Shameful Otaku Secret!

A couple months without a night or weekend off, then a week of some insane (probably non-swine) flu, a new TV season is here and nary a word. Blah, blah, work, vomit, excuses. What’s next? For me, Fall 2009 is like a ghost town in a western movie, sequel and spinoff tumbleweeds slowly rolling across my field of vision as some Morricone ripoff tunes play and bloggers get all bent out of shape about underage lesbianism that’ll never pay off. The logic to a flagging anime industry is sound: instead of producing a 50-episode series, produce a few 12-or-24-episode series, continue the ones that do well as “sequels.” That’s fine, but if you didn’t catch it the first time around, there’s not a lot of value in finding out what Haruka’s dirty little secret is (she cosplays as Shana? That’s more shameful than my own supposed secret…).

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?

You may have heard through the grapevine that I recently went on a week’s vacation — holiday, to you fancy folk in some countries. It was great: learning about another culture, eating freshly-caught (and freshly-clubbed) fish, relaxing on the beach, and spending the declining US dollar in a way that was more wallet-friendly than staying at home. And it occurred to me (with a little prodding from someone…) that place is important. In the context of anime, a place can be as compelling a character as any human, Abh, or magical ferret, but rarely gets the same attention. What is Love Hina without the Hinata Inn, and where else but planet Gunsmoke does Vash the Stampede make even a drop of sense? Here are some my favorite anime places.

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.

Double Oh Nineteen hundred seventy-nine AD. The One Year War begins. Char Aznable, the Red Comet, meets the Federation’s ultimate weapon, the Gundam, for the first time. And White Base begins its long journey.

At least, that’s what happened in the animated world.

In the third dimension, something somewhat less earth-shattering happened: I was born.

Fast forward thirty years. Gundam celebrates its anniversary with a new series announcement, international Tomino appearances, and of course a giant life-size Gundam in Tokyo, while my birthday goes by without so much as an whining post.

I have, however, set out to celebrate my thirtieth year in a truly Gundam-tastic way by finally starting my journey into the grandaddy real robot franchise. I am beginning, appropriately, with the 0079 movies.

Fifty episodes for the series is a bit of a stretch for me these days, and besides — mechafetish and ghostlightning pointed me to the movies with their helpful Gateway Gundam Chooser®.

I’m partially through the second movie, but rather than keep waiting to post, I thought I’d get out my impressions of the first.

(more…)