Category: Animation

100 years ago today …

… (yesterday, actually) Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur debuted. (The live-action first half of Gertie is here.)

*****

Today’s headline: Russia Issues Terror Alert For ‘Moose And Squirrel’

*****

So, what is the state of animation a hundred years later? Let’s take a quick look at the winter 2014 anime season.

The only show I can recommend is the hellish comedy Hozuki no Reitetsu. Much of the humor depends on knowledge of Japanese legends and folklore as well as contemporary Japanese culture. If you’re not familiar with the story of Momotaro, for instance, you’ll miss many of the jokes in the first episode. Even so, enough of the humor survives translation, ((Sometimes excessively free translation; e.g., in the fourth episode, the rabbit’s victims are tanuki, not badgers, but “We don’t need no stinkin’ tanuki” doesn’t have the same impact.)) and this account of the life of a competent, dour oni in an underworld populated largely by flakes and silly people nicely illustrates the close relationship between humor and horror. It also features the second-most bizarre ending animation of the season, starting with the second episode.

If you’re interested in the art of animation, Space Dandy might be worth watching. (There are episode-by-episode discussions here.) The title character is an unsympathetic jerk, however, and the stories aren’t particularly interesting. It’s probably best enjoyed without subtitles and without sound.

The third episode of World Conquest: Zvezda Plot reminded me of Cold Turkey and Yasutaka Tsutsui’s “The Last Smoker,” and I wondered if it might be another Excel Saga. However, the fourth episode was merely weird, and the fifth dumb, and I’m losing patience.

Witch Craft Works has the winter’s most bizarre ending animation. It’s also the second series to feature an iron maiden (but not Iron Maiden). Five episodes in, it looks like the dweebish protagonist is caught in the middle of a war between the witches of order and the witches of chaos, and that every female he knows is more than she appears to be. It also seems that he himself has a past he doesn’t know about. I hesitate to give Witch Craft Works a recommendation. Every episode adds complications and new characters, and I will be surprised if the crew can bring the show to a satisfactory resolution in just twelve episodes. However, thus far it’s held my attention, and, despite the female lead’s over-ample bust, fan service has been negligible.

Nothing else I’ve sampled is worth mentioning.

Ten types of silliness

The human mind requires regular doses of absurdity to maintain sanity. Not just any nonsense will do, though; otherwise, you could obtain your recommended daily allowance of absurdity by perusing the editorial page of any newspaper. The best nonsense is as rigorously logical as it is absurd, e.g., Lewis Carroll. The anime industry supplies much nonsense every season, and winter 2014 looks to be particularly rich. Here’s a quick look at some first episodes to see which might be properly silly and which are likely just dumb.

A recent genre of anime is travesties involving Oda Nobunaga. There are two this time, Nobunagun and Nobunaga the Fool. One involves a military-otaku girl who wields a gun embodying the spirit of Nobunaga; the other has mecha. Both feature random historical characters, from Joan of Arc to Jack the Ripper, and both feature lots and lots of action. Yawn.
Silly/dumb rating (enjoyably absurd = 10; just plain stupid = 1): 3 (both shows)

Stuffed animal toys are power

An imperious little girl riding a pink bicycle with training wheels intends to conquer the world in World Conquest Zvezda Plot, and she just might do it. There are lots of explosions, and many strange people wearing masks run around, acting threatening and shouting slogans. So far, it makes no sense at all — which is not necessarily a bad sign, but I do expect some exposition in the second episode.
Silly/dumb rating: 7

Death bunnies

I sampled three separate shows about people with magical powers, two of them in high school settings. Magic is more contagious than the flu in Magical Warfare. Norio Wakamoto is a frog familiar in Wizard Barristers. A young man learns that he is a princess in Witch Craft Works. There are also giant armored bunnies.
Silly/dumb ratings: Magical Warfare, 5; Wizard Barristers, 6; Witch Craft Works, 5.

Space Boobies Dandy is nothing like Cowboy Bebop. The first episode was pure farce. This could be fun if the writers are deft, but Dandy is a flake who could easily become tedious. I suspect the dub is unwatchable.
Silly/dumb rating: 6

Robot Girls Z

Robot Girls Z is an improved Love Pheremone (not recommended), in which the not-quite-competent heroines present a greater threat to their city than do the villains they fight. It could be fun, but the third short episode was too off-color for my taste.
Silly/dumb rating: 5

In Tonari no Seki, a student maintains his sanity at school by undertaking various complicated projects at his desk in the back of the classroom, such as building a Pythagoras-Switch arrangement using erasers as dominoes. This annoys the girl at the next desk over, and she annoys me. The best part was the music, which reminded me of Masaki Kurihara.
Silly/dumb rating: 4

So cheerful

Hell is a complicated place in Hozuki no Reitetsu. Hozuki is the demon king’s right-hand oni, handling crises, solving problems and raising goldfish flowers (which are nothing like Nematanthus). I usually find “slice of life” series tedious, but this slice of afterlife has promise.
Silly/dumb rating: 8

I’ll probably watch more of Hozuki no Reitetsu and World Conquest Zvezda Plot, and maybe Space Dandy and Wizard Barristers. The rest — meh. At least there’s more Kill la Kill.

Submarines, rabbits and ogres

I’m not compiling a top-ten list of this year’s anime because I didn’t watch ten series all the way through. These are the shows that I started and didn’t quit watching in disgust or boredom.

Tolerable

Armed and dangerous

I Couldn’t Be a Hero, So …: It sagged badly in the middle, and there was more fanservice than I care for throughout. However, Yu-Shibu pulled itself together for a satisfying grand finale. Also, any show that espouses the free market deserves credit.

Continue reading “Submarines, rabbits and ogres”

Checking in

Use the force ...

Life is busier than usual right now, and it will be a week or two before I have time for a proper post. Until then, here are a few odds and ends.

• The true and proper words to the traditional Christmas carol:

Boston Charlie

• Some more silly stuff I’ve come across recently:

Flute season

Great ...

• If Kyousougiga ends well as well as it began, it likely will be the second-best show of 2013 (I don’t expect any current series to top the second half of Shin Sekai Yori). Here’s a tune from the OST that illustrates one aspect of the show. If Carl Stalling wrote anime music, it might sound something like this:

• Kill la Kill is currently in the middle of a tournament arc. Once that’s resolved, I expect that the show will shift gears, and then we’ll see just how good it really is.

• Arpeggio of Blue Steel, when it isn’t annoyingly silly, has been a surprisingly good series. Ubu has more to say about it. See Jusuchin for episode-by-episode discussions, with plentiful spoilers.

• Despite my better judgement, I’m still watching I couldn’t, so, etc. The creators can’t decide whether it’s a comedy, a fanservice vehicle, an action story or a romance; too often, it’s none of the above. Still, it’s just interesting enough that I want to see what happens. I wish Fino were in a better show with better writers.

• Today’s quote:

History is satire, and histories that are simply serious are simply false.

Continue reading “Checking in”

Submarine with duckie

Submarine with duck

Episode seven of Arpeggio of Blue Steel was mostly just plain silly, with the “mental models” of the warships behaving like infatuated adolescents. The show is partly about about artificial (or alien) intelligence, as embodied by the models, acquiring human-like emotions and behavior, but this was ridiculous. Oh, yeah, it was a beach episode, too. It was set on Iwoto/Iwo Jima, and, as I anticipated, there was no indication that the writers had any awareness of the geological nature of the island.

Episode seven of Kill la Kill was also subpar. All the absurd invention and energy couldn’t redeem the trite moral: wealth isn’t necessarily a blessing. (I would like to verify that for myself, though. Would anyone care to subsidize a few months of luxury for me?) It’s still worth watching, but I expected something better.

Incidentally, I recently discovered that Kazuki Nakashima, the “series composition” guy for Kill la Kill, also wrote the play that Oh! Edo Rocket was based on.

Maybe they can pixelate them out

What is going to give American critics more problems with Hayao Miyazaki’s last movie? This:

Although “The Wind Rises” has a strong pacifist message, it is essentially a biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, an aeronautical engineer whose contribution to the world was a killing machine. His designs led to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, which was used to devastating effect during World War II.

or this:

Mr. Miyazaki’s film, which is aimed at adults, also features at least eight scenes in which characters smoke cigarettes….

It’s just a matter of time before Haibane Renmei is rated “NC-17” for Reki’s horrifying habit.

Something stinks

Iwoto?

Okay, for the sake of a story, I can suspend my disbelief in sentient submarines and ships. I can accept “mental models” of these vessels that look like adolescent girls. I can even believe that stuffed bears eat carrots. But I cannot believe that any military would store vital materials on Iwo Jima . “Sulphur Island” is the tip of a rapidly-inflating volcanic resurgent dome, and it’s rising out of the sea at an average rate of about eight inches a year, rendering any harbor or dock temporary. Soon, geologically speaking, magma is going to meet seawater, catastrophically. The creators of Arpeggio of Blue Steel need to do better research.

*****

Shin Sekai Yori depicts a future in which adults are frightened of children. We’re already there. (Via Ace.)

Love, Labrador

The Kousanji family

Five episodes in, the story in Kyousougiga is taking shape, and it looks like that underneath the Carrollian whimsey and name games, it is exactly what it purports to be, a fairy tale of love and rebirth in the Kousanji family. It’s difficult to encapsulate the show beyond that. ((Crunchyroll’s description of the show is “Enter a description.”)) Instead, here are a bunch of screen caps from the second episode, “Episode 1,” to give you an idea of the flavor of this willfully eccentric series.

Continue reading “Love, Labrador”

Through another looking glass

Quick notes on what I’m currently watching:

Jonathan said the magic words “Alice in Wonderland” in his notes about Kyousougiga, so of course I had to take a look. A few minutes into episode zero, I wondered if I was back in Kenji Nakamura Land. Not exactly, it turns out, but some of the designers had indeed earlier worked on Mononoke and other Nakamura projects. If you liked the art in Gatchaman Crowds, check Kyousougiga out.

About Kyousougiga itself: after watching episodes zero (surrealistic verging on psychotic; prestissimo) and one (in which the story actually begins; allegro ma non troppo), I can say that it sure is lively, inventive and fantastical, and very, very busy — you can’t let your attention wander for an instant lest you miss a vital clue. Whether all the bright colors and incessant activity ultimately add up to a story that makes sense remains to be seen.

Kill la Kill rockets along like a psychobilly song, proudly lowbrow and defiantly tasteless. There might be a political message and sociological commentary lurking beneath the outrages and the breakneck pace, but through the fifth episode it hardly matters. Kyousougiga and Coppelion show how artsy anime can be; Kill la Kill reminds you that you’re watching cartoons. Before there was Miyazaki, there was Tex Avery.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel has been a pleasant surprise. Given the elements — kids in the navy, sentient ships and submarines with “mental model” avatars that look like pretty girls, a powerful but vaguely-defined enemy, glowing hexagonal grids — I expected a Strike Witches ripoff. However, the focus has been on battle tactics, politics, and the puzzles human behavior presents to non-human minds. Fanservice has been minimal thus far.

For a while it seemed that I couldn’t be bothered to come up with a real title was going to be the comic counterpart of Divergence Eve: a very good show nearly spoiled by a surfeit of jiggle. Possibly the makers realized that; I didn’t notice any buy-the-BD moments in the fifth episode. However, while it was mildly amusing, it was never more than that, and Raul’s outbursts are increasingly grating. Unless the next few episodes are markedly better, I’ll probably drop it.

I likely will also drop Outbreak Company. Our hero crossed the line from raving otaku to blithering idiot in the fourth episode, and much as I would like to see what elves and dwarves make of human culture as presented in manga and anime, I’m losing patience. Update: Ken the Brickmuppet reports that the fifth episode is a disaster. The show is now off my watch list.

Today’s musical interlude

The Professor has discovered “group sounds,” the reaction of young Japanese musicians to the Beatles’ 1966 performance at the Nippon Budokan. Here’s a band of that school I recently discovered, Yokohama’s The Golden Cups. They might have had the first fuzzbox in Japan. The bass player, Masayoshi “Louis” Kabe, sounds like an asian John Entwistle to me.

Continue reading “Today’s musical interlude”

Miscellany

Guys und Panzer:

(Via the Borderline Boy.)

An ornithopter for Miyazaki.

The Sailor Senshi meet the Jetsons. (Via Project Rooftop.)

“I think that when a human engineer lives a good life, he’s reincarnated as a beaver.”

Full disclosure: I am a creature of the sinister right-wing Koch brothers, just like Michael Mann. Both universities I attended, plus the one where I studied and photographed ballet and the one where I took part in the annual Renaissance Faire, have all received money from the Kochtopus.

Don’t expect a Calvin and Hobbes movie.

You probably shouldn’t expect another VEI 8 blast from Yellowstone, either.

I haven’t had a haircut in 20 years. Perhaps that is why I’m still alive despite riding my bike every day on the wild streets of west Wichita.

Notes on growing biochemical weapons.

Pride and Prejudice for academics.

Ikea or black metal?

Today’s musical interlude, lunatic bassist edition:

MxBx

Do all the little-girl singers sound alike to you? Is the Anime Music Tournament making you sleepy? Here’s something to wake you up. (If you’re prone to seizures, don’t click.)

If all you know about Japanese rock is what you hear in anime, you’re missing most of the best. Someday I’ll write about the bands I’ve discovered, from Happy End and the Sadistic Mika Band to Melt-Banana and Tatsuya Yoshida’s various projects. In the meantime, here’s an article about and an interview with Melt-Banana.

We Have Signal: MELT-BANANA from We Have Signal on Vimeo.

If you find Yako’s vocals hard to take, try thinking of her voice as a percussion instrument.

(Via Clear and Refreshing.)

The year of sewing dangerously

Useful adjectives for discussing Kill la Kill:

ridiculous
tasteless
vulgar
lunatic
gross
headlong
obscene
violent
sophomoric
breathless
extreme
insane
pretentious
freakish
puerile
stripperiffic
furious
absurd
pell-mell
disgusting
fun

The ideal audience for Kill la Kill is a bunch of drunken male college sophomores. The show really is too tasteless to recommend, but if you can stomach the inexcusable extremes, you might find it compulsively watchable. I can hardly call it good, but if the creators can maintain the berserk energy of the first three episodes without veering into stupidity or pornography, Kill la Kill could very well be great.

Other shows I’m currently following include Yuusha ni Narenakatta Ore wa Shibushibu Shuushoku o Ketsui Shimashita, Outbreak Company and Arpeggio of Blue Steel. I’m feeling lazy, so I’ll just refer you to Steven and Avatar for commentary on the first two. About Coppelion, I don’t know. There might be a good story there, or it might descend into Angst and Message. I also sampled Tokyo Ravens, which I barely remember though it’s only been a few days since I watched it, and Galilei Donna, which is ridiculous but does feature a wrench wench. I might watch more of the latter, but I don’t have great hopes for it.

Update: As of the third episode, I’m Not Typing This Silly Long Title Out Again is on probation. Fino may be a delightful character, but tentacles cross the line.

Update II: Another word for Kill la Kill: shameless.

Calendar girls

Calendar girls

It’s the time of year to look for new calendars. I found a bunch at YesAsia, such as the Girls und Panzer one above. Other shows represented that might be of interest to certain visitors here include Vividred Operation, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet and Hatsune Miku. There’s a Gatchaman calendar, but it’s the old-style Gatchaman, not Gatchaman Crowds — a pity; Utsutsu deserves at least one month of her own. ((Better yet, a calendar of her own.))

For those with different tastes, there are two Edward Gorey calendars, this one, and The Evil Garden.

Pop quiz

What do Shinku Izumi, Light Yagami, Death the Kid, Alpaca (from Polar Bear’s Café) and Percy Weasley have in common? The answer is below.

A few last notes on Gatchaman Crowds:

• The ending was unsatisfying. Although the good guys won and evil was defeated, and the resolution made some sense in terms of the show’s premises, it left too many questions unanswered. For instance, who or what is JJ? What is his connection with Berg-Katze? How did he know to pick Hajime? Are Utsutsu and Jou still around? What is Berg-Katze? What is his origin? What about MESS? Perhaps there wasn’t enough air time available to make everything plain, but if so, then why was half the penultimate episode a clip show?

• Nakamura doesn’t show us the final confrontation of Hajime and Berg-Katze, so I don’t know if J. Greely’s prediction was accurate. It makes sense and could have happened, and it would have made a fine climactic scene.

• Hajime is the most alien character in the show. ((Except maybe for JJ, but he scarcely counts as a character.)) I’m not convinced that she’s human, even if she does talk to her mother on the phone.

• Nakamura has a more optimistic view of human nature than I do, and more faith in the possibility of utopia. I’d rather that people didn’t try to immanentize the eschaton. (On the other hand, if you can transform troublemakers and jerks into inert cubes, then the remaining people probably will get along better and behave more responsibly. For a while.)

• Shifting attitudes toward information technologies can be followed in anime. In 1998’s Serial Experiments Lain, the “wired” is weird, scary and dangerous. In 2007’s Dennou Coil, evolved Google Glass is a lot of fun, though occasionally still dangerous. In Gatchaman Crowds, smart phones and conscious artificial intelligence are taken for granted and are generally benign.

Despite my reservations, Gatchaman Crowds is one of the better shows I’ve seen recently and is worth your time. It’s by no means Kenji Nakamura‘s best, though. If you want to see what he is capable of, violate international copyright law and download Mononoke.

The answer to the quiz:

Spoiler

They were all performed by Mamoru Miyano, who was also the voice of Berg-Katze.

[collapse]

Update: Ken the Brickmuppet finds libertarian themes in Gatchaman Crowds.

Update II: Greely found a picture of the team in old-style uniforms:

Gatchaman

Nobody’s favorite guitarist

Umizatou as Norio Wakamoto

While I wait to see how well Kenji Nakamura pulls everything together in the concluding episodes of Gatchaman Crowds, I’ve been again re-watching Mononoke, his first full series and still his best. Above is a screen capture from the fourth episode, in which an ayakashi with the unmistakable voice of Norio Wakamoto visits the passengers of a ship sailing seas stranger than any in Yellow Submarine.

Mononoke Crowds

Crowds: Mononoke, above; Gatchaman, below.

Gatchaman Crowds