Pop culture mockery of the week: Bad Sinetrons

Let’s note that Sinetrons, aka Sinema Elektronik, are soap operas from Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country. 

No matter how strong or weak they are, like any other sinetron studio, MD entertainment seems to churn out sinetrons not just to appease and please its execs and shareholders, but also to snag merchandising deals and shill for the most profitable of product placements. 

While there are sinetrons for rural youths who mostly haven’t read a globally popular (but mainly Eurocentric) book series in their lives (as a result, these Sinetrons are in a sub-genre known as ‘Sinetron Remaja’), rural women are the main viewers of these super pervasive shows. 

One of the increasingly blatant problems with Sinetrons, as with any other incredibly dysfunctional creative industry worldwide, is the horrendous mistreatment of effects artists, especially visual effects artists without a consistent deadline, which partially explains the misuse in lots of these Indonesian soaps. 

The hunt for some of the best Kamishibai compilations ever made

Although a couple of Kamishibai history books are rather old, that doesn’t mean they’re easy to find outside of Japan. The one that I borrowed from TAFE is a valuable (although feebly translated and overtly favouring the best known stories) memoir from New York Times bestselling author Eric P. Nash. 

The most popular pre-90s Kamishibai history book in Japan is a retrospective memoir made by the late Kamishibai megastar Kōji Kata; who defined the art style of Golden Bat for nearly 3 decades. First published in 1971, it has two more editions, an updated reprint made in 1979 and (after its author’s untimely death at 79-80 in 1998) a posthumously revised one made in 2004. 

Perhaps the hardest to find of them all was a huge, compiled encyclopaedia of surviving Kamishibai works mostly from the post war Showa period. Although it might’ve bombed so badly in terms of book sales, the really elusive 14 volume set is still quite popular with Japanese academics to this day. Its first seven volumes were made in 1994, while the other seven were made in 1995. 

Sheena: the plot line

Subplots 

Judi’s backstory: Judi and her husband Lucius lived through decades of relative strife (still bad but not as extreme as the situation that Koba’s parents were in), as they were longtime soldiers surviving the deaths of many a relative. As a result, Judi is a wisecracker with rather agitating mental health issues, who’s also unfairly outcasted by her more religiously extremist kin. Her husband is not only pretty distant, but also a hikikomori. 

Kiro’s backstory: Kiro was abandoned by her dad, just days before he destroyed her senile mum’s life. As a youth, she temporarily lived with gorillas, lions and other animals. In a brutal world where dangerous animals tend to eat each other and chomp on plants, she’d been bitten by cryptids a lot and slowly grew immune to their absurd powers by the time she turned eighteen, thus she uses them to survive by frequently killing the most heinous of people with her own frigging hands. 

Matt’s backstory: Matt and his two brothers were born the products of a military woman’s marital violation on her husband. The mum battered and concussed them to high heaven while her husband also suffered drastically as a result. Their relationship is still so screwed up that, after Matt being gently fired by the CIA, he moved to Tigora to start Cutter Enterprises. 

Shirley’s backstory: Shirley arrived into Tigora with her parents, who were geologists digging for dead plants. The last time that they lived together was only a few days before the latter two committed suicide due to incredibly horrible treatment from their boss, thus kicks the main plot.