Hige vs. Otaku

Hmm, this episode lacked the developed impact of the last, following its similar plot pattern of Doll-gradually-losing-tenuous-humanity with Hei there to offer fraudulent sympathy. I suppose with us now knowing that Hei is emotionally dead inside meant his involvement seemed less convincing and it undermined the impact of the conclusion. Still, the spontaneous combustion was a bit exciting and opened lots of doors for future fireworks. So to speak.

What is curious is Hei’s consistent desire to be there as support to these faux-humans, even in the face of his inability to genuinely care and its deviation from his duties as a Contractor. I am suspicious that there is a broader plan at work, though, and not just an example of Hei’s possible hidden altruism. Prior events definitely suggest a cynical coldness to Hei’s actions and I love this inherent distrust of his activities. Still, the audience’s ignorance can only be banked on so much and Darker than Black will have to adjust to maintain its current impressive consistency. If I’m going to remain as involved as I currently am there’s needs to be more blind-siding and bitch-slapping of expectations. Having no idea of what twists may turn is basically what makes this show so freaking promising, and so having rather a lot to live up to. 

One successful aspect of Mai’s subplot is its examination of Darker than Black’s grander themes, however. Mai’s father is obviously deeply involved with the Dolls and their scientific history, as well as Hell’s Gate and its deeper mysteries (as demonstrated by the episode’s opener). There’s strong suggestion that he may be responsible for their creation, which makes the coming episode’s events all the more exciting. One thing Darker than Black can’t be criticised for is its ability to excite you about its future and that’s pretty much the Holy Grail for an on-going series. Nevertheless I am getting quite impatient in wanting to know why all these key scientific types have to be assassinated. I don’t want to trust my intuitions because of that sneaky glint in Darker than Black’s eye, but further explanation would definitely help me care more about the characters in peril.

The only problem I can see is that Darker than Black can only pull off so many red herrings before the audience becomes too hardened to enjoy their dramatic impact. I doubt it will rest on its laurels, though. Even with this episode’s slight dip in force (which could easily be because of its less-charming components – neither Mai or her father had/have the charisma of episode two’s Shinoda) there’s a lot of meat to digest and this show is moving along at a rather impressive pace.

In the words of porn-hungry 4chan-ers: moar plz.

P.S. Was anyone else kind of disappointed that Mai wasn’t a failed suicide attempt? I was so sure that that was the point of her bandage. Being proved wrong took a lot away from her ambiguity, and she was pretty irritating as it was. But no bother, she all exploded now. Unlucky!

This is going to take half-an-hour to write, but gosh darn it I’m going to use this newly acquired wireless connection for my Wii for all it’s worth!

God this is tedious. I should invest in a USB keyboard or something. I keep forgetting what I want say.

ANYWAY, hilarious novelty post over. Back to Lylat Wars (Starfox 64) I go.

P.S. Marry me, Nintendo. x

Yeah, okay. Humour those Shonen Jump tropes and be done with it, Claymore. I’m surprised you pulled out ‘tortured past/traumatic current dilemma’ card so soon, though. I wonder if it’s suggestive of a more streamlined approach in comparison to your sister shows?

But enough of the second-person tomfoolery. Claymore remains a pretty watchable show, even in the face of its overt lack of originality and fairly stilted personality. This episode offered some generic backstory for Clare, which I enjoyed but wasn’t especially moved by. It was a nice history lesson, however, and provided light on the Claymore organisation and its members. The appearance of Rubel was suitably sinister and I’d like to know how he factors into the whole arrangement, beyond providing new threads when Clare gets herself impaled and collecting the money from her contracts. Raki’s role remains fairly redundant bar offering a bit of humanity to Clare’s general aura of stolidity. Oh, he can cook, too. Which is nice.

The dip in animation wasn’t too severe; though the grubbiness you find in out-sourced Korean animation is quite apparent. Still, I really enjoy the texture and style of Claymore, and the grittiness feels more intentional than a by-product of some producer’s budget choices. Audio-wise there’s not much to pick out, except perhaps the rather hilarious Yoma voice-acting at the start of the episode. Claymore’s music is also pretty inoffensive and ignorable, which is a blessing and a curse I suppose. Rather that than it being horrendously cheesy.

Yep, Claymore is ticking along nicely for me. I don’t anticipate it like the big three, but it’s nice to have a bit of solid action to level things out.

As much as Bokurano has relieved my trepidation and impressed me with its restraint, Darker than Black remains (especially after this blinder of an episode) this season’s favourite by quite a margin.

As soon as the fledgling love story began at the end of episode one I felt a bit conflicted. On the one hand it sparked off a whole boatload of theories regarding Hei’s role in the show (does he have duel personalities? Is he being controlled?), but equally I felt concerned that Bones were losing the plot for the sake of soppy romance. Post-episode two, neither proves especially true: Hei is still as hardarse as he was in the opening of episode one, and the fledgling romance has been gloriously annihilated with cold, cynical reality (while being rather informative on some grander aspects of the show).

All I know for sure now is that this shit is officially on. 

We got a few more snippets of information regarding how Contractors and Dolls operate, but both still feel mysterious and I entirely support of this method of storytelling. The old ‘drip-feed vital information’ technique is the bread and butter of well-paced, extendedly-told fiction (a 13 episode TV series, par exemplar) and Darker than Black has a good grasp on how this works. It’d be easy to humour impatience and complain about the lack of explanation, but think of how the forthcoming events that would be undermined if all its cards were exposed. I’m growing more confident that Darker than Black will explain itself with sophisticated drama rather than extended lectures, and that will be its defining characteristic in a season full of solid entertainment.

This was a lovely example of pacing. No overt showing off of capabilities, a standard GONZO first episode practise, but rather a very solid and faithful representation of its source material. One of the main aspects of Bokurano’s manga I love is its seemingly leisurely pace in the face of incredibly bleak prospects, and its anime adaptation honours this approach whilst offering a touch more to legitimise its existence.

Visually, it captures the style of the comic quite well. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, as I’m not a fan of Mohiro Kitoh’s character designs or the anime approximations, but it did nothing to detract from my enjoyment of the manga and I doubt it will for the anime. The CG for Zearth and its combatants is fine, but I’ve yet to see an anime that can integrate CG and cel animation seamlessly and it still grates, even at the hands of the proficient GONZO. I understand why they animated the fights this way, though; Zearth is a hulking cumbersome thing without much articulated movement, so the heavy, mechanical affect you can get with CG suits it perfectly. The fight itself still bored me to tears, however.

Bokurano, as I see it, is basically a character study with sci-fi window dressing. The manga dedicates the majority of its time to fleshing out the fifteen protagonists and eventually placing them in a battle that will lead to their deaths. The battles themselves never excited me; the real grit comes from the children’s realisation that to fight means their end, and what they do in response to this knowledge. Instigate Lord of the Flies imaginings and you’ve got a pretty idea of what’s to come. The myriad of characters briefly hinted at in this episode means the variety of ‘coping strategies’ is disturbingly vast, as are the moral dilemmas, and I’m pretty damn excited about how GONZO will approach the task. Out of all the new shows this season Bokurano has the greatest expectation to perform and so far I’m not disappointed

To describe the first episode of Darker than Black as ‘consistent’ seems to be doing it a disservice somehow, but it feels the most appropriate way to describe my thoughts after watching. Still, in the world of initial flashy visuals that deteriorate into sub-mediocrity and big story promises that amount to nothing (I love you and all, Ergo Proxy, but you’re a perfect example of this), consistency is really nothing to be sniffed at.

The visuals of the show demonstrate this especially well. Apart from a rather exciting fight scene at the beginning, there were few particularly standout animated moments. But, again, Darker than Black takes the much more commendable approach of consistency-over-flash and I really appreciate this tact after the countless bad experiences of the past. If the quality of this episode is maintained for the entire run then I’ll be a very satisfied wee camper, and Bones’ reputation makes this a safe bet.

Still, one fault I found with the aesthetics was the character design. While certainly not bad, it just didn’t feel appropriate to the atmosphere of the show and a little creatively uninspired. The large, gawky eyes specifically felt awkward to me; giving a weird 90s feel the characters’ appearance and this really didn’t suit the otherwise sophisticated presentation. As the episode went on it didn’t bother me as much, but it did undermine the otherwise solid visuals.

While we’re on the subject of the more underwhelming aspects of the show, Yoko Kano’s score left me feeling indifferent, and long-term fans will understand how bizarre this feels. Again I can’t criticise it in any active way . . . just it didn’t have the immediate ‘wow’ factor that Kano constantly gives with her music. There’s a whole boatload of room for that to change, of course, but I hope Kano hasn’t stretched herself too thin with other commitments to give a lacklustre performance with this show. From this sample, however, I barely even noticed the music, which is madness considering we’re talking about Yoko ‘God-Queen of Anime Music’ Kano.

The plot setup in this first episode invited a lot of theories on what the various nuggets of information could mean, and I really like that an anime is tackling the whole ‘meta-human’ sub-genre that seems quite prevalent in other kinds of fiction at the moment. Both the Contractors and the Dolls offer lots of potential for drama and mystery, which I do approve of and want to know more about. More info to establish what/how/who would’ve been nice, but Darker than Black’s restraint made me all the more curious to find out more in the coming episodes. Bones’ shows tend to have quite a measured pace to them, which bothered me initially with Rahxephon and Wolf’s Rain, but now, with more experience of their style, I appreciate and love this approach. Definitely no complaints in regards to the more earthy, important aspects of the show.

Darker than Black’s first episode was always going to be a tricky one to evaluate. On one hand I placed a good third of my expectations for this season solely on its dream-team shoulders, desperate for a better cross-section of shows to enjoy after the appalling selection from the last season. But equally, all the reasonable lobes of my brain knew that would only lead to disappointment. So what I’m left with is retrained thumbs up and a solid interest in the coming episodes. Not a particularly energetic position to have, but I’m at the age where reliability and robustness mean more than hyperactive spikes of excitement with no substance.

God, that’s depressing. *runs off to watch FLCL and have lots of epileptic fits of joy*

Disclaimer: I watched this episode last night after I got in from celebrating a friend’s 21st. I may’ve been a touch inebriated, having indulged in a few cheeky drinks as the kid do these days, so I don’t know how much to trust my shit-faced perceptions of the show.

Still, Claymore is pretty cool (when drunk).

Art-wise, Claymore has a sharp, lucid style that I really like. Character design is lovely; quite high-brow shonen fantasy stuff with lots of quirky minutia. The colour pallet is fantastically vibrant, fostering a broody, murky atmosphere that goes a long way to accentuate the success of the show’s tone and mood.   

Yet I’m well aware that, while having a solid reputation, Madhouse do suffer from the old ‘tend to tart up their first episode and gradually diminish into passable mediocrity’ (ref: NANA) that prevails in most modern anime. I’m not worried about it, though, because Death Note remained decent and Madhouse aren’t prone to GONZO-style fuck-ups. It’d be naive to expect them to maintain the high quality found in this episode, however, which means no whinging in five episodes time, anime blogsphere.

As far as the non-aesthetical things go, Claymore lingered around Entertaining But Nothing Particularly Inspired, which probably explains why my drunk, thuggish mind had lots of fun watching it. Based on a Shonen Jump manga that I have no experience with it has most of the tropes you can imagine involved with fantasy action anime/manga. To be fair, though, I can imagine that its manga counterpart is wholly appropriate for VIZ’s otherwise patronising Jump Advanced imprint; Claymore’s anime adaptation is definitely more mature and serious than most standard Jump fare. And it works to its advantage, assuming there are no horrible surprises loitering around the corner. If they somehow manage to crowbar an irritating comic-relief sidekick/mascot into the show in the forthcoming episodes, then that’s it: I’m dropping it with brutal disregard.

There’s definite potential for that happening, which troubles me, but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt for now. Claymore is what I need from anime at the moment: solid production values; interesting premise; mindless violence. Our stoic lead Clare looks to suffer from being too hardcore for her own good, which could get boring, but again I’m happy to give Claymore the benefit of the doubt. Simple, attractive fun.