Well, the holidays got me sick. Not fun. But being bed-ridden was a great excuse to do my first legit series marathon in a very long time. I chose the supernatural action thriller Ga-Rei Zero. There may be minor spoilers, but considering the bulk of the story is laid out within a couple episodes, there’s not a lot to spoil in this series.

Story

Ga-Rei Zero is the origin story of the Ga-Rei manga, showing the path a young girl named Kagura took to become a powerful exorcist in a world full of demons and government “spiritual defense” organizations. Told mostly in flashback, Zero recounts the love she shared for 3 years with her surrogate sister Yomi.

There’s not much way to talk about this series without talking about the bizarre beginning: The non-traditional structure is a make-or-break point for Zero. By starting somewhere near the end, telling in flashback, then finally joining the two ends, writer Katsuhiko Takayama (also series writer for ef) constructed a horrible ode to inevitability that anime doesn’t deal in often, and some people just aren’t gonna go for. I can think of a live-action parallel: In Scorsese’s Casino, Robert De Niro’s character dies in a firey car bomb in the first couple minutes. The ensuing movie is entirely a flashback, and three hours later you remember: oh, yeah. He dies. Ga-Rei Zero takes an even more desperately depressing approach. Scorsese aimed to shock you with your forgetfulness, but this series constantly twists the knife to remind you what awaits.

On a superficial level of motorcycles, government demon-fighting teams, heroes-turned-bad, and depressive mood, Zero strongly resembles Blassreiter. It has a few key traits that separate it, though: half length, devotion to standard anime-“isms,” superior animation, and more personal themes of love and individual destiny versus Blassreiter’s focus on faith and duty.

Characters

I really wish Kagura were a more interesting character, but in truth that goes for most of the characters of G-RZ. Rather than a complex collection of emotions, they often feel like they’re just a product of the things that happen to them throughout the series — can you honestly say there are many people out there who wouldn’t have taken Yomi’s route, given the absolute emotional and spiritual pummeling she suffers?

That said, their generic qualities might serve to make them more sympathetic (same question applies here), and as the climax approaches, it’s hard not to feel for Kagura and, to a degree, Yomi’s erstwhile fiancé Noriyuki.

Technical

There isn’t a whole lot to say here. Nothing animation-wise, or audio-wise, went over-the-top for execution, but it’s appealing and more than solid the whole time. Character designs and overall style project a Production IG vibe, but maybe that’s just because Kagura = Saaya (Blood+) to some degree in my mind and it colored everything else. Fight scenes are well-directed and there’s no slippage in the high quality over 12 episodes.

Themes

Amidst all the standard anime junk — dead mothers and distant fathers, swordfighters in seifuku (not complaining), a world of improbable science-meets-magic — Zero manages to raise some interesting points. It’s really too bad that it spends a lot of time broadcasting those points through viewer proxies, dramatic monologues, and its lovely Engrishy tagline, “Would you kill someone you love, because of love?” Not that I expect the average anime to stop holding its viewers’ hands, but Ga-Rei Zero teased that it was going to give me lots to chew on, then took that away by outright verbalizing almost all of it.

While the show really wants us to ponder the question of whether Yomi overcame the Stone’s power or it just granted her true wish, what’s the difference? Either way, love tragically triumphs over greed and revenge, not that it helps anything. In hindsight, it’s kinda like the Haibane Renmei question of intent, except with damnation in place of salvation as the end result.

The Y Word

If you’ve read anything on blogs about Ga-Rei Zero, you’ve probably heard the word yuri tossed around a few times. In fact, ANN’s page lists “yuri” as the only theme. Glad I wasn’t watching it for that, or the other themes of “senseless suffering,” “inevitable tragedy,” and “sweet swordfighting” would have really distracted me.

But you can feel the sisterly love, and it really has to be ramped up for the horrific result to be felt. In the end, out of 4 hours of series there are about 30 seconds worth of anything that could be called yuri. There is one mouth-to-mouth kiss (a sort of Lady and the Tramp thing with Pocky), but that scene is there for a reason: it’s paralleled later, with horribly sad (if slightly overplayed) results.

So don’t watch this for yuri anymore than you’d watch it for guro — there’s enough blood, bathing, and shortness of skirts to cover your perverted needs, but it’s just not that kind of show. You’d have to be pretty depraved to get your jollies from something so damn depressing.

Bottom Line

Ga-Rei Zero caught me with its surprises in the first couple episodes, but after those were over, it continued to entertain and satisfy with good animation, cute girls with swords, and my ultimate anime fanservice, ludicrous tragedy (geez, maybe I am an extremist after all, clearly some people are not up for that and I guess I can’t blame them).

1990s OVAs full of tits, blood and total apocalypse fed my early fandom, and while this isn’t strictly an update to that it does provide the same kinds of thrills with a little more depth, a lot more heart, and a modern edge. Plus, it’s a lot better than Mnemosyne. Take its 12-episode length into account, and it’s hard for me not to recommend Ga-Rei Zero to anyone who likes their anime dark, action-heavy, and depressing.

I’m not going to go too much into why it’s made of awesome and win — many have seen it, plenty of blogs praise it even if they don’t agree on the methods, and most people already know lots about JC Staff’s occasionally brilliant skills of execution that can make something as rote as Hatsukoi Limited into a winner and something well written into animated gold. The true strength of Honey & Clover is not its humor, underplayed dramatic moments, or unwillingness to insultingly explain key points to you out loud; it’s the writing, plain and simple. As a fan you’ve probably spent at least a little time justifying why anime isn’t kids’ stuff, but you’re often repaid by archetyped characters bouncing around a high school and crying a lot. Honey & Clover is your true reward. Even the theme that I most wanted to talk about is a little more “mature” than what you normally see: That’s letting go, one of the series’ many central threads that runs throughout. I’m picking ONE because apparently I can write almost 2,000 words about it, so to take on the whole thing would be extreme fucking insanity.

Something atypical for me: I try to leave them out normally, but there will probably be big spoilers.

What do I mean, specifically, when I say “letting go?” Easiest way to explain is through the characters, and how their ability to “let go” is directly proportional to how much they grow as people.

Rika and Shuu. Rika’s pretty easy: she is still hanging on to her dead husband. In a way, Shuu-chan is hanging on to him as well. They both lived a depressed life, feeling half complete without their counterpart and unable to even be around each other. Rika fully planned to off herself after completing their last joint project, which seems counterintuitive to me (seems that finishing that would be the last thing she needs to move on, but she’s taking “move on” in a very different way). She’s the only person who’s somewhat unclear at the end of the story: did Mayama really open her eyes to the kind of love that can free her? Not sure. But she did get the benefit of a very shock-treatment method of therapy when they visited her childhood home. Shuu of course, freed himself by admitting his feelings about Hagu, — he’d already been dedicating himself to her, but to truly live for her was his way of finally facing the future.

Kaoru. He’s the next simplest to explain. Though his father specifically told him not to pursue a grudge, he dedicated his life to just that. Was it about redeeming his father, reclaiming the company, or revenge on the villain? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t even sure anymore, and besides, everything he did from a very early age was colored by his envy of Shinobu. He couldn’t stop his hanging on to the past until the deed was done, and then he was left without a purpose for quite a while. Clinging to something, especially a grudge, for so long causes you to really lose sight of everything and get serious tunnel vision.

Yamada. Speaking of which. Boys from her childhood, good looking suitors with successful careers, even a better job — they all existed outside her narrow field of vision that encompassed only Mayama. What was it that finally broke the spell? More than likely being around Rika and throwing herself into her work had the largest effect on her, but of course cool guy Nomiya’s clumsy and vulnerable persistence finally opened the door. She might be the most cartoony of the characters, like a shoujo heroine (Kotoko from Itazura Na Kiss, anyone?) who just can’t stop. But when she became free, it happened in a realistic enough way: not a snapping realization, but a gradual stepping into the light.

Mayama. Here’s the flipside of that equation. What is there to talk about? Mayama’s hangup is obvious. It’s Rika. Wrong. At least, not all the way right. Yes, he had a serious problem with his one-way feelings for Rika, but that (sort of) paid off in the end. The moment when his folly ended was when he loosened his iron grip on Yamada, the poor, beautiful bench warmer. Even he wasn’t 100% sure whether he was keeping an overly big-brother hold on her or if he really was keeping her on the back burner, but neither one was healthy. He found it very easy to blame her until Nomiya went on the offensive and he stopped bemoaning his own situation long enough to realize how badly he was fucking her up by maintaining his hold.

Shinobu. The younger Morita seems to have had the opposite problem of everyone here; instead of clinging to something that’s holding him back, his unwillingness to cling to anything is what stopped him for so long. His feelings went unexpressed, responsibility was an ignored nuisance, and he even tried to bring Hagu on that train of irresponsible apathy with him. In that way he’s actually like Takemoto gone unchecked, but more on that in a second.

Hagu. For most of her life, until college, drawing was her only escape. And when she was told that she was better at art than most people, she reacted in a way that infuriated her “fans.” But Hagu’s desire to move back to the country and spend her adult life painting the forest and the mountains shouldn’t be confused with a clear-headed decision or an adult way of thinking. She just hung on to that life from before, and the more time she spent in Tokyo the more she seemed to  block out her own opinions and keep her focus on that goal that she might not even want. Combine that with being unwilling to trouble her beloved Shuu-chan, and by the time of her injury she wasn’t even sure what she wanted and what she was doing for others anymore. Morita put a stop to that with his selfish but caring request that she just stop her art and be with him. Paradoxically, she was able to feel her love of drawing again just by being told that she didn’t have to do it. And that same paradox freed her.

Takemoto. Poor Takemoto. It’s easy to think of him as Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club (RIP John Hughes), the nerd who went through the same (actually, more effective) journey of self-discovery as the rest of the crew but who didn’t get the girl and ended up writing everyone’s report for them.

Takemoto was cursed by his own self-awareness. Every year since Mayama’s graduation was progressively more sad, and it became harder and harder to hold on to his memories of carefree days filled with the love of friends and dominated by the image of Hagu. For Takemoto, even the very literal journey of self-discovery brought him only to realize the value of the things and people he wanted to come back to. I thought sure he’d wind up replacing Shuu as a teacher, his attachment to the school and reluctance to commit to the future were so great.

At the end of the first series, it was in debate whether the naïve and crying Hagu was confused about her feelings or just plain couldn’t return his; by the middle of the second series the truth was heart-wrenchingly obvious. And that, long past the point of unequivocal defeat, was really hard for Takemoto to stop clinging to. It partially served as a reminder of how much different this is from most anime: as with Yamada, just working hard to win over your unrequited love won’t necessarily change anything. It just makes you lonelier and less tied to reality. But more importantly, this is about how the things that were holding Takemoto back were tied together. When he finally cut the ties to both his college life and his unrequited love, he could rest. Hagu let him do that with her trip to the train station and her goofy bittersweet sandwiches. And when Takemoto was finally able to cry and let it go, we the viewers finally got the chance to be free as well, left with our own bittersweet taste.

Close to home (do you remember love, and how it ruins everything?)

Putting aside the flowery talk that always sounds better in your head than in print, how does this contribute to me, my viewing, and the fearsome oyaji hate machine that is Honey & Clover? Simple, on one level. It makes for a story that someone like me (a bit older, out of school for quite some time) can not only identify with, but be hurt by in a way that more juvenilely focused plots (no offense) just can’t deliver. While that KeyAni gut punch is swell at first, it fades quickly. For the feeling to really sink in and last through time and repeated viewings, it has to resonate. There must be identifiable pain in your own life behind it.

I suppose that’s why Takemoto’s character creates a dull ache in my heart. He’s the reliable but not-too-sexy dude who doesn’t get the girl and can’t quite be okay with growing up. Eventually I did get the girl, but Honey & Clover showed me that I still haven’t quite shaken the Takemoto-like desire for things to just “stop spinning” for a while. That’s painful, as it refers to mortality, which is an even more agonizing subject than unrequited love — you cannot go back, no matter how much you want to. But even that realization is a beautiful thing.

And it means that for all those marvelous characters, great humor, and tasty music, the thing that really sets Honey & Clover apart is that it has the power to hurt, help, and look inside its viewers. You don’t see that too often. It also apparently has the power to end all the usual irreverence in my blog posts, so I apologize for that. Back to dick jokes and Macross references next time.

But that resonance was important for me to get across, and I know plenty of folks love the series for different reasons so I ask this: did Honey & Clover hit you very hard personally, compared to other anime? Was there a character that you identified with particularly, as I did with Takemoto? And might H&C help you move on from something?

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.

Problem is, it still ain’t perfect. Each channel and method has its own downfalls and drawbacks, so I intend to swallow a couple bucks to provide a reasonable practical guide. I had planned to co-write this series with Riex for Oi, Hayaku! quite some time ago, but of course we didn’t quite get to that, and now I’ve been beaten to the punch by Reverse Thieves and their very well-done analysis of Crunchyroll’s anime membership.

I want to preface this whole journey with one of the fundamental problems behind any streaming or online distribution method. At least for the forseeable future, both studios and licensors get their cash from DVD sales (well — that and merch). Any online distribution is seen as just a promotional tool for those DVDs. That’s a big reason why we haven’t seen a lot of HD/high-res/TV-watchable stuff out there yet. Younger generations of folks don’t necessarily need physical media — and considering that most anime started its life in a fairly transient way, as a television series, who can blame them anyway? More and more people are connecting PCs to TVs, and a lot of anime viewers aren’t interested in leaving their computers (which have higher-res screens than TVs) to begin with.

If you saw the recent half-off anime sale at Best Buy (aka Margin Eliminators, Inc.) you know that those plastic discs are not doing it like they used to, but there’s still a ways to go before we see anime companies on either side of the Pacific fully embrace digital, with or without DRM. That out of the way…

Enter the Apple

iTunes is a perfect candidate for cracking any tough market, since it persuaded a Napster-crazed America to start actually paying for music. Not only that, it persuaded us to pay for low-quality (128kbps), DRM-handicapped music. Granted, the DRM worked better than the ultra-crippling Windows Media kind, but it wasn’t the quality or portability that won customers over — it was Apple’s trademark ease of use. When they brought video to that, suddenly 5 bucks to rent a low-res movie didn’t seem that bad to people. It still does to me, especially as a longtime Netflix user, but it is portable, and every once in a while you end up with an iTunes gift card so what are you gonna do…

The first thing you’ll notice about finding anime on iTunes is that it’s really fucking hard to do. That’s because categories are pretty broad in the iTunes store and there isn’t one for “TV Anime.” There is one for Movies — and it fails hard, just check it out — but not for TV Shows, which is the meat and potatoes of the anime viewer’s diet. So Ouran High School Host Club falls under “Animation,” but your average tit-filled Gonzo action-fest is in the “Sci Fi” section.

FUNi Factor

The second thing you’ll probably notice is that, like a lot of the digital channels that I’ll be exploring, FUNimation rules the roost. Each site and store has its own unique players (like Joost’s Gong or Toei on Crunchyroll) but Funi is like the Visa commercial, everywhere you want to be. Also, I’m assuming that original licenses probably didn’t apply when they started going digital, so it’s far from being all of Funi’s stuff. That means a lot of Gonzo. If you’re not interested in the likes of Speed Grapher, Afro Samurai, Burst Angel… you get the picture, your choices start to drop tremendously. That’s not to say Funi doesn’t have good stuff on iTunes — Ghost Hunt, Ouran, FMP: The Second Raid, and Gunslinger Girl for instance — or that some of the Gonzo titles aren’t worth watching.

Gong Anime, a fixture in streaming sites, doesn’t really have a presence on iTunes, but the Anime Network does, and they have a few interesting titles: Tsukihime, Mahoromatic, Angelic Layer, Saiyuki, and Pet Shop of Horrors. Nothing earth-shattering, but hey it’s better than just watching Speed Grapher all day long.

Manga Entertainment, most famous for the “THIS SHIT’S NOT FOR KIDSSSSSS” trailers at the beginning of their VHS tapes of 90s OVAs (also for being the people who will never reprint End of Evangelion, thankyoujebus I bought it back in the day), has a few titles as well and most are really solid. Among them are Astro Boy, Stand Alone Complex, Gurren Lagann, Robotech, Macross Plus, Macross II, and Now And Then, Here and There.

And of course, tons of Dragonball, Naruto, Bleach, and other popular Toonami-style shonen action series, along with their accompanying movie versions, abound in the store.

There are a few other movies, which makes iTunes the clear winner in that department (I think CR has… two?), but it’s not much of a win. You’d expect Disney properties like Ghibli flicks to be here, but not so. However, search a little and you’ll find Paprika, Tekkonkinkrit, and a few others.

Crowdsourcing

Most sites and stores feature user reviews. So can you trust them? In iTunes’ case, reviews vary depending on what you’re looking at. For the longest time, all any of them ever said was “Get Naruto! Vote Zero if you want Naruto!!!!!one!!” This is, as you can imagine, not super awesomely helpful. Now that iTunes HAS Naruto, these sorts of things have ironed themselves out a little, but reviews still tend toward the not-too-helpful. iTunes buyers also seem to be DVD buyers, and range from people just like my friends to the superior-otaku “I know lots about anime because I have 6 boxsets at home” attitude. If you’re not 12, and if you own more than 6 DVDs, you will see through that. And one of Macross Plus’s reviews talks about how these days it’s all computers, and things were much better back then without all the computers. Macross Plus. Look it up. Now who’s the superior fan? HUH?

Anyway, here’s the breakdown, in a format I’ll be using for the rest as well:

So… anyone here buy iTunes anime? What are your thoughts?

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.

You may have noticed that since I randomly sampled a bit of Futakoi Alternative, I haven’t posted much. That’s because I’ve been watching it. On recommendations from Kabitzin and TheBigN, I dove headlong into what turned out to be one of the best series I’ve seen in quite some time.

Story

In Futakoi Alternative, which takes place in the same female-twin-infested universe as an (apparently crappy) harem series called Futakoi, Rentarou Futabo inherits a detective agency from his father and operates it with his young twin assistants. It’s not exactly a normal premise in itself, but add in crooked cops, a tofu salesman obsessed with crawfish, a Yakuza boss with a Mazinger Z fist, a vast underground conspiracy involving humanoid squid, and an arranged marriage in a castle in Germany, and shit starts to go all over the place.

Nearly every episode bounces around chronologically. At first, that’s a little disorienting and just a smidge confusing, but in the end this method works wonders for the emotional impact of the story.

Characters

Characters are foremost in driving Futakoi Alternative’s 13 episodes, especially Rentarou. He’s one of anime’s finest male leads — neither a spineless harem loser who can’t make up his mind about what he wants, nor an emotionless caricature of manliness. He’s a regular guy who you get to watch grow from a somewhat indecisive kid to a young man who takes things into consideration before ultimately tackling his problems head-on. The main theme of Alternative has more to do with Rentarou accepting who he is, and what it means to be his father’s son, than it does with squid conspiracies. He does, however, smoke a cigarette in one drag during an especially awesome scene, and if you think that’s great, you’re right.

Sara and Soujyu, the twins, aren’t as deeply characterized but they’re not one-dimensional moe shortcuts either. Sara’s strength and unhesitating decision-making are the trigger for the second half of the plot, and the vulnerability she ultimately shows is the ironic product of her unwavering resilience. By the same token, Soujyu, the shy and accomodating one, gains a quiet and believable strength in that second half.

Side characters aren’t very well-developed at all, but they are highly entertaining and more than serve their purpose, especially the crawfish-catching Gen.

Animation & Music

Alternative has some of the best background music I’ve seen in a TV anime. It almost always enhances the mood greatly, and anyone who’s seen it should probably identify with the words “disco fight scene.” Animation (by ufotable with flag and feel.) is capable and never drops in quality, but the directing goes far beyond the call of duty. Action sequences are over-the-top and frequently resemble Kazuya Tsurumaki’s wacked-out FLCL, while the more melancholy stuff can be gut-wrenching without slipping into Key-style melodrama.

Vibe

I have to mention that one of Futakoi Alternative’s greatest strengths (if not the greatest) is its constantly-shifting mood. The first half is manic, hilarious, and action-packed. We get a bit of angst off Rentarou as everyone including the spectre of his dead father pressures him to be something. But overall, it’s a free and easy (if very wild) time. You feel as if there can’t be more fun packed into 20 minutes. Then, abruptly, the second half cuts a wide gash through your fun, just as it does with the characters. That manic energy is ripped away and replaced by alternating sweet sadness and hopeless desperation. By the time the middle of the story starts winding into the end, the only happiness the characters have seen for weeks was in their own bizarre and delusional fantasies. But by the end of the story, frenetic action and laughs are back, augmented this time by a fist-pumping “fuck yeah” factor that would make Simon and Kamina proud.

Bottom Line

Just watch it. It’s got brains, balls, and heart. And, it’s got something for almost everyone: romance lovers, missile spam fetishists, FLCL fans, and even bigamists. I would love to own the show, but it seems unlikely at this point that we’ll get a license for R1 and I’m almost never willing to pay R2 DVD prices for stuff, so my enjoyment of this series is a bit bittersweet. Much of what we watch as far as TV anime is throwaway, even the best of it, but I can see myself easily enjoying Futakoi Alternative again. I can recommend this wild ride without any hesitation.

During the Spring of this year, Gonzo’s initial online streaming experiment began with two series: Tower of Druaga and BLASSREITER. Both shows were featured not only on Crunchyroll and BOST TV, but YouTube as well for an unlimited time. Tower of Druaga was pretty well-liked, and its twist ending caused some interest in Gonzo’s new properties. Then, of course, Panty Witches was a raging success of the dumbest kind. So what about Blassreiter, arguably the most “Gonzo-like” of the series?

Well, it doesn’t immediately stand out the way either Strike Witches or Druaga did. The series tends to slip into Gonzo’s comfort zone pretty quickly, and as such exhibits a quite a few of their typical problems. But it’s not without merit either — in fact, at times it was really engaging.

Story

Without getting too much into it, since part of the fun is watching the story unfold, Blassreiter tells the story of a human augmentation project — somewhere between Twenty Faces’ cybernetic super-soldiers and Gendo’s Human Instrumentality — gone horribly awry. The augmented monsters, called Amalgams, start running all amok in Germany on their way to destroy and remake the entire world. Through it all, the only people with the balls to try and save the world are some glorified cops on motorcycles.

XAT uniforms require cleavage, regardless of gender. I found this to be pretty progressive on Gonzo’s part.

Characters

The series gets a few episodes in before you finally realize who it’s actually about, and it’s not so much racing hero Gerd Frenzen (which you might think through two or three episodes) as it is XAT cops Amanda and Hermann. By the final episode, they’ve become fantastic leads. Amanda is the strongest female I’ve seen in anime in a very long time. If you’re looking for her to break down and need a man at some point, take your moe elsewhere — she stays on point for 25 episodes.

And, she’s a pink-haired looker!

Animation

Notoriously, a lot of people (myself included) ditched this show from minute one when they saw just how bad Gonzo’s trademark CG had gotten. It was like a video game had invaded my anime. But two things happened: First, it got better. The CG fight scenes between the dextrous amalgams were fast-moving and creatively directed. And second, I watched a couple Speed Grapher episodes and saw to exactly what level Gonzo will stoop if they don’t feel like animating a vehicle using cels.

CG motorcycles it is, then.

I mean, motorcycles are cool, right? Right?

The Gonzo Factor

Gonzo tend to try really hard to make their “adult” shows seem very “adult.” That usually means gratuitous violence and ridiculously amped-up sexuality (lol bewbs), combined in a way that makes everything feel decidedly un-adult. Rather than upping the sex-and-violence quotient, Blassreiter’s crew opted to use hopelessness, despair, religious themes, and insane amounts of character death to create something you might actually find somewhat mature.

Themes

Blassreiter’s characters struggle most with trying to maintain their belief systems and their sense of right and wrong in a jacked-up world where most of their friends have been needlessly slaughtered (sometimes twice). A lot of the characters are Christian and question their religious beliefs, and Zwölf is a church-operated organization, but Christianity is a theme that remains mostly unexplored. Ultimately, the characters like Gerd who become Amalgams cling to any belief, even if they doubted it during life, just to try to remain human as their basest instincts start to take over their minds.

Bottom Line

Blassreiter was part of an experiment for Gonzo. They’re not doing all that well money-wise, but they dumped 2 million USD into Crunchyroll, so something apparently worked (probably Panty Witches, actually…). [Edit comes in the form of getting schooled in my comments section — that money came in April so it's actually part of what powered this whole thing.] Considering more Crunchy shows this season and the off-balance amount of Gonzo stuff in Funimation’s iTunes store, these guys are going to be anime’s first real fixture on the Internet, for better or worse. The good news is, you could do a whole lot worse than Blassreiter.

If you like your anime dark and full of action, but without the over-the-top indulgences in sex and violence that Gonzo can be guilty of at times, give it a shot. I think it’s their best “traditional Gonzo” series in a while. And even if you’re just curious, you can jaunt on down to YouTube and check it out for nothing, so why not?

Whether or not you like the recently Japan-released Lucky Star OVA (cleverly titled Lucky Star OVA) will depend almost entirely on the answer to one question: did you like Lucky Star the first time around? If you did, you’ll find yourself amused and charmed by irreverent non-sequitur comedy and a little blatant pandering. If not, you’ll find it hopelessly meaningless, unfunny, and riddled with too-obscure anime, manga, and computer game references.

What’s new and different:

• Konata’s ringtone is now “Love Legend of Mikuru” instead of “Hare Hare Yukai.” I know, it’s a damn revolution, right?
• Lucky Channel is live action. I have very little to say about this, as the sub I caught was unfinished, and no Lucky Channel subs. In Chris Farley’s immortal words, “Mother of mercy, I don’t speak Japanese!”
• An undercurrent of sweetness, sometimes almost off-putting preciousness, flows through the entirety of the video — it never gets overpowering, but the opening segment with Minami’s dog is not at all how I expected this thing to start. Think back to the final episode of the series. It worked then, but trying to manufacture it again after only a few minutes didn’t quite work.

What’s not different at all:

• Konata still speaks entirely in references to anime and games.
• Tsukasa is lovable and cute, etc.
• Minoru Shiraishi is still all over the place.
• Animation is rock-solid. Lucky Star’s simple style has always allowed Kyoto to give realistic motion and body language to their characters.
• I don’t care what anyone says. Aya Hirano is fantastic in Lucky Star.

Fans on both sides of the Pacific will no doubt enjoy little tidbits like Kagamin cosplaying as Miku Hatsune the vocaloid (leek and all) during the best segment, featuring Konata dressed in her Yuki Nagato witch gear as a poor man’s fairy godmother to Kagami’s Cinderella. Lots of MMO jokes kept me in the dark, but most anime fans probably cross over in that world at least every once in a while.

Watch it? Well, refer back to that first question. I personally enjoy Lucky Star quite a bit — trying to attribute any kind of significance to it is pointless, but that’s part of the charm. I can take it or leave it most times, so a short OVA like this every once in a while seems like a perfect way to enjoy the lighthearted and disconnected style.

This not strictly a review of Macross Frontier. There are going to be a lot of those on the web, of varying quality and opinions. And I’m guessing a lot of people are going to say they liked it, with some complaining about a botched ending or how Alto didn’t stick it in your favorite girl, blah blah. And they’ll be right about many of their complaints: the end was a copout and the love triangle was lukewarm at best. But after all the shipping, all the whining, and all the missile spam, what did Macross Frontier really do for the franchise? While thankfully some reviewers can look at Frontier as its own sci-fi series, if you’ve seen previous versions it’s harder to divorce any series from the overall Macross “experience,” the way you could with (for instance) a Gundam series.

First, let’s have a look at what other series and films have brought to the table.

• The Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The birth of Macross.
• Do You Remember Love? Established Kawamori as one of those artists who obsessively paints the same picture over and over — in this case, the chill-inducing juxtaposition of an incredible battle with a majestic song performance.
• Macross 7. Took the vague mystical concepts of Lynn Minmay and turned them into vague hard science. Also made Macross a bit silly and fun.
• Macross Plus. Set a higher standard for music and characterization, and opened up the possibility of a more mature Macross.
• Macross Zero. Gave fans real perspective on the Macross world, and a new view on Protoculture. In a way, Zero made Macross “real.”

Macross Frontier

Zero animator Satelight is back, and this time they’re out to turn all your characters into cyclops. The computer work is better, in fact it’s amazing. But the end result doesn’t smell as good as I’d like it to.

The contribution… What is it? In my mind, when I try to reach a conclusion about what Frontier means to the franchise, I come up short. Since it’s Macross, here’s a musical analogy: Frontier is less like a new album by a master songwriter and more like one of those awful tribute albums — or worse, a re-recording of old tunes by the original artist with none of the fire intact.

There’s no new Macross here, only more of the old Macross. More songs (which is a good thing), more singers to sing them, more space battle, more guy-who-looks-like-Global, and more more more references to past Macross.

The peppering of little smirks and nods to Macross lovers is a cool form of fanservice, and just as panty-shots of Mylene Jenius are a rare and notable thing, so should be those references, or they become less… nifty. Sorry, saying “special” in reference to Mylene’s panties seems totally wrong.

I like a captain who looks like Global, I like the dread inherent in a pineapple dessert, I like filming a movie about the events of Zero, but put them together along with all the other (often forced) wink-wink-nudge-nudge fanservice in this series, and two things happen: instead of creating something original, you’ve created a collection of references; and it only reminds me that all those shows you’ve referenced were better than this one.

Deja Vajra

Not only is Frontier determined to look toward the past, it’s basically made of past Macross spare parts. Take, for instance, Sheryl’s climactic performance on the battle stage, an enemy who is not actually your enemy in the end, or a fold engine for Valkyries that’s newly invented. What the flying fuck? How many times must we invent this thing? Gamlin used one in M7, Isamu used one in Plus, and suddenly Bilrer’s a flipping genius for making another one. Re-inventing the VF fold engine only served to iron out a story issue that should have been solved through quality writing.

The point is…

Perhaps I’m missing the point. Fanservice seems to form the basis of plenty of series these days anyway. Maybe Macross fans deserve to have a TV series that tells a very “Macrossian” story with a modern look, bright colors, and more songs than ever before. And I think I can get behind that idea.

The problem is, Kawamori and Satelight didn’t deliver. If the goal is to sum up the “Macross experience” in an all-encompassing story, then it deserved more consistent production values, a tighter story, and better characters (Ranka…). If the goal is simply a jumbled Super Dimensional antique store full of basic nostalgia, then I guess they did well.

Let’s just say it didn’t leave the best taste in my mouth, that way I’m justified in using this picture.

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.