Hige vs. Otaku

I’d forgotten what good shonen anime was like. Having eased gracefully into the battered house-wife role with Naruto the many joys of tight plotting, charming characterisation and taut action had become something of a distant memory, reserved for murky, wistful nostalgia and pangs of regret/bitterness. FMA: Brotherhood was like becoming a 13-year-old all over again, right down to the spazzing out during action scenes, getting so carried away I couldn’t help but punch the air and reenact every blow.

At the heart of the show is its two protagonists, the brothers Elric Edward and Alphonse. I state the bleeding obvious because ‘heart’ is the most apt way to describe their narrative importance. Both these boys are trapped in stasis and the driving force of the show, for me, is the pathos born from this fact. They’re young, but their emotional cores are even younger, held hostage by a traumatic event in their early lives. Both strive to start anew, resolve their pasts and forge ahead to a resolution that will give them peace and allow for growth. As it stands they’re still the two little kids crying over the death of their mother and the abandonment of their father, trapped by a childish mistake that cost one brother half his limbs and the other his entire body. In the present they suggest an image of capable maturity, possessing prodigious gifts for alchemy that’s world renowned, but frequently this front slips and their vulnerability peaks through resulting in major emotional pwnage of the audience.

Al, granted, is much more relatable than the gruff Ed because he’s so candid and honest. Truly innocent, he breaks our hearts with his naivety and downright adorableness at almost every turn. This is a major accomplishment because Al is a giant suit of supernatural armor. No physical body to speak of, just a sweet boyish voice echoing out an imposing shell of metal. Yet when he gets his wee notebook out, making a list of all the food he’ll taste when he gets his real body back, or when he touches the belly of a pregnant woman and marvels over the creation of life, he’s as alive and tactile as any of the other characters. At the moment, like many others I’d imagine, Al is my favourite. His good-natured melancholy causes all sorts of emotional thrums deep within my blackened husk of a heart and I’m complicit in the show’s manipulations because it’s done so damn well.

And a he’s a highlight amongst a truly excellent cast, main and supporting. Every character is likable, or at least understandable, regardless of how periphery. They’re all so uniformly great, developed enough to be worthwhile, that a setup one character receives that would otherwise immediately flag them as soon-to-be-dead completely passed me by until their untimely end. And it genuinely stung, feeling like a major loss. The only consolation is the knowledge that FMA: B gives so much attention to its characterisation that there’s plenty more to learn about the other cast members introduced to compensate. I’ll still miss spoiler-free-non-specific-dead-character. They were one of my favourites up to this point. The focus on Winry certainly mitigated the emo, but I’ll still miss them longtime.

Not to suggest that the plot is neglected in the face of all these charming characters. There’s not an inch of flab on FMA: B; its pacing is brisk and a plot point never outstays its welcome (nor does a character for that matter). I’m sure I said exactly the same thing about Naruto in the early days so I’m maintaining hopeful skepticism for the future, but at the moment it’s been a fantastically penned adventure. It’s very difficult to criticise anything about Fullmetal Alchemist: Brother at the moment, really. I’m sure if I’d seen the first anime iteration I’d be bawling like some of the fandom, but this has proven to be a brilliant introduction to the series and one I look forward to it every week.

Chicks with guns in turmoil? Now there’s a twist. Initially Revvy fulfills everything about the male wank fantasy: aggressively masculine, acrobatically violent, nihilistically badass. I started watching Black Lagoon with a tentative shrug, thinking it seems nicely made and reliably entertaining – probably won’t change my life, but sometimes meathead action shows done well really hit the spot.

Then we get a rather interesting scene. After a whacky run-in with some thinly-valed Neo Nazis Revvy and Rock, initially an ineffectual fish-out-of-water protagonist, find themselves in a sunken Nazi u-boat waxing philosophical about the nature of human value systems. During this conversation Revvy suddenly jumps from gun-toting arse-candy to a bleakly thoughtful existentialist. What she says won’t rock the worlds of anyone who has read a Wikipedia article on the subject, but in the context of the show it was quite a shock. We actually get some qualification for her amorally violent tendencies and, damn, character development for an archetype otherwise shallowly reserved for Awesome Action Sequences and not much else.

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I honestly can’t decide on this series and judging by the reaction of parts of the ’sphere and their Twittering, I’m not alone. Certain schools of thought currently best describe my nonchalance. To summarise: it’s objectively good, but . . . eh. Something feels like it’s there, pulling me along to follow each episode, but I can’t work out if that’s genuine interest or fear that without it I’d be watching nothing of this current season.

Eden of the East is a solid effort, or has been for the past seven episodes. Its ideas are interesting, the set up is mature and the characters… actually, this is my biggest problem. I honestly don’t care about Akira, quirky, carefree amnesiac, or Saki, quivering docile anime girl, or any of the bland supporting cast. I particularly don’t care about Saki, in fact. Her bizarre sense of duty towards her sister’s husband confuses me, it seeming to be a sort of misplaced paternal respect or weirder still, inappropriate feelings. Her unrelenting wetness (no, perverts, not like that) drives me mad and I wish with every episode she didn’t exist. She stumbles around in that knocked-kneed squealing way anime is so fond of depicting its female characters in and adds nothing to the proceedings. Of course, apart from some hackneyed prince fantasy, which I suppose is meant to add romantic depth but instead only adds depth to my contempt for her fatuous existence. She’s like Yamada only tedious and shit.

All this from Kenji Kamiyama. Kenji ‘one of the adults’ Kamiyama, a man born nineteen years and a day before me and a reliably thoughtful, interesting director. It feels like he’s watched Honey & Clover, decided it was pretty cool and attempted to apply his love for sociology and hard sci-fi onto its contemporary-Japanese-kids-falling-in-love template. It fails horribly in that respect: Saki and Akira’s fledgling relationship doesn’t feel like anything more than the obvious, ’save you from this bland, dissatisfying life’ situation its meant to be. There’s no substance there, no hint of chemistry that would spark a relationship between these two characters. Maybe Poor-Mans Morita likes the idea of being the prince to Faux-Hagu and his interest stems from that kind of saviour complex, but that isn’t interesting nor is it convincing. Eden of the East seems pretty keen on verisimilitude – particularly in regards to its characters who occupy real places and reference things/events that give firm nods to reality – and this obviously affects the expectations of the audience. Our suspension of disbelief adjusts and our tolerance for whimsy declines. It takes a certain shrewdness to juggle so many contrasting genre elements together and make them work. Kamiyama, who struggles with characterisation at the best of times and isn’t known for his flights of fancy, can’t seem to pull it off. The sci-fi is solid, and the social commentary is interesting but everything else, which is a much bigger piece of the pie, is mediocre at best. The end result just feels rather stale and difficult to warm to.

But then it’s important to remember we’re only half way through and Eden of the East still has many intriguing, honestly decent aspects to it. The plot has a lot of potential, though it’s difficult to imagine them fitting in the suggested formula of one Selecao per episode. I suppose it’s obvious now that Kamiyama doesn’t intend to play it that way, which makes the remaining four episodes a rather interesting prospect. I can probably bear the tepid love story if the broader pay-off is worth it. Either way, Eden of the East has a class that makes it very easy to stick around and find out.

Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys (because we apparently have to prefix everything he’s done with his name these days) is a worthy successor to Monster. It takes a huge ensemble cast and weaves them into a web of plot lines that would, reasonably, overwhelm lesser authors yet remains comprehensible and intriguing. Urasawa is Mr Manga Big Balls because of his ability to keep a firm handle of his immense ambition. Even two volumes in it’s obvious that Urasawa is making a point of his talents with 20th Century Boys, pushing them even further by incorporating a variety of timelines to keep us enthralled. It’s a little dizzying at first, but once the initial barrage of Mystery calms you know you’re in safe hands. Urasawa is a tender lover; he only wants to screw our minds in enticing little bits.

These first two volumes, unsurprisingly, are concerned mostly with character introduction. That’s not to say the manga’s secrets and mysteries aren’t given due attention but rather they’re alluded to through learning about a group of young boys in 1969 and their plans to save the world. Shoot forward a few decades and we’re placed in the current main timeline of 1997 and Kenji, seinen protagonist extordinairre, is fending off his disappointed ma (he sold their family liquor business to a franchise) and taking care of his AWOL sister’s baby, Kanna (permanently attached to his back via a papoose).

I’m going to tangent here a moment and exclaim that Kanna is the best character in these two volumes. All she can do is coo expressively, being two-years-old and all, but she steals the show every single time she appears. Oh, and she seems to be gifted. In the clairvoyant/supernatural sense. The smell of foreshadowing is strong with this one, but theorising aside Kanna is just a wee badass. Kenji’s undying dedication to her is perhaps his most endearing trait, too, he being something of a coasting, complacent thirty-something otherwise. In fact, the strongest moment of these two volumes is when we find out why Kenji is so committed to raising Kanna. It turns he and his erstwhile sister into pathos-rich, sympathetic characters — the kind you really need at the centre of narrative shitstorm, I’d say.

But yes, the main plot. It focuses on a shady cult who uses the same symbol devised by Kenji and his friends in ‘69, only rather than being a symbol of boyish fantasy it now represents something much more sinister. Rival cult leaders die mysteriously, the police force is infiltrated and a very creepy looking machine waits in the shadows, standing by for its destructive entrance. Kenji is pulled into the mess with the supposed suicide of an old school friend called Donkey, the snot-ragged super-speedy nerd who saved him from near death as a wean. Donkey’s death just doesn’t make sense and combined with some other strange occurrences, all linked by that ubiquitous childhood symbol, he’s dragged into something big; something apocalyptic.

I’ll admit it took me a while to warm to 20th Century Boys. It’s definitely more amiable than Monster, favouring tit-gags over dry hierarchical politics or rigid senses of duty, but the sweeping, expansive chronology we’re bombarded with felt like it diluted something. The second volume does no end in remedying this, however, and we get more attention paid to grassroots characterisation. Urasawa even fits in a tangential storyline that doesn’t relate to the main cast much at all, but still serves a wider purpose in demonstrating the creeping influence of this mysterious cult and its sinister leader, ‘Friend’. The diversion manages to break your heart in the space of a single chapter and is a genuine shock to the system. Urasawa didn’t pull this kind of narrative flair until much later in Monster and it suggests the bar has been raised with its successor. Either way, after reading just these two volumes the commitment of buying twenty-four of the bastards (including the final two under the title 21th Century Boys) seems much less imposing. My wallet would like to object, but no one cares what that guy says anymore.

Revolutionary Girl Utena represents everything I thought I despised about anime. Almost to the point of exaggeration, which is ironic because it’s the exaggeration in anime that I hate the most. The melodrama, the tweeness, the utter campness of it all. Utena takes notes from everything I can’t stand (particularly about shojo) and succeeds in such a way that, by virtue of being so conspicuously not me, I love it all the more. So let me tell you something you probably already know: Revolutionary Girl Utena is fundamental to any anime fan, regardless of their tastes. It sits firm in the canon with Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne et al as something even a passing fan of the medium has to see. I mean, personally, it was worth it just to get all those FLCL references that had otherwise alluded me.

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Owen, ever the Machiavellian puppet-master of the anime blogging community, has kicked off another ramshackle community event by asking a number of bloggers to watch (or indeed rewatch) Darker than Black and then talk about it. The method? Two episodes a day for thirteen days and write about it however you see fit. The intention? To watch the series as it was intended – as two episode story arcs rather than singular episodes, thus preserving the pacing and getting the most out of what is actually quite a sophisticated show. It’s also been two years since it originally aired, during one of the best anime seasons in recent memory, so it’s half-experiment, half-celebration. Kind of puts all the recent dross we’ve had to contend with in startling perspective, eh?

The way I’m contributing is by adding a chunk of text onto Owen’s episodic blogs. I’d originally intended to provide wee quotes, alternative angles on points made by Owen, but they’re basically just mini-blog entries tacked onto the end of his posts. My role in this event is much like Owen’s; we’re documenting how our attitudes have changed in two years as well as noting how rewatching an anime (particularly a BONES anime, I’ve found) can shed all sorts of new light on what it’s trying to do and say. Owen and myself had very different opinions on DtB when it first ran – I loved parts of it but had serious issue with the tangential storylines whereas Owen was a frenzied mess of fanboyism, near incapable of writing a coherent blog because the urge to fap gave him the tremors. We’re older now, and we’re watching the show in a much more reasonable way. You can read our ruminations over at Cruel Angel Theses (we’re currently up to episodes 3 – 4) and we’re running on a daily schedule. It’s worth it just to witness me blog in a frequent and consistent fashion. Quite the phenomenon.

While we’re on the subject of watching and rewatching, I recently sat down with Mamoru Oshii’s latest animated feature The Sky Crawlers, which was not the philosophical clusterfuck I was expecting. In fact, it was an incredibly ambient experience up to the two-thirds mark. Everything explodes somewhat after that point – we get characterisation, plot development, intrigue, excitement – but the nothing that comes before it has a very strange charm. That alienating Oshii vibe is bubbling beneath the surface but it’s nowhere as acute as with his previous films. I think the constant blue skies and lush scenery gave it a serene feeling that stands out against his usual decaying cyberpunk aesthetics, and it works in a difficult-to-grab-hold-of sort of way. It turns out to be a Lain-styled non-reality where everything is fixed to continue on an infinite loop, which is where the textbook Oshii headfuck comes in, but superficially it’s not as unnerving as his usual output.

This infinite loop is what draws Sky Crawlers into the ‘watch and rewatch’ theme of this post. After the credits finish rolling there’s another scene that plays out almost identically to the start of the film; to the point where I thought the video had looped over and started again. Then the Production I.G. logo popped up and I was left with a very upsetting thought. All of these characters were expendable. The deceased would be replaced with exact copies of their prior selves only with none of the memories. Those who survived had to live on and suffer with their memories and experiences with the prior incarnation as the new one stands before them completely ignorant. The cycle continues on and during the film we merely witness one of these repetitions. After realising this I wanted to rewatch the film immediately. I wanted to see it again with this vital bit of understanding so I could appreciate the eerie feeling that had previously confused me and finally grasp the behaviour of some of the cast. The Sky Crawlers is really a film that has to be watched twice in a row to understand as a whole. It’s a very perplexing but very exciting experience.

Tokyo Sonata is about a modern Japanese family that’s falling apart. Sasaki, the father and patriarch, is made redundant at the beginning of the film and spends much of it hiding his unemployment to his dutiful wife, Megumi. She presents an image of domestic perfection going about her duties as a mother and wife with a diligent grace, unquestioning of the authority her husband exerts over the household. Her resolution in this role is shaken, however, as the family she works so hard to maintain rapidly begins to unravel.

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I’ll start by stating what I felt throughout the whole of Xam’d: Lost Memories: what a sublime piece of work this is. Everything from the presentation to the writing was notably excellent. It swept with an epic, seamless verve that very few anime manage to pull off and it’s wholly down to the high standard of every constituent part. This wouldn’t be a frenzy of hyperbole if I couldn’t reel off at least one of these superlative zomgzomgs, but Xam’d is one of the very few anime I’ve seen where I’ve sat back and thought, Christ, that’s some good writing.

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Hey, mate, listen. Yeah, you. Come here, mate. Listen, you got to help me. Just, I mean, my life is tits-up right now and I need help. Just one more hit, get me? Listen, if you can do this for me I know a man that can help you with anything, yeah? With anything. Oi, don’t walk away . . . OI!

Yeah, probably should work on my characterisation a bit more, eh. Anyhow, there is a purpose to this tomfoolery and it is ask those still with any interest in this hive of neglect for new anime recommendations. My life really has been hectic lately and I haven’t kept one eye on the new stuff as I usually do when I don’t post anything for months. Needless to say, the incessant repeats of Family Guy on BBC3 aren’t really sating my need for animuationz. So, bearing in mind my taste (bleak, hyperactive, bizarre, saccharine . . . so anything, really), lay some recommendations on me for the newer series out there. Danke schön~

It’s funny, so many of my animu blogging brethren (init) are getting exasperated about how much they love Eve no Jikan when, personally, I’m finding it nigh-impossible to express how much I’m enjoying Detroit Metal City. Like, for serious guys. I watch a few episodes and I’m gob-smacked. Completely dumbfounded. The best reaction I can muster is to plan how I’m going to introduce this tour de force of offensiveness to my filthy goth friends (of which I have numerous). The fact that I live in Glasgow makes DMC’s copious use of the c-word just all the more perfect. Although I’ve always sworn like a motherfucker the c-bomb has remained sacred and employed only when necessary. Until I came to Scotland, that is. Now I drop it so frequently in casual conversation that I actively worry about going home in case I let slip in front of my mother. Needless to say, this anime is practically handcrafted for the majority of my friends. Not since Honey & Clover have I ever felt this eager to show my generally anime-phobic chums something of the animated persuasion. Yes, not since Honey & Clover. How bizarre is that?

But there’s obviously more to DMC than the initial shock value of its foul language. I love its laconic exposé on the reality of these obnoxiously stylised acts. It takes the notion of ‘everyone has a mother’ and pushes it to hilariously cutting extremes. I also identify somewhat with the schism Negishi faces between his musical tastes and those he associates with. Most of my friends are the aforementioned goths who would legitimately enjoy DMC’s music. Obviously not so much the lyrics, of which they’d enjoy in the same self-mocking way I do, but the music isn’t too far removed from what I hear before a night out with my nearest and dearest. And yet I’m as indie as you can get without broaching Insufferable Wank territory. Negishi actually mentions Cornelius at one point and I sat there aghast, pointing at the screen in recognition. I’m not saying I’m all about Swedish pop music or anything – I do actually partake in metal diversions when something interesting comes along – but I can’t deny a slight twinge of identification with the boy. The animation style, too, is fantastic. I was initially a little unnerved by the heavy use of borders but Studio 4°C obviously have a vision in mind with the aesthetics and I’ve grown to love it. There’s also a certain superflat element to them that I really appreciate. So yeah, DMC is this year’s Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Only with more rape gags. So many more wonderful, wonderful rape gags.

I also managed to find a Michiko to Hatchin release that didn’t rape my computer in a horrible Krauser II-like fashion. I enjoyed the experience but can see the show becoming needlessly overrated by the community. It’s no Cowboy Bebop, that’s for sure. I got none of the sophisticated storytelling jollies from it as I did from Bebop, nor could I ignore how much it pandered to us, the white-ass crackers of the West. It seemed like a fairly tepid attempt to recreate that genre-striding filmic quality of Bebop though ultimately came off too contrived with none of the meaty substance. I agree with Bateszi that the torture suffered by Hana was very difficult to watch, thus successful in one sense, and I felt a bit of satisfaction when she broke free of it, but it could’ve been more acute, more gratifying. The concept of Michiko to Hatchin reminds me a lot of the manga Bambi and her Pink Gun, only with none of its fantastic anarchy. And seeing as it’s aimed at us, the violence-loving, gun-toting arseholes of the world, there seems to be an overt degree of restraint to it. If you’re going to be so obvious in who your target market is at least go completely nuts with it and show no restraint. Michiko to Hatchin is obviously a highly polished anime with a lot of financial weight behind it, so why not follow through with a punch that doesn’t feel so frustratingly pulled?