Aoi Bungaku (Blue Literature)

The first story of Aoi Bungaku, No Longer Human, is covered in a soft, often wintry mist that per­meates through to the character’s unsur­pris­ing end. The remain­ing five stor­ies how­ever are vividly real­ised, vary­ing between sharp real­ity and kal­eido­scopic dream­s­capes; each con­veys the vagar­ies of human­ity with poignancy and skill. So too changes the atti­tude in each story, from the pur­gat­orial trap­pings of the first story to the the­at­rical ana­logy of Run, Melos! to the Rashomon–esque mul­tiple view­points of Kokoro. An ambi­tious and vibrantly suc­cess­ful ven­ture that wears its lit­er­ary roots proudly, por­tray­ing char­ac­ters with unflinch­ing amor­al­ity and focus­ing not on full-circle stor­ies but short vign­ettes of start­lingly tan­gible people.

“the stark implic­a­tions of mad­ness and jeal­ousy, grace and fer­vour played out with such composure”

The first four epis­odes tell the story of Yozo and his attempt to come to terms with his more base instincts and emo­tions which more often than not lead him to psy­cho­lo­gical tur­moil, not helped by his sexual reli­ance or pen­chant for escap­ism. The second tale is of Shi­ge­maru, a cal­lous thief who one day comes across the beau­ti­ful but demand­ing Mit­suki whose bloodthirsty atti­tude is tempered only by her mor­bid fas­cin­a­tions. Shi­ge­maru battles with his fear of the forest’s cherry blos­som grove while capit­u­lat­ing to all of Mitsuki’s mur­der­ous whims. The third story is of a gen­tle­man known only as Sen­sei who invites a scruffy man, K, into the house where he is stay­ing; told from two dif­fer­ing per­spect­ives, both con­cern the daugh­ter of the house, her affec­tions and the res­ults of a cross-communication between the men. The fourth nar­rat­ive is of a man tasked with adapt­ing a story for theatre but the pro­cess opens old wounds with the par­al­lels it has with his own life. The final two stor­ies are set within the world of a fickle and flam­boy­ant king: the fifth sees the cap­ture of the wicked crim­inal Kan­data, his exe­cu­tion and des­cent into hell; the sixth fol­lows the artist Yoshi­hide who, dis­il­lu­sioned with a king­dom he sees as rife with viol­ence and cruelty, is ordered by the king to paint a vis­ion of the land on the walls of his tomb.

Mad­house have exceeded all pos­sible expect­a­tions for this series, the six entries are all rav­ish­ingly detailed and demon­strate the char­ac­ter design­ers — Take­shi Obata, Take­shi Konomi and Tite Kubo — at their best. The stor­ies are deli­ciously unique, whether it is the gos­samer veil of No Longer Human, the gentle vis­tas of Run, Melos! or the corus­cat­ing tech­ni­col­our of Hell Screen — the con­fid­ent superi­or­ity in which they are rendered is sub­lime. Anim­a­tion too has been lov­ingly craf­ted with a keen eye for expres­sions and cloth­ing shared through­out but dra­matic shots of trains draw­ing from sta­tions to an ebul­li­ent sis­ter are won­der­fully anim­ate. At times there are hints of Stu­dio 4°C’s work such as the sem­inal Genius Party or the numer­ous music videos of Utada Hikaru. So flaw­less is the pro­duc­tion that there is noth­ing but hair-splitting to find fault with, it rep­res­ents a stu­dio at its zenith: cre­ativ­ity, ima­gin­a­tion and tal­ent in its purest form and though it has echoes of some of Madhouse’s pre­vi­ous series, it sur­passes them all with ease.

Fit­ting then that it should be partnered with power­ful source mater­ial from some of the greatest Japan­ese writers to have lived in past cen­tury. The pre­ci­sion and flawed char­ac­ter­isa­tion frees the cast from the bland every­man like­ab­il­ity that is usu­ally inflic­ted upon anime prot­ag­on­ists and gives the strongest hints to their lit­er­ary gen­esis. Ones such as Takada, who des­pite hav­ing lived in Tokyo for over fif­teen years, is still unable to recon­cile with the friend he unwit­tingly left behind until an impas­sioned let­ter is received, just as the play he is writ­ing reaches its most pain­ful dual­ity with him. Or Yoshi­hide, who regard­less of his favour with the king is will­ing to sac­ri­fice his daugh­ter and his own life in order to speak out on the injustices he sees per­pet­rated in his home­land. Their actions feel ori­ginal and fresh des­pite the gen­eral time period of early twen­ti­eth cen­tury Japan, but their status as paradigms of these traits is obvi­ous by how often they have been aped and sub­sequently watered down. Rare is it when giants of men are treated with as much beauty and respect as the most fem­in­ine of women; rarer still is to watch the stark implic­a­tions of mad­ness and jeal­ousy, grace and fer­vour played out with such composure.

Dis­tilling short stor­ies and nov­els allows the series to con­cen­trate on the core aspects that defined each work. Aoi Bungaku works in part due to each story occupy­ing a short run of gen­er­ally two epis­odes or less and while the char­ac­ters are bril­liant in their own right, the pos­sib­il­ity of them car­ry­ing even a quarter sea­son series, is slim. No Longer Human is the length­i­est with four epis­odes and adroitly fills each one but any longer and the sole focus on Yozo would begin to wear thin. Far from a cri­ti­cism, the series chooses its own terms and takes the most sens­ible route in adapt­ing enorm­ously com­plex and well-loved tales. Myriad oth­ers have built series on far flim­sier con­cepts than those presen­ted here, but it works because of the short indi­vidual lengths rather than in spite of it. This makes the final two stor­ies the most jar­ring: not for their osten­ta­tious use of col­our, but the dove­tail­ing of both stor­ies into one world while shar­ing the cent­ral char­ac­ter, the King, implies there is a con­nec­tion between the two where none, ostens­ibly, exists. Like the anim­a­tion how­ever, this is a nit­pick at best and the bom­bast of the King cer­tainly deserves longer than a single episode’s expos­ure would have provided.

No other anime series pro­duced has attemp­ted what Aoi Bungaku has, that is has suc­ceeded so thor­oughly and its struc­ture so uncom­mon means that com­par­is­ons with other series is impossible. Pro­jects such as these are extraordin­ary treats for the senses as well as the mind, paint­ing worlds that effort­lessly draw one in and stay long after each has fin­ished. There is little to noth­ing to cri­ti­cise in this dazzling series, com­mon bug­bears such as voice act­ing or corner cut­ting are entirely absent which leaves the real­isa­tion that Aoi Bungaku per­fects what it set out to do and intro­duce chal­len­ging lit­er­at­ure to the cell-phone gen­er­a­tion. Uncon­ven­tional and stim­u­lat­ing, the series is superb and with its unique­ness alone, like its par­ent­age, sets it up as a genu­ine, time­less clas­sic. ¶