Darker Than Black

However, there is Darker than Black, and my illness conveniently laid me up in bed to finish the original series. Have to say, it was, uh, “better than it should be.” Light chuckle here because, putting the ridiculousness of that statement aside, it was just about as good as it should be. Tensai Okamura and Bones created something that is, in a way, very typically Bones — think RahXephon,  Eureka Seven and its red-headed stepsister Xam’d — in the way that the story was put together. The method: Create a compelling but mysterious world, and don’t reveal too much about its nature until near the climax. In some ways, it’s a cheap way of keeping the viewer hooked, but I can’t say I don’t prefer it to A Certain Expositional Infodump that a large amount of anime is guilty of to some degree.

It’s not typically Bones in that its characters are distant, sort of unknowable. The warmth you can feel in Xamdou’s most aloof character Nakiami, for example, is far stronger than what I got from DtB’s Hei or even the human Misaki. I suppose part of it comes from the fact that Contractors aren’t supposed to feel emotion (though Hei’s case is a little more complicated). This makes them distant from anyone, so the viewer should be no different. All in all, I liked the story, I liked the action, I liked almost all of the characters, and the “cool” factor was in place. I’m skeptical of the new season, with its lack of Yoko Kanno, but I enjoyed the first enough to make this a no-brainer.

Cowboy Bebop

Speaking of Yoko Kanno and Fonz Factor, I also spent some time re-watching Cowboy Bebop. It’s been a lot of years since I saw it, and my subsequent re-education in anime allowed me to view it with new eyes — which is what second and third viewings are all about. It hasn’t diminished in my eyes; if anything I have even more respect, plus I watched it in Japanese for the first time and was delighted to hear Coach Emperor Wakamoto as Vicious. I’m not going to go on about Cowboy Bebop too much, you could fill a library with what’s already been said. It did get me thinking about something Zaitcev mused a while back about Honey & Clover: “What is particularly ‘anime’ about this anime?” In the case of H&C, I disagree, there’s plenty there to keep it in the realm, but with Bebop, I’m less certain.

For one, romantic drama is kept to a minimum. A mixed-gender spaceship in most anime, at the least, would create some sexual tension or maybe a Naked Misunderstanding or two. But for the crew of the Bebop, romance is a thing that happened in the past. Each of the three majors gets a “past coming back to haunt them” episode chronicling their turbulent experience with the opposite sex, most notably Spike. The present is a time for work — dangerous work with no room for such distractions. There’s only one “baka” from Faye that really carries the typical meaning, and it’s very late in the series.

Secondly… everything else. Really. Why break that out into bullets? Cowboy Bebop skips over almost everything. Teenage characters: One, briefly. Something to protect: Sorry, not really, unless you count cash. Tsunderes, seifukus, people crying a lot, techno-babble, mecha, evocation of moe, forget them all.

What it does have, of course, is an obsession with music and an amazing soundtrack to match. Both the anime and its Kanno music seem overflowing with ideas and hooks, a feeling that’s rare in something as polished and tightly executed as this. But that’s another tired subject when it comes to Bebop. If the series has a significant fault, it’s that we’re asked to take the story’s word on a great deal of things that happened in the past, rather than made to feel their significance. And that can lessen the impact of the otherwise astounding end.

At any rate, if for some bizarre reason you’ve never seen it, you’re missing out on one great example of what happens when some talented people get together and treat anime as a medium rather than a genre.

Planetes

I’ve watched 4 episodes of Goro Taniguchi’s space-junk saga so far, and the jury’s still out, but it’s an interesting take on near-ish future Sci-Fi. I wouldn’t exactly call it “hard” SF but the notion of space garbage getting in the way of progress is a realistic-sounding one anyway, and a lot of attention is given to the technological details and the mechanics of zero-G. A future where astronauts are skilled but un-amazing laborers and the whole of space is mired in bureaucracy, politics, and nepotism is a depressing future, but of course our idealistic naïve lead shoujo is here to brighten the picture.

Oddly, I see parallels to a more recent series, Production IG’s Library War: Cute, short-haired underachiever joins an exotic but ultimately unglamorous job that isn’t quite what she thought it would be, is beset by a tsun-tsun coworker, and tries to foist her wide-eyed idealism onto the world. I’m sure the comparison will pretty much end there, but it’s the kind of story that’s not hard to get behind, even if Ai can be a little shrill at time.

That about covers my recent viewing, aside from Utena and the various things I occasionally watch but will never finish, like Harlock and Legend of the Galactic Large Amount of Episodes. You should expect to see more on that soon as well. As of Fall ‘09 week 2, do you agree with my “alternative” choices or is there anything this season I’m missing?

As you may have heard, a sequel to the popular visual-novel-turned-anime ef: a tale of memories is coming in the next few weeks, hopefully to power us through the fall season angstily. ef seems to be a touchy topic: some people find it a perfect case for attempting to give an anime series a handjob, while others condemn it as artsy pretentiousness. In preparation for the upcoming ef: a tale of melodies, here are some nice election-year-ready arguments you can use around the dinner table when dealing with both the ef-ignorant and the ef-haters among your family and friends.

“I don’t like visual novel adaptations.”
This is probably the hardest one to start with. ef has all the trappings of a VN story. The girl with the tragic yet mysterious problem, the love triangle, the childhood friend, the mysterious stranger who observes the situation, and most of all, the wrenching melodrama. But you really have to boil it down not to what makes a VN what it is, but what makes it suck — and what ef does to counteract that.

1. Two stories, two males, three females. There’s your character roundup. Compare that to, say, a Shuffle! or even a Clannad, with a single male protagonist going up against a virtual Hinata Inn of girls. In ef, all characters are actually characters, not just potential pairings for a male lead. Essentially what I’m saying, a VN adaptation doesn’t necessarily mean a harem show.
2. The tsundere, the genki girl, a loli, the space cadet genius, blah blah, you won’t find them here. Miyako’s a little crazy, but like True Tears’ Noe, she’s a believable kind of crazy that you may have met/dated/gotten 100 voicemails from before.
3. It offers something different than just regular unrequited love or fake-ass distant courtship. I get so damn tired of these chaste anime kids who can’t even manage to hold hands. ef’s characters kiss, call each other out for corny lines, and even enjoy a little bit of the old in-out. That’s refreshing.
4. Speaking of refreshing, try this spoiler: Show ▼
   Childhood friend doesn’t win.
5. How many VN adaptations have the elements of suspense and darkness in ef? Not many, I’d wager, and School Days spent its first half being shitty.

“It’s all style and no substance.”
Well, it does have style. I suppose that means that most VN adaptation have no style and no substance? Fine by me, you go ahead and watch those, I’ll watch the one with style.

“Everyone thinks it’s so deep.”
I don’t see how that’s the animation’s fault. TV anime usualy lacks depth. Even Kaiba didn’t have that much to say in the end, though it said it well. So when something comes along that even implies a little depth, it’s latched onto by fans and the blogging world pretty quickly. Not the series’ fault if some people projected too much depth onto it. Perhaps the style seemed to imbue ef with a hidden meaning or depth that it didn’t really have. Either way, even if nothing was behind it, ef was provocative, and I don’t see how that’s bad.

“The animation is distracting.”
Touchy subject, so this one is multiple choice:

1. I find your breath distracting.
2. Your MOM’s distracting! Hooooo!
3. Give it a chance, it just becomes part of the show eventually and it’s not distracting anymore.
4. That shit was necessary. Without Shin Onuma and Shaft’s self-conscious “artsiness” (as an art-ignorant Philistine like yourself may call it), we’d never have The Phone Card Scene, one of the most harrowing and nail-biting bits of (melo)dramatic anime ever made.

“There are no lesbians.”
There are in some versions.

Anyway…

For a VN adaptation, or for a dramatic anime in general, ef works pretty well. It did away with some of the more standard symbols, shortcuts, and easy routes that anime romance often follows, and it did so with great style. This time around, we’ve seen all the tricks that ef had to offer, so is A Tale of Melodies going to have the same impact? Probably not, but under the stylistic uniqueness and the head-spin factor, A Tale of Memories was a very good, well-executed story that stood up to multiple viewings, and that bodes pretty well for its sequel.

Oh, Chiko. I don’t envy you. Your aunt’s still trying to off you with soup, or the occasional desperate and ineffectual sneak-attack on a boat. Your best friend thinks you’re a novelty and occasionally pretends to be you just to get in trouble. Your only real friend is your murderous aunt’s servant. And now the latter two, along with the numbnuts detective who “found” you, have all gone hypnotized by some white-haired zombie cyborg demon doll who’s in love with Twenty Faces.

Oh yeah, you’re homeless, and it’s raining. That just sucks. What? Cyborg woman is holding your only friend ransom… Jesus.

Well, all is well, since you’ve found Twenty Faces! Sure, zombie doll bitch is all about killing you out of jealousy, but didn’t we all know that Akechi secretly was Twenty Faces all along?

Wait, he’s not? Okay, so Twenty Faces just disguised himself as Detective Akechi. Hm. Still following, just less so.

So Twenty Faces kills zombie doll lady, cool, but then he falls off a blimp to save you? Ouch! Meaning, you got him back, stabbed him while hypnotized, finally came to your senses, and he’s gone again?

Wow. Did I mention I don’t envy Chiko?

What the hell is going on?

The reunion of Ken, Chiko, and the Boss didn’t have time to be sweet and sappy because they were pretty much under threat of death the whole time. I think that gave us a nice indication of the new darker and more urgent atmosphere — that it’s never going to be the happy Robin Hood’s merry-men party that they used to be living in. Of course, an eyepatch is always a dead giveaway too.

Cyborg-love-interest is gone, but so is Twenty Faces. Or is he? The scene near the end of episode 13 really hints that he’s actually dead this time, but his work isn’t finished, and TF seems like the kind of guy who would gladly cheat death to get the job done.

Say what you will about Twenty Faces (no one is saying much, actually), but these past three episodes gave me what I like the most about the show. First, the rare action scenes are creative and well-animated with a sense of style that I think only Bones could really pull off. And more importantly, the story keeps me guessing, something it’s been doing ever since Twenty Faces disappeared. Love it. I also love the way the writers gave viewers an “I knew it!” moment when Akechi turned out to be Twenty Faces, only to take it away by revealing that he wasn’t.

This backstory on Akine really seems superfluous, and cyborg lover went down pretty easy (she just kind of gave up living), but I can’t say I have real complaints about the direction of the show lately.

As a side note, anyone notice that the visual effects in the OP make noise now, like motion graphics on a Fox TV broadcast? Kind of goofy and lame.

Movie time! Chiko, her aunt, and Tame trek to a secluded island under the guise of seeing a movie shoot, each with her own ulterior motives. See if you can match the goal to the character, kids!

• Find the jewel and see if it leads to Twenty Faces‘ whereabouts
• Kill Chiko
• Stop Chiko from being killed

There they run into Eye-Patch, aka Ken, aka Akito Tenkawa from Nadesico after he comes back all dark and broody in Prince of Darkness. He ain’t happy.

But it’s a funtime family reunion when it comes down to saving each others’ lives. Little do either of them know, Twenty Faces may have been working on a project during the war to turn ordinary humans into rubber Mazinger Z dolls. And one of them lured Chiko to the island using the jewel.

Chiko graduates

The highlight for me was the scene from one of the nifty action sequences in the show’s OP. That’s pretty neat to finally see in itself, but in this scene Chiko goes from spunky thief-girl to ultimate badass. Ken and the humonculus (or whatever she is) both notice how much like Twenty Faces she suddenly looks. And they’re both scared by it.

What’s next?

OGT has been speculating on the nature of the second half the series; his thoughts are that either Chiko’s going to get increasingly bitter and angry as she finds out more about Twenty Faces’ seedy past experimenting with Frakenstein-esque human hax, or she’s going to find out she’s been punked. I lean more toward the former, possibly because I just hope it’s not the other. For Twenty Faces to pop out at the end and say… “You passed!” reeks too much of the old “it was all a dream” trick.

No matter what, the Twenty Faces continues to be super-fun, and I’ll bet you anything that the first season ends with a bitching cliffhanger.

I’ll leave you dirty, dirty, fanboys with a bonus.