submitted by Erika3sis to blorp 11 points | 4 comments

blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

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What’s the chef cookin’ tonight?

Overview

• Reserved time: 180 minutes
• Ellos Eatnu : 119 minutes
• Tokyo Magic Star E10: 11 minutes
• TV☆3SIS flourishes: 8 minutes
• Estimated door-holding: 15 minutes
• Estimated slack: 27 minutes
  • If we have at least 10 minutes left at the end we’ll watch Magic Heart and the Magical Warriors episode 11.

The spoonful of sugar

Ellos Eatnu

Ellos Eatnu , officially known in English as Let The River Flow and in Norwegian as La elva leve ^[Not to be confused with La elva leve! , a 1980 film also about the Alta dam protests.], is a 2023 historical drama film that I stumbled upon when watching honest to God television on my honest to God television set one night last year. Almost immediately, I resolved to blorp it some time.

Ellos Eatnu recounts the 1970s and 1980s Sámi protests against the construction of the Alta dam, which you may know as the inspiration behind a subplot in Frozen II. The damming of the Alta river was protested by the Sámi because it would’ve led to the flooding of the Sámi village of Máze, including the destruction of its church, and would’ve destroyed a large amount of pasture used by Sámi reindeer herders to boot. The protests, which included acts of sabotage and civil disobedience, eventually forced concessions from the Norwegian state, sparing Máze and its church. Nevertheless, the dam was built, and it did destroy a large amount of Sámi pasture.

I think the Alta dam protests have taken on a role in Norway’s public consciousness in the decades since as Norway’s equivalent to Martin Luther King Jr. saying he had a dream — or at least that’s the role that the Alta protests had when I was in school: a nice, symbolic moment when The Narrative™ would tell you that people were so moved by the plight of the othered minority that Racism Was Solved Forever, or at least Mostly Solved.

Does Ellos Eatnu play into that “MLK had a dream” esque narrative, or does this movie present a more earnest and nuanced image of the protests? I’m leaning towards the latter, but we’ll find out together! Plot description from Norwegian Wikipedia:

A young Sámi woman named Ester, who has been hiding her Sámi identity to avoid racism, returns to Northern Norway to work as a teacher. As she arrives, she discovers the protests against the Alta dam, which will flood Máze village if constructed. This starts a personal journey to shed the shame Ester has long borne over being Sámi.

I would really strongly recommend you read my translation of “A Sámi State Of Our Own” before watching this movie, as it’s an interview with an activist who lost his arm doing sabotage against the Alta dam. Much of “A Sámi State Of Our Own” also concerns the Sámi parliamentary system, which came about following the paradigm shift for Sámi issues that was the Alta dam protests.

The medicine

What is fanime?

A fanime (etym. blend of fan + anime) is basically when someone makes an anime-style cartoon show by drawing frames in MS Paint; compositing them in Windows Movie Maker with pirated music, stock sound effects, and dialog recorded in one take on potato microphones; and posting the result to YouTube. This isn’t necessarily accurate of all fanime, but the throughline is in any case that fanime is a form of democratized amateur animation combining anime aesthetics with “Internet Ugly”. The style is most associated with the Western anime fandom of the mid-2000s through mid-2010s, where it was often difficult to distinguish sincere fanime shows from parodies of the genre.

Tokyo Magic Star episode 10 (finale)

Tokyo Magic Star is an influential 2012-2018 shoujo idol horror magical-girl fanime. Kisaka Toriama (Tokyo Crystal Mew etc) is notably a fan of it. It is the ten-episode chef d’oeuvre of Kawaiiouija / Mari, who also created Terrence Terribly Troubled and Yay! Cat Evan’s Future. A second season of Tokyo Magic Star was going to be made, but had to be put on hiatus due to Mari’s voice dropping, leaving him unable to voice the characters.

Plot description from Fanime Realm:

Sakura Masayuki is a normal 15-year-old girl who wants to live out her dream of becoming an idol. After passing an audition and getting signed to a company with her friend, Umi Matsuoka, the two see the world change slowly around them. The two then find out they have been chosen as sacrifices to Satan and have to become magical girls to stop his evil duing [sic] or else! However, they will not give up without a fight. Sakura, “Death”, and Umi, “Depression”, will now try and fight to save themselves from being killed. Along with their new friend Ichigo Kojima, “Despair”, and Tomomi Usaki, who is also “Death” from years earlier, the four will try and defeat Satan’s crew or else the cycle will repeat itself again.

Episode 10 was published on July 6, 2018.

Content warnings and accessibility

Audio description: Not available.

Sign language: Not available

Captions:

• English and Norwegian Bokmål softsubs (Ellos Eatnu)
• Not available (Tokyo Magic Star)

Language of audio:

• Northern Sámi, Norwegian (Ellos Eatnu)
• English (Tokyo Magic Star)

Content warnings:

• SUICIDE BY HANGING
• Police racism
• Mild blood
• Children in peril

♫ Uniting nations at the speeeed of liiiiight ♫ [epic sax solo] ♫ Station of the '20s — TV☆3SIS! ♫