In Defense of Anime Part I

I know there are those people out there that immediately think of Dragonball Z or Sailor Moon or, even worse, hentai when they think of anime (I mean, who doesn’t think of tentacle rape!). The typical reaction to anime from those that don’t really know it except from what their kids watched or what their peers watched is that it’s just for kids. Which is utterly ridiculous. You don’t need to look further than Avatar to see a contemporary American example where a “show for kids” has transcended that label and reached out to a much larger audience.

Moving back into anime, you don’t really have to look further than Pokémon, arguably the most popular anime to come to the States. But it’s unfair and unwise to make the comparison that Pokémon has transcended the same label and reached out to kids over a certain age. I mean, it’s made by Pokémon USA with children in mind.

But this is about misconceptions. They’ll see a giant robot, like one in Neon Genesis Evangelion and immediately assume that it’s going to be for kids. I mean, what kid doesn’t love giant robots fighting each other? But Evangelion is about so much more than that. Sure, it can entertain kids with its visuals and robots and characters like Misato and Asuka and Rei, who were clearly created with the teenage male viewer in mind. But it’s so much more than that. It’s a show that you can watch and be entertained or it’s a show that you can watch and realize how troubled a boy Shinji is at just 14.

Look further, though. What about something like Hellsing? This is clearly not something you want to show a child but if we see one screenshot of Seras when she first meets Schrodinger, you’d believe it might be for children. It’s silly and there’s a cat-boy. But then Alucard shoots him in the face, completely obliterating any semblance of a face he had.

Now, I’ve just provided examples thus far. Next time (when I have more time to prepare and don’t just start writing about something on a whim), I’ll go in depth about one show (to be determined) that has appeal to kids and appeal to adults and why it appeals to us as kids and us as adults.

Comic Heroes v. Manga Heroes Part III: X-Men, One Piece, and Fairy Tail

I recently read some X-Men comics and rewatched X-Men: First Class. What I was able to notice in the second watching (that I realized after watching it before, but not really again when discussing it with my friends) was the way in which an inherent difference manifested itself between the two main parties: humans and mutants. This inherent difference produces itself much, much differently in the world of anime. Going back to my examples of shonen, in both One Piece and Fairy Tail, the inherent difference is in how you treat your friends, crewmates, and, as the Japanese say, “nakama.” The word nakama in Japanese is translated to “friends” in the English dub of One Piece and probably to friends in the dub of Fairy Tail as well. I haven’t seen the dub of Fairy Tail, so I can’t say for sure. Anyway, the translation itself is good enough, but it doesn’t quite capture the meaning of the word. It’s like translating the blue of the sky as just being “blue” to a blind person. It takes more than one word to convey just the color blue, let alone the blue of the sky. My personal translation would probably be “comrade,” but it’s much too formal for both One Piece and Fairy Tail, the Funimation script writers probably thinking the same thing.

My point in all this ranting is how this is reflective on our own cultures. X-Men draws us humans as xenophobic crazy people when faced with something new and unknown. We would act with aggression first and science next to wipe out the mutant threat. After that, we study what the hell is going on with their bodies. This is reflective and criticizing the United States’ general perception and stereotypes against those who the US perceive as threats. In One Piece and Fairy Tail, the philosophical difference is the treatment of your nakama, your crewmates and guildmates. In One Piece and Fairy Tail, Luffy and Natsu on multiple occasions act rashly in defense of people they barely know because they don’t think the person they barely know is being treated correctly or justly. The reflection on the Japanese culture is that of honor above almost all else. They’ll sacrifice anything for their honor, the honor of their friends, and to guarantee the safety of the people they know. Compare that to the US, which often seems to me that it would be willing to sacrifice few for the sake of the many—at least according to fiction.

Of course, multiple times through X-Men and multiple times through One Piece does this happen. Otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it. In X-Men, they talk about “curing” the mutant gene. Relieving them of their “curse.” In Japanese works, any type of curse like that of mutants is infrequently referred to as such. The one I can think of off the top of my head is Watanuki in xxxHolic, who hates that demons are attracted to him. The Japanese, rather, think of curses as a physical manifestation of what they have to overcome as people. Often, they don’t even get rid of their curses, they learn that it is a part of them. And this is from a third person perspective. Someone aside from Watanuki would view his curse as something he has to overcome in order to grow as a human while the populace of the X-Men world views the mutant gene as something to be cured. I’m not saying that X-Men doesn’t view their mutations as something to overcome like the Japanese do, they do. But it’s in a much larger light in X-Men because of the gravity of some of the mutations of the people, which isn’t very often something that’ll come up in anime (for example, Beast in X-Men has the blue fur but most anime curses or mutations don’t manifest in a physical form).

Compare that to what One Piece and Fairy Tail’s themes are—which is to protect your friends, crewmates, and guildmates. Luffy and Natsu would literally sacrifice everything and anything for the safety of their nakama. Luffy breaks into the One Piece equivalent of Alcatraz to save his brother, they break into a marine headquarters by themselves to save Robin, who they had just met at that point, and Natsu is always going above and beyond to defeat the enemy and save his friends from danger. This is highly contrasting with basically every action movie ever where the needs of the many very, very often outweigh the needs of the few. But this is especially true with X-Men. They work to protect the whole world, both mutants and non-mutants, and sometimes at the sacrifice of the few (for example, Colossus’s own self-sacrifice, which I believe would never be allowed to happen in an anime, especially a shonen anime). Again, this goes back to the Japanese’s sense of honor over all else. They will protect the honor of the few, possibly at the sacrifice of the many. Of course, the Japanese are not willing to just sacrifice thousands of lives to save one on a whole, but they will often hold the life of one person above what we Americans would in our fiction. Think to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight: He created a situation where one person could kill thousands of others to save an equivalent amount. But one of the boats was filled with prisoners and another with innocent citizens. In an anime, I believe it would never be a question as to which boat you would sacrifice, it would move to how will you be able to save both, as Batman thinks. But anime would have the inhabitants of at least one of the boats try to figure out how to save both and persist.

The overall theme, of course, is reflective in the cultures in which they manifested. I believe that we in the US have placed huge value on the safety of the many while the Japanese have placed huge value on the safety of the few as long as we can protect the many. This will, of course, reflect in their fiction.

Spring 2012 Anime Review - Part 2

Recorder and Randsell

Plot Summary: The series is mainly about the Miyagawa siblings: Atsushi—an elementary student whose build and appearance is the same as a typical adult man; and Atsumi—his sister and a high school girl whose appearance is like an elementary student. They live everyday encountering misunderstandings and misadventures, most to be blamed to their ironic age/looks.

The series ran for 26 3-minute shorts. And I don’t think it could have worked any other way (unlike Poyopoyo, which I believe might have been able to work as 13 10-minute shorts or something). The show was fun and lighthearted, but didn’t really get farther than that. It’s the kind of show where you understand exactly what it’s doing in the first episode and you know that it’s not going to go out of that comfort zone. I don’t think this show is necessarily bad, it’s just not anything special or even anything that I would want to watch again.

The high point in the series isn’t Atsumi and it isn’t Atsushi. In fact, they’re fairly forgettable and cliché driven characters. What was pretty good here was Atsumi’s friend Sayo (voiced by Aya Hirano). Her child-like naivety when it came to Atsushi was actually pretty funny and captivating at times but her misunderstanding drug on for way too long. Overall, it was probably Aya Hirano herself that made the character interesting rather than Sayo as a character.

Basically, if you want 68 minutes of random crap happening to these characters with no real memorable moments, go ahead and watch it. I used it as an introduction into a marathon of anime that was to come (Thursdays were high release days or catch-up days) and that worked out really well for me. But I can’t say I’d want to marathon through the series myself…

Saki: Episode of Side A

Plot Summary: Nodoka Haramura’s appearance on television playing in a high school mahjong tournament inspires her old Jr. high school friends to reform their schools club so they can meet and play her in the National High School Mahjong Tournament.

Saki clearly has more to go (given that it ended in the middle of a match and ANN confirmed that it was given three more episodes) and I’m glad that it’s finally taking the time to go through something like the original Saki did. Up until this point, it’s been blasting through story after story just to get to this point faster and the show itself really suffered for it. Like, the first episode jumped forward several months and then three years just to get to high school. It was unbalancing as a viewer because I was missing all this information that could potentially be important (as it turns out, it wasn’t very important, but it could have been handled a lot better).

What it does do well, just like its predecessor, is show mahjong in enough detail that someone who has no idea about anything in mahjong can potentially follow it and not dwell on it so much that its bogged down by expository dialogue. But it’s also clearly a continuation of the original Saki story rather than a spin-off of it, like it claims to be. Fans of the original will be glad to see old characters pop up and love the new characters that are appearing, but those who haven’t watched the original may be turned off by the influx of information that it gives you just to recap what happened in the original.

I’m not sure when those last three episodes will air, but I am waiting with anticipation for them. The show didn’t look like much from the outside, but I picked up and finished the original Saki to understand everything (and I’m super glad I did) and it quickly jumped over shows like Lupin in my Sunday catch up days solely because of the excitement value of the show. It is by no means better than Lupin or tsuritama or even You and Me, but it provided with fun mahjong (that I could barely follow, if at all) week after week. It’s not something to pick up if you get lost easily, but it is fun for fans of sports anime.

tsuritama

Plot Summary: In Enoshima, Yuki is a high school student who’s never been good at making real friends thanks to his abnormally poor communication skills. Haru is the self-styled alien who decides to teach Yuki to fish. Natsuki is an irritable born-and-raised local. Akira is the mysterious Indian who watches them all from a distance. These four meet, fish, and find big adventures on their little island.

tsuritama did one thing better than every other series on this list: visuals. Kids on the Slope certainly had the best looking visuals, but the color palette is bland in comparison with tsuritama (as well it should be considering the content of both shows). Kids on the Slope impressed, but tsuritama stunned.

But aside from that, the show fell flat compared to its first episode. The first episode showed promise to be one of the best of the season, but the continuation of the alien sub-plot (much like Ano Natsu of last season) didn’t really fit in with the rest of the story, in my opinion. It was a lot better than the way Ano Natsu handled the alien sub-plot, but I was still turned off by it in the end.

The most interesting part was watching Yuki grow and watching Natsuki’s relationship with his family unravel and eventually reconcile. While I felt these stories played themselves out to my satisfaction, I felt they could have been included more into the actual plot of “catch the giant alien-fish that’s making people do that hilarious dance” main plot.

Overall, I felt it was a strong series with definite rewatch value. But it’s not something I’d pick up immediately after it comes out (like I would with Space Brothers or Bunny Drop). I’ll wait until Sentai finally releases a Funimation-like sale (which I haven’t seen yet, by the way).

Upotte!!

Plot Summary: For those of you out there that remember the OS-tan manga and anime mini-series, this is a bit along the same lines. In this case the characters are not representing computer operating systems, but firearms from around the world. The general storyline is quite funny, and a bit “ecchi” in nature but is well written and not overy silly.

The first victim of the spring 2012 anime season. It ended first but you probably aren’t reading this review first (if at all). Overall it was probably the biggest disappointment in terms of shows I watched this season. But I kind of expected it out of a show like this, where the premise is girls are guns. Literally.

I think the most disappointing part of this series was that it was very informative (often overly so) but it did not need the amount of fanservice it got. It’s like the Japanese got together and found the one show that could serve only for promoting the subsequent merchandise. It’s disappointing when it gets to that point, but it has for a while. I’m just sad to see it continuing down that road.

What I did like about this show was…was…There wasn’t really anything redeemable about this show. I kind of kept watching it because it wasn’t a complete waste of my time and the final episode almost (almost) made it all worth it. If the entire show was like the last episode, I would’ve enjoyed this show a lot more. But there’s this very creepy scene in one of the episodes where SAKO Rk 95 Tp is…yeah…Not that, but if you’ve seen the show…yeah…

I wouldn’t suggest anyone to watch this show unless you really want to learn about guns, you really don’t care about mindless fanservices, and you really want mindless fanservice. But I allow myself one stupid fanservice-y episode per season. I guess I should have gone with Mysterious Girlfriend X.

You and Me. 2

Plot Summary: (From season 1) About 4 friends, twins Yuta and Yuki Asaba, the cute and girly Shun Matsuoka, and the class head Kaname Tsukahara, who have known each other since kindergarden. When a half-Japanese transfer student named Chizuru Tachibana joins their group, he brings a new dynamic to their friendship.

I didn’t expect much out of You and Me because, honestly, the first season wasn’t all that impressive. There were a few episodes out of this season that were mediocre and are easily glanced over, but it quickly became the dark horse of this season, but easily outshined by Space Brothers, Kids on the Slope, and tsuritama.

Despite its downsides, You and Me has some of my favorite moments of the season and I think I can confidently say that some of the character interactions between Shun, Yuki, Yuta, Kaname, and Chizuru were more genuine and all around better than some of the interactions between Kaoru, Ritsuko, and Sentaro in Kids on the Slope. I loved the love triangle between Shun, Chizuru, and Masaki was funny, touching, and simply fun all at the same time. And even Kaname’s little love stint in episode 12 was one of the most loveable moments of this season, in my opinion.

You and Me’s only downside, I think, is that it isn’t really about anything. It’s just about these five friends going through high school. And while I do love stories like that, it’s a big reason why a lot of people are turned off from slice of life. And this isn’t even the best slice of life show I’ve seen, and certainly not the best of this season. Even Honey and Clover and Usagi Drop had more in the way of plot compared to You and Me. But seeing the growth of these characters over now 25 episodes was a fun experience, but not one I’m sure I’d like to see again, or at least any time soon. It was fun while it lasted, and I’d definitely watch a new season if it were to come out, but the show leaves a lot to be desired in a lot of ways. It’s one of those shows were you don’t look forward to it every week, but you’re also pleasantly surprised by its arrival every week.

Spring 2012 Anime Review - Part 1

Bodacious Space Pirates

Plot Summary: Marika is a first year high school student living on a planet known as Uminoakeboshi. One day she finds out that her recently deceased father was once the captain of the space pirate ship called the “Bentenmaru”. More importantly, the only one to inherit the captain’s title has to be a direct descendant—meaning that Marika is next in line to become the captain of the ship.

The show started off as one of the standouts of the winter 2012 anime season, right behind the continuing Chihayafuru. But it was outshined right off the bat by some amazing shows in this spring 2012 season (namely Kids on the Slope, tsuritama, Lupin III, and Space Brothers).

The initial concept would turn off a lot of people (I mean, really, a high school girl becomes the captain of a space pirate ship? Really?). But it takes off from there to pace itself rather well compared to every other show that does this. It isn’t until about episode 5 or 6 that she decides to become the captain, and even longer than that to actually start doing piracy. But piracy is some showcase where they’re hired to entertain, something that’s finally brought up in the final couple episodes.

The thing that this show did well compared to other shows then is its pacing. It let Marika decide and settle in to the role of the pirate captain rather than just have her immediately join the crew and be the prodigy that she so rightly deserves to be (she doesn’t deserve that). Instead, Marika mulls on becoming a captain and doesn’t do so well in her first few outings as a captain, having only done anything related to space in her school’s yacht club. It’s only when Kana Hanazawa shows up (aka Chiaki) that she really starts to get a grip on how to do this pirate thing.

The character moments in this show were definitely its strong point, as it lacked much in the way of plot beyond “Let’s do some piracy!” Marika’s growth and the friendship between her and Chiaki and her fellow yacht club members are what drive this show to be good. Its “plot” leaves a lot to be desired as the royal princess running to the pirate captain and the pirate/bounty hunter/what the hell was she trying to destroy pirate ships for not really being pirates left me wanting this to be more like Cowboy Bebop with episodic things throughout the series rather than trying to do arcs like it’s some sort of shonen manga.

But there isn’t really one big thing that I have wrong with this series. It’s just a series of little things that are really more nitpicking at how it could have been better rather than any glaring errors in the show itself (like in Kids on the Slope or Upotte!!). It just didn’t live up to the potential that it had and, while I enjoyed watching it week after week, I didn’t look forward to it like I do Space Brothers or Hunter x Hunter.

Overall, it’s a show that’s definitely good for the modest anime fan, but not really great for a newcomer to be shown. It doesn’t live up to the potential that shows like Cowboy Bebop and Space Brothers have, and they’re both relatively similar in basic, basic plot (aka, they’re both about space things). I’d give it a solid 7/10, but it’s pushing it to go much higher. Although I could make a good argument for an 8/10.

Kids on the Slope

Plot Summary: Summer 1966: Kaoru Nishimi has moved to live with relatives in Kyūshū. He’s been an aloof honor student his whole life, but that starts changing when he meets Sentarō Kawabuchi, the school’s notorious bad boy. Through him, he learns the appeal of jazz and forms his first real friendships.

Kids on the Slope went out in true Watanabe fashion: With an ambiguous ending leaving it open for a whole bunch of possibilities for these characters and what the future holds for them. At the end of Cowboy Bebop, Spike’s own life is left in the air and Ed is god knows where. At the end of Samurai Champloo, Mugen, Jin, and Fuu head their separate ways after helping Fuu find the samurai who smells of sunflowers. And now, Kids on the Slope ends with Kaoru, Ritsuko, and Sentaro back together again after eight years apart. Yurika even makes an appearance, now six months pregnant with Jun’s child.

This show had a lot of ups and downs (more ups than downs in my opinion, but still not the show it’s touted as by everyone on the internet), but in the end, it did not disappoint. I’ll maintain that Space Brothers is the superior of the two, but Kids on the Slope does not fall far behind. It’s a touching coming of age tale about Kaoru and moving through life, love, and music.

If this show had one major downfall, it was that it was only 12 episodes. It would have served this show the justice it properly deserves to be 24 or 26 episodes so it doesn’t have the awkward time skips with the constrained episode count. But if the show had any strong suit, it was, of course, the music beautifully composed by Yoko Kanno. The soundtrack could easily outshine Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo’s ambient music.

I believe that this show could have easily been just as strong (and maybe more interesting) if it wove in flashbacks of the previous 11 ½ episodes and have a 12 episode series of everything that happens after they meet at the end of the episode—something like what Space Brothers is doing now. But alas, it skipped through time willy nilly and had a lot of downfalls because it just hit the plot points and skipped over some important stuff.

I haven’t read the manga of this, so I can’t compare, but this could very well be Shinichiro Watanabe’s weakest work yet. It’s most definitely the weakest I’ve seen, but I’ve only seen Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.

Overall, I would suggest this to someone new to anime, but unfamiliar with slice-of-life anime. There are other shows that are on the list above it, but we’d certainly get there.

Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine

Plot Summary: Many people are falling prey to a suspicious new religion. Lupin III infiltrates this group, hoping to steal the treasure their leader keeps hidden. There he lays eyes on the beautiful, bewitching woman who has the leader enthralled. This is the story of how fashionable female thief Fujiko Mine first met Lupin III, the greatest thief of his generation.

I can’t say I’ve seen a whole bunch of Lupin III stuff. Basically, it’s just been what was on TV back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. But I have heard that the franchise kind of dropped itself into a hole after years and years of mediocre movies that wasn’t really true to what Lupin really is. And, again from what I’ve heard, this series has come back to what Lupin really is.

The series began with Lupin and company all separated and, of course, it focuses on the seductress Fujiko Mine. Lupin headlines the first episode while Jigen and Goemon headline the second and third episodes respectively. From here on out, it’s little of Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon compared to Fujiko. Another twist compared to recent films and series is that Zenigata is back to a competent detective that’s just outwitted by Lupin rather than being an idiot himself.

That said, I really enjoyed this series. In the early going, I thought it was a lot stronger with its one-off stories rather than the overarching plot of Fujiko having a screwed up childhood with owls. And that’s really saying something, considering I usually hate one-off episodes of TV. I think I would have a lot of fun with the franchise if it was at all available to buy, but alas. From just this series, I’m really interested in watching more of it, which I think is a testament to how good this is.

The strongest point was the character building that it had to do. Fans of the old series got to revisit these old characters in a new light with fresh beginnings. Newcomers to the franchise didn’t have to have any previous knowledge of the characters and could enjoy this as a stand-alone series. And it wasn’t like it was bad, it’s what kept me interested in those early going episodes that were very episodic compared to the rest of the series. In my opinion, this is one of the best ways to set up a show in general if it’s formatted like this (with the main characters being more recurring and with Fujiko headlining it).

The worst, or maybe most awkward part, was that Fujiko was…well, she was Fujiko. She wasn’t afraid to show off her body (all her body) and that can immediately turn off some fans. But in this series, it’s really in her character not to care and if that’s all you’re complaining about in a series, I’ll take it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this series. By the end, it easily outshined tsuritama (they were pretty even in my mind based on the first few episodes) and may very well outshine Kids on the Slope in my mind. It showed how it could be amazing in the first few episodes and did fall off quite a bit from that potential, but it still didn’t disappoint. Could it have been better? Yes. Was it still worth of an 8 or even 9 out of 10? Yes.