“Hmmmm.” That was the noise I made as the post-credits scene in Makoto Shinkai’s Kotonoha no Niwa (Garden of Words) faded to black. It wasn’t so much a question or even a measure of concern but more a noncommittal sound that seemed to fit with the rather woolly way the petite forty five minute film ends. Ordinarily at the end of Shinkai film, even one as short as Dareka no Manazashi (Someone’s Gaze), there’s a satisfied silence, pregnant with the weight of the story just told and the characters just glimpsed.
Pluviophiles rejoice for much attention is lavished on the rain
A lot of the discomfort with the ending will likely come from what expectations you had going into it - in short whether you’re familiar with Shinkai’s films or not. Certainly you should take each work on its own merits, but the sharing of motifs and style and tone is enough to sink you back into the amber sunsets and cloudscapes first set out in Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star).
Within moments of the first episode, Durarara!!'s connection to Baccano! is obvious: brightly coloured eyecatches punctuating the opening and enumerating the sizeable cast. Sharing a significant portion of its predecessor's production team, director and character designer included, it likewise refuses to be pigeon holed into a single genre instead throwing its weight behind its eclectic characters and pacing. Unlike its predecessor however, everyone introduced in the first three episodes is fascinating in isolation, but fizz with chemistry when the ensemble cast collide.
the deadly serious kidnapping of Magenta is in stark contrast to the blonde bartender who punches a gentleman's clothes off
Set in Ikebukuro, Mikado Ryugamine arrives at the train station after being invited by his friend to attend the local high school. Eager to be part of the city life, Masaomi Kida shows the somewhat naive Mikado around, introducing him to friends and warning him of the dangers that the entertainment district of Tokyo holds. Weaving through the busy night time streets, they pass a girl meeting up with a man she has supposedly spoken to online. Events spiral out of her control and things look bleak until one of Ikebukuro's urban myths arrives: the Headless Rider - an enigmatic driver of a jet black motorcycle. Story threads diverge and coalesce with equal frequency as more oddball characters are introduced including a Russian giant hawking sushi, a monstrously strong bartender and a whimsically vicious young man.
My train to Narita airport leaves in just over three quarters of an hour and I've just filled myself with an assortment of breakfast foods (and some not breakfast foods, seriously - hamburgers?) so some random bits and bobs as they come to me:
Shinjuku station on a Saturday - bleh
Shinjuku station on a Saturday night while squiffy and trying to get from east to west - bleh
My bag is the densest thing in the universe, its gravitational field has already claimed my sanity
Akihabara - noisy
DVDs - expensive
CDs - my addiction
Now for 1.5 hours on a train, 12 hours on a plane, 2 hours in an airport, 1.5 hours on a plane and 40 minutes on a train (and 15 minutes in a taxi most likely). Homeward bound.
