chaostangent

Sunday matinée

chaostangent — Sun, 13 May 2012 22:16:18 +0000

Sunday is all about putting your feet up, turning the volume up and queuing some music to get wholly lost in. During the week music always seems to accompany doing something: programming, walking, writing, pretending you can’t hear the other people in the office talking about you. It seems somewhat of a lost past-time to simply sit and listen.

“there’s something alluringly infectious about this sentai inspired quintet”

What better way to celebrate this than the release of the Kids on the Slope soundtrack? Any Yoko Kanno release is a cause for celebration; that this has jazz ensembles from Takashi Matsunaga, a noted master of the genre, as well as vocal tracks from well-known artists such as Aoi Teshima is a special treat. I can’t claim to know the first thing about jazz or how to approach it for a better appreciation, but as the adage goes, I know what I like. It’s still on heavy rotation so my final opinion is still gestating but the tracks effortlessly blend easy listening and jazz sessions with Kanno’s signature background melodies – unique but not overpowering.

For a different take on jazz in anime Mayumi Kojima released a full length album for the opening to Ghost Hound back in 2007. It’s slightly more big band and blues than the smooth jazz numbers from Kids on the Slope but is far less challenging. Ghost Hound itself is a sonic treat and has to be heard loud to truly appreciate it. Also noteworthy is Ryouya, the father of the protagonist Taro, who has an entire room dedicated to jazz appreciation.

The opening single from Kids on the Slope was also recently released and has vocalist YUKI (not to be confused with the similarly capitalised YUI) taking the helm. It’s a lilting and forgettable tune and though pleasant, doesn’t really stand out when compared to some of the openings from Yoko Kanno’s other scored shows – Hemisphere (Maaya Sakamoto, RahXephon) and Go Tight! (Akino, Genesis of Aquarion) spring to mind.

The same can’t be said for the March released Bodacious Space Pirates opening single which is a vast, utterly bonkers track from idol group Momoiro Clover Z. I’ve shied away from the hyper-commercialisation of idol groups such as AKB-48 and their ilk, but there’s something alluringly infectious about this sentai inspired quintet and the monstrously titled Mouretsu Uchuu Koukyou Kyoku Dai Nana Gakushou “Mugen no Ai” (Bodacious Space Symphony 7th Movement “Infinite Love”). A true belter, but just as brilliant is the recent insert song Black Holy by Mikako Komatsu who also plays Marika in the show. It may have a twee verse but a stunning chorus elevates it and is instantly memorable. Truly befitting of the series.

If twee is your cup of tea (pun intended), the Hyouka opening, Yasahisa no Riyuu, was also released recently; that it book-ends a series that still seems to be trying to find its feet doesn’t stop it being a solid, but again, forgettable song. It’s similar in tone to Sankarea’s opening Esoragoto by the murderously punctuated nano.RIPE as well as HAPPY CRAZY BOX which is the thoroughly generic opening to Medaka Box.

None of that criticism can be levelled at Dusk Maiden’s opening CHOIR JAIL which could describe a very odd medieval torture device (“Get in the choir jail heathen!”). Mixing synthetic organs with strong vocals, it’s a akin to a lighter version of Yousei Teikoku’s (Fairy Empire’s) most recent album Gothic Lolita Alligator Agitator. Of course once you slip into the heavy rock and metal area of Japanese music it’s all too easy to get caught in the visual kei trap. Tofugu recently covered some all-girl metal bands which is worth a visit if not for the final video, Baby Metal indeed.

If female-fronted metal is a favourite of yours and you’re willing to step outside of anime’s sphere of influence, you can’t go far wrong with 101A who specialise in sultry, pitch-black tunes without the screamo of a group like Aldious. Slipping back to anime and away from garish Harajuku fashions, 9mm Parabellum Bullet is free from XX chromosome carriers and is best known for the opening to the critically underrated Real Drive, Wanderland; their album Vampire is similarly superb. Likewise for stalwarts LAST ALLIANCE who contributed the ending to Ouran Highschool Host Club (among others) but selected perhaps one of their worst songs for it, Shissho.

Finishing off Sunday with something a little slower paced than the borderline speed-metal of the above is the criminally unknown Lillies and Remains who recently released a cover album, Re/composition. This in itself would be unremarkable were it not for the covers themselves: everything from Toxic by Britney Spears to Everything Counts by Depeche Mode to The Cutter by Echo & The Bunnymen. It’s eclectic and wonderful to listen to and has neatly rounded out a week which has seen the spring season explode onto speakers with mixed results.

3 Episode Taste Test: Those halcyon school days

chaostangent — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:16:34 +0000

Nostalgia for the carefree days of school is a staple of anime, the future was brighter when one didn’t have to worry about careers or significant others or the multitude other thralls of adulthood. If this spring season of anime is anything to go by, it’s also full of banal whinging.

“where exactly is this series going with flying middle-school girls?”

Hyouka and Kids on the Slope kick this off with the protagonist of the former trapped in chronic apathy (“energy conservation” in his parlance, like a self-conscious battery) while the latter’s Kaoru bemoans climbing a gnarly looking hill to get to school. Such hardships. The two series share a similar affection for oversaturated amber sunsets and a slow, measured pace; the polar opposite of A Summer Coloured Miracle which is all cerulean skies and the constant background cry of cicadas.

Ignoring exactly what colour summer is (a kind of greenish-purple?) the shows couldn’t be more different. Hyouka is full of flabby dialogue and long drawn out mediations on the most mundane of “mysteries”, eking by thanks only to the attention to detail studio KyoAni is known for. At three episodes in there is the smallest hint of a more involving plot but all except the peppy Chitanda lack a critical spark that characterised so many of the studio’s previous greatest hits.

A similar affliction befalls Acchi Kocchi which has a strong affinity with Lucky Star with the pint-sized, fighting-game savant of a protagonist. What it lacks in fan pandering and in-jokes (a reference to Daigo’s legendary Evo 2004 match not withstanding) it makes up for with a keen sense of style that smartly contrasts its wintery opening episodes. As with its other light-humour contemporaries though (Working!! before it and Polar Bear Café now) the dead space that camps around the jokes and puns murders the pace, and the soul of humour – brevity and timing – is lost. Couple that with the lack of character development endemic to the four-panel light humour source and the result is entertaining but flat.

Thankfully soul is something that Kids on the Slope has in spades, in no small part due to its superstar director Shinichirou Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop) and auteur music composer Yoko Kanno (again, Cowboy Bebop). Three episodes is enough to prove this is no standard high-school romance: transfer student Kaoru both befriends the class pugilist Sentarou and confesses his affections to the charming Ritsuko in short order. So far so typical, but it’s the refreshing lack of cruft that so far makes the series so enjoyable; characters are without pretence and combined with musical sojourns into jazz history it’s proof that a school setting, given the right tweaks, can be more than just animated nostalgia.

A Summer Coloured Miracle then is a step backwards into familiar territory, most recently covered with Waiting in the Summer and Hanasaku Iroha and just as heart warming and free wheeling but dreadfully lacking in imagination. A treasured school friend is moving away and didn’t tell her friends? Scandalous! You’d be forgiven for raising a cautious eyebrow at the end of the first episode though, asking yourself where exactly is this series going with flying middle-school girls? Short version: the same adolescent melodrama that any other of its ilk can offer but with more personality than on display here.

Of the four series then, the first three episode of Kids on the Slope are by far the strongest. Hyouka certainly has the leg up when it comes to aesthetics – few could argue the detail lavished on Chitanda’s eyes or the gratuitous hair growing scene aren’t hugely impressive – but Acchi Kocchi manages to do a lot with a little and put its own stamp on a twee but otherwise stilted opening. The runt of the litter then is A Summer Coloured Miracle which apart from a few sigh-worthy attempts at fan-service is inoffensive and entertaining enough but errs too far into the arrested-development zone of wish fulfilment, trapped eternally longing for a rose-tinted school life. Ironic really that the one which cuts closest to the ideal of a happy-go-lucky school life is the one that comes across as the most soulless.

Queen’s Blade Rebellion: An interpretation of episode 01

chaostangent — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:59:53 +0000

[EXT. Idyllic port]

Flying pirate ship: PEW PEW PEW!
Hapless villagers: Why is she attacking us with potassium chloride?!
Dandy pirate: *evil cackle*
Hapless villagers: That outfit does not look conducive to piracy!
Skeletons: RARGH!
Animators: Who knew skeletons were so hard to animate?

Please note: the remainder of this post contains images of nudity, if you are offended by these or are otherwise unable to view these images within your municipality due to laws or moral obligations, please do not proceed.

Cloaked figure (totally not female): *kick*
Panties: HELLO!
Dandy pirate: Let us duel!
Breasts: HELLO!
Cloaked figure (totally not female): Starfish nipples? Finally the echinoderm fetishists are catered for!

[EXT. Idyllic mountain town]

Eight year old child: I am an elf so canonically older than everyone! I will likely be sexually assaulted later in the series
Busty golem: Despite this series being medieval, I am somehow radio controlled
Queen’s guard: We need fruit, scurvy is rampant amongst our ranks! Please donate your fruit to your queen!
Evil blue haired girl: You are attempting to impress socialist ideals upon a now capitalist society despite a progressive but tyrannical matriarchy!
Queen’s guard: …
Busty golem: SHE-HULK CRUSH
Eight year old child: Notice how when my automaton attacks her clothes become transparent. I am in no way feeding the audience’s perversion
Queen’s guard 1: My sword arm! I’ll be thrown out of the guard! What will my scurvy-wracked husband and three children do now?!
Queens guard 2: If only there were some way to disable the automaton that was only protected by a small child!
Evil blue haired girl: Thank you tiny child. Please take this in no way poisoned apple as a reward!

[INT. Implausible castle on top of a mountain]

Volus: I am far from my home planet human, fight for me!
Giant salamander: Help! My masters have witheld treatment for my sialorrhea! Without it I could drown!
Inappropriately dressed warrior: HA-CHA!
Giant salamander: You hit my tongue! Jees, that’s just rude!
Volus: That saliva did not cover your nubile body as the crowd demanded, now I must electrocute you!
Inappropriately dressed warrior: Surely you will win more money by letting me defeat this grotesque beast?
Giant salamander: Hey I’m standing right here!
Volus: It sounds like you are enjoying this electricity, I must give you more of it then!

[INT. Water feature, possible future bath scene]

Eight year old child 2: *plot* *scheme* *thinly vieled insult*
Pornographic nun: *religious zeal*

[EXT. Tribal encampment]

Nipples: HELLO!
Phallic cod-piece: HELLO!
Tentacles: Hoho, wait for it!
Old man: Hey I paid for an hour! Keep dancing!
Tribal oracle: *smoooosh*
Tentacles: Haha, fooled you! No rape this time!

[INT. Eight year old child's house]

Evil blue haired girl: I have brought you these in no way poisonous flowers!
Eight year old child: These look like nerium oleander…
Evil blue haired girl: Don’t be silly! Hey a shiny stone, I’ll just go ahead and steal it…
Eight year old child: Hey your hands didn’t melt when you tried to selflessly clean that incredibly powerful artefact, phew!
Evil blue haired girl: Yes… “Clean”…

[EXT. Idyllic mountain town]

Eight year old child 2: Come with me and bring your sex robot with you
Eight year old child: No
Crowd: Gasp!
Queen’s guard: Please, someone, vitamin C. So… Much… Scurvy…
Eight year old child 2: Oh go on
Eight year old child: Oh alright then
Cloaked figure (totally not female): It is hard to breathe with all this disguise on

[EXT. Outside idyllic mountain town]

Ropes: *smoooosh*
Queen’s guard 1: Did the ropes really have to squash her boobs? We’re all female and would surely be aware how uncomfortable that would be
Queen’s guard 2: Quiet! The maid outfit is not deviant enough, bondage must be introduced!
Eight year old child: Mwuh ha ha ha!
Busty golem: SHE-HULK LIFT
Cart: *creeeeak*
Physics: Wood doesn’t have this kind of lateral strength!
Queen’s guard: Team Rocket are blasting off again!
Eight year old child: But of course I unhitched the horses before tossing the carts, I am no monster!
Animators: Phew
Eight year old child 2: The anachronistic microphone I planted into the horses worked perfectly. Now to scheme!
Elina: I have a sister complex and a complete disregard for physics!
Busty golem: SHE-HULK KICK
Panties: HELLO!
Busty golem: ROCKET PUNCH
Eight year old child’s leaf panties: HELLO!
Remote control: wheeeee!
Busty golem: Oh no, now my controller is out of range, my breasts will break through my clothing!
Breasts: HELLO!
Elina: Wait, what? Oh whatever, CHOP!
Cloaked figure (totally not female): Parry!
Physics: You can’t parry a lunge like that!

Cloaked figure (totally not female) evolved into Knight (totally not female)!

Elina: Your exposed cleavage, short skirt, long hair and feminine features leads me to believe you are in fact THE MOST MANLY OF MEN

Eight year old child 2: My holographic display says you have cancer
Evil blue haired girl: Aw man

Knight (totally not female): Let us duel!
Elina: Meow!
Breastplate: *shatter*
Physics: Metal doesn’t work that way!
Nipples: HELLO!
Elina: Good god, YOU’RE A WOMAN?! This is so unexpected!
Knight (totally female, who knew?!): Curse my flimsy armour! Oh no that eight year old child is falling off that cliff!
Eight year old child: wheeeee!
Knight (totally female and totally topless!): Pony, I choose you!
Elina: Why is that pony see-through?
Breasts: *smoooooosh*
Panties: HELLO!
Elina: Ah
Eight year old child: I didn’t know this cliff was this high!
Physics: Falling doesn’t work that way!

Hapless villager: Why am I running out of the village?!
Eight year old child: I’m not sure how my automaton is even carrying me anymore
Hapless villager: The other eight year old girl took the evil blue haired girl! And your shiny, glowing stone!
Eight year old child: Curses! Such a devious scheme! How could I have not seen this coming?! I knew I shouldn’t have left the ridiculously powerful artefact out in the open! And those tours around my house to see it were, in retrospect, ill advised!

[INT. Church?]

Pornographic nun: What is it minion, I am practising my kama sutra positions?
Less pornographic nun: Things are afoot!

[Merciful credits]

Technology in an accelerated world

chaostangent — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:40:54 +0000

Accel World owes a lot to Serial Experiments Lain. The script may not be penned by Chiaki J. Konaka and has yet to deal with digital deities but a great many of this new series’ ideas can be traced back to it.

“there is a fundamental stumbling block to the kind of time-stoppage seen in Accel World: biology”

Lain itself is of course based on volumes of, what was then considered fringe, research on the unstoppable onset of the Internet and digital devices – Project Xanadu and Memex are just a couple of its mentioned inspirations. When Lain was released mobile phones weren’t remotely close to the technological marvels they are today and the concept of wireless access to the Internet (ne. The Wired) was still far fetched. The beating heart of the series though was the eponymous Lain’s attempts to be subsumed into the digital world by pursuing a “deviceless” way to access the network.

Accel World doesn’t attempt to chase that ideal, instead using sleek neck-mounted computers which, in the first three episodes, enable access to a virtual world, regular file keeping and of course the “Brain Burst” fighting game at the core of the story. The “Accel” part of the title series’ refers to when (rather than where) this game takes place: in the split second of an accelerated reality. After a brawl lasting upward of thirty minutes has been concluded, the players’ hearts have yet to take another beat.

As far as the Lain is concerned, this is a successor to the smart-drug / nano-machine “Accela” which is reportedly able to accelerate the processing capacity of a user by up to twelve times and alter their perception of time. In reality, this dilation of time is a known psychological effect called tachypsychia and is connected with physical exertion (“runner’s high”) as well as periods of extreme stress (“fight or flight”). As with Lain and its early series shooting incident this effect results in reduced situational awareness and a lack of higher cognitive functions. The chemicals involved with this process are believed to involve an excess of dopamine and norepinephrine; the latter is also released during REM sleep which presents one possible explanation for the effect seen in Accel World.

It’s a common anecdote that the concept of time in dreams rarely matches the time it takes to experience them – your dream can be of hours and days but in reality only minutes pass. It has been proven the detail or fidelity of a dream correlates with its length, but when it comes to the perception of time there seems to be no relation. Films have taken a liking to this idea (Paprika, Inception, The Matrix) but there is a fundamental stumbling block to the kind of time-stoppage seen in Accel World: biology.

While taking ecstasy or nootropics (e.g. Limitless) may be enough to change how you experience time, biological processes such as muscle movement and nerve responses are still subject to physical constraints. Experiments showing this are easy to do but perhaps best shown by the Mythbusters during the “catch an arrow” segment from 2008. So when the portly protagonist Haruyuki is told he can dodge the incoming punch from his tormentor, he could well be able to see it coming but whether his muscles would be able to react in time is another matter. This is to say nothing of the associated fatigue associated with such increased “processing” or the necessity for common functions like circulation.

This of course does not take into account what the devices in Accel World are capable of – perhaps a chemical factory isn’t out of the question. The machines themselves seem inspired by Ghost in the Shell and are identifiably computers with file systems and applications but how they interface with the human body is still unknown. As examples of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) they are immensely complex: overlaying information onto a wearer’s vision would require either implants directly within the brain or a separate screen such as a contact lens.

The former would be rife with difficulties – the human body naturally tries to expel foreign bodies and implants would suffer from a debilitating build-up of scar tissue. Even if this was overcome, the different areas the device interfaces with – motor control, sensory augmentation – would mean an extensive implant, something unlikely given the devices are supposedly usable from birth. The alternative could be indicated by the device’s position at the top of the spine and the effect seen in the series thus far is just interpolation of movements (typing etc.) and transmission to a small screen display.

BCIs aren’t new and rudimentary, non-invasive products have made it to market. This includes the video game orientated “Neural Impulse Actuator” through to the twee Neurowear cat ears, the envy of nekomimi lovers everywhere. Research on BCIs has taken place since the 1960′s and advances have been made by scientists such as William Dobelle in restoring sight to patients with acquired blindness by transmitting images from a camera to a person’s visual cortex, as well as relatively more mundane products such as cochlear implants wired into the hearing system. This however highlights another sticking point for this kind of technology: morality.

Accel World shows it best at the end of the third episode when Haruyuki is able to rifle through the files on Chiyuri’s device with consequence-free abandon. They could be as banal as homework or more personal like visual and auditory recordings. Mind-reading and privacy invasion is a major aspect to the reticence of scientists to pursue, what is essentially, cyborg research that doesn’t directly benefit patients which is why disabilities such as blindness and deafness have seen the majority of focus.

Interfacing with the wearer is not the only task the device performs though and connecting to networks is another major part. This aspect however is now as mundane as being able to send someone a text message and the proliferation of Wi-Fi and WiMAX, even in the ironically backward cities of Japan, is an existing part of life for many. There is of course the spin that anime tends to put on this by making them hyper-localised – Summer Wars, Dennou Coil and even the venerable Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex are all guilty of this, obviating the fundamental idea of a borderless and geography free network.

For Accel World though this a necessity for the Brain Burst game to exist. Paralleling Lain’s PHANTOMa, it is an augmented reality that overlays the existing world, the difference here being that it all takes place within the blink of an eye. Pesky details such as how other players of Brain Burst are able to “watch” matches without prior knowledge of them taking place are omitted but the idea of a fully immersive online game is no stranger to anime with series such as murderously punctuated .hack//Sign and even Real Drive and the previously mentioned Summer Wars with their take on fighting games.

The first three episodes of Accel World then don’t pitch it as a bold new take on its ideas but as a short step into a possible (but largely unlikely) future. It’s pleasing to see that anime is moving out of the cringeworthy phase of neologisms and tired “cybcerspace” thrillers (Chaos;Head et. al.) and that there is some basis to the technology used. Its cribbing from Serial Experiments Lain is intriguing, but the otherwise tepid delivery, lacklustre characters and premise certainly don’t do its progenitor justice.

3 Episode Taste Test: Eureka Seven AO

chaostangent — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:01:03 +0000

Of all the franchises that crave another series – Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, Stellvia of the Universe (well kind of), Moyashimon (wait…) – Eureka Seven was not one of them. The hugely influential original series was Studio Bones firing on all cylinders. A tour de force of storytelling, boundless imagination, confident execution, and most critically a satisfying and conclusive ending. Say what you will about the pacing (soccer episode anyone?), it still stands as one of the best anime series ever made.

Eureka Seven Astral Ocean has a lot to live up to and does itself no favours by starting very similarly to Xam’d of the Lost Memories – an idyllic island community is attacked with terrifying force by an alien aggressor while an aged doctor tries to help. It’s certainly a lot more coherent than Xam’d and has echoes Eureka Seven’s original opening with the humanoid robot Nirvash careening into the Thurston’s garage roof.

So far so Bones, but the lingering question from the first three episodes is how the story slots together with the first series, if at all. The options boil down to sequel, prequel or reboot. A sequel would be the least controversial with the protagonist Ao pitched as the child of Eureka and Renton; a prequel on the other hand would make more sense given identifiable geography and geopolitical factions as well as a lack of twee moon graffiti; but then a reboot is not outside of E7‘s grasp given the copious volumes of manga and the Pocket Full of Rainbows spin-off movie.

The answer to this question is not helped by an insistence on hiding Ao’s mother’s face until the closing minutes of the third episode. As a “big reveal” it only muddies the waters – is this the Eureka we know and love from the original series and the world has indeed changed unrecognisably in a few short years? Or is this her progenitor and perhaps the beginning of an explanation as to why Eureka Seven and not Eureka One?

It’s largely an academic inquiry though because it in no way effects the absurd quality on display. A team must have been hired specifically to animate the explosions for they are as beautiful as they are numerous. More pedestrian elements like the iconic sky-surfing robots, flying cars and the burgeoning cast are equally superb. That is to say nothing of the music which is so brilliantly chosen it grabs your ears and sends tingles down your spine.

Any fault you can level at Eureka Seven AO then, at only three episodes into the currently projected twenty four, boil down to taste. AO is well on track to become another one of Bones’ masterpieces and it brings all the studio’s skill and boldness to bear in order create an utterly enthralling opening play. AO may not be the series we originally wanted then, but damned if it isn’t one we can’t now do without.

3 Episode Taste Test: Anthropomorphisation Throwdown!

chaostangent — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:20:15 +0000

Anthropomorphisation in Japan is a time honoured tradition and part of its global exportation of “cute”. Some view it with indifference, others disdain. In anime culture it has a long history beyond the days of “OS-tan” with different females representing the different available computer operating systems. Nowadays you’d be hard pressed not have had a run-in with such characters: trains, browsers, planets and vehicles to name but a few have been transformed into anime characters or, to use the vernacular: moefied.

This season of anime has popped up two shows notable for their anthropomorphisation: Haiyore! Nyarlko-san and Upotte! The former taking creatures from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, the latter guns from the around the world. So in an attempt to compare apples to oranges:

Upotte!

Girls with guns? Sure. But guns as girls with guns? There’s no context given as to why this is (not even “a wizard did it”) or why the girls wield the weapons they’re supposed to anthropomorphise. There’s just the rapid realisation that with the same company and character designer as Ladies versus Butlers, Upotte! is not just gun pornography but actual pornography.

It’s the same same tasteless smut that typified LvB and Kanokon: the “are they really being that blatant?” category of brain-dead drivel. What little charm there is in the first three episodes comes from the interstitials that explain the histories and usages of the various weapons and the twee position of sub-machine guns as pre-schoolers, machine guns as middle schoolers, rifles as high-schoolers, making the top-heavy female teachers missiles?

That it takes two full episodes before an inappropriate and voyeuristic bathing scene is frankly amazing but sadly demonstrative of the overall lack of imagination shown beyond the initial concept of anthropomorphising military weaponry. Sure gifting the girls personalities that fit their usage is all well and good, but like Strike Witches or any geographically aware show, the Brit is shown as a ditsy, busty and ripe for sexual harassment, while the American is brash, blonde and meddlesome.

Like Nyarlko-san then the source material – in Upotte’s case several decades of weapons development from around the world – is plundered for the most promising morsels in order to inject some life into an otherwise staid setup. There are attempts at education, but fundamentally this kind of fetishising of guns could not exist in such a twee and matter of fact way without trivialising their purpose and usage. Sure it’s discomfiting to hear a girl, who is also a machine gun, talk inappropriately of a teacher’s hands, but it’s far more disconcerting to see pupils running around a school shooting at each other without care or concern.

Haiyore! Nyarlko-san

As if Lovecraft aficionados needed another reason to be upset, the protagonist from this series is Nyarlothep, the Crawling Chaos, the soul and messenger of the Other Gods, he of a thousand other horrific forms. A chittering, silver-haired, hyperactive girl with all the menace of a Yorkshire Terrier and a psychotic devotion to a dullard protagonist. Hardly something that would bring ruin to the Earth.

There is an obvious reverence to the original stories with accurate depitctions of lesser gremlins like Night Gaunts, mention of the lesser known Dreamlands and even promoting a post-Lovecraft deity, Cthuga, to a main character. Obviously as an aggressive, laser-slinging lesbian rather than a unearthly ball of flame, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s indicative that while the deities are ripe for the picking, the bleak cosmiscism that separates Lovecraft’s fiction from other horror isn’t.

That’s no bad thing coming from an overly wordy and nihilistic writer but while one could argue this is but one interpretation of his stories, each is should pay homage and not just lip service. Without pitching humanity as utterly insignificant your’re just left with a vaguely entertaining light comedy.

That’s more than can be said for Upotte! then with its humourless setups and noseless, barely-teen cast just waiting for DVDs and Blu-ray to liberate them from steam. The first three episodes of Nyarlko-san at least have an Egyptian Pharaoh being labelled an underwear thief and the ominous city of R’lyeh recast as a Golden Saucer-esque amusement park for creatures most foul. It could certainly have pandered to its source inspiration and its attached fans more judiciously but then the juxtaposition of nameless terrors with a crowbar-wielding teenage girl is enough to stick with this scatterbrain series at least a little longer.

The final bell

In a world of choice a consumer never has to be satisfied with just one of many. Here though in a face off between Upotte! and Haiyore! Nyarlko-san, no one is a winner. Upotte is certainly truer to what it is anthropomorphising and the addition of more lecherous elements may suit gun aficionados more than not; Nyarlko-san then is the better show but neither succeed in being enjoyable outside of their vanishing small niche. Even then military and gun fans would likely find better and more faithful material in Jormungand and Lovecraft fans would be better off avoiding Nyarlko-san altogether.

In conclusion then, between apples and oranges, the best fruit is by far the kumquat.

3 Episode Taste Test: Jormungand

chaostangent — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:48:22 +0000

Jörmungandr – the world serpent, Jormungand - a Black Lagoon knock-off? Not quite. The parallels seem all too blatant from the first episode: a female lead, explosions and a fastidious attention to detail when it comes to guns. Black Lagoon though started utterly bonkers and was content to stay there, all the while mediating on the choices its characters make and the nature of its underworld setting. Jormungand tries to be rooted in reality with less boat-jumping and samurai versus shooter nonsense but instead laces every action bubble with endless monologues, rife with inappropriately timed observations and introspections.

That aside, it’s closer in spirit to Gunslinger Girl with its insistence on eschewing an overarching story for a mostly episodic and character driven plot. The comparison is also helped along by the child soldier protagonist who is evidently a graduate of the Rei Ayanami school of emotionless. Koko, the leading lady and human descendant of a fennec, is pitched as a shrewd businesswoman but a benevolent leader which wouldn’t seem so incongruous were she not a prolific arms dealer.

The first three episodes show her team more as a band of misfits than a battle hardened team of mercenaries. It juxtaposes the murky, morally grey area of gun-running nicely but feels entirely out of place when compared to the otherwise grounded but cosmopolitan plot. For example, the only other woman on the team is a busty lesbian who was supposedly forged in the crucible of warfare given her skill with a blade, but then goes weak at the knees over buying her commander a watch.

Are we, the audience, supposed to empathise or just tolerate this disjoint until their motivations are revealed? It’s the question the series as a concept has to answer because if the opening episodes are anything to go by, we’re expected to like them because they’re not mass-murderering psychopaths like the shark-toothed antagonist from the third episode is, and not a cavalcade of cretins as every other character has been thus far. That doesn’t make the current cast likeable by default though and many of the faces in Koko’s crew have yet to have more than a moment of screentime.

The series definitely has time and scope to satisfy these flaws, but it could all too easily fall into a pattern of self-contained, mediocre stories which could be summarised as “arms dealers do the craziest things!” Black Lagoon worked because it tempered the madness in its action (maid-fu anyone?) with a very astute look at the effect of violence and the protagonists’ place within it; Jormungand would do well to attack some of the thornier issues – arms dealing, their role in conflicts, the effects on society, especially children – if it’s to resist the thrall of the first three episodes: entertaining but lacking credibility.

A Dusk Maiden’s perception

chaostangent — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:59:12 +0000

The third episode of Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (Tasogare Otome x Amnesia) has a fascinating hook: perception.

“it is critical to the nature of Yuuko – she only exists because others can see her”

In the context of the episode it arrives when Kirie challenges Teiichi’s vision of Yuuko as a busty, alabaster skinned school-girl and instead claims she is “dripping with hatred” with filthy, cracked skin. From then on Teiichi can only see this ghoulish visage of Yuuko until he forcibly excises it from his mind. It’s claimed in an earlier episode that Yuuko only exists in the form of the beholder, so if someone believes her to be a wandering spirit then that’s what they’ll see her as.

It poses the question of what exactly Yuuko looks like. Obviously as a wraith she is gifted, or perhaps cursed with, this supernatural ability and part of the mystery of the series will no doubt be discovering exactly why she haunts the school and what her “true form” really is.

The idea of a perceived and a “true” form is one that I’ve covered before with regards the psychology of the persona (honne and tatemae). Here though it’s, rather ironically for a ghost, more tangible and Yuuko’s outer image, even her personality and actions, are moulded by the beholder.

What Kirie does with Teiichi is just as interesting though because the scene where his perception of Yuuko changes, Kirie doesn’t so much challenge him but state exactly what she looks like, first by sowing enough doubt in his mind then reforming his opinion. Essentially, she’s psychologically priming him. For the most part this happens throughout our every day lives and is innocuous enough; it can however be used for more nefarious purposes by con artists and salesmen though to help better their pitch.

In Dusk Maiden though, you could almost count Kirie’s subversion of Teiichi as a form of attack on Yuuko – if it’s that easy to change her form, even to those who can already “see” her, why not make it so they can’t see her at all, essentially destroying her? (Look at episode eleven of the first series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a western interpretation of this). Yuuko herself evidently has no control over how people see her and her incorporeality means she is not bound by the traditional human form. So it would take a psychological impairment (Korsakoff syndrome for instance) for someone to believe another human was a floating horror, Yuuko has no such restrictions.

This is different to one’s own self-image which is often more abstract – look no further than another recent series, Accel World, for an example of how a person’s perceptions of themselves are reflected in the digital world. A short, pudgy pig for the protagonist while an etheral and impossibly beautiful butterfly for the female Kuroyukihime – perhaps an allusion to previous, caterpillar state. (The first Matrix movie also briefly covered this).

Digital worlds provide free reign for creativity when it comes to personas, Summer Wars and Takashi Murakami proved as much there. The converse of this outward expression would maybe be the erasure of it, and can be seen in the climax of the the first series of Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex which has the master hacker, The Laughing Man, scrubs himself from the vision of nearby cyborgs essentially rendering himself invisible. Or to keep with the paranormal theme, Kokuto in the fifth Kara no Kyoukai movie, Paradox Paradigm, when he is able to avoid the gaze of the magus Cornelius.

Perception then at its core is a philosophical question: if an object isn’t perceived does it really exist, e.g. a tree falling in an empty forest? It underpins the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s cat and a lot of what is considered “beauty”. In Dusk Maiden though it is critical to the nature of Yuuko – she only exists because others can see her, and they can only see her because they know, or perhaps believe, in her. It’s close to the often the fanatical cry of those who see ghosts and wish for the paranormal to be understood – that unbelievers can’t perceive them. For Yuuko though, whatever curse binds her to the school is perhaps only marginally more bearable than the one which forces her into the guise of every ghost story and whispered rumour that emanates from the campus.

Guts’ sword

chaostangent — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:05:49 +0000

The first time we are introduced to Guts’ sword, the Dragonslayer, in Berserk is in the opening seconds as the master blacksmith Godo mends it. The first time we are properly introduced to it however is when Guts cleaves a brigand clean in two, taking out a solid wooden table and most of the floor with him. It’s a monumentally absurd weapon, as tall if not more so than the wielder and likely just as heavy, outside of fiction it would be impossible for any human to wield.

For the 1997 anime at least, this introduction is misleading as the sword that we see for the remainder of the series is just as tall but not quite as absurd. It’s not the only one of course – Guts grows up and events transpire which changes who he is and subsequently what he wields.

N.B. While this post deals primarily with the story covered by the Berserk anime series, allusions and non-specific spoilers regarding the manga are also made.

The first sword we see Guts with is the one he takes from his abusive adopted father Gambino and is the one used to slay both him and the wolves which hound Guts’ flight from what was once his home. It is a larger version of this sword we also see a teenage, mercenary Guts defeat the rotund Bazuso with. As Guts’ grows up, his sword is shown markedly fatter but still just as long.

It isn’t until after his fight against a hundred men that this sword is damaged and eventually shatters when facing Boscone in the assault on Doldrey – this is then replaced by Zodd’s massive blade which Guts’ uses to carve through both the general and his horse in one swipe. This is reforged into a pointier version of the now iconic shape and is shown breaking through solid oak doors as easily as it does human foes.

The most telling element of Guts’ relationship with his sword is not when he has it on him (sleeping, wounded, in a water fight with Griffith) but when he doesn’t. The first time it is absent from him there is a fleeting thought but he is seen wielding a dagger without a another thought. The second time it is absent is during the Eclipse when, after chasing a gaunt and helpless Griffith, Guts is caught in that hellish world without it. Here though there is no lament, just singled minded resolve as he carves through demonic minions with anything at hand – a dagger, horns and fists if need be.

The adoption of the Dragonslayer – originally forged for the once king of Midland – is at once pragmatic, but also a statement of purpose. Guts’ sword always reflects the measure of the challenge he faces, whether that’s the gusto of an overzealous mercenary, a hundred men or the full force of destiny, Guts’ says himself that he is only happy when swinging his sword and watching sparks coruscate from the blade.

Indeed his reason for originally leaving the Band of the Hawk was to discover why it is he fights, why he swings his sword. To do this he must of course defeat Griffith who originally won his allegiance in a duel. The difference between the two men’s swords couldn’t be more stark: Griffith’s is slender and pointed with an ornate handle while Guts’ is nothing more than a slab of metal with a handle. Even the two’s fighting style is a reflection of their personality: Guts swings and bludgeons scattering men from their horses, Griffith jabs and slices with precision whether that’s Zodd’s demonic form or a pederast lord.

Fair to say then that Guts’ sword is an integral part of him. Not only facing off against his foes and reflecting his personality but his raison d’etre, why he lives to this day and why he continues to live despite all that aligns against him. For Guts’, there is never to be any rest, no white-picket fence and charming homestead waiting for him because his battle will never be over, regardless of what the alternate reality fever dream at the climax of the series implies.

The final battle is with himself though; Zodd, in their second encounter, refers to the Dragonslayer as a “truly demonic blade” and it becomes increasingly necessary for Guts’ to slip further into the red mist of his inner demons to defeat his foes. The progression of the sword is the same as the horrors Guts’ has faced, the most traumatic the murdering of a child, a loss of innocence as the once righteous sword turns from a means for survival to a weapon of slaughter.

The last piece to Guts’ sword then is not the outer appearance, how it is used or what it represents, it’s what is beneath the blade and subsequently inside Guts’: a maelstrom of energies and complexities that can even strike at enemies incorporeal but is, when all’s said and done, inhuman.

Fundamentally, Guts’ sword is a character all its own, not a ridiculously oversized phallic analogy but a blade that speaks volumes (quite literally) about its wielder and more than words perhaps ever could.

3 Episode Taste Test: Medaka Box

chaostangent — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:32:33 +0000

Medaka Box, despite sounding like the more amenable sister of Pandora’s Box, is proof positive that you need a strong director to make the most of sharp writing. Coming from the same pen as Bakemono and Nisemonogatari it’s hard to believe the protracted, laborious dialogue here could ever be transformed into the wit that his other two animated series showed.

By and large it’s the same type of banter just presented by who has to be one of GAINAX’s most uninspired directors – the one behind such meteoric duds as He Is My Master (shudder) and This Ugly Yet Beautiful World.

It doesn’t help that the titular Medaka sports of all the loathesome personality quirks of Haruhi Suzumiya - arrogance, self-importance and a complete lack of empathy with other characters. It would be wrong to even label her a protagonist as it’s her hawkishly styled lacky who does most of the heavy-lifting. Certainly she turns up for some entirely out of place fan service and sporadic grand speeches, but it’s Zenkichi and his diminutive friend Hansode Shiranui who provide the bulk of the entertainment.

Like a buddy-cop duo they go about trying to solve whatever mystery has fallen into the suggestion box – nicknamed the Medaka Box and the impetus for the plot of the first three episodes. It’s definitely Hansode with her cackling laugh and fashionable, prehensile quiff which brings the chuckles; Zenkichi’s straight-man routine meanwhile would work if he were dead-pan serious (e.g. Kyon) or fists-up and bolshy, but neither happen regularly enough, leaving him rather dull.

It’s a feeling supported by the animation which is almost painfully generic despite the pleasant pastel colours. The palatial school with its myriad club-houses feels flat and though this allows for stories like a derelict kendo club and a bullied track racer, it’s hard not to feel entirely underwhelmed by the formula as a whole. The opening hints at a more varied cast to come than a shark-toothed thug and besmirched runner but the question the first three episodes pose is: should you stick around?

There’s certainly nothing offensive enough here to drop this unless the GAINAX jiggle proves a step too far, but mediocrity is its own anchor and without a stronger hand reigning in or capitalising on the extensive dialogue, this will in all likelihood sink. A significant change in the trajectory of the story would be a great start, as would expediting the inclusion of the other members of the student council to introduce some much needed chemistry. Until then though, this will remain like Corpse Princess: just another bullet point for GAINAX until their next hit comes along.

3 Episode Taste Test: Lupin Ⅲ: Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna (The Woman Called Fujiko Mine)

chaostangent — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:09:37 +0000

The talent behind this new entry in the voluminous Lupin III canon gives it a head start when it comes to acceptance. For many, Lupin III will be the critical darling The Castle of Cagilsotro directed by Miyazaki, others the original manga series. Then there’s those with no prior exposure to Lupin at all who have to accept that with Takeshii Koike (Redline) on character design, Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop) on music and Sayo Yamamoto (Michiko to Hatchin) in the director’s chair – maybe there’s something special going on with Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna.

“Fujiko plays the femme fatale wonderfully: pragmatic and daring but mysterious and alluring”

You’d be forgiven for believing from the first three episodes that it was inventive ways of the titular Fujiko Mine appearing naked within an episode. At the risk of plunging recklessly into sexism and feminism: it’s refreshing to see a female character so fully in control of her sexuality and not playing the coy and chaste purity-Sues that are the norm for most anime. It’s telling though that the of the first three, the episode with the least gratuitous nudity is the most effective.

Indeed it’s when an episode takes its time and enjoys the setting, the characters and the atmosphere that it’s at its best; not running around with guns blazing, islands sinking and paraphernalia parading across into view. Steeped in reverence to early animation, the visual style is difficult to miss and what it lacks in fidelity with the charcoal shadows and pop-up book backgrounds it more than compensates with character. The director’s previous experience with the similarly eye-pleasing Michiko to Hatchin suffered from a precipitous plunge in visual quality as the lacklustre story progressed.

Whether the same will happen here is still up for debate but so far the journeys into the lives of Lupin’s erstwhile crew has been strong enough not to raise the question of an overarching story. Taken as short character studies they work due to the strength of personalities, no more so than Fujiko’s who plays the femme fatale wonderfully: pragmatic and daring but mysterious and alluring. She certainly shows previous queens of the archetype such as Faye Valentine (Cowboy Bebop) how to make the most of it.

Like Cowboy Bebop, Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna is in love with the noir, gangster atmosphere from the 1940′s and 50′s Hollywood films. It’s a wonderfully evocative genre and one which seems to bring out the best in a series as Baccano! can probably attest to. Also like Bebop, there is always a place for a series which features and is written for adults and not adolescents.

Unfortunate that some of the latter has bled into the former with the copious, unnecessary nudity but conversely, the latter’s reckless abandon means scenes never stay po-faced for long before someone is slicing bullets (a likely unintentional nod to the lunacy in Black Lagoon) or putting rockets on a bodhisattva. If the first two episodes were raucously entertaining, and the third episode is hopefully a sign of things to come – measured, comfortable and subtle – then the remainder of this series will be utterly unmissable.

3 Episode Taste Test: ZETMAN

chaostangent — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:26:54 +0000

Nanananana, ZETMAN? Scowling Men: The Anime? In a world without irons, there are only CRUMPLED CLOTHES?

It’s hard to be serious with a name like ZETMAN but the first three episodes give it a good stab regardless. The story of a boy born to to science and raised by a homeless Santa Claus tries its best to be affecting early on, but with no context to the death of a loved one, who could for all we know be the head of a child prostitution ring and prolific giraffe smuggler, it’s hard to feel anything but mildly perplexed.

“character motivations are handled with all the subtlety of a howitzer”

Voiced admirably by Edward Elric, the tribulation and tears of a young orphan has a genuine emotional core to it. Then tongue demons and an alternate reality Charizard are wheeled out and it all falls apart. The most cringeworthy of these is the rich best friend who does his darndest to emulate Batman with gadgets and chutzpah but, miraculously, comes off as more annoying than his demure sister who may as well wear a t-shirt emblazoned with “Monster Bait!” on it.

Things get muddied once the time skip happens and the two boys are old enough to have chiselled jaws and floppy hair-dos. At one point it would seem that orphan Jin has become a dark anti-hero with unfeeling pragmatism when saving some screaming children, then he’s once again champion of justice and accepting deals from shady CEOs. The audience is expected to feel some measure of body-horror as to the transformation from Jin into ZETMAN but his confusion is fleeting and instead there’s the pressing, jargon-heavy matter of him melting.

It would be incorrect to say that there’s not much here: the story moves rapidly, character motivations are handled with all the subtlety of a howitzer and antagonists are neatly lining up to be thwarted. Events lack gravity and consequence though and the absence of a strong directoral lead to means the different themes – body horror, the woes of science, domineering fathers, what is your justice? – blur messily together.

Cues seem to have been taken from other sources like the foot-tapping opening lifting liberally from Xam’d: Lost Memories while what little fighting is present is bland enough to have been taken from any generic beast vs. beast anime – Guyver and Devilman did almost of this much better including the feckless teenage love interest. Credit where it is due though, the animation is slick but scrappy and while designs aren’t going to be to everyone’s taste, they are clean and have a modicum of personality to them.

There’s a lot of places ZETMAN could go, but the structure and story so far lends itself perfectly to the “monster of the week” format with the plot noise of childhood friends facing off (JUSTICE CLASH!), a damsel to save and a hawkish interloper who could be friend (probably not) or foe. As a trashy pulp series there are certainly worse and it’s to be commended for staying clear of the deviant, unhinged ultraviolence of series like Elfen Lied. At the end of the day though there’s little to indicate that this won’t end up a forgettable and thoroughly mediocre experience.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Writing (About Anime)

chaostangent — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:26:27 +0000

You do something often or long enough and eventually you have to succumb to insanity or ask the question as to why you do it. It has taken me a while but, for now, I have a grasp on why I write about anime. That reason however is tied to why I started writing about it.

“You, with your opinions, your desires, passions and language”

The first canonical post I wrote on anime was in September 2007 and was on the Lucky Star TV series which had finished airing just over a week before. I say canonical because I have written about anime before, however those are locked away as protected posts under the category fearfully titled: “Deadjournal“. At the time I had decided to set out my stall as someone who wrote eruditely about anime, something which at the time I believed was lacking in anime blogging. “This aniblogosphere deserves a better class of blogger!” How arrogant.

That was the ostensible reason for starting to blog about anime, and is the one I offered to Aroduc in IRC when questioned about it later, but in reality I had just finished up a narrated playthrough of the Hitman franchise of video games and was itching for a new project to absorb the upcoming winter months. After polishing off reviews of several Summer 2007 series, I birthed the first 3 Episode Taste Test from a common cry of a forum I frequented: “give it at least three episodes!”

My posting rate was as regular as my life at the time; I could arrive home from work, consume the required three episodes and pump out a relevant post in an evening. That regularity however gave rise to a demon I battle even now: rigidity. It was a crutch in my writing that supported the wordy, unimaginative drivel I was producing – flowery and pointed but every post had to be a certain word count. Every paragraph about a certain topic. I was not, at the end of the day, contributing anything but a surplus of adjectives.

No more is this apparent than with my three episode taste test of Amagami SS. I was no stranger to writing with vitriol, however the response to it was wholly unexpected. Within hours of a solitary link on Kurogane’s blog I was being pilloried on 4chan and my comments section was host to some vicious and immature personal attacks. In retrospect I could have handled the response better. In retrospect it’s all just immensely silly. At the time it didn’t feel it though; it wasn’t so much an attack on me but of a hobby, a passion, that I held dear.

When I went on hiatus, I still maintain it was not because of the backlash but that it highlighted I was only going through the motions. My interest in anime and subsequently post count routinely waned with the seasons and I could no longer identify with the fiercely vocal fanbase – I was an adult now after all with all its mundanity and trappings like purchasing property and career progression.

It took time and a tremulous start before I got back into the swing of things. I always tell people that I dream more when I write and I had missed dreaming. Anime is after all my hiding place – it’s where I go when events transpire against me, it’s my escape, my solitary pursuit. For I have never had a group or a close friend who shared my interest in anime, even in my university anime society there wasn’t anyone who remotely shared my tastes (except for a girl who I had a relationship with for four years but that is another story).

So when I write about anime you can understand I’m not writing for friends, for colleagues or for an audience. I’m not even writing it for you. I’m writing it for the mythical, impossible person who is furiously happy at the news of more Moyashimon, who can name every episode of Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex and still watch Queen’s Blade without reservation. You, with your opinions, your desires, passions and language are not this person. You are better than this person because you are reading what I write and sometimes you and I might agree on things, sometimes not. Sometimes it might promote discussion and sometimes my nonsense is rightly relegated to obscurity.

Why I write though? As a punctuation mark. Taking all my thoughts and ideas, putting them down in words, putting those words one after another, and moving on. As soon as I hit publish, all of the discussion has already occurred either in my head or in the scrawls of notebooks. Sometimes I’m pattern matching, other times just trying to make sense or organise my thoughts.

I don’t write for comments, whether “me too!” or reasoned discourse; I don’t write for popularity or hits, I write because I can look back at any post and it is a save-state of what I felt on that topic at that time. I write because I want to be able to describe what it’s like to watch ten minutes of a show and know, without prior knowledge, who wrote it. I write because one day I want to explore the malignment of gay characters in anime, and if I keep going, in the future I’ll have enough to make it worthwhile. I write because sometimes, every now and then, the words all line up really nicely.

So to you who reads even a few words of what I write, I thank you. I may not write for you but I wouldn’t be where I am now without you.

With apologies to Haruki Murakami and Raymond Carver for butchering their titles for the sake of foreign cartoons.
Flaming computer screen image from danbooru, Serial Experiments Lain image by Yoshitoshi ABe

The humble punk

chaostangent — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:48:42 +0000

Punks have been a staple of anime for as long as it’s been around. The 2012 spring season alone features at least two shows – Accel World and Medaka Box – featuring them prominently in the opening episode and with the upcoming Kids on the Slope sporting a central character who fits the definition.

At the heart of the punk idea is a rebellious youth, whether part of a gang or standing alone, a delinquent or just misunderstood, there exists an endearing quality to them that crosses countries and societies. These are far from the 70′s and 80′s image of Sid Vicious and The Sex Pistols and closer to that of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

“would Kamina and subsequently Simon be treated as anything other than delinquents in today’s society?”

Not all of their depictions in anime are rosy though: often they’re used as disposable antagonists, school bullies or street thugs, that tromp around in eclectic gangs. All brightly coloured barnets and sneered remarks, they’re present simply to endure a beat-down or perhaps galvanise the resolve of the protagonist. This is where Accel World, Medaka Box and any number of other anime fit in, even Kara No Kyoukai has them in both Remaining Sense of Pain and Spiral Paradox.

That arms-length approach is how a great deal of the real Japan would rather deal the issue. Academics are split on exactly what drives a youth to the popularised kind of brash and anti-social lifestyle: some suggest low educational scores compounded by a less affluent upbringing, reinforcing an apathy from the lack of job prospects; others claim that stunted social skills could be to blame or even the very act of labelling someone a delinquent makes it so and encourages a group mentality – gangs and syndicates, not neighbourhoods and clubs – that is claimed to be at the heart Japanese society.

These latter points could be to blame for the majority of “misunderstood” delinquents, think Ryuuji from Toradora!, Hasegawa from Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai or Akiharu from Ladies Versus Butlers. Isolated and alone they’ve been branded either through a misunderstanding or because of their looks and are treated with fear, regardless of the facts. It often takes an accident or another “maladjusted” individual to break that spell but it’s disappointing that such a self-fulfilling prophecy could be perpetuated – how many others haven’t had the chance to break out from their pigeon-hole and remain a pariah?

Gang culture is part of Japan whether that’s the Yakuza or the Bosozoku, the speed tribes that patrol the highways and cities – look to Nurse Witch Komugi or the film Kamikaze Girls for the most common, clownish representation of them or Akira for the converse. The former sprung up after World War II and have been both venerated by the countless films on them, look no further than the Yakuza Papers series for that, and most recently vilified by books such as Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice. That requirement to belong starts at the bottom, with the new recruits, the chinpira, who are no better than organised thugs and must learn to respect and follow.

That ethos is instilled throughout a Japanese upbringing though, that elders are the authority holders, and it’s no surprise that there would be some push back from such an overbearing approach. Practising punks then are well catered for with the likes of Seiji from Midori no Hibi, Harima from School Rumble, Makoto from Ghost Hound or, at a stretch, any of the main cast from Rainbow. All stalwart and honourable but opposed to society as a whole, like the misunderstoods, it takes a pure soul, an accident or old fashioned chutzpah to show society or the audience their true worth.

Gangs themselves meanwhile are often relegated to the sexually-charged fighting series such as Tenjou Tenge or Ikkitousen which often marginalises them as psychopaths or incompetent. The exception being the recent Durarara!! which prominently featured gangs, especially the so called “Colourless“. This only deals with the male side of the equation though which naturally lends itself to testosterone and pugilism, female punks and delinquents aren’t exactly as populous but still represent.

Again there are the misunderstood like Haruka from Minami-ke who fell into the role of the bancho or, the lesser known female variant, sukeban. Both Kyouko from Working!! and Ryouko from Ookami-san however are unabashed as to their status whereas others like Makoto Kino / Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon are left unexplored. Female gangs, although a real phenomenon in Japan are, barring pornography, unrepresented in anime and you have to turn to films such as Yo-Yo Girl Cop (based on a well-known weapon of choice of the girl gangs) or perhaps even the divisive Battle Royale to get a feeling for them.

Any number of different sources could be responsible for this diverse range of punks, deviants and misfits. The lone-warriors evoke the historical samurai spirit, a defender of good and bound to the bushido code. While the amorphous gangs seem more likely to be a response to the woolly juvenile laws in Japan combined with the intense pressure that schooling exerts on a child – for without an education how could a child hope to attain the high standing job and the respect of their peers?

Regardless of their proliferation though, little is said of reform or reintegration into society and if anime is anything to go by, simply beating them into unconsciousness is often enough to mend their ways. The overriding ideal however is that these people don’t need to change, only to be understood or even encouraged – look no further than something like Gurren Lagann for this, would Kamina and subsequently Simon be treated as anything other than delinquents in today’s society with their talk of revolution?

Ordinarily these reprobates would be seen as a symptom of a much larger ill, but as with many issues, delinquency is afforded media scrutiny but the real impact is far more restricted. The lament of youth is always repeated by adults from as far back as ancient Greece and likely even further. So the humble punk is here to stay, whether as fodder for fists or underdog outsiders, spare them a thought before beating them senseless or cowering from their wild eyes.

Beautiful Fighting Girl

chaostangent — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:43:31 +0000

I came to Tamaki Saitou’s Beautiful Fighting Girl with the expectation that it would answer the question I have pondered on for a while now: why does anime have so many “combat” girls? I left somewhat disappointed. The unfortunately abbreviated BFG was, if the translator’s opening blurb is to be believed, the first in a opening salvo of critical academic writing on the subject of anime, manga and the subculture of otaku, much of it yet to be translated.

“when the last remaining human component, the voice actor, is virtualised, the desirability remains”

This book is unfortunately academic in the worst possible way. The author evidently expects nothing less than enthralment and in the same way a narcissist babbles endlessly into a microphone, he is content to fumble and meander across a hundred and sixty pages. Compounded by dense language – understandable for a high-level text – and vast swathes of superfluous text, a tip for wide eyed, enthusiastic reader: skip the opening prelude if you want to avoid a barrage of vocabulary smackdowns like: “Insofar as their repetition perpetuates a libidinal attachment to a fictional construct”. Suffice to say, if you don’t have at least a cursory knowledge of the psychiatrist Lacan and his theories, prepare to persevere as I did or at least gird yourself for further research.

Many of my grievances with the actual text are covered by Brian Ruh’s overview which also concisely summarises the content of each chapter. It’s hard to believe, but the meat of the book is only contained within the final two. The first orders the various different types of fighting girl into a taxonomy according to their use in anime, manga and live action films from the 1960′s onward. The second explores how the beautiful fighting girl paradigm came about.

Anyone with any familiarity with anime will be familiar with the typical presentation of a beautiful fighting girl – pretty, naive and a little klutzy but can sling magic and high kicks with the best of them. Fighting girl royalty includes Sailor Moon, Cutey Honey and more recently Shana and Nanoha. Glossing over the nuances the book covers – the beautiful fighting girl is as a grand archetype is tied to two core concepts: how otaku consume anime and manga, and what comes from what the author sees as a split in the way fiction is approached by the West (Europe and Northern America specifically) and Japan.

Otaku consumption

Otaku interact with media – anime and manga – in a different way to other non-otaku. It’s generally agreed that this boils down to being able to “own” a fiction (story, character, genre etc.), commonly achieved by writing fanfiction, drawing doujin art, perhaps writing a blog or simply to discussing it with friends. This ownership is tied to the idea that otaku can “context switch” without think, so when watching a show or reading a manga they are interacting (cataloguing, pattern matching, internalising) with the fiction of that media differently than they would, for instance, socially with other people or during their day to day lives. Saitou shotgun-blasts several different meanings of “reality” which is often baffling and frequently contradictory and is perhaps the keenest place where the translation from Japanese isn’t ideal.

This turns the idea of the socially stunted loner stereotype of the otaku that is commonly championed on its head and it’s easy to see that when this “switching” doesn’t happen is when the much reported extremes happen e.g. “2D over 3D”, hikkikomori (be sure to read Shutting Out The Sun by Michael Zielenziger for more on the latter). But what does this have to do with a beautiful fighting girl? In short: her unreality, the very fact that she can’t as a character or personality exist within the real world, is what makes her desirable because it allows a viewer to “own” her fiction very easily. Perhaps because of the inherent ephemerality there is a sadness to her existence which only increases the desire, to keep her “alive” longer than the fiction otherwise would allow.

Saitou discusses the Western counterpart to the fighting girl, portrayed as “warrior women”. Older than the youths that are anime staples, their raison detre is commonly a trauma that defines them and pushes them to fight. For instance, Revy from Black Lagoon and Caska from Berserk would both fall under the warrior woman paradigm as they’ve both suffered trauma in their past – the former from an abusive father, the latter a randy regent. Juxtapose them with Reina from Queen’s Blade who fights, simply because the plot demands it and is never sullied by revenge or hatred. That age difference is commonly seen in anime as a negative – the mature woman antagonist for instance opposing the more righteous youth – and is suggested that the “transformation” part of magical girls is an analogy for (temporary) maturation – an interesting idea when considering transformations that include gender switching (Ranma 1/2, Kämpfer).

Saitou does admit that fighting girls do exist in the West but in smaller numbers. Prime examples include Kitty Pryde from the X-Men comics or more recently Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass or even Hanna from the self-titled 2011 film.

The author refers to the beautiful fighting girl as a “phallic girl” and dives into the idea of them being “hysterics” which, although I’m dimly aware of the pschoanalytic meaning behind both terms, still cut too far into what is already a sexist minefield, especially when considering the Saitou’s negative view on homosexuality or the refusal to deal with non-heterosexual male otaku.

East vs. West

The second element to the beautiful fighting girl paradigm is the perceived split between fiction in Japan and the West. In broad strokes: Western fiction by and large has a large number of different core stories and genres but little modification of presentation, Japan and anime/manga meanwhile have few core stories but much variation in how they are told. It’s an abstract idea but at its heart is the idea of fantasy – Japan tends to revel in tearing away from reality as often and as early as possible, whereas the West favours an anchor in reality.

The best analogy I could conjure for this was the lack of “other world” type shows in the West such as Escaflowne, Magic Knights Rayearth etc. It has a nugget of truth to it but the cut and dry version presented by Saitou falls down under even cursory scrutiny.

Regardless, when this is used to define the beautiful fighting girl, the argument is that the reverence for unreality and theatre allows and even encourages acceptance of her desirability. That unreality is inherent to the presentation of both manga and anime and extends into what was once science-fiction with Sharon Apple from Macross Plus or Idoru by William Gibson: when the last remaining human component, the voice actor, is virtualised, the desirability remains as can be seen with the phenomenal popularity of Hatsune Miku.

Saitou refers to the difference between the two different approaches to fiction as Western and Japanese “space” and likens the Japanese space to Takashi Murakami’s superflat illustrations – an argument the original Japanese publication took to heart with a cover by the artist; the English translation meanwhile only sports a fierce looking Rei from Evangelion. Odd as Evangelion is only ever obliquely referenced as a kind of academic discourse monolith, casting a long shadow and spurring even the most disbelieving of psychoanalysts to write.

Issues

Beautiful Fighting Girl was first published in 2000 and since then a sea change in the way anime is viewed and consumed has taken place thanks largely to the internet. Saitou’s book is obviously unable to cover the “moe” boom that is still washing up debris even now. But the best of ideas and analysis are always timeless and I have fundamental issues with the way the author argues for the beautiful fighting girl.

The primary one, and is entirely attributable to the author’s academic specialisation, is the defaulting to sex as the great underpinning force behind everything. The opening chapters even go as far as to define otaku as bluntly as someone who can masturbate to images of anime or manga. It’s not a radical view when one ponders the multifarious perversions perpetrated by sites like the rightly maligned Sankaku Complex, but it’s a rather bleak outlook on a subculture which has always had far more nuance to it regardless of the definition. Indeed, the subtext to his interpretation of a beautiful fighting girl is little more than a template to be fiddled with sexually (literally and figuratively) in order for otaku to attain ownership.

Similarly Saitou claims rather brazenly that Hayao Miyazaki (of Studio Ghibli fame) has such a wide range of young, strong female protagonists in his films (Nausicaa, Mononoke etc.) because of his underlying sexual feelings (“trauma”) towards the fictional heroine of first anime he saw: The Tale of the White Serpent. It’s a bold statement and though probably academically justified, just feels flat-out wrong when referring to one of the foremost creators of progressive, de-sexualised female protagonists.

Ideas and further reading

As is so often with books like this, the best aspects are between the lines and come in the ideas it seeds and discussion it fosters rather than the text itself. It’s somewhat of a shame that the extensive discourse that resulted from this book isn’t available in English, however the publisher of this book has already released the widely regarded Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals - a thankfully a more accommodating read for the less academically specialised – as well as the dense essay collection Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams (which itself contains an essay by Saitou) and the diverse Mechademia series of books.

At best then Beautiful Fighting Girl (Sento bishojo no seishinbunseki) is a touchstone of a time when straight faced discussion of anime and otaku was still rare. It sporadically shows brilliance in incorporating diverse topics into the discussion such as the “Comics Code Authority” and its neutering effect on Western (American) comics, or touching upon the distortion of time in both manga and anime, most recently epitomised by Redline, or even coming up with the wonderfully succinct “campus love comedy” definition for the unusual girls at school genre (Ah! My Goddess, Tenchi, Uresei Yatsura et. al.). At worst though, it’s an offensively sexist, protracted dive into a well-regarded psychoanalyst’s meandering thoughts, more focused on defining otaku and examining obscure outside artists than getting to the core of what the book is ostensibly about.

Other reviews of note:
Nina Cornyetz
Bodies in Movement

Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing

chaostangent — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:05:21 +0000

Nowadays incredulity follows the Gonzo logo. That once stalwart mark associated with Gankutsuou and Full Metal Panic, which in its latter years branded atrocity (Dragonaut) and mediocrity (Speed Grapher) alike and culminated in the studio’s unceremonious booting from the lucrative Strike Witches franchise.

It’s with much surprise then that Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing is so good. Not just “good for Gonzo”, but genuinely entertaining. Could this be the series to restore the studio’s lustre and break it free from a reputation of shoddy endings?

The first series of Last Exile didn’t set the world on fire like a 10th Anniversary show should, however it had a unique blend of steam-punk styling and airship fetishising that made it pleasant to watch even when haphazardly animated. With eyes on a grander narrative the purely character driven plot of the first series is mutated into something more political and imperialist.

Warring nations, splintered families and the horrors of war visited upon children. It’s closer to the themes flogged to death by Gundam or even the latter series of Code Geass and similarly drawn with fat, crayon strokes with telegraphed successions and shifts in alliance. The same tired climaxes from those series are brought to bear here. As soon as the nuclear-weapon analogue is rolled out the ending is set: either the antagonists du-jour win and the world lives in a tyrannical peace, or the allies win and their unification under a common goal sweeps aside their previous grievances. That the super weapon here is a super-massive unfinished spaceship with flowers for weapons is immaterial.

The focus on the politics of war is at the expense of character development to the point that come the ending, the antagonist’s motives are still an enigma and the protagonist – the titular and cherub-like Fam – is left almost a complete cipher. Seemingly secondary characters are afforded more growth such as Millia who goes from snobby princess to ace airship captain while Dio, returning from the first series, is half as crazy and twice as whimsical yet his catatonia and demise there is entirely ignored, despite the interstitial episode devoted to his back story.

Other political figures such as Augusta Sara and Vasant bely a world that sends its chivalrous men to war but is governed by a grand matriarchy. Idolatry and patriotic zeal underpin this conflict with one nation raising the ineffectual child Sara as a battle-standard and another throwing its best pilots, the valkyries of the sky, headlong into rocket-propelled suicide missions.

It’s stirring stuff and it’s hard not to be moved as a phalanx of floating warships razes country after country, bolstered by a sountrack that sports stunners like “Gamesmanship” and “Red-Letter Warfare”. Even replacing the iconic opening tune by Dolce Triade with Maaya Sakamoto proves to be a winning choice, especially with her cameo as a sultry race mistress.

That cameo unfortunately epitomises the rather wayward opening episodes. Once they subside however, skirmishes come thick and fast and are with some exceptions easy to follow and various enough to be enthralling. Pleasingly, with Sun Tsu’s teachings in full effect, battles regularly rely on strategy and cunning rather than an arms race to build a bigger gun.

Were the series smarter it would have focused on this warmongering and the already accomplished world building rather than trying to bake in morals and ideals. The result is that neither is afforded the attention it demands, with the strife of nations often lacking context and the themes lack bite, like attempting to demonstrate that speeches can overcome blind nationalism and steel. Fam’s naivete and earnestness never achieve the contrast to the bloodshed obviously intended, instead straying close to annoyance, just as Sara’s innocence and Millia’s familial bonds are never adequately explored.

Likewise the blatant real-world connection of each nation – American imperialism, an isolationist Russia/North Korea, a very British cavalry charge – let the otherwise superb setting down slightly and, however implausibly, more story threads are left hanging than the first series. How did Dio survive his swan-dive into the Grand Stream? Who controls the other Exile’s hanging in the sky? Why is Dian forgiven for what amounts to regicide? What was Lusciana’s plan with the Grand Exile?

So Gonzo are back to their old tricks: blindside the audience with high-concept aesthetics and ideas but falter in either conviction or talent to follow through. It is sometimes poignant, othertimes goofy, frequently beautiful and sporadically smart but don’t misunderstand: Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing succeeds Last Exile in almost every regard. That there are issues with what is an immensely ambitious narrative and nigh-on impossible balancing act does not dampen a thoroughly entertaining series.

Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer)

chaostangent — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:11:43 +0000

A lot can be said for a good story well told. Ano Natsu de Matteru rockets into the romance genre with a concept that by all rights should be weary from overuse, but is instead energised by likeable characters and a story that is impassioned and dramatic with little triteness.

“Crowbarring five teenagers onto a sub-tropical island was suspect enough but meeting up with a childhood friend…”

Not surprising really given the talent behind almost every facet: the director has past triumphs with Toradora!, Ano Hi Mita Hana and A Certain Scientific Railgun, the writer is the same person responsible for Please! Teacher and music is provided by the imitable I’VE SOUND group including opening lyrics penned by none other than alumni KOTOKO – it’s like getting the band back together. The creators indelible fingerprints are everywhere, whether it’s the cerulean skies and over-saturated greenery encapsulating a youthful summer or the skilful manipulation of character affections and steady meting out of drama; to say it was well produced would be doing it a disservice.

It’s thanks to that skill though that the “girl from another planet” paradigm, commonly used as an analogy for the insecurities of the lead with the other gender, is not exploited in the obvious ways. So the protagonist here is not socially regressive or confused by the opposite gender and neither is he the subject of the laser-like affections of every female around him, he’s just real enough to be empathetic and just dopey enough to be likeable. That’s not to say there isn’t an undertow of adolescent confusion and insecurity but it doesn’t protract the story more than is necessary.

That job goes to the awkward side-story visit to Okinawa which serves only to show off the female cast in bathing suits (a contractual requirement for any anime of this ilk) and muddy the waters with two of the secondary characters; this despite the borderline overdose of angst and emotional trauma. Crowbarring five teenagers onto a sub-tropical island was suspect enough but meeting up with a childhood friend beggars belief, at least it stays thematically relevant which is more than can be said for the climax of the show. Throwing reason to the curb the previously light science-fiction elements take the fore with a high-speed chase and a van that sprouts robotic arms.

Incongruous yes but so much fun. The series does so much right that it’s hard to fault it. There is a timeless quality to the story that comes from its history as one of the oldest archetypes – boy meets girl, fall in love but can’t be together. Its greatest triumph though is something the otherwise lamentable Please! Twins before it managed: capturing the teenage abandon of summer. It transcends language and locality and though for some it may be faux-nostalgia, invoking rose-tinted memories of times that never happened, the emotion and feeling of possibility is undeniable.

The ending seems like it would be a foregone conclusion – ill-judged chase sequence or not – but even here it manages to surprise and, most importantly, satisfy. The core concept and science fiction trappings could have easily been substituted for a terrestrially alien rather than galactic alien girl and been none the worse, especially as the initial plot of her staying on earth to monitor the well-being of the protagonist Kaito is never satisfactorily tied off. It does however serve the retro aesthetic that gives the series a lot of its charm with the old-style 8mm cameras juxtaposed by the sleek neon curves of the alien technology.

Likewise the plot concerning the soft-spoken Mio and to a lesser extent the clingy Chiharu, feels out of place in what is, beyond the first episode, an otherwise smut free show. The development of Mio, indeed of all the cast however is the reason to keep watching. The furtive glances and endless confusion of miscommunication is supported by the threat of secrets being revealed and the irrevocable change – good or bad – that may result because of it. In the end the characters don’t fall easily into their expected roles and grow and become stronger because of it.

Ano Natsu de Matteru epitomises emotion and passion over rough edges. It’s about the early morning mist on the fields as a confrontation plays out and feelings boil over. It’s about the sun setting behind the hills as you sit next to the partner of your dreams. It’s about all the things that make summer and that first foray into love precious and without equal – captured in a series that joins a small club of the most memorable romances in anime.

3 Episode Taste Test: Winter 2011

chaostangent — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 21:49:32 +0000

Spring 2012 is coming, attempting to wrap up Winter 2011.

Aquarion EVOL

This is not the Age of Aquarius. The first series of Aquarion was mediocre at best – surprising really given Yoko Kanno’s duties on the soundtrack and the birth of what should have been a decent pop-star in the form of AKINO. EVOL comes after an ill-advised OVA and reboots the premise by retaining the giant robot consisting of separately piloted craft – think Getter Robo except with squeals of orgasmic delight from the female aviators – but amps up the ridiculous factor to eleven. The opening episodes are pleasing in how seriously the show doesn’t take itself with a a male protagonist who floats on wings growing from his ankles when he has any naughty thoughts.

The drab grey environments from the first series are dispensed with, replaced by a colourful canal town that’s part Aria’s Aqua and part Gunslinger Girl’s Italy. Otherwise this is business as usual: the reluctant pariah hero is an unexpectedly competent giant robot pilot but breaks the rules through naivete and succeeds due to determination. There’s an undercurrent of teenage naughtiness and a raging torrent of creative abandon that will only be undone if it strays too far either way: Code Geass lunacy or Kiddy Grade seriousness?

Yoko Kanno is reprising her musical role which only deepens the question of whether such high production values and an auspicious start will lead to a more fulfilling conclusion than Aquarion managed.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear (Swan song of the Valkyries: Symphogear)

Singing and fighting have a long heritage, perhaps best known in Macross with the divisive Minmay. Here it is a little harder to believe that any of the lead females can hold a tune while performing acrobatics rather than standing about on a space platform (regardless of what the energetic performances of Sheryl Nome has to say about this). Sharing none of the staff but a lot of the ethos of Kannazuki no Miko, this is a scrappily drawn and histrionic take on the weathered story of a spunky girl thrown into traumatic circumstances.

Here though the protagonist has none of the charm of say Sailor Moon and her counterpart fares little better by taking the bushido paradigm a little too seriously. All of the character archetypes have been seen before, whether its the busty and whimsical lead scientist or the gruff and fatherly commander; that the opening episode is so charged and potent doesn’t make up for the slideshow-esque animation of the third or the increasing apathy for any of the cast.

It would be charitable to say that Symphogear had potential but frankly there is little to like and a lot to disparage.

Rinne no Lagrange

Finishing off the mecha triumvirate is another unlikely heroine, robots, aliens, etc. Unlike Symphogear, the machinery here is a petulant robot rather than JPop-activated armour and while the protagonist Madoka has just as much chutzpah as Hibiki, she manages to be twice as likeable. Intrigue and mystery abound with a race of invading aliens performing antagonist duty while very similar looking aliens aid the human cause. The likelihood of them being one and the same race seems high.

Thankfully the dynamic between Madoka and her cousin is as fresh as the cousin’s relationship with her underling is. The introduction of ditzy, top-heavy blonde pilot is disappointing and hints at more inappropriate flashes of skin to come, but with such a worn plot that this is the only burning issue is heartening. The scraps between the fetish-sleek robots are more humorous than awe-inspiring which makes a change from the dull repetition of the tired set-ups one expects. Delivering the coup de gras in the first fight with a wrestling move was certainly unanticipated.

With studios Production I.G. and Xebec behind this there is the possibility of Lagrange being an underrated hit as it progresses, though it would be just as enjoyable if it were to remain as entertaining as the first three.

Another

Reconstructing the original novel not withstanding, Another is an interesting entry in the relatively sparse arena of horror series. The first three episodes capture that unsettling feeling of small town, conspiracies and deviancies hiding beneath the surface. The addition of an old-fashioned ghost story means it certainly has the set-up for greatness. Unfortunately it ruins this with a fixation on dolls that, while thematically relevant, the cuts to images of them during an episode serve more as humorous non-sequiturs than the intended atmosphere building.

Similarly the protagonist’s infuriating lack of common sense and refusal to ask basic questions of the odd happenings around him isn’t helped by the obtuse and protracted dialogue. The third episode unceremoniously kills off one of the cast and by all accounts the deaths pile up as the series continues – unlike say the glacially paced Shiki, here the death is shown in excruciating detail and brings to mind the annual torture-porn of the Saw films. Common schlock horror then rather than slow-burning psychological torment.

The test of Another will be whether the various characters remain as inscrutable and abjectly annoying as they come across in the opening episodes or whether the mystery and body-count are enough to carry it through the projected twelve episodes.

Nisemonogatari (Fake story)

chaostangent — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:58:58 +0000

Nisemonogatari is a very understanding series. It understands the difference between pornography and eroticism is a fine line and gyrates provocatively on the latter side. It understands that by emasculating the protagonist and slavishly worshipping the otherwise entirely female cast it champions misandry over feminism. It understands family members transcend the commonly held notions of love and hate and that often reason and logic don’t apply. It also understands, and this is crucial, that as a phenomenon, the Monogatari franchise (including Bakemonogatari before and the upcoming Kizumonogatari film) are fleeting. And damned if it isn’t going to burn magnesium bright while it can.

“inspires slavish devotion and cultish adoration because it has passion circulating in its veins”

All the pieces from Bakemonogatari are in place here: art and animation that sucker-punch the retinas, banter that strafes wit and tedium and a supernatural affliction story framework for support. Like Akiyuki Shinbo’s previous role as director with studio SHAFT the production is, sometimes pompous, but always slick and confident and plays strongly to the intended audience. Specifically, eroticism for otaku. Not the flesh markets that series like Queen’s Blade, Yosuga no Sora or Ladies versus Butlers are, but understanding how to titillate rather than satiate and the confidence to put the story on hold for an episode to indulge in this. It’s still smutty and deviant for sure, but it’s fathoms from Nadeko disrobing in Bakemonogatariand here only the exhibitionist Suruga is exposed for giggles. Even the extended bath scene with the ever young Shinobu – deliciously voiced by Maaya Sakamoto – comes across as familial rather than perverse. It’s that familial connection which underpins the entire series and makes it thematically stronger than its scattershot predecessor.

Marginalising fan favourite Senjougahara was a smart move as it limits her obnoxious domineering and allows the bond between Araragi and his sisters Tsukihi and Karen to take the fore, making the two overarching stories – Karen Bee and Tsukihi Phoenix – much more potent. No clearer is this than in the penultimate episode when, as the audience, we are privy to why the two antagonists have visited Araragi’s house yet he is oblivious. When the attack on his sister comes it is swift and brutal and from Araragi there is no pithy comment, no monologues or diatribes, just red mist and fury. It speaks volumes of the relationship with his siblings, more so than any of the extended speeches do.

Unfortunate then that speeches are what define the climaxes to both stories. Standing around and trading sentences, regardless of how you package it, falls short of what should be a satisfying fulfilment to weathering the barren patches of story. Ameliorating this there are visits with past characters, Hachikuji seems to be the favourite despite her relative two-dimensionality. These interludes are conspicuous for stalling an already protracted plot, and were it not for the dialogue and animation’s boundless enthusiasm, these would be all but intolerable.

Similarly so for Araragi whose only lot in life seems to be pandering to the bevy of females that orbit him. Amusing though it is to watch him be humiliated by Senjougahara, fawned over by Nadeko, put down by Hanekawa and stripped of his masculinity by Karen, it would otherwise be pathetic and borderline creepy with such a sycophantic lead. Araragi takes the role of both verbal and physical punching bag with aplomb but other males do little better: Kaiki is a sickly looking con-man who extorts children for money and Oshino has all the trademarks of a wayward father by leaving his protégé without a word. This then is faux feminism by juxtaposition with the strong, demure, smart, young, sporty and witty traits doled out evenly to different cast members – pick your perversion and start salivating.

This is a series for fans of anime as a medium and not for any specific niché. It inspires slavish devotion and cultish adoration because it has passion circulating in its veins – it’s in the animation, the direction, the script and the music. It’s certainly not in the characters or story which if penned by any other director or studio, would collapse like a flan in a cupboard. It is fervour an audience can get caught up in, stow your ambivalence and caution by the door. It isn’t for everyone but that’s not through lack of trying. Some will see the lack of story progression or archetypal personalities and rightly baulk, others will ride that passion over the cracks and chasms hiding under the surface.

Nisemonogatari knows it is short lived – sooner or later you need more than just chutzpah to sustain yourself. Until then though it is will blaze in technicolour, a sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes picturesque love letter to fans of an oft maligned medium.

Final Fantasy XIII-2

chaostangent — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:18:35 +0000

Having now completed most all of what FFXIII-2 has to offer according to both the trophy screen and the challenge the end-game activities provided, I’m ready to go into my thoughts on the game.

Please note: contains spoilers.

Whenever you talk about a Final Fantasy game it’s usually prudent to establish what regard you hold the previous games in. More likely than not, those reading this have played a previous game and were either turned off by the experience and now look on quizzically with each new release, or are eager for new entries in the inappropriately named series.

I started with and loved VII, was perplexed by VIII, never really got into IX, I adored X, I was disappointed with X-2, I did not play XI, I loved XII, I was indifferent towards XIII, I liked Tactics Advanced and Tactics A2, VII: Advent Children was silly.

It’s impossible to talk about XIII-2 without going into the fan reaction towards XIII which ranged from incredulity to disappointment. If some sites and sources are to be believed then the furore over the linear environments, lack of towns, extensive background reading etc. were deal breakers for many people. The problem with this mentality is that it presents a list of things which fans were expecting from the game and were not provided with. But this list only masks the problems with XIII which were more difficult to describe and were set into the foundations of the game. These are exactly the same problems which plague XIII-2 because the surface flaws, that fan list, has been addressed and they’re problems which are core to the RPG experience: characters and story.

Characters

Putting aside the semantic argument of whether any Final Fantasy game is an RPG, it’s safe to say that the protagonists and plot are absolutely key to the experience of any of the games because fundamentally they tell a story. This isn’t to give the gameplay elements short shrift, but long term enjoyment is often about whether you related to or empathised with the characters and were energised, saddened or simply moved, however slightly, by the story.

XIII didn’t forget that, it just didn’t do a great job of it. The cast of characters was eclectic as expected but out of the six core and other secondary characters, I came to enjoy the company of only three: Lightning, Sazh and Fang. Lightning’s no-nonsense approach and singular mindset on saving her sister was refreshing and her dynamic with Sazh, the exasperated father mourning for his son, was brought in far to early in the story to be appreciated. Fang meanwhile was almost feral in her demeanour which contrasted so well to thermoset curves of everyone else. By the end of the game, it was obvious who your favourite characters were, and in Venn diagram of great and terrible characters, Vanille, Hope, Snow and Serah commonly existed solidly in the latter.

So why would XIII-2 base an entire game around three out of those four? It beggars belief as not one of them, neither Hope, Snow or Serah is any more endearing. Hope has now graduated to the bishie phase of his development and looks stoically thoughtful throughout; Snow meanwhile grows a cyber-mullet, and Serah… Serah whines more than Hope. Two out of three of the most tolerable characters meanwhile are almost entirely absent. Sazh is given lip service towards the end of the game in time for his upcoming DLC while Fang is safely ensconced in crystal so her interaction with the story is limited to a single dream.

The issue, and it’s a huge one, boils down to personality and chemistry: specifically the lack of both. Thinking back to some of the other Final Fantasy games – every new one of course invites comparison – and remembering groups like Barret / Tifa / Cloud in VII, or Yuna / Tidus / Lulu / Auron in X, or even the brilliant Fran / Balthier and Asch / Vaan combination in XII, conversations and situations where the characters sparked off one another bubble up from memory. XIII-2 has none of this. Snow, supposedly Serah’s fiancée, has been absent for years at the start of the story, but everyone just accepts this, Serah included. Where’s the anger? Where’s the passion? Where’s the… emotion? Their position as future husband and wife feels cosmetic, there is no connection, even when they meet later in the story there are no longing glances or forlorn hand holding – where’s the love?

This disconnect is tied to the lack of a party – far more reminiscent of X-2′s costume sphere system except worse as the third spot, instead of being filled by a death-metal band dropout, is now populated with a personality-less monster. So at any important juncture, there are only ever two characters available for real development.

Serah’s counterpart Noel Kreiss, the interloper into the pantheon of protagonists, is the only protagonist to have a worthwhile motive for tromping around the timeline. Ignoring that his first name is my last which makes for very confusing spoken conversations, his status as the last human ever born makes him forthright and seem very dependable if not slightly meat-headed at times. Unlike Serah and Snow, the connection between Noel and Yeul (his Yeul) is plain to see and all the more touching because of it. Simple things like the daydream of being able to hug her again speaks so much more than the clumsy dialogue ever could.

There is a litany of missed opportunities for developing and humanising the characters which comes down to unimaginative writing. Serah has been searching for her sister across time and space, and when she finally materialises in front of her, no hug? Just stilted questions on paradoxes?

Thankfully there is an exception to this cavalcade of disappointment in the shape of Caius, the antagonist extraordinaire. His full worth isn’t truly exposed until the ending – until then he is an unknown aggressor with an immortal body and an impractical Soul Calibur-esque greatsword. But his motivation, his raison d’etre, is phenomenal and the pithy responses from the protagonists pale in comparison. More than anything he is empathetic, as someone who has lived for eons and has seen the people he cares about, that he swore to protect, fall his actions are not only justified but inevitable.

So from a canon of characters established in XIII, the most infuriating are given leading roles while others are relegated to also-rans. It’s telling that those introduced in this game are the stronger ones, even the comedy Moogle is more endearing than Vanille could ever be. There are still giant missteps in the writing and in the end Hope and Serah limp over the “tolerable” finishing line ready to start on the “interesting” character marathon.

This is to say nothing of some of the secondary characters such as Alyssa who have all the character design traits of an important do-gooder (multiple belts), but none of the exposition. She is even ousted as a collaborator with the big bad in one of the post-story missions which is neither contextualised or explained. This however, is a key example of the second and most critical issue with XIII-2.

Story

A good story can make up for a lot of downsides in an RPG. XIII-2 doesn’t have a great or even a decent story and this is after an almost complete tonal and narrative shift from XIII. The fal’cie and l’cie naming spaghetti is now more or less gone and the pseudo-political backdrop and techno-deities are ignored for a good ol’ fashioned proper god, Etro, and a time-travelling plot spanning seven hundred years.

On paper this sounds excellent: let’s ignore’s the flimsy connection between the two games as the sequel moniker implies. Except the time travel here isn’t thoughtful or even thought-out, it is used as a conceit to shotgun blast jargon at the player that even on a cursory listen is utterly daft. Even the most incidental characters spouts gibberish of paradoxes and time-space distortions and rifts in space-time – it’s enough to put Star Trek to shame.

Jargon aside, the time travel element is used ham-fistedly and prime opportunities for narrative nectar – watching as friends and locations change, decay and die over time – are completely ignored. Instead, every single character finds a way to leap through time like the protagonists Serah and Noel do. Whether that’s implied with Sazh, stasis with Noel or a time-travelling motorcycle with Snow. And yes, that’s the same motorcycle made out of the two lady eidolons from the first game.

This is the worst case then. That time travel, a plot element I cherish so, is butchered to provide a reason to change the weather in the same locales and advance a story started in the closing seconds of XIII. This is compounded by the default view of the level select screen, the Historia Crux, which runs from left to right like a timeline but branches off to drastically different periods. It’s confusing until you realise the line is advancement through the game’s narrative rather than through time as one would perhaps expect.

The minutiae of the story shows flashes of brilliance but are never capitalised on. Noel for instance, is the last human ever born, in the far future when the sky has fallen and the land is barren, he is the final child. It’s an origin story that’s wonderfully evocative but beyond the first few gobbets of exposition, has little effect on his character. Caius, in the climax says more about Noel than an entire game’s worth of development could “You don’t like to kill anyone. You, the last human, understand the true meaning of life.” Where was this kind of writing when I was shearing sheep or delivering trinkets?

Perhaps the most criminally disappointing story thread is that of Serah. Her affinity with Yeul, the cursed oracle of Pulse, is not made apparent outside of dialogue, only in the closing moments when she shares the same fate. It was certainly signposted but never expanded upon and the reveal comes off more as a “huh” rather than a tear-jerking denouement ala. X. Her search for her sister Lightning meanwhile is just as tepid and lacks the impetus needed to maintain interest. The opening scenes hint at attempting to find a gate to Valhalla where Lightning now supposedly resides but then gets lost in dealing with the intangible fall of Cocoon and defeating Caius who throughout has opaque motivations.

Individually then the strands of story disappoint – Serah and Noel’s time skipping adventures, the fall of Cocoon, the endless battle of Lightning – but together they are muddled and too disparate. At no point do you as a player really know what you’re trying to advance. Is it the search for a sibling, the saving of the world, the vanquishing of evil? It’s as if someone had a checklist of narrative sources and decided to throw them all in, making each as bland as the other rather than one of them brilliant.

The world of Pulse and Cocoon with its organisations and denizens is strong, that was never the issue with either XIII or XIII-2 and even the introduction of Academia, apart from sounding too much like Macademia (nuts), is intriguing but not explored. The world building is certainly not up to the standard of XII with its nation states and political machinations, but nor is it a believable setting like the journey through X or VII, it’s all just…

Spectacle

To say anything of the artwork of XIII-2 is to be in awe. This is the fidelity of a high budget, whether incidental crowd members, the texture of an anti-gravity jump, to the grand sweeping vistas of locations like the Archelyte Steppe or the crumbling of a planet-sized crystal pillar. There is not a corner cut.

Many people play the Final Fantasy games for that spectacle. When in-game graphics were relatively crude, that came from the full motion video sequences ushered in by CD-ROMs and then DVDs. The jump in fidelity was pronounced and it was enough to put your controller down and bask in the some of the most impressive visuals available in video games, rivalling even the most revered from studios like Blizzard.

It’s a credit to the Crystal Tools engine used by XIII-2 that the difference in visual quality is vanishingly slim between in-game and pre-rendered scenes and only the opening and ending sequences are out-of-engine. The changes are still only cosmetic: the ladies’ lips look fuller, their eyes shine brighter and their hair sways invitingly in the breeze.

But for all its grandeur and awe, like the story, it never feels part of a whole. XIII suffered from this less acutely but the lack of a “big picture” view of the world, be that the floating Cocoon or Pulse below it, means all of the locations are microcosms. The accompanying dialogue tells me where Bresha is, and the position of Cocoon gives me an idea of where New Bodhum is, but nothing about how they all lock together.

Neither X or XII featured the traversable world map that all previous games had, however X obviated the need for one by presenting a journey. From Besaid to Djose to Zanarkand the locales spilled into one another like water and though the presence of map buried in the menus was pleasant, it was unnecessary. XII on the other hand needed one to glue together the different regions and their spats with each other, but more than that the art-style and mood remained consistent across the locales which, again, contributed to a cohesive world.

XIII and XIII-2 on the other hand have neither an interactive or static world map. We are told but never shown where places are. XIII-2 suffers even more due to the time-travel mechanic but even then, as a player were are shown an arena surrounded by walls and ceilings – some hidden others not – and never allowed to know how the Archelyte Steppe could ever lead to New Bodhum. Or how the impossible space of XIII’s opening could ever tie in with the rest of the Cocoon.

The result then is a beautiful, stunning world – Academia switches from rain soaked, Blade Runner-esque sci-fi to Star Trek utopia – but it’s all just curtain hanging. There’s nothing behind. It’s ironic that the Void Beyond with its floating islands of masonry and gnarled trees is just as isolated as the most lush and verdant of plains on Pulse. It’s sad that it would have taken so very little – when compared with the construction of these new locations – to pull together a visual map of these places, and the benefit would have been astronomical.

This is not a nostalgic cry for a world map or any other kind of system but a desire for a better connected world. One where there is a journey and a story in the environments themselves rather than immensely pretty but completely static pictures. Many of the systems which are already available though – the ones which make up the interactive rather than ephemeral aspects of XIII-2 – don’t need changing because they’re some of the best the series as a whole have ever offered.

Systems

The ATB system has been chopped and screwed, mutated and subsumed so many ways in the different iterations of Final Fantasy that its original turn-based line-dance is unrecognisable in recent instalments. A remark made during the creation of XIII was the desire for more visual fighting, akin to the tomfoolery found in the FFVII: Advent Children film. You certainly get that here, but the biggest change is from a micro-management point of view.

You pick a role and let the computer work out the best moves for your other party members and, optionally, let the computer work out the best moves for your character. You can queue your own if desired, but you are rarely forced to. The difference is stark as you are now no longer manager the second-to-second actions of your party but orchestrating a strategy – I don’t want to have to individually tell my party to heal, I just want to indicate I do.

The unfortunate side-effect of this is, outside of some end-game battles, this takes the form of press X to win. XIII-2 compounds this by making the fights so staggeringly easy that even on the dreadfully named “normal” difficulty, anyone who completed XIII will rarely break a sweat. It’s especially bonkers when the paraphernalia of the Paradigm system – bar refreshes, profile switching to mitigate powerful attacks – is all locked away in the drudgery of tutorials and text screens. Adding insult to injury is a seeming regression whereby the computer assistance – automatically selecting the most wounded party member for instance – favours Serah and Noel over the third slot monster, regardless of how critically debilitated they are. Similarly the often daft choice of actions from the “auto-x” option beggars belief – throwing more lightning at an obviously resistant enemy is, frankly, the kind of intelligence I expect from Serah but not from my home console.

It’s infuriating. Especially so when the menu-based interface could be streamlined to make interacting with a great system better. For instance, the slick animations block further input until their completion, meaning menus lag making it tedious to choose your own actions when the computer refuses to act sensibly. Similarly while I can repeat my previous custom actions, I cannot store my own bank of them, meaning switching between two different action sets is an exercise in annoyance.

Despite my vehemence, these are but small annoyances that accumulate. XIII-2 is rife with these, whether it’s the clunky paradigm choosing or the Crystarium system which is implausibly more difficult to use than XIII’s – an ode for the license board or sphere grids of old. There are several new systems, so clamoured for by fans: Chocobo racing! Slot machines! … Monster recruiting? Diversions at the best of times, these are pale facsimiles of previous games with Serendipity a shade of the Golden Saucer or even the oddly addictive card game of VIII. Worse than that though is how useless they are, the Chocobo racing is entirely avoidable, even in the end-game, while the slot machine is the source of a particularly insipid reward requiring either boundless patience or a construct to hold down the trigger of a controller.

This frustration leads into the darkest area of the game: the Fragment system. Like Mario’s stars, this is a collect-em-all, except here the ways of collecting are obscured by visuals effects and further squirrelled away in out of the way places. I would be unwilling to play any majorly numbered Final Fantasy game without a guide to hand, if not simply to avoid the controller destroying frustration of making a decision, be that levelling or chest opening, that cripples you further in the game. The benefit of the collecting is that it naturally creates a checklist of accomplishments and progress is measured by immutable numbers, that the method is so mediocre and difficult to decipher did not stop the organisational part of my brain, locked away in the primal centre, kicking in.

Conclusion

Short-sightedness is why XIII-2 exists in the way that it does. It’s why there are egregious puzzle sections (although the “Hands of Time” puzzles were devilishly fun). It’s why the soundtrack has the beautiful vocals of Origa on it but omits the best track used in the game, “Blinded by light” from XIII. The fans shouted for towns, shops, non-linearity and diversions. And Square Enix provided. But the fans don’t know what they want. They know what they had, and they liked what they had, so when XIII didn’t have these things, that’s what was wrong with it. XII was similarly pilloried and reviled for its lack of a “proper” battle system and relying on MMO style functionality – but I’ll be damned if the gambit system wasn’t a joy to tinker with.

Square Enix and all of the creative team behind XIII-2 should have listened to that stubborn creative voice in their head – the one that still refuses to remake VII regardless of fan desire - and tried something else new. Damn the whining fans because if they kept giving fans what they wanted, like a musician always making the same music, it becomes predictable and boring.

Maybe this is just the repositioning that is needed by the much delayed Fabula Crystalis Nova series. The hanging edge of the story here indicates that more of XIII’s universe is forthcoming and this is just a hiccup in the way Square Enix approaches modern console games. Games that have boundless artistry and tuned mechanics but which are increasingly mired in a combination of short sightedness and fan pandering.

So with all that said, what would be the one thing I would say to Square Enix? Don’t listen to a word of this. Let your artists create and make whatever game you want to because what the hell do I know? I’m just a fan.

Reconstructing the Another novel – part 1

chaostangent — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:32:47 +0000

(Another was originally a book by Yukito Ayatsuji. With news of a translation yet to appear, I’m trying to reconstruct the novel from the first three episodes of the anime series)

I woke up in the hospital. It felt like I had been dreaming, but there was clichéd narration and an awful, terrible song playing. It was still 1998 so I was slightly disappointed I hadn’t time travelled to a future where ALI Project had been outlawed.

Outside the sun was setting and the backwater town I had moved to seemed ready to sleep. My Grandma and Aunt were chilling with me on dialysis. At least I assume it was dialysis, I wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing with tubes in my chest but they had said it was medically relevant. We chatted about my father and late mother, and where I was going to school. Some students came to visit me with all the cheer of a funeral procession. Must be depressants in the drinking water.

Most of the stilted conversation centered around my living in Yomiyama before. The second time I said I had only visited before elicited a handshake which seemed slightly odd, but who am I to question the country folk and their quaint mannerisms?

The hospital is so dark at night, darker than the hole in my heart, both literally and figuratively after that “dialysis”. I questioned whether to phone my wayward father when I noticed the elevator didn’t go to the fourth floor – guess that superstition is taken seriously here. A girl was in the elevator that I hadn’t noticed before given how roomy this glorified metal cupboard was, apparently she goes to the same school. Slipknot must have become the band du-jour here as this girl was just as emotionally vacant as the welcoming committee was previously. If only I could think of an analogy to describe her… Something human-like but inanimate…

I was so elated to be in an elevator I had omitted to select a floor so rode it all the way to the second basement. The girl got off and when I asked her name, she proclaimed it like she had to check her credit card to remember. With all the fluids in my body replaced with… Mountain Dew? I was apparently in tip top condition for going to school! My Dad called me at a thoroughly uncivilised hour beforehand:

“Just think of it as something that’s in the past and go enjoy your life!”

Super advice on my potentially trauma induced condition, thanks Dad. To add to my early morning malady the robot bird seemed to be playing up and trying to tell me something. Stupid bird, Lassie would have been so much more emotive.

My class was positively abuzz with excitement when I arrived! Is what I’d like to say, instead I got the feeling my classmates were all trying to make my head explode with their thoughts. During the interval I was questioned rigorously though it seemed like they were hiding something from me, steering me away from certain topics. As I had the unexplainable urge to fit in with these maladjusted prepubescents and I am chronically daft, I pretended I didn’t notice.

During PE I chatted with a couple of students who seemed especially weird so I ran to the roof to escape the stupefying conversation. The girl I met in the lift in the hospital was there, drawing or perhaps doodling conceptual architectural schematics. I quizzed her on her name. She said my name meant death. I tried to look stunned, like no one had called me “Deathy McDeatherson” before. She said the school was close to death. Definite Slipknot fan. Or perhaps just coming down after watching Evangelion.

“You shouldn’t try to get close to me. You shouldn’t talk to me anymore, either.”

Reverse psychology ey? I’ll show you not talking to you any more! Hey look a bird!

So day one at school: success! I sent one boy to the infirmary (heart condition indeed), freaked out a girl by saying a name and met someone who said I reminded everyone of death. Way better than my last first day!

Aural pleasure

chaostangent — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:06:15 +0000

A few years ago I almost lost the hearing in my left ear. The gory details are best omitted, but I was left with (what the doctors claimed) was 20-30% hearing and only two thirds of the bones I should. For all intents and purposes I was deaf in that ear, a lopsided and mono world where car alarms didn’t exist (a boon at 3am) but wearing headphones was painful.

Two years and two operations on I have most of my hearing back. All of this is just context for me to say: my hearing is precious to me and I am precious about it. It is a cliché to say that you don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve lost it, but when it’s personal it really brings it home.

A lot of anime – be that series, OVAs or movies – don’t really “get” audio. Whether by budget or by design, often it’s a case of slapping some screechy tween rock on the opening and ending and some forgettable instrumentals in between and call it a day. A rare few though tap into that lovely woolly part of the brain, hotwiring the pleasure centres through the ear and leave me turning the lights down and volume up.

This isn’t just “great soundtrack” though, if so I may as well just name drop Yoko Kanno, Yuki Kajiura and Kenji Kawai and be done with it. Nor is it about haughty audiophile terms like crossover or audioscapes or tweeter fidelity (I may have made them all up), it’s about using sound, be that musical or effects, in the most potent way.

This isn’t a definitive, ordered, or best of list, only ones which make me tingle with auditory nostalgia.

Mushishi

There are never enough good things to say about Mushishi and audio is just one. Here it’s the judicious rather than overbearing use of sound that matters. Mushishi’s composer, Toshio Masuda, crafted a new ending theme for each and every episode, sourcing traditional and sometimes rare, one-of-a-kind instruments for many of the tracks. The result is a score that is hauntingly ethereal and fits with the series perfectly, just as the dialogue – muted and never protracted – serves its purpose without getting in the way.

The sound effects though are where the heart of the series lies, with a permanently natural landscape everything from birdsong to meandering waterways are added to an already soothing score. The moment that never fails to send shivers down my spine comes early in the series. Ginko makes his way through the mountains, snow crunching underfoot and falling silently in the twilight. He comes to a valley with a small village in it, a starfield of lights from windows and Yawarakai Tsuno (lit. Soft angle), the third track from the OST, is left to linger.

Mushishi, more than any other series, is one I can lose myself to completely. Hours can go by and only the regular changing of DVDs marks time. It rejuvenates me when ill, and elevates me when healthy and I can only attribute some of that to story and visuals.

The Chiaki J. Konaka triumvirate

Chiaki J. Konaka is neither a composer nor a musician but while compiling this list, three anime cropped up all of which he was heavily involved with: Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze and Ghost Hound. All feature different sound and music directors as well as a range of different composers and contributors, but their themes and styles bleed almost seamlessly into one another.

It could easily be attributed to the themes CJK favours with collaborator Ryutaro Nakamura – director for both Lain and Ghost Hound, but the musical directors introduce variety surprisingly without disparity. So Yoko Kanno’s husband Hajime Mizoguchi provides a great deal of the Texhnolyze soundtrack while guitarist Reichi Nakaido does the same for Lain yet both share a melancholy sound beyond the guitar riffs.

The parallels between the shows are varied, both Lain and Texhnolyze have a technological nihilism running through them, while Lain and Ghost Hound play endlessly with the audio itself, the latter dragging out and distorting sounds. All three feature vocal tracks: Lain with the chilling and iconic Duvet by Bôa, Poem of the Moon by Gackt ends every Texhnolyze episode (let’s ignore Juno Reactor’s opening effort), while experimental jazz artist Mayumi Kojima lends Poltergeist to Ghost Hound.

This is all academic though when watching the different series. Ghost Hound builds a creeping sense of dread of the unknown with its constant sonic barrage – the mid-episode blast needs to be heard to be believed. Lain meanwhile has the constant background hum of power lines or the whir of computer fans accompanying the belting techno tracks. Texhnolyze on the other hand is mournful, often discordant but builds on the bleak vision of a distopian future with heavy breaths and metal on stone.

It is audio that challenges. Always absorbing – Texhnolyze especially – but a pleasingly eclectic offering from each series while still mostly cohesive as a whole.

Aria

Aria is many things to many people which is a polite way of saying that many people passionately dislike it. The no-drama approach is not unique (K-On! et. al.) and the soundtrack is forgettable muzak when isolated, the lilting Roundtable feat. Nino endings not withstanding. Taken together though, it represents a ferociously soothing and melodious of scores. Mushishi’s may be just as likely to lull you to sleep, but Aria’s soundtrack borderlines on providing health benefits, capturing that summer’s day feeling so succinctly. Coupled with the cheery setting and careful voice work, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Unlike others on this list which tend towards the overt, Aria’s gets out of the way and lets the overall rather than the specific rule. That isn’t to say there aren’t memorable moments: the silent and imposing Cait Sith or the first time you hear Athena’s stunning vocals, it’s the subtle changes that really power the emotions. I would be hard pressed to forget any of the final series’ denouements thanks largely to the emotional as well as audible crescendo.

Aria proves that audio doesn’t have to be unique to be memorable and sometimes it is enough to accompany and enhance rather than overbear and intrude.

Ghost in the Shell

Take your pick from either of the two movies (Kenji Kawai) or the two Standalone Complex series (Yoko Kanno). This is the sound of the future, whether it is the Hong Kong inspired labyrinth of the first movie or the clean, smooth curves of the series. Ghost in the Shell as a franchise has a leg up due to its status as critical and (eventual) financial blockbuster. Not every series can afford to hire two of the most trusted minds in music, nor can they afford to provide such a brilliant surround sound. And fewer still can afford to distribute separate DVDs with the ear pleasing DTS audio format on it.

It’s hard to talk about either the movies or series without mentioning the score – both are so overpoweringly brilliant that it would seem like every other sound could be muted to little detriment. Ghost in the Shell though is about the detail, whether it’s the mechanical pulse of cybernetics and multipedal tanks, the thrum of cyberspace or the cacophony of gunfire, very little exists in anime that can match this range and fidelity.

Out of the two, the series soundtrack stands out because it straddles what others on this list do well individually: world-building and atmosphere. Aria, Ghost Hound and Mushishi provide atmosphere in spades, while Lain and Texhnolyze really do sound like the future but Yoko Kanno’s score is the best of both. Using the operatic vocals of Origa as well as long standing contributors such as Tim Jensen and Chris Mosdell means every track is memorable, but slot so effortlessly into place.

Who could forget “Beauty is within us” at the climax of the second episode as a robot reaches for its parents? Or “Torukia” at the climax of the Individual Eleven storyline as the missiles fall? Few soundtracks have seen such repeated playtime with me as the Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex ones and it’s testament to their quality and Yoko Kanno’s seemingly boundless talent that so many have been released without a single dip in quality.

Also ran

The list above is abridged to the ones which resonate with me the most. Were someone to ask me “which are the best anime to listen to?” they would spill out in a heartbeat. Many others though are just as deserving but lack either the boundless brilliance of the above, or perhaps just caught me at the wrong time.

Kara no Kyoukai

Yuki Kajiura’s soundtrack is the sound of Kara no Kyoukai, gifting the series a fittingly dreamy, ethereal tone but is let down by a comparatively ho-hum effort in other areas (of course excluding Maaya Sakamoto’s voice work).

Cowboy Bebop

Another Yoko Kanno effort and one I’m sure many would rate higher than my choice of the Ghost in the Shell soundtracks. Here though is but more proof that a great (nigh stunning) soundtrack doesn’t make up for other auditory shortcomings.

RahXephon

Ichiko Hashimoto’s score is superbly accomplished, just as the series itself is – memories of episode 19 “Blue Friend” come flooding back – however, ironically it’s perhaps because the frequent and fitting discordance that this sits somewhat oddly with me. That said, the effects afforded to the Dolems are brilliant, giants of stone and opera.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Fitting with the endlessly daft shift in visual styles is a soundtrack that challenges you to pigeon hole it. Switching from the bonkers “Ringo, Mogire, Beam!” to shamisen ditties through to piano medleys, listening to the multiple soundtracks on shuffle is to hear madness distilled. It’s telling when even the remixes are stunning (and sadly unreleased by perpetual madman Rappubitto).

–

Audio is important to me in a way that is difficult to elucidate in words (despite taking at stab with this 1600) but perhaps it’s enough to leave a collection of my most favoured and return to pining for the next hit of sonic cocaine.

3 Episode Taste Test: Nisemonogatari

chaostangent — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:31:12 +0000

You don’t come to Nisemonogatari (lit. Impostory) for the plot or characters, you come to it to watch an art director take an LSD trip through modernist architecture and a paint-palette orgy. You come for the in-jokes and the riffs on other media. You come to listen to what few other series ever dare to try: banter. And what banter. This is not the banal monologues which often pass for conversation but a shotgun approach to dialogue: sometimes funny, sometimes racy, othertimes just oblique.

But nothing happens.

The opening episodes serve as a “previously on Bakemonogatari” complete with the old trick of changing the characters’ hairstyles is used to indicate the passage of time and to shoot ardent fans into apoplectic bliss. But so far this is just a retread of the same setups and gags that its prequel had. There is the briefest of cameos from an antagonist in the third episode and two new but so far underutilised characters, but Senjougahara is still domineering and obnoxious just as Sengoku is demure and fawning.

“There is more to come!” is the fervent cry from fans. And that fervour is what sustains this. It relies on the energy, the wry humour, the back and forth and the obscenely stylish animation to sustain itself because neither the characters’ personalities or glacial story can. It’s to its credit that such difficult to maintain elements can carry what is often borderline pornography.

SHAFT and director Akiyuki Shinbo get a pass here for their frequent fan-service and inappropriate nudity because, while it always makes you feel dirty, there’s an element of class that overpowers the guilt. Perhaps if the visuals don’t titillate then the discussions on polygamy or implied paedophilia will appeal to the more cerebral.

For the most part it works. It’s prequel Bakemonogatari fell too quickly into a pattern that was repeated through the series, the first three episodes here have been anything other than formulaic. But it exists on a knife edge between wearing a knowing smile and being a vanity project – where those involved in making it enjoyed themselves more than the audience does. The series demands attention and has enough style to justify it, but with the upcoming anime film and the remainder of the series to go, whether it will avoid the studio’s penchant for eventually “phoning it in” (Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei et. al.) is the burning question.

3 Episode Taste Test: Bodacious Space Pirates

chaostangent — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:56:27 +0000

“What are you watching?” “It’s about a rebellion and government sponsored mercenaries, but in space.” “What’s it called?” “Bodacious Space Pirates” “…” “…” “Want to watch a documentary on polar bears?”

These are not today’s surly pirates who kidnap and extort or even those of yesteryear who rape and plunder but- well, in three episodes there hasn’t been much of any kind of piracy. The assumption is that there will be pillaging and perhaps even looting at some point, it may even take place in space but whether these endeavours will be bodacious is the primary question.

So far, this is the restrained story of a high-school girl on a distant planet who has been informed of her lineage as some kind of omega pirate and her largely indifferent acceptance and eventual indulgence of this revelation. It’s a foregone decision when the opening animation sees the heroine wearing a fashion mash-up of pirate regalia and school uniform (all the pomp with extra sexiness) and her crew, for the most part, seems already in place.

This errs on the side of hard science fiction though with attention paid to humdrum mechanical failures and touch-typing cyber warfare rather than running gun fights and the fierce abandon of sundering ships and razing ports that the series’ title suggests. It’s hard to imagine any of the preppy private school girls knocking back grog and getting into a bar scrap when, at the end of the third episode, they are sailing languorously through space on their yacht. It’s to be somewhat expected when their pirate emblem includes pig-tails and a mandolin alongside the standard Jolly Roger skull and bones.

The attention to “realistic” elements of space travel seem especially ill placed when comparing space battles to naval battles is ripe for incredulity. But this is from the creator of the under appreciated Stellvia so the slow-and-steady approach isn’t without precedence, as is the scandal-free crew composition of girls with a sole male teacher. Were it not for the form-hugging space suits and brief foray into locker-room sexual harassment, the series would be, so far at least, pleasingly sexless.

The shred-metal opening belies a thus far quieter and more thoughtful approach to what could have been another Nadesico - noisy and gung-ho. With a title like this you could be forgiven for expecting something more high octane and, while the potential is certainly there, the likelihood of it kicking-off wanes with each slow burning episode. If the gradual reveal of this universe’s history and the focus on a character’s personal dramas appeals more than the inevitable scuffle with the Interstellar Alliance then this may well turn out to be a worthwhile sleeper hit.

Working`!!

chaostangent — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:29:28 +0000

On the surface Working`!! has very little going for it. Sliding off the back of the first series the second introduces no major new jokes or any characters of substance, the animation is scrappy and there’s no drama that isn’t wholly manufactured. Telling then that the most exciting part is when Matsumoto – the eternal cameo – is gifted a voice and takes part, albeit in a small way, in the ongoing story. Against all of this, somehow everything clicks together and works.

“often situations are resolved with a rare outbreak of sensibility but just as many are run unceremoniously into the ground”

This is mostly thanks to a core set of characters which play off each other very well, making sure that no personality (foibles and all) is allowed to dominate. So the sparky Taneshima remains the most enjoyable character thanks to her indomitable good nature, but her clashes with Satou are kept spaced apart, providing brilliant but occasional visual humour. Likewise Takanashi, who exists on the knife-edge of creepy and eccentric, interacts more with Satou and Souma now and his baffling relationship with Inami is kept restrained.

Sometimes though, some more variety is needed which warrants the intervention of the Takanashi’s sisters. Even this is too well-worn for the series’ mid-point which brings in cronies from Kyouko’s past, as well as another member of the estranged Yamada family. It takes the focus away from storylines which were already tired but fundamentally changes nothing.

And there’s the rub. For the series to work the constancy of the character chemistry, situations and jokes needs to remain otherwise it would slip into unwanted drama or be required to grow a pesky storyline. Certain episodes tease a kind of self-awareness with a possible revelation or overhead conversation that threatens the status quo, but events always expire and dramas always pass without consequence.

This is after all light humour and often situations are resolved with a rare outbreak of sensibility but just as many are run unceremoniously into the ground. There is a surreal streak to the comedy though, beyond the basic workplace shenanigans is a young girl hiding from her family in a restaurant, a business owner looking for his sewer visiting wife and a freakishly strong androphobe. This isn’t like the British workplace comedies of yore (Brittas Empire and Dinner Ladies et. al.) but an off-the-wall look at the microcosm that is employment.

Wagnaria like any business is an odd, disconnected place where disparate people are expected to work together while outside of the workplace their grievances, romances, trials and traumas don’t exist. Sometimes we see Souta at home with his sisters, and this series we even see into Inami’s homelife, however their school and private lives – what they do when not working – are almost entirely omitted. In that way then, the characters aren’t people but wholly defined by their quirks and any semblance of well-roundedness is entirely accidental.

So if you can ignore the torturously punctuated title and accept a flawed, sometimes funny but always lighthearted take on a service-industry workplace, Working`!! is great, unoffensive entertainment. The premise is fragile and a prime target for negativity: too similar, nothing happens, characters are annoying etc. The first outing may have been too much for many and this second series doesn’t try to remedy these complaints and settles for continuing and refining what is at heart, a romantic office comedy.