Hige vs. Otaku

I’m a week early for it to be an ‘official’ month, but I thought I’d write this now to break up the time between my next manga and anime purchases (which might be a week or two as I’m waiting on my student loan to come through and breathe life into my now very flaccid bank account) and thus, reviews.

As far as reviews are going I’m generally satisfied with what I’m knocking out. I have a habit of writing reviews in one uber sitting and feeling the distinct need to post it immediately after, which often results in some shaky grammar and syntax choices, but I’m learning to pace myself and do drafts, and I’m constantly editing current posts. The lengths of my reviews are too long, I know, and again I’m working on tightening things up and avoiding redundant tangents. I’ll eventually develop a bit of a technique if things continue to go to plan.

As for what’s coming: I’ve got my eyes on the latest volume of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (volume 5 for us Brits, annoyingly) and continue to see how Haibane Renmai develops. Howl’s Moving Castle is being played at the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre) from the 23rd September, which I’m definitely going to see. Manga-wise I’m a bit directionless at the moment, being in a no-man’s land between my favoured releases with nothing in Forbidden Planet immediately grabbing my attention. I’m really enjoying Viz’s Shojo Beat; Nana being the obvious favourite, but Godchild is making me reconsider Angel Sanctuary and the Shoujo genre in general. Nana really is as good as people say; I might even do a wee overview when #4 of Shojo Beat is released. Sgt. Frog has always been on my ‘maybe’ list and feels like I should be reading it, but there’s something about the presentation that puts me off when I’m browsing. If there’s anything out there that you guys would recommend please do via email or the comments. It might be presumptuous to think enough people read this to ask but it’s worth a shot. Recommendations are always welcome anytime!

Which leads me to the key aim (site-wise) of getting more affiliates and a touch more attention in general. I’m of the thought that maintaining consistency and quality will eventually result in the good stuff, but there must be other, more pro-active ways of doing things. I’ve popped an extreme tracker on the sidebar to keep track and hopefully I’ll get some nice surprises from the referrals after a while. If you’d like to affiliate then don’t hesitate about emailing. Traffic and all that cal isn’t important assuming you’re doing good stuff.

Story & Characters
Macross Zero focuses around the protagonist Shin, your typical tunnel-visioned pilot out to avenge the murder of his parents with every bogie he shoots down. We don’t actually know how or why his parents were murdered, or even if the blood splattering across the cabinet in the same flashback constantly used belonged to a family member, but we can assume it all fits in with the stereotypical orphan aliens-killed-my-moms&pops war story. Macross Zero doesn’t exactly go to any lengths to make us think otherwise. Plot-wise, after a surprise attack from the anti-UN force utilising strange new aircrafts that can morph into robots and gain the advantage in battle Shin crashes on the island of Mayan, an island inhabited by some fairly primitive natives. Here Shin meets the second protagonist of Macross Zero; Sara, high priestess of the Mayan people, as well as her free-spirited little sister Mao. In the time it takes Shin to recuperate he manages to nonchalantly trample on all their customs and beliefs, and also restores a generator that supplies electricity to the island. This dismays Sara, who feels most modern creations of man will bring about ‘kudun’, another word for demons or evil. Sara thinks anything generally useful/convenient is a kudun and spends most of the OAV whinging about it (after listening to the wind, of course) and scowling at Shin. In this time she also, majestically, falls in love with him, and the feeling becomes mutual. As viewers we rarely get a glimpse at any sort of common ground between these two characters and their romance only feels ‘okay’ because everything else to do with characters and story is so cliché it’s expected, in a disappointing sort of way. My biggest qualm with this anime is that it just doesn’t put the time in to create robust and empathetic characters. It throws in the occasional flashback and expects us to be satisfied with what we see but never elaborates enough for us to really care.

However, what can’t be faulted is Shoji Kawamori’s direction, and this goes a long, long, long way in elevating Macross Zero above its flaws. Each scene flows to the next with a casual fluidity that demonstrates a great skill and ability. If you don’t analyse what you’re seeing too closely and admire the view, Macross Zero can be quite a fun ride. Each character reliably plays to its stereotype and there are some satisfying moments. I would be lying if I said I didn’t vie for Nora’s (one of the anti-UN’s top fighters and grade-A biatch) blood every time a good character went up against her in a dog-fight, or find Focker (first name ‘Arrogant’) & Aeris’ love affair quite charming. Macross Zero succeeds at what it intends to do in some senses – it just doesn’t do anything new with any particular flare. Right down to the typically-anime, all-powerful supernatural monster/evil final battle. There’s excitement and drama, no doubt about it; just nothing deep or especially meaningful. Perhaps ultimately this is a good thing? In an anime that seems to have a strong anti-war/pro-environment message I’m not so sure.

Animation
In many ways it feels like the animation is the centrepiece of this anime – a demonstration in what modern technology is capable of in the world of animation. Utilising both CG and ‘traditional’ cel animation Macross Zero manages to expertly blend the two with some stunning and truly breath-taking results. The CG focuses mostly around mechanical action sequences, such as the completely insane aerial dogfights and mecha moments. The traditional animation takes care of everything else including the characters and backgrounds with a lush art direction and a beautiful design sense. I got the impression that CG was just used for functionality rather than to be ‘showy’. I couldn’t imagine the fight sequences ever being realised to the extent they have been here with normal animation. And while it’s obvious that they’re done on the computer (set within those gorgeously painted backdrops, mind) it rarely jarred for me. Let’s call it a necessary evil that turned out incredibly well. Still, on both accounts and overall the animation quality is simply immense and I dread to think how much each episode cost to make over the two years it took to release all five, but it was probably worth every yen.

Sound
The sound quality falls in line with the animation in being very high. The music shows a lot of subtlety and beauty as to be expected from the first lady of anime music Yoko Kanno. Inevitable comparisons to Macross Plus may come up, but we have to remember this is an entirely different kind of show that doesn’t have any pop stars featuring centrally to the plot. People might find Sara’s song / the main theme tune (‘Leur Coeur’) slightly pretentious because it’s in French, but I found it to be quite beautiful and appropriate to the feel of the anime (if you ignore the obvious problem of it being in a completely different language to what Sara speaks). The audio certainly doesn’t let down the high production standards.

Conclusion
This is quite difficult to articulate clearly, but it felt like Macross Zero wasn’t intended to be a plot-driven anime or a character-driven anime. Or even an action-driven anime. To be honest I never got a definite sense of direction in any aspect of the five episodes – rather a mediocre attempt at each without any standout factor. Was this meant to be a prelude to the other Macross series? Well, it didn’t do an awful lot to explain the origins of anything I recognise to be Macross (limited as my knowledge may be), except giving us a number of practical demonstrations of some of the first YF models, a decent explanation of the human proto-culture intervention hypothesis and of course Focker. In fact it felt very stand-alone in nearly every way, and not really for the better. Even with the breathtaking fight sequences never felt like centrepieces that everything else revolved around (partly perhaps due to Kawamori’s ability as a director), even if the technical achievement of this OAV is its crowning glory. The plot had big ideas and the characters had potential to have depth and pathos, but neither seemed to develop beyond their initial representations. Everything except the superficial felt rather half-arsed if I’m brutally honest. But the half-arsed and the superficial are directed and produced with undeniable skill and quality. If taken as what it could have been, Macross Zero is simply disappointing, but taken as-is it’s actually pretty decent. Action fans and any animation aficionados will get a major kick out of the fight sequences, but Macross continuity fans will feel a touch under-whelmed. Solid but flawed.

“The word is out on the streets: a reward of five million dollars to the opportunist that wastes the courier calling herself Bambi and returns her living cargo. Chainsaw swinging psychos, gold-toothed Elvises, Derringer-packing grannies and all the other scum in these badlands could care less whether Bambi is kidnapping this toddler she christened “Pampi” or if she’s snatching him back from his captors. With a pink gun in one hand, and a leashed Pampi in the other, can antihero Bambi’s huge ego and formidable gun skills hold off an army?”

Plot & Characterisation
Okay, I’ll try and summarise what floated through my head as I read this first volume of Bambi and Her Pink Gun: A Quentin Tarantino film in the form of an indie comic staring Tank Girl with a pink gun instead of a tank. And if you hate each of those things independently of one another I’d still suggest you look at Bambi as it managed to develop a very unique and distinct personality, independent from its obvious influences. Once you go beyond the insane and explicit violence (yeah, the parental advisory tag on the front isn’t just there for added creditability) there’s actually more to this book than you might initially give it credit for. Sure, it is first-and-foremost an action comic with a whole shed load of violence that doesn’t hold back, and Bambi will come across as a bit of a typical self-serving anti-hero, but it flows so effortlessly well with a lot of cynical but intelligent humour it makes it very easy to like and enjoy.

The plot doesn’t do much to move beyond what you might’ve seen in your favourite Tarantino movie, but the fact that it pulls it off with such panache and style will endear it to you . . . assuming you already have a disposition in your comics to wanton violence and cool Japanese chicks with pink hair. And by god is this comic violent – violence that is rendered with graphic realism but also somehow fantastical and Big. You should be warned that this obviously isn’t a book for children and makes no light of the idea that it may be read by them (seriously, parental advisory? I wouldn’t want my mum know I was reading this at 20-years-old!). It’s shrink-wrapped on the shelves and for good reason. The story is adult, the violence is adult and the humour is adult. And by ‘adult’ I mean completely void of innocence or suggestion. You’ll be desensitised to it after a couple of chapters, as is the way with this kind of entertainment, but it still has a massive impact every time a trigger is pulled.

Character-wise Bambi is your typical anti-hero[ine] (although probably more simplistic than most anti-heroes) with a wee bit of a difference in the form of ‘Pampi’, the little boy she kidnaps for the mysterious ‘Old Men’ and is the indirect cause of most of Bambi’s problems throughout the book. Pampi is permanently attached to Bambi with one of those kiddy leases and doesn’t do much except eat junk food and look a bit dim; and once the ultra-violence starts kicking off this dynamic becomes one the most entertaining aspects of the book, giving the almost caveman-like Bambi some humanity and accessibility. Make no mistake; characterisation in this book is pretty shallow. You aren’t going to find much depth or pathos in these people and it makes no attempts to be deep or meaningful. Of course this could change over the coming volumes, but so far Atsushi Kaneko maintains the ‘wild ride’ feel of the comic without bogging it down with too much back-story or expedition, and generally this is a positive rather than a negative.

Artwork
With an artistic style that could be seen as a Japanese Daniel Clowes if he decided to create Tank Girl instead of David Boring, Atsushi Kaneko brings something truly unique to manga by infusing a very indie, very Fantagraphics sensibility with all the vibrancy and expressiveness of Japanese comics. The line-work has a pink hue, similar to how Clowes’ Ghost World had a teal hue rather than the standard black, and this goes along way of creating an ‘indie’ feel in the artwork. The characters actually look like their nationality (mostly Japanese) with a more realistic slant than in most manga. Design-wise everything is as stylish and hip as you might presume from the cover, but never affectedly so and with mucho creativeness. Sequentially speaking I’m actually quite amazed at how effortlessly dynamic Kaneko is with his anatomy and backgrounds. Everything merges into the same slightly shaky style that really gives the violence and action an added mind-bending quality. The layouts are detailed and complex, almost verging on convoluted, but yet retaining a distinct clarity on closer inspection. I’d be lying if I said the cover wasn’t what initially attracted me to the book, and the interior work lives up to it by simply being damn impressive and damn cool.

Presentation
DMP get top marks by releasing a very attractive and well-produced package. The slip-cover goes a long way in creating that prestigious effect that justifies the $12.99 price tag and translation-wise DMP maintain their high standard. Everything is ‘authentic’ (or native, as DMP call it on the back cover – a much more appropriate way of phrasing it I think) with sound affects and signs translated in textboxes beside them. The pink hue I mentioned in the artwork section gives the book another distinctive quality and is well presented. On a whole an exceptionally high quality is maintained throughout.

Conclusion
The first volume of Bambi and Her Pink Gun is successful in every pursuit it attempts. There’s no denying this is a bit of a ‘trendy’ or ‘hip’ manga with a strong indie vibe to it, but it makes no effort to justify this and is simply is cool in the beatnik sense of the word. Considering the amount of explicit violence I found it very easy to read with the artwork being fluid and as technically accomplished as anything you’ll get off the shelves. The story doesn’t delve too deeply into the human condition, rather putting a bullet in its head than psychoanalyse it, but there’s much to be said about Kaneko’s ability to tell an exciting and fast-paced story. If you fancy something different, quirky, and don’t mind lots of violence and mature themes, I would definitely recommend Bambi and Her Pink Gun. It’s too much bloody (oh the pun) fun to ignore.