So, here are the 10 (surface level) reasons to love Revolutionary Girl Utena. Be warned a thousand times, if you haven’t seen the full series, there will be spoilers. Most are vague, but they’re there.

10. Balls

Be-Papas didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Kunihiko Ikuhara and co. were hardly amateurs. But it still amounts to a debut work, and it’s one of JC Staff’s first TV productions to boot.

Yet Utena comes out of the gate with a sense of purpose that few veteran productions come close to. The confidence is almost ridiculous, giving Be-Papas the sheer gall to try a million things that no one else had really done before. That sense of putting one’s balls on the table and saying “here you go, this is what I have” is what allowed all the other elements of this list to exist. So here’s to Be-Papas’ giant brass ones.

9. Surrealism

Symbolism in anime is nothing new. And to be honest, much of the symbolism in Utena is simple stuff. But rather than being incidental or enhancing, it’s everywhere, making the line between reality and allegory appropriately nonexistant. The series is packed so densely with out-of-context imagery that playing “spot the symbol” is a fun game, and playing “spot the red herring” can be even more fun. Sometimes the images only color the experience, sometimes they provide a direct line to the allegory of the overall story, and sometimes… well, here’s Ikuhara on one of the big questions:

“[Mickey’s] stopwatch contains the key to open all the mysteries of the world. And Mickey is the only one who knows that. So I don’t know what it is either.”

In the same interview, he treats Nanami’s egg similarly, so you have to wonder — either Ikuhara doesn’t want us to get the answers easily, or he doesn’t even have them all. And that would be fine, too.

8. Repetition

I did a whole post on Utena’s repetition patterns and how they mirror the practice in visual design. And that was just the Student Council Saga. The series continues to use repetition through each arc, to awesome effect. It’s amazing how much mileage Ikuhara got out of so little new footage per episode. The repetitive sequences don’t seem rote or tiring — in fact, for me they were exciting in themselves.

The beginning of “Absolute Destiny Apocalypse.” A Black Rose candidate descending the elevator. Touga saying “Listen? Do you hear it?” These are the culmination of a story, the satisfying climax to the buildup of the first part of each episode. The repetition also reinforces how similar each plan by End of the World to wreck Utena really is, and how futile those plans are every time. And of course, it enforces just how different the final duel really is.

7. Sex

It’s amazing really, how much you can get away with when you don’t explicitly say or show too much. To me, the sexual element in Utena could be shockingly overt at times, but without any showing tits or actual penis talk (unless you count “polishing your sword”), it slides right by. Sex is a lot of things in Utena, but usually it’s a means to an end. The characters (many of whom are just middle school students) casually use sex as a tool to get back at each other, or as a weapon to destroy innocence and nobility.

And Akio’s car? Those scenes made me feel like a middle-aged housewife reading Danielle Steel, all fanning myself and loosening my collar.

The sexual ambiguity of the characters further enhances the air of debauchery: Everyone pretty much seems ready to fuck everyone else, regardless of gender. Wakaba’s innocent yuri crush on Utena sets the homoerotic baseline, with the other extreme covered by Touga and Akio’s chest-groping photo sessions.

6. More Shoujo than Shoujo

That all makes me think: A lot of this long-haired beefcake shit and rosy borders are probably par for the course with flowery girls’ manga, but shoujo is really just a base context for Utena. Ikuhara uses that as a framework and then both expands and subverts it, often in the same moment. You know what moments I mean, right? How about when Utena and Anthy symmetrically lay down in their beds, silhouetted in a dramatic arched-back pose? Or the mirror image of that same pose starring Akio and Touga as they watch a duel… from a gilded bed? It’s both a Gurren-Lagann-esque inflation of shoujo elements and a hilarious parody of them. And that brings me to…

5. Humor

What does Utena have in common with another symbol-heavy hit of the 90s? Well, quite a lot, including Be-Papas member Yoji Enokido. But one thing it has that Anno’s ode to misanthropy lacks is an ever-present sense of humor. Utena is rich in both standard anime humor and in parody of its genre. And what about those Nanami episodes?

4. Nanami

Yes, Nanami. She’s exemplary of Be-Papas’ subversive methods: they masked story and character development in seemingly throwaway comedy filler episodes. Ultimately Nanami was an important lens through which to view Akio and Anthy’s relationship, but that lens was polished by her constant comedic abuse at the hands of elephants, runaway horses, curry powder, and of course her beloved Touga-Onii-sama.

3. Chu-Chu

Nuff said, but if you need help: Watch the final episode. Ikuhara says that Chu-Chu tried to be more like Akio so that Anthy would like him, but at the end he removes his tie and earring in the world’s cutest gesture of independence and change.

2. The melancholy of coming of age

There’s plenty of anime that could be described as “coming of age” stories. But the best of them always have a unique way of getting that same timeless idea across. For some reason, Utena’s end reminded me of Philip Pullman’s vicious indictment of C.S. Lewis. He attacked Narnia not for its religiosity but for what he saw as condemnation of the very idea growing up. Utena does strike me at first blush as taking up the Narnian (that is, traditional) side of the argument. Loss of innocence is not necessarily as bad a thing in be-Papas’s world as in Lewis’s (although it happened to Utena in a manipulative, not-so-nice way), but growing up does mean the abandonment of certain strengths that only the pure can have. I suppose it’s open to interpretation whether Anthy was right, that Utena can’t be her prince because she’s a girl, but I’ll save any more musing on this for when I have enough words for a post in itself. I would love to hear others’ thoughts on this, beyond the obvious.

1. J.A. Seazer

Seazer’s importance to the anime can’t be understated. It’s even possible that Ikuhara’s whole idea of an anime about revolutionizing the world was generated by Seazer’s music, even if Seazer’s purpose was a bit more specific than Utena’s pretty abstract kind of revolution. And in turn, Utena brought the 1960s countercultural icon back into the limelight for the first time in many years.

If you doubt how much Seazer’s music colored Revolutionary Girl Utena, just imagine it without, or maybe with some other more traditional anime music. Suddenly the vibrantly surreal and representative world becomes a little more normal and shallow. Seazer’s bizarre imagery — inscrutable lists of items found at the apocalypse, obsessive meditations on the human body, and symbols borrowed from religions around the world — is the cornerstone to the multi-tiered fortress of Utena’s allegorical storyline.

So…

The sound that races through the End Of This Post

These ten things just came to me without much thought, but there’s plenty more to love about Utena. Not to mention, any of these ten items could make a post in itself, and hopefully some will someday. Is there anything you particularly liked about Revolutionary Girl Utena that I missed? Or do you just hate Chu-Chu (you heartless bastard)?

Plenty of people told me plenty of things about ABe’s Haibane Renmei. There’s Martin, Pete, TheBigN, Coburn — it almost seems to have a 1:1 viewer-to-fan ratio. And I found it for cheap many moons ago now, but it sat on the shelf until I was bed-ridden a couple months back. In the end, being sick and watching it was a wonderful way to do it. Thanks to its mood and themes, Haibane could almost sit in the vague non-genre called “iyashikei” (healing) alongside such plotless delights as YKK and Aria, but it does have a story and some really heavy drama to go with.

In fact, searching for a “moment” in Haibane could only mean finding its harrowing climax. Amidst the surreality of a painting come to life and a Satoshi-Kon-like reality warping, there’s intense human drama. The series’ overall meditation on sin and salvation comes to a nail-biting crescendo here. And then I understood.

Well, to be fair to Haibane Renmei, I understood a good bit before, that just drove it home. More than ABe’s other  more cyberpunky hits, it’s tied together with threads of love, hope, and melancholy that make it easy to get caught up in. And now, if you haven’t seen it, there’s one more asshole telling you how much you’re missing out.

How to make a Student Council Arc episode of Utena:

1. Introduce a member of the council as your focus
2. Make sure that character has a run-in with Utena
3. Optional bitch-slap
4. Challenge
5. Grab the handle, close-up on the water hitting the rose ring
6. Begin JA Seazer’s Absolute Destiny Apocalypse song
7. Climb the stairs
8. Transform Utena’s uniform
9. Power of Dios, Utena for the win (usually)

Previous discussion on Utena in the comments saw some people decrying this pattern as monotonous and boring, while others declared it ritualistic and symbolic in itself. Me? My design schooling kicked in and said hey — Utena is in fact a “series.”

Yes, of course, you say. Utena is a series. A television series. But there is a design trick called a series as well; it’s a group of items that illustrate the design principle known as repetition.  Repetition is exactly what it sounds like. But any series, in order to avoid monotony or maybe to express a point (if you have that in mind; when designing wallpaper it seems imprudent to try to make any kind of explicit statement), usually incorporates another design principle: variation. This, in turn, creates a third principle, emphasis. The changeup in the series is emphasized by virtue of its difference from the rest.

The variation or anomaly usually doesn’t come at the end, but then again straight design doesn’t have a temporal element. When elapsed time comes into play, obviously pulling the old switcheroo at the end is going to provide maximum impact. Utena’s student council arc puts the variation near the end but not at it — and brings back the familiar Utena victory to neatly cap off the arc.

So it’s a great design tool, extrapolated across 13 episodes as a motif. Lots of fun, too. But what about that lingering possibility that there is a representative purpose to the “ritualistic” repetition? Well, I’m not sure about ritual, but the options are there:

• End of the World seems to be some sort of puppet master, and it might require (or at least desire) a degree of religiosity in order to operate. The Council’s devotion to the dueling process is certainly quasi-religious, and until Touga subverts the process with his faux End of the World letter, they seem to hold the process in strict regard.
• Dios, too, might be looking for Catholic-level ritual worship in order to fully awaken — look at his name, even.

But regardless of the purpose of the repetition, the end result (for me) was to reinforce the futility of the Student Council’s quest for Revolution. For all of their dedicated faith in dueling, they can’t keep Utena from beating them and walking away with Dios’s power, and the Rose Bride.

I have nothing much to really offer in the way of interpretation; that was just how I viewed the arc, and part of what made it so satisfying to me. I’ll say it again: it’s clear to me that Utena is something. It’s the real deal, and it’s been a while since I saw something with quite this much going for it.

But a re-release, such as the recently remastered Revolutionary Girl Utena, provides a great opportunity for a new group of people to share the experience they might have missed the first time around. One such person I’m fortunate enough to share this particular series with is animekritik, who’s braving a less than optimal computer to get his fix of swordfighting fantasy… shoujo?

kritik: I actually think when well done, shoujo is the most powerful of anime genres. What’s more powerful than the emotions of a teenage girl? rage, love, envy…
otou-san: you mean what’s more histrionic and melodramatic?
kritik: melodramatic, yes, overboard, yes. I like that in anime.
otou-san: I can’t argue that anime is a medium that does melodrama well.
kritik: What you do is you take all that emotion, which usually an outsider would think is plain silly, and make it the key to saving the universe or something of that sort.

He makes a good point. You want drama, teenage girls have it in spades. Though for some reason it surprised us both, Utena’s unmistakably shoujo— from the flowery borders, to the spindly, curly character designs, to the (cool and spicy) heroine in a boy’s uniform, this is aimed at the fairer demographic. Maybe that’s why it never made its way into my VCR the first time around — the shoujo overtones didn’t mesh with my more Kawajiri-focused taste. But if a pink-haired girl swordfighting amidst a metal soundtrack doesn’t sway you, I question your male status as well.

The story revolves around Utena Tenjou, who was given a rose ring as a child by a prince. Like any normal girl, she decides that she herself will become a prince. What? Utena has lived her life in a princely way thus far: she acts noble but never snobby, and she’s devoted to protecting the weak and bullied. One day she’s challenged to a duel — kendo, or so she thinks — for the honor of her friend Wakaba, but it turns out to be a bit more than a kendo match.

Neither kritik or I have a very clear idea of where this is going, but it shows up with all guns blazing and makes no apologies. The show doesn’t feel the need to over-explain just yet, it’s too busy exciting and confusing you. I thought that at the very least you could say that few first episodes were executed with incredible confidence:

kritik: Yes! Notice the show is done with the same confidence Utena shows in her dealings with the world… it’s like they’re in sync.

Then there’s the ballsy move to toss the viewers into a weird world without much explanation; it isn’t a move that a lot of anime tends to make. Recounting what happens to Utena from when she sets foot in the woods:

1. Bizarre door that appears to open via her rose ring.
2. Floating stairs that lead up to a surreal floating castle-like structure.
3. Anthy Himemiya in a dress, apparently engaged to a student council member, spouting a sword erotically from her chest.
4. A duel, between her with a kendo stick and her opponent with a real sword.

And not only does Utena appear ready for it, she manages to brush it off by the time she gets home.

kritik: [It's] fantasy after all. she wants to be a man (i.e., do as she wills, be strong) while she’s quite strongly against men (they travel in groups and beat the weak). She wants to be a prince, basically…
otou-san: but most fantasy has that grace period where the hero/ine, despite her dreams and imaginings, has to adjust to whatever fantastical situation she’s thrown into. I mean, I’d poop my pants, but the girl totally rolls with it.
kritik: it’s like a dream, where you immediately accept what’s happened and move on.

The dreamlike events and equally dreamlike logic of acceptance makes Utena’s opening episode one of the most unique out there. Where do we go from here? Well, our combination will start to take a more definite shape as the series itself does, and I hope that some of our volleys will unearth some thoughts and conclusions that we might not have come to alone. I’m sure that those of you who’ve seen Utena will enjoy reading our missed conclusions and wild speculation, but that’s part of the fun. Look forward to it — next week it’ll be kritik’s turn.

Neo-Venezia

Cropped. Click for full size on pixiv.

It probably won’t surprise any Aria viewer that this one would go at the top of the list. Yes, there are cute gondoliers and suteki~ oneesamas like Alicia, but the lead character of Aria is not the titular cat, but Aqua — and its fake Italian city. Built by human hands, and mostly as a tourist destination, but not to be a gaudy Vegas/Cancun/Dubai statement of “look what we can do” or a faux-experience Disneyland. Instead, Neo-Venezia is an authentic locale born from the dedication of a few intrepid souls to recreating a simpler time and place. It’s the best kind of future, really: Technology ensures that all of the wonderful baked goods and none of the diseases of the past live on in a pleasant and welcoming place that neither gets you too dirty nor reeks of touristy “plastic”-ness.

Glie

If any anime gives off a similar vibe to Aria, it’s Haibane Renmei. I don’t mean in the sense of stories, characters, or even mood (Haibane actually has a story, which doesn’t make it superior to Aria necessarily, but different for sure). It’s that indescribable something special that makes you feel like you’re the only person who’s ever watched this, regardless of how many other people you know who find it wonderful. And like Aqua, Glie is a place that affects the story as strongly as any of its residents. Unlike Aqua, it has a complex set of rules and physics that separate it from the rest of the universe — at least, people assume that, but seeing as how they can’t freaking leave, it’s hard to prove anything about the outside world. Glie provides a wonderful mirror to the characters’ minds. Rakka loves it at first, but mistrusts its intentions more and more as she comes to empathize with Reki, who finds the town to be a comfortable cage from which she can’t escape.

Mayan

Leave it to Kawamori to name his island ode to vanishing culture and environment so plainly after a nearly-decimated American culture. Obvious message is obvious. Mayan serves two main purposes: it inspires a desire in Shin, Roy, and the viewer to protect it (wait… geographical moe?), and it provides a unique perspective on the story of the final world war on Earth. So it’s not the most well-developed location, but it does what it does well. In Macross Zero’s pre-SDF timeline, the world has yet to unite behind the giant ship to fight the Zentraedi, and is instead fighting itself. Honestly, it’s probably a more compelling story, and that’s largely because it’s told from the perspective of the Mayan Islanders — the collateral damage who can understand neither the motivations nor the sophisticated weapons of the mainlanders. The low-tech, spiritual world that they inhabit lends a mysterious new meaning to the Protoculture for fans of Macross, and their mythology does more to explain exactly what the Protoculture is (and means) than Exedol’s visit to the edge of the universe in Macross 7.

There are more, many more…

Even a completely real place (like Tokyo) can be an effective focus of a story, especially if, like other fictional characters, it’s put in a unique situation or circumstance (a massive earthquake). The question of place is often what elevates an otherwise ho-hum anime beyond average, whether it’s a school life or post-apocalypse setting. So what are your favorite anime places? Is there anywhere that’s crucial to a plot, fascinating to think about, or just well-drawn enough that it catches your brain as much as the characters and story? I, for one, would like to watch it, so I can take another vacation without having to get the days off work.

Three things, I guess:

1. Haibane Renmei is a series that was recommended a few times. I couldn’t remember by whom, so I checked MAL to jog my memory: turns out 16 of my MAL friends have seen it: for some reason CCY did not rate it, and lelangir called it a 7 by virtue of the fact that it was not Gunbuster (understandable), and the rest were in the 8-10 range. I realize MAL is a severely unscientific research tool, but it does give me a pretty good impression of people’s thoughts. Also, I do remember that coburn and TheBigN were the biggest proponents, although others call it a 10.
2. I watched it too friggin’ fast to do any mid-series posts.
3. I’m trying in vain to translate that little lump in my throat into an appropriate post.

So I’m not sure where to begin, but let me say this: my overall impression is that Haibane doesn’t play out like one anime… more like three. They don’t have hard demarcations, instead they flow seamlessly into one another. But if you took say, episode 2, episode 7, and episode 11, they would each feel like they could have come from a different series.

First, there’s the introduction. This lasts fully half the series or so, and it gives off a decidedly un-ABe-like vibe (if you’ve seen Serial Experiments Lain and/or Texhnolyze you know what I mean). We, the viewers, get to see the town of Glie through new and wondrous eyes — Rakka’s eyes. The beginning of her journey is painful. She’s born lonely into the world, devoid of her memories, and her own body becomes a foreign thing as she’s transformed into a winged angelic Haibane. But others who’ve been through this shelter her, and the residents of Glie are lovely people, so she’s surrounded by love. In this way, it’s very Aria-like. And like Aqua, Glie is a unique location because it’s almost ridiculously mundane in its day-to-day life but fantastic for the simple fact that it exists. As Rakka fits into this world, there is little to no plot development to speak of, just a wide-eyed sense of wonderment and discovery, and Aria’s same simple magic that leaves you smiling.

But Haibane is a creeper. As suteki~ as that first part is, the second arc is equally crushing. Things change, Rakka enters a deep crisis of faith and personality, and like any good fictional hero, must overcome this. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to talk about it, or the third arc, without giving away the farm, and the unexpected way in which the story unfolds — though never jarring, always kind of morphing — is one of the series’ strong points.

One of the unexpected turns (if not quite a twist) is like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s most masterful one: it turns out the series isn’t actually about who you think it’s about. Well… it is and it isn’t. But let’s say Haibane Renmei has two fantastic characters in Rakka and Reki, the oneesama-type character who takes selfless care of her fellow Haibane. It’s an interesting proposition, the idea that all the characters are half-lives whose more putty-like years were spent in a world (presumably ours, but maybe not) that they can no longer remember. That means that they get a fresh start, so the things weighing down Reki’s mind are particularly powerful, and Rakka quickly learns that life in Glie can be an easy stroll or the world’s most pleasant prison depending on where you sit.

Haibane Renmei, according to Yoshitoshi ABe, is a religious story, although it doesn’t mirror or endorse any particular religion. The Haibane’s angel-like appearance probably serves no other purpose than to make this obvious (that and he probably liked drawing wings and halos).

If it doesn’t really tell the story of a god, then how is it religious? I suppose it’s because the central topics here are salvation and the nature of sin. The Haibane Renmei (communicator) tells of the circle of sin, a thought paradox that characters like Rakka and Reki become hopelessly trapped in. It’s heartbreaking because it’s a bit like original sin in that they carry it from their birth, and are powerless to stop it when they emerge naïvely from the cocoon. But salvation also comes whether they like it or not.

The assessment of sin and salvation goes something like this: Being deserving is not a matter of intent; intent only clouds the issue. That’s not how you’re saved.

No one is entirely devoid of sin. Even if you’re just selfishly trying to absolve yourself of sin, if you’re good at it, you become good in the process. I love that. In that way, it’s a lot more idealized then your average actual religion, but makes such beautiful sense. In the end, that anti-paradox becomes the fix for the first paradox, the circle of sin. Though much is lost along the way, Haibane Renmei leaves its viewers feeling saved.

You see, she’s the source of the interesting things that are happening. Long the “girl next door” in every sense of the word to poor personality-deprived Zaitsu, now this stone-cold fox with supposedly no desire for dudes has another lame-ass suitor, Koyoi’s beloved onii-chan. Now, let’s not get too hung up on the whole brocon/siscon thing and how it, like boobless girls, is on the surface made to be the freaky but undesirable fetish but of course its very presence in modern anime constitutes a ringing endorsement and custom fetish delivery to stinky otaku. I digress like fuck.

The elder Besshou is no more interesting than the younger Zaitsu, and has just as little concept of where his league is and when he’s out of it. To top it off for this poor sap, Misaki’s ditched her sexual disinterest in favor of his tactless, uncaring, lollipop-wielding best friend (who happens to be Kei’s older brother). And, tell me you ronery fuckers that you’ve never been here — she calls him to the restaurant to find out what she should do about her crush on crass-a-nova. FFFFFFFFFFF.

All of this matters because it’s the harbinger of the change of tone that every romantically focused anime must make before it becomes part of its genre. In love, everything isn’t breasts and roses, and tragedy is the name of the game. Here, we have both Besshou and Zaitsu, hopelessly hung up on the mesmerizing Misaki, and we’re already treated to the earliest tragic truth of the series: One of them — perhaps neither of them — will have her. Bummer.

Because let’s face it kids, Misaki’s pretty bangin. And she’d have to be. In an anime where the 14-year-olds cause lelangir confusing feelings (and cause pan-ups to be pasted together into pinups, apparently), the 16 or 17-year-old (maximum age in anime, deshou?) can’t just be bomb, she’s gotta be nuclear.

I’m starting to wonder now, how much Misaki will be a character, how much we’ll see into her head (like the unprecedented tsundere-POV of Kei) or whether she’ll just continue to be an object of desire, a veritable walking nosebleed for the male characters of the show. Regardless, this is animation, so I think we can all rest assured she’ll stay sexful. How her courtship fares, well that might not be as positive but a rosy outlook for love doesn’t make for good TV so let’s see what kind of damage she can do.

K-ON

Pre-airing thoughts: The script writer from Aria, Ghost Hunt, and quite a few other fantastic light-hearted series adapts a musical manga. OK, I’m listening. But when it’s animated by Kyoto animation, whose beloved status comes at least partially from Haruhi’s Super Effective rock concert scene, even more ears start perking up. This information tells me I can expect: Cute girls, animation accuracy in musical scenes, and a solid script. Will it deliver? Dunno.

You get the idea.

First ep thoughts: Holy shit. If you want moe, you got it. Looks like our lead girl is the Ultimate Dojikko, constantly tripping, falling, failing, crying, being afraid, etc. I can’t tell if I want to squeal in delight or shoot myself. The art looks a lot more like Kyoto Animation defectors A-1 pictures than Kyoto themselves, which is interesting but I’m unsure why. I’m also not sure if I hate this or not, but I’ll continue for the moment. I’m not expecting another Lucky Star by any means (I think we have Haruhi-chan for that), but let’s hope it’s just more than “[insert series] plus music.”

Shangri-La

Pre-airing thoughts: Well, I think Range Murata’s designs are great. A weird mix of cute and hot that you can only get in anime. Of course, that goes for the post-apocalyptic setting as well, and the two should add up to the kind of sexy action adventure that Gonzo does best (when they don’t overdo it).

You get at least part of the idea.

First ep thoughts: Gonzo has taken the Murata designs and simplified them, Druaga-style, until they lack most of their imagination. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but the sweeping cinematic style of some of the opener’s scenes and setup is promising. The future based around the extreme but somewhat-logical conclusion of global warming is intriguing, but could go in either the “effective world-building” direction or the “overcomplicated nonsense” direction. A technical note: Crunchyroll shows TV Tokyo’s uninteresting (to me) offerings in 720p, but Gonzo’s simulcasts are in SD. What gives?

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Pre-airing thoughts: Wait, there’s a new Fullmetal Alchemist?

You get the idea.

First ep thoughts: I seriously noticed this 5 seconds before downloading. Oh wait, Funi’s streaming it? No wonder their video portal site is down. So I was surprised to find that it’s not really a sequel. Is it necessary to reuild FMA as a true-to-the-manga update with slightly more CG and different character design? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll sniff anything Bones shits out, but I’m not sold on this yet. The series isn’t even very old. I’ll continue for a while though, because episode one featured some familiar characters doing their thing, and the action was solid and fun.

Shin Mazinger Shougeki Z Hen

Pre-airing thoughts: So, it’s not a sequel. It’s not a remake. Right. Well, either way, it’s a trip down memory lane for me, with arguably the first robot I ever watched on TV. I’m not certain whether it was Voltron or Mazinger Z (Tranzor Z) but the Rocket Punch will forever stand out in my mind.

HOLY JESUS FUCK SHITSICLE

First ep thoughts: I… wh… um. It just… holy — motherfucker. FUCK. OH MY GOD.

11:14:23 PM otou-san: thanks for writing a half sensible post on mazinger
11:15:00 PM ghostlightning: lol thanks
11:15:14 PM otou-san: I was reduced to sputtering idiocy
11:15:39 PM ghostlightning: i did notice people were just shitting bricks and calling them posts
11:15:56 PM ghostlightning: but i don’t blame anyone
11:16:11 PM ghostlightning: awesome show is awesome

Here I am, calling this brick-shitting a post. Remember a few seasons ago when Soul Eater started? It was an insane ride from minute one of style and action. It was something new, and it was exciting. This, however, is something old and exciting. It drops you, the viewer, into the dead middle of a situation that you can’t possibly begin to handle and then throws as many robots, heroes, villains, explosions, and called-out attacks as it can at you until you’re reduced to a stuttering, drooling, mess of Super Robot lover. Again I’ll invoke ghostlightning, who led me to the conclusion that my beloved Gainax SR beasts like Gunbuster are made to bring about a child-like state, but reward your adult love with cleverness and references. This Mazinger, along with Imagawa’s Giant Robo OVA (which I’m in desperate need of seeing) are actually for the kids. That doesn’t mean you’re too old for it, though. Check this shit out, it’s so brutally amazing. I’m gonna go watch it again.

Sometimes, even otherwise-good anime seasons will grace us with surprisingly good series that are a notch above what we’re normally stuck watching. While Kannagi may not have managed to make the top spot for Fall ‘08, it probably did manage to be the biggest surprise.

Story

Kannagi centers around Jin, who carves a wooden sculpture of a mysterious shrine deity he saw as a kid. When it comes to life as Nagi, eyes will roll, but what you’re predicting doesn’t ever really come to pass. In fact, somehow a hilarious show comes out of this clichéd and idiotic setup.

Rather than being the ultra-omnipotent type of god, or the typically naïve magical girlfriend type, Nagi is a pun-loving layabout who spends her time eating Jin’s food, watching TV, and very occasionally catching “impurities” with a dime-store Mahou Shoujo wand. The shape of the story is very much sitcom, so it’s more than a little off-putting to find the series ending on a serious note. The end just doesn’t work all that well. For 10 episodes, we’re given nothing but laughs, and if those 10 episodes make you a fan, why would you want to see a bunch of moping around (and sudden devotion to the supposed plot) for the other three? It’s not that I don’t care about Nagi’s identity crisis, it’s just that it’s foisted upon us pretty late in the game.

Characters

As Kabitzin mentioned, the characters are probably the primary strength of Kannagi — or for me, one of the two main strengths, along with the animation. The story is flimsy, not that interesting, and mostly unexplored until those last episodes, but the characters manage to be a huge pile of charm. Soft-spoken Jin is a bit more than your typical harem hero. Zange-chan the idol, who dresses like a slutty nun and can’t sing for shit, is funnier than the average interloper. Tsugumi is the kind of cute childhood friend that you can root for, just like you’re supposed to. And the art club’s cast of weirdos all generate their own kinds of laughs. At the center of that is Nagi, the pun-spewing screwoff god. Haruka Tomatsu (also great as Chika in Kyouran Kazoku Nikki and not so good as Lala in To Love-Ru) brings her to life masterfully — when reading the manga, it’s impossible to imagine Nagi any other way.

Animation and Music

The execution of Kannagi, by A1 Pictures and erstwhile Lucky Star director Yutaka Yamamoto, was the second of its strong points, and one you can’t just chalk up to good source material. Yamamoto proved himself brilliant at both LS-style fan-pandering and impeccable comic timing. Minimal background music and large periods of silence often reinforced the sly delivery of jokes. As far as the animation itself, it was true to the manga, looked good, and maintained a consistent level of quality throughout. I’ll just repeat myself:

Like Lucky Star’s cartoony-yet-realistic body language helped create a million Kagamin fanboys, the execution here makes Nagi more real when she scratches her leg with her foot while watching tennis on the floor, as Jin saws frantically at the glued-on wand behind her. Or, best of all, when she describes the circumstances surrounding how the wand got glued to the exact center of the table.

When combined with Nagi and Jin’s excellent voice acting, the animation style drove home their classic two-man comedy routines.

Bottom Line

Kannagi ended kinda poorly, all full of emo and previously-absent clichés, and that took it down from being one of the highlights of the year to a show that probably won’t be as fondly remembered as say, Toradora, with its more cohesive story. But I went back and watched a couple of the funnier episodes, and when this series was on, it was hot. In hindsight, I wish there had been more of a story, but at the time I was watching most of the episodes, the lack of a “point” didn’t bother me at all. It was just funny and entertaining. If Kannagi were to get a second season, I would most definitely watch more.

Not really too much else worth mentioning about that, but hopefully the quality doesn’t falter. So far there’s been nothing original about the plot in general, so adding another anime cliché should just be another test of Kannagi’s ability to execute brilliantly. It’s still a bit early, but it hasn’t failed yet.

This is mostly an excuse to respond to remarks made by He-Who-Must-Be-Spoken-To-in-Trackbacks (you’re welcome for the trackback), which no one loves to do but the statement that “nobody … even paid attention” raised a flag. Heaping praise is being dumped on Kannagi from all over the webernets, and let’s just say I wasn’t the only one zaitcev glossed over when he decided he was the sole party who noticed the animation quality. In fact, I even mentioned the Lucky Star resemblance (passing mention, I guess, but the parallel is clear as day).

Why is it people have to imagine they’re the only ones to notice something? Some other bloggers I love have a tendency toward this underdog stuff as well. Maybe it’s everyone’s desire to be the one finding the hidden gem, but let’s just all get together here: Kannagi is pretty boss, it’s so boss that we all know it, time to start a fan club.