This handsome snapshot came fresh from my cell phone; it came out well considering the sun was in the background.

Well, as my own Crusader88 mentioned last Saturday, the elections in the Land of the Rising Sun are complete, with modestly satisfying results, as you may see here. The ever-reliable Liberal Democratic Party and its ally, the Buddhist New Komeito Party performed much better than the center-left Democratic Party of Japan and its block. Though these developments (which I, Atobe, assure you are more accident than fate--just a month before the new DPJ Prime Minister was wonderfully popular, but he sank fast) are surely happy, alas, the genuine conservative patriots in the Sunrise Party of Japan won but a single seat, but lost another. For some perspective, they mustered a fifth of the votes given the communists, but themselves received a similar advantage over the political wing of the Happy Science cult. Such is the fate of the Right.

I, Atobe, confess a better mood than electoral circumstances would permit, however. Leslie, see, frequently recommends weblogs and websites he presumes are worthy of my inspection. The recommendations, to my dismay, are just as frequently silly. After trying out .Christian Lolita., a LiveJournal page where Christian practitioners of the Japanese fashion he wishes the fair sex would wear find electronic fellowship (at right is a classic lolita, and below her a gothic lolita--in Holy Nihon we see them more often, and they're sort of like prettier punks, so it's not a big deal), and then Good Bye, Bad Bishops!, a goofy site which posts the retirement dates of supposedly bad bishops with a squeaky old Lawrence Welk tune playing in the background (we Japanese haven't enough bishops for a comparable site, and we don't have to worry about bad clerics as bad ecclesiastical architecture—imagine if St. Patrick's Cathedral looked like St. Mary's here in Tokyo!), I was ready to stop trying.
But this is different. He sent me to a magnificent Catholic-run anime blog named NeoShinka.

To use one of those foreign-language phrases my colleague so loathes, NeoShinka is a tour de force. Founded September 12, 2007, NeoShinka is dedicated to the Holy Name of Mary, the feast for which is also September 12. The author, Charz by pseudonym, has a distinctive style of posting anime images and reproducing paragraphs from Wikipedia or a similar reference as commentary. In this classic post, he takes a few images from the exuberantly executed, albeit slightly perverted anime Maria†Holic, and quotes the free encyclopedia to note the influence of Japanese woodcuts on Art Nouveau. Another plus: NeoShinka clearly leans right. See Charz attribute an offensive anti-anime joke to an Obama-loving New Hampshire Democratic state representative here, and see the commbox here on why manga is overtaking propaganda-smothered Western graphic novels. And an off-topic pic of Obama as the Dear Leader here. Most impressive, however, are select icons from the sidebar. Since NeoShinka is hardly neoconservative (thanks be to God), I am not sure what this image, featuring the Bleach's violent Zaraki Kenpachi, says about America's "DIPLOMACY", but I like it. Better yet, get a load of this:














Look familiar?

Yessir, that there is the yoke and arrows, the symbol of the Falange, the Catholic Integralist party under which Generalassimo Franco beat back the Reds in Spain and maintained one of Europe's last Catholic states until his death in 1975. But why, you ask, is "MOE MOE KYUN" superimposed, and why hearts rather than arrowheads? Crusader didn't know until I told him its a reference to one of the greatest moments in all of anime. In the popular K-On! series, the characters are wondering what their band should do for the school festival, and one character proposes a maid cafe; when you Americans realize their splendor, they will colonize you like the tasteless McDonald's has colonized us. And no, "MOE MOE KYUN" doesn't mean much of anything. But at last, the Falange of that Christian Caudillo and the cuteness of affectionate maids (though more Crusader's cup of tea; I've been around maids all my life) are shown to belong to an Integral whole.



Be awed at the sight of my prowess!