Or to give its full, punctuated title: Princess Lover! The premise - once again - is to cram as many lithe, buxom females into as confined a space as possible and provide an empty husk of a male protagonist to catalyse their frequently outlandish but never overtly raunchy interactions. In short: fan-service romance comedy. The anime is just one of a number of media co-minglings, starting with the visual novel by newcomers Ricotta (as in the cheese) and followed by light novels, manga, this anime and a related radio show. What should be surprising is just how many different ways such a vapid and paper-thin plot can be told.
this is borderline misogynistic, reinforced by the profusion of quantum singularities where underwear should be
The lead character's parents are killed and while moping near their grave one day he gets embroiled in a scrappily animated chase between a horse drawn carriage and an open-topped jeep full of thugs. One tenuous event leads to another and the pink haired, well-endowed passenger is flung from a cliff into a thicket of trees where upon the protagonist wakes up and finds himself fondling her chest. This is all immaterial of course because he has been adopted by his immeasurably wealthy grandfather, ostensibly in order to find the people responsible for his parent's murder and subsequently avenge them. Instead though he spends time rubbing elbows with various females and partaking in the local school social club (by attending a party after etiquette lessons, naturally). That this feels so familiar is odd considering the set-up at least is superficially unique.
Evangelion occupies a very special place in my heart: I watched the series on VHS in 1997 when I was fourteen and - without hyperbole - it was a life changing experience. A series that was smart and brutally obtuse and flitted from Jungian psychology to religious dogma was revelatory for me at the time and it questioned a lot of what I had not yet fully formed questions about; so as well as being gob-smackingly awesome, it changed who I was and consequently who I am. For those reasons I am utterly fanatical about the franchise and concept. Like a delusional lover I put up with a lot of the nonsense that GAINAX throws: I own the original series on twelve VHS tapes which I upgraded to DVD when they were first released, then upgraded them to the Platinum DVDs; I did manage to stay away from the deluge of tat that has been continuously released but it's fair to say my own lot of Evangelion merchandise is not insignificant. In what is a truly savvy move, just as patience for the constant re-releases was beginning to wane news came of the Rebuild project.
If 1.0 was meant to prime the fans for what was to come, 2.0 detonates with magnum force.
Not just a fresh coat of paint but a fresh take - that was the promise at least. It was hard to get excited, especially when there was also word of a live action Hollywood adaptation bolstered by some mightily uninspiring concept art - the only promise being that WETA are on the case. Regardless, the news came out over a year before the first Rebuild release so there was plenty of time to build up my scepticism. The first movie, "Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone" released in 2007, deserves a post of its own and the number of pages I've devoted to notes and thoughts and theories bordering on absurd. The second movie, "Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance" released just this summer is easy to write about because I have not yet had a chance to analyse and unpick it as I am wont to do. For want of a better description, this is a review rather than an unravelling.
How would a studio approach a manga known for its wordplay and focusing on a depressively suicidal teacher, a manga that was notoriously (even infamously) claimed to be untranslatable? Surely even SHAFT, known for their off-the-wall adaptations of other, more straightforward manga such as Pani Poni and Negima, could manage such a feat? They did, and with such reckless disregard for obstacles such as plot, continuity and sanity; Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is bizarre, satirical, cynical and rambunctious and solidifies SHAFT as a skilled and confident studio.
each episode is a scatter-shot of styles and content, the speed and veracity of each bite-size skit causes as much humour as the subject matter
Describing the premise of the series would never be enough to encapsulate what it is actually about: the histrionically pessimistic Itoshki Nozomu is at thwarted in his attempts to kill himself by the outwardly naive and interminably optimistic Kafuka. This satisfies the first twelve minutes of the series as it then goes on a journey involving stalkers, hikkikomori, escape routes and courting rituals but most of the time it concerns itself with nothing in particular: a multicoloured collage of gags, perceptions on life and randomness. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has very little to say and has a damn good time saying it. The series doesn't cover a specific time frame or tell a coherent story, it is a staccato whimsy of wordplay and wonder; a möbius strip of pop-culture references and banter on the thralls of modern existence. If all this sounds like the series occupies a different existence to the rest of the world, you wouldn't be far off the mark. An episode can focus on one specific topic, often meandering along the way, veering off on tangents of logic but ultimately digging through an obscure subject such as what can be accepted as minimal culture, or clearing away impurities or escaping from blame and responsibilities. Other episodes which make up the majority of the twelve episode barrage concern themselves with frittering away on whatever shiny issue takes its fancy, the opening episodes concern themselves with introducing the core set characters and their associated archetypal personality quirks then strobing fanservice, insults, family members and all points in between. Episodes are sometimes over before one knows it, other times the closing animation can be just a punctuation mark before it continues, seemingly unabated.
Having a character in a series attempt to win an argument using squirrels seems like it would go down well around these parts; thankfully squirrel related tomfoolery is not all Minami-ke has to offer as it manages to break out of its well trodden, all-girl-school-comedy premise and develop into a raucous look at the life of a family of oddities and the selection of characters which get pulled into their orbit.
Characters, situations and comedy are stitched together so deftly that it's hard to think of Minami-ke as a series at all
The first season of Minami-ke seems to constantly better itself by proving time and time again that it will not beat a dead horse, providing capricious situations that seem patently obvious when shown, but on reflection take on Rube Goldberg-esque set up. For instance: Makoto, a typically brash and uninteresting character whose only lot in life seems to be to provide a catalyst for Chiaki's deadpan cynicism, add in the desire to visit the Minami household without incurring special kinds of wrath, mix in some typical gender-bending and atypical cross-dressing, sprinkle in some adoration for Haruka and the result is something that never seems anything less than hilarious. Time and time again the off-the-wall comedy provides sporadic moments of howling laughter buffered by constant amusement with a boy with a propensity for loosening his shirt and sparkling to the trio of straight-faced brothers who also share the name Minami.
Given such an auspicious and confusing opening three episodes, it would have been easy for ef to fall into obscurity and abstraction with deep symbolism and obscured plot; thankfully this is not the case and the series manages to make the absurdly stylistic symbolism part of itself while still a sometimes unique, not wholly original story which ends well at a petite twelve episodes.
the grayscale visions of Hiro, the stained glass technicolour of Chihiro and the sunset beaches for everyone
In between the astounding opening and changing ending are two stories: one about a high school boy trying to find colour in his world while trying to deal with the affections of two girls, one overt and another covert; the other is about a girl whose memory lasts only a scant thirteen hours before events begin slipping away and her relationship with a boy she meets at an abandoned train station. The plot may sound akin to an atypical dating-sim territory but the storytelling is first rate and deftly draws one into the world and its characters. The supernatural elements that nagged the opening episodes are present but downplayed; the ephemeral figure of a long haired woman who imparts advice to all of the central characters and then vanishes is never explained even slightly, the same with the silent, world weary caretaker of the memory-challenged protagonist. The only time these elements are brought to the fore is in the final moments of the series, hinting more at a desire for a second season rather than anything that would affect the first.
