenda), even to just use to the bathroom,
McDonald's has taken away your choice to supersize your meal. And Spurlock (or his crew) are taking the credit. From the main page of the
Supersize Me website, under "Recent News":
McDonald's phasing out super-size fries, drinks !!!!!!!
We've changed the world! McDonald's is officially "phasing out" their Super Size options. Although they'll be the first ones to say that this decision has "nothing to do with that (film) whatsoever"
(Click Here For Full Story)
Well, I agree with Spurlock that his film is obviously at least partially responsible for McDonald's decisions to remove a popular menu choice, whether McDonald's admits it or not, but the word I assign to Spurlock's role in this decision is "blame", not "credit".
This is a terrible move on McDonald's part, limiting choices to their own customers to appease critics whom don't eat there. While I eat at McDonald's a couple of times a week (usually just for medium fries and a medium Coke rather than a full meal), I almost never supersize, however I do appreciate having the choice to be able to supersize for the one or two times a year when I am feeling *that* hungry. And, even if I never, ever, supersized my own meals, I would never begrudge the decisions of those whom choose to supersize, just as I'm not interested in owning an SUV but have nothing against people who do drive them, whether they drive offroad or not, or just as I don't smoke but I think adults should be free to be able to smoke in well-ventilated designated areas in bars and restaurants. The only valid reason McDonald's should ever eliminate the Supersize option would be if there's no longer sufficient consumer demand to warrant offering that option.
But the anti-McDonald's activists aren't really at all interested in consumer demand, "consumer demand" being a rather annoying element of the capitalist free market system, which a lot of the anti-McDonald's people what overthrown anyhow, McDonald's being the prime symbol of the corporate globalization bogeyman.
(And make no mistake, the reason they have McDonald's in around the world is because many people around the world like eating there, even in France: the most packed McDonald's I have ever eaten at was in Paris, and I didn't hear many other tourists, so it was mostly locals. Jose Bové certainly doesn't represent every Frenchman.) No, they want McDonald's shut down, preferably by the government, but, since no government (of any real significance) would ever make such a unpopular move as legislating McDonald's out of existence, the activists will just beat the obesity "epidemic" drum and their willing accomplices in the liberal media will report on it as though it's news and report uncritically every claim made by "Nutrition Gestapo" activist groups like
The Center for Science in the Public Interest and each new scare about french fries causing cancer, and then the trial lawyers will launch class action suits against "Big Mac-Macco" for causing obeisity and heart disease, and governments will implement "fat taxes" on all junk food, using increased health care costs as an excuse, eventually having a huge impact on McDonald's bottom line and causing it to scale back operations or put it out of business completely. Ultimately, it's the equivalent of legislating McDonald's out of existence, but doing it through the back door, the only door available to the anti-McDonald's types. That is how the nanny state advances, incrementally, rather than by leaps and bounds. (Read more about the attacks on fast food by activists of all stripes and their trial lawyer allies on the
"Eating Out" page of
the Center for Consumer Freedom's site.)
Also, for those activists whom honestly are just concerned with nutrition and aren't seeking to implement a nanny state government-enforced diet on the rest of us, McDonald's eliminating the Supersize choice is also counter-productive. All it means is that a lot of the people whom would have their meals Supersized before will just order an extra portion of fries, so they'll end up eating
more fries than they would have if they supersized. Or they'll just eat at one of the other fast food chains that still offers larger portions for people whom want them. (Note to investors: take note of which fast food chains don't
bend over and drop their pants eliminate large portion options because of activists and buy shares. Their stock is going to go up, up, up!)
Not that I have anything against vegitarians or even vegans whom choose not to eat at McDonald's... that's their choice, and it's fine with me, nor do I have a beef with people whom choose not to eat at McDonald's for health reasons
(and especially not those whom don't eat there for religious reasons, either because they don't eat cows or because of Kosher prohibitions against mixing meat and milk). What I don't like is when people tell me not to eat at McDonald's... well, they can tell me not to eat there all they like, and I'll politely tell them, "Thanks but no thanks", or, if they continue to tell me anyway, I'll tell them to piss off, and, if they "Mau Mau" McDonald's into removing menu choices through intimidation and threats of lawsuits and fat taxes, well, I'll tell them where to stick it.
As I said back in January: McDonald's, "I'm lovin' it!" and the Nutrition Gestapo ain't gonna stop me!
*I don't remember exactly when that particular Street Cents episode aired, but it was during the era when the hosts were Benita Ha, Jonathan Torrens, and Jamie Bradley, and Brian Heighton played Ken Pompadour, a sleazy marketer and "yes man" for the fictional anti-corporate straw man Buyco Corporation.
Hmm... my third grade teacher,
David Wadsworth, has had 20 months shaved off his five year sentence which he received for molesting 21 students at my school. Expect me to write a long piece about my own memories of him, if not this evening, by Friday.
SILVER LINING
While the biggest disappointment of the night for me, besides maybe Keisha Castle-Hughes not winning Best Actress for
Whale Rider, was Bill Murray not getting the Best Actor Oscar for his work in
Lost in Translation, at least now that Murray has failed to win an Oscar he deserved and for which he was nominated, maybe he'll get some sympathy next year should he be nominated for his role as Steve Zissou in Wes Anderson's
The Life Aquatic, which should sweep next year's awards if there's any justice in the universe! (Probably too "quirky" to get nominated except for a token "Best Original Screenplay" nomination, just like
The Royal Tenenbaums, I know, buit we can always hope.)
Also, you heard it here first: Best Animated Feature next year,
The Polar Express will defeat at least
The Incredibles and
Shrek 2.
Finally... hmm... I made 30 posts on the RottenTomatoes.com board within the past 24 hours, which has got to be some sort of record for me.
SPOILER WARNINGS ARE FOR PUSSIES UPDATE
Personally, I hate it when film critics neuter their reviews by refusing to discuss the most significant aspects of a film if a discussion of said aspects would give away an important twist. While I think that I can only know if a movie's worth seeing if I know all the twists yet want to see it anyways, being a person whom hates seeing a film just to know some lame gimmicky plot twist, I fully understand that some people like being surprised by films, but, if they want to see a film and be surprised, it's up to them to not read anything about the film and avoid looking at reviews at all aside from the overall rating. I don't think it's reasonable for them to expect that everyone else keep a conspiracy of silence for their benefit, especially for films that have been out for a while.
So, the other week on
Ebert & Roeper, they reviewed an Australian film,
Sue Brooks' Japanese Story (
Australian site), which Roger Ebert gave "thumbs up" and Richard Roeper gave "thumbs down" to, but it was a neutered review which made the review useless in my eyes (though it was bloody obvious what the nature of the twist is from the way they were framing it). So, I was interested enough to go to
Movie Pooper and
The Movie Spoiler to find out exactly what happens, but, alas, the film's too obscure for them to list (at least when I checked those sites last weekend). So, I had to go to Google, and, interestingly enough, Roger Ebert himself gave everything away in
his print review of Japanese Story, however, prior to giving away the twist, he gave a pretty bloody obvious spoiler warning, only not using the magic "s" word, and then a paragraph of buffer space before he got to the meat of the twist. I say it's more than fair warning. But some
spoiler nannies are complaining anyhow. Fine if you don't want to know, but I do. And you even said that you stopped reading after Ebert's warning, so I don't even see the problem! Really, Roger Ebert can't win with these people.
Also on the subject of spoilers, evidently, I'm not the only person whom is is sick of certain anime boards demanding you put spoiler warnings/space/blacked-out text for every twist, even for anime that have been out for a couple of years, even for twists as well-known by now within the general anime fandom community as "Anakin becomes Darth Vader and he is Luke's father" is to the general public.
I love this page whose sole purpose of existence is to state the obvious. (I'm a firm believer in expiration dates for spoilers, so "Rosebud" is his sled, Soylent Green is people, the Planet of the Apes is Earth, the "Moon Princess" is Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon herself, and Tenchi's grandfather is an alien and he is the Crown Prince of Jurai.)
Also, best thread of the evening,
I mention just one of the many, many things I prefer to Lord of the Rings, in this case
Sailor Moon, and all crap breaks loose!
CONGRATULATIONS TO FINDING NEMO AND SOFIA COPPOLA!
For
Best Animated Feature and
Best Original Screenplay (for
Lost in Translation) respectively.
To paraphrase
"Magnolia-Fan",
Fuck Lord of the Rings, fuck it up its stupid ass. Sorry, that's how I really feel. But nothing I like ever wins
Best Picture anyhow, and, usually, nothing I like even gets nominated. At least this ensures that no riduculously overrated, overhyped, overlong, shallow, boring, repetitive, fanboyish splooge-fests will ever win any non-technical awards again in my lifetime.
(Incidentally, I registered the user I.D. "Magnolia-Fan" at Ain't It Cool News just after seeing the sneak preview of
Jay and Silent Bob in August 2001, and, tonight, it's finally
paid off.)
While I wish
Millenium Actress would have been nominated for Best Animated Feature (and Best Picture) and won (both), I'm glad
Finding Nemo won because it means
my prediction from January 23rd, 2003 came completely correct.
WHAT IF SPIRITED AWAY WINS THE BEST ANIMATED FEATURE OSCAR? I was just having a little fun in the AnimeNation.net forum. ("Joe Multiplex" and "Jane Blockbuster" are my generic American moviegoers that never see anything in limited release.)
SCENE: a couple watching the 2004 Oscars... Finding Nemo has just won "Best Animated Feature".
Jane Blockbuster: Oh look, honey, that fish movie just won the cartoon award. That was pretty funny, but it wasn't nearly as good as Shrek which won the award last year.
Joe Multiplex: No, Shrek came out in 2001... it won two years ago.
Jane Blockbuster: Well then, what won last year?
Joe Multiplex: You know, I have no idea... did they even have an award for the best animated movie last year? Hold on, I'll check the Internet Movie Database... oh, it was Spirited Away.
Jane Blockbuster: Oh yeah, I liked that one okay... with Matt Damon as the voice of the horse.
Personally, I still prefer Lilo & Stitch, though I wouldn't be upset if Spirited Away won. I just doubt a win for Ghibli will increase the visibility of non-kiddy "monster" video game spin-off anime in North America all that much.
Eh, as someone whom is "Bored by the Rings" (yes, I know I didn't invent that phrase), I'm currently opting to watch Fox's telecast of
The Phantom Menace instead of the Oscars. Yes, I like the
Star Wars prequels much more than the
Lord of the Rings films... of course, I also like the prequels pretty much as much as the original trilogy, which I never put on too high a pedestal.
Don't get me wrong, I liked
Finding Nemo, but I don't need to see it win. (The Best Animated Film,
Millenium Actress, wasn't even nominated...) And I wanna see Keisha Castle-Hughes win Best Actress for
Whale Rider, except everything I've read said that Charlize Theron is the biggest shoe-in of the evening for
Monster. And I'm finding Michael Eisner-bashing increasingly insufferable, and Roy Disney's promising to say something about Eisner in the event that the decades-delayed Disney/Dali-coproduction animated short
Destino wins. Not that I really have anything against Roy Disney, but I get the idea that Michael Eisner knows better than he does how to run the company which bears his uncle's name, and most of the Eisner-bashing you're hearing on sites like Jim Hill Media is actually thinly-disguised general corporation-bashing.
WHAT'S AN OXYMORON? A PHRASE WHICH CONTRADICTS ITSELF...
Damn, I wanted to post a lot of stuff during my week off, but I was depressed over my financial situation and didn't feel like writing. :(
Yes, I will at least inquire about getting a job somewhere this week.
Anyhow, there's this
odd article over at Anime News Network about a new shoujo manga magazine in Japan aimed at a male audience, Futuabasha publishing's
Comic High. What's odd about it? Nothing really, except that "
shoujo manga" means "girls' comics". There's nothing wrong with guys liking shoujo manga; I'm currently buying
GALS! by Mihona Fujii and
Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya, both aimed originally at teenage girls in Japan. But... how can you have girl's comics aimed at boys? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of calling it "shoujo manga"? Not all
shounen manga (boy's comics) are mindless fighting or "fan service" (gratuitous T&A); there are plenty of so-called shounen manga, like Izumi Matsumoto's
Kimagure Orange Road, that are character and relationship-driven in a way identical to some shoujo manga. This just further proves that "shoujo" is a largely meaningless label.
I was pleased by
this response I wrote in the ANN forum.
| CorneredAngel wrote: |
Ugh, all it points to, really, is that *nobody* has any idea what "shoujo" actually means anymore.
|
Eh, one can claim that both this magazine and CLAMP's shounen forays like Angelic Layer, Chobits, and XXXHolic, are blurring the lines between shoujo and shounen, but, really, the lines have been blurred for years and "shoujo" and "shounen", for a lot of titles "in the middle, somewhere", are just arbitrary designations based solely on the magazines in which the comics appear.
I'm trying to figure out what male-oriented shoujo would entail... my best guess is that they'll take certain specific style elements more common to shoujo, like large-eyed girls, symbolic flowers, thinner lines, and minimalist-shading (yes, I know there are shoujo manga that don't use those vague rules), but they'll change the mathematics of the situation, so that, instead of reverse-harems (a lot more guys than girls, like in Fushigi Yuugi or Fruits Basket) or rough equilibriums (about the same number of guys and girls, like in GALS! or Marmalade Boy), we'll have... erm... reverse-reverse-harems, or, more simply, "harems" (one guy, many girls... like... umm... Tenchi Muyo, but more flowery).
Maybe they'll also tone down the yaoi relationships and bring the ambiguous friendships between females up a notch or two. Unless they figure, and I have no idea one way or the other whether or not this is true, that a disproportionately high number of the male readers of shoujo are gay or bisexual (or "fluid"... or plain old "bi-curious"), in which case, I suppose, they'd keep the yaoi content more or less the same but try and make the relationships a little more reflective of the true experiences of the gay/bi male reader and not just cater to the fantasies of the yaoi fangirls. (Note that I said "disproportionately high", by which I mean, compared to the incidence of homosexuality or bisexuality in the general population, not "the majority of male readers" or even "the plurality". In any event, I said that I have no idea, I was just floating that scenario.)
Or they'll have stories like Marmalade Boy, but told from the point of view of the guy (in which case it would be like the half-hour Marmalade Boy "movie"). Or maybe just stories where the protagionist is a female, but one guys can relate to; strong-headed and independent and not going around whining about Tamahome all the time... a heroine whom is more Ran Kotobuki (or Utena Tenjou) than Miaka Yuuki.
Also, on a similar topic, and I don't feel like starting a new post to point out this article, Jesse Betteridge talks about why he thinks shoujo anime would work on Canadian TV. He also makes an interesting observation, that there are a heckuvalot of commercials for feminine hygiene products during YTV's broadcasts of Inu Yasha, indicating that YTV or their sponsors looked at research on who exactly was watching Inu Yasha and they found that the audience for that show is overwhelmingly female, even though, in Japan, Inu Yasha is a boy's comic/cartoon (though it's from Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½, whom was one of the first women to make it big in a male-dominated field of manga). Yeah, I can vouch for that; anecdotally, in pretty much every blog I've ever read where the writer is a fan of Inu Yasha, the writer is a female fangirl of the series.
