Tag: Current viewing

I’m down to three fansubs: two substantial stories, Denno Coil and Seirei no Moribito, and a cheesy entertainment, Murder Princess. ((I might add Oh! Edo Rocket to the list, depending on how good the second episode is. I hope to see more of the Waragetcha 5, but the translation of Master of Epic proceeds very slowly. I may resume watching Darker Than Black, Claymore and El Cazador, depending on what I read about further episodes.)) At this point, I think that DC and SnM are the two best shows of the year and better than anything from last year. ((I count Mushishi as a 2005 series.)) (I reserve the right to change my mind if either turns stupid, but I doubt that will happen.) I hesitate to write any more about the former lest I oversell it, ((Here’s the Denno Coil opening and trailer combined, which hints at the quality of the production and the tone.)) but latter deserves some comment.

Seirei no Moribito, or Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, is set in a mythical Asian land. Balsa, an expert spearwoman, rescues the prince Chagum from drowning when the oxcart he is traveling in falls off a bridge. His mother subsequently asks Balsa to be his bodyguard. Chagum needs one; he contains within himself the egg of a water spirit, and for reasons connected with that, his father the emperor wants him dead. Thus far, Balsa and Chagum have evaded the assassins, and eleven-year-old Chagum is learning about life outside the palace.

Production values are high, but the appeal of Seirei no Moribito is in the characters and story. Balsa and Chagum are fully-realized three-dimensional, sympathetic characters. Chagum in particular is appealing, combining a deep sense of responsibiility with childish naiveté. It is easy to imagine him growing up to be emperor someday.

Seirei no Moribito is based on a series of novels by Nahoko Uehashi. The makers of the anime have enough confidence in the story that they don’t feel any need to make every episode action-packed. When there is fighting, it’s spectacular (here are excerpts from the third episode ((This is mildly spoilerish, but you don’t really expect the central characters to be killed off that early, do you?)) ), but it’s sparse. The eighth episode is particularly suspenseful, and it’s mostly just characters talking and telling stories.

One element worth noting is that, although Balsa and Chagum don’t lack enemies, none of the characters thus far are evil, not even the emperor who orders his son’s death. The imperial diviners have discovered ominous signs that may be connected with the water spirit, or demon, within the prince, and the emperor’s decision, tragically wrong though it may be, is understandable. (My hunch is that there is indeed a connection, but it’s not what they think, and Chagum’s death would be disastrous.)

I’m violating my usual policy in watching Seirei no Moribito. Hitherto, I have never downloaded a fansub of a show once a license was announced (it’s going to be a long time before I know how Death Note ends). My feeble excuse is that this is one of the best series I’ve seen in a long time, I’m impatient to see the rest, and there is as yet no mention of it under either title on the Geneon website. If you have the self-control, the ideal course of action is to emulate Wabi Sabi: wait until the entire series is available, and then marathon the show. Here in region 1, that could quite possibly involve a two-year wait.

The second episode of Denno Coil introduces the adult members of Yuko/Yasako’s ((Yuko asks her friends to call her “Yasako.”)) family and adds another layer of complexity to the story. We meet her parents, but it’s Mega-baa, her grandmother, who dominates the episode. The crafty old woman runs the combination sweets store and cybershop where Fumie buys her kuro bug spray and other toys. Mega-baa can cure Yasako’s cyberpet of its virus, but there’s a price.

The connections between the real and virtual worlds become increasingly complicated. “Satchii,” a powerful but stupid antivirus program, cannot enter homes, schools or Shinto shrines. By slapping the appropriate “metatag” on the traffic light post, Fumie can change them to red — useful when Satchii is chasing the girls. By slapping a different metatag on Yasako’s forehead, Fumie enables her to fire beams from her glasses. (The beams looks like bolts of energy, but they seem seem to act by disrupting data, causing flickering gaps where they strike.)

There is evidence that the humans in Daikoku City are themselves at least partly cybernetic. There’s also the puzzle that, although Yasako can pick up and hold Densuke, implying that there is some tactile feedback, she can’t tell if he is as soft and fluffy as he looks.

Besides the cybernetic paradoxes, Yasako also discovers that she may have forgotten important details of an earlier visit to Daikoku City when she was quite young. As she investigates the mysteries of the city, Yasako will likely discover much about herself and her family.

It’s too early to be sure, but I think that Denno Coil is probably the outstanding show of the spring. ((The other contenders are Seirei no Moribito, about which I’ll try to write something coherent soon, and Darker Than Black, the first two episodes of which are excellent, though it’s not what I enjoy. Astro discusses the latter here.)) These two episodes are as re-watchable as the first three of Kamichu! Everything is done well. The colors are muted, suggesting water colors, and the character designs are simple but expressive. There’s no cloying KyoAni prettiness here; instead, this highly artificial world seems natural and believeable. Yasako is an attractive character, and Mega-baa is quite formidable and interesting.

Thus far, Mitsuo Iso and company have been introducing the characters and setting up the rules of their world. What the story will ultimately be is not clear yet. Iso’s theme, according to one writer, is “the distance that separates everyone.” It’s not much in evidence yet, but there are twenty-four episodes to go. If Denno Coil ends as well as it begins, it might be a classic. (Of course, it could degenerate into an illogical mess, but given how sure-footed these two episodes are, I think we can reasonably hope for the best.)

Yuko, newly arrived in Daikoku City with her impulsive little sister Kyoko, loses her dog Densuke when it chases an “illegal” — a sort of computer virus — through a hole in a fence into an “obsolete” cyberspace. Fumie’s business is retrieving lost cyberpets, and Yuko hires her to rescue Densuke. It’s a more difficult job than they anticipate.

Episode one of Denno Coil is the first episode of any of this season’s series that I watched a second time, which automatically makes it the coolest show currently being broadcast. In some respects, it really does seem like Serial Experiments Lain retold for youngsters. Virtual spaces are coincident with the everyday world, and one can open holes to the cyberspaces with “bug” spray. Children have cyberpets that look and behave like real dogs and cats but are visible only to those who wear special glasses. It is possible to pick up and hold these pets, and they can freely pass through the holes into cyberspaces. They don’t like it when you drop a backpack on/through them. Numerous small floating spheres constantly monitor Daikoku City for cybernetic breaches, blasting suspicious areas with a sort of ray.

The first episode is very promising. The characters have distinct, non-cliche personalities, and the Denno Coil universe is the most interesting I’ve come across recently. Whether Denno Coil remains cool depends in part in how carefully and consistently director and writer Mitsuo Iso works out the logic of the intersecting real and virtual worlds. It also depends on whether he has twenty-six episodes’ worth of story to tell. The character designs are simplified but serviceable (though the characters who wear visors instead of glasses look like they have pig noses), and the art and the animation are adequate. The background music sounds interesting when I’m aware of it.

I could complain about the manifold implausibilites of Rocket Girls, but it would be pointless. How can you expect logic in a universe where a space agency drafts random high school girls to be astronauts merely because they’re lightweight? Instead, it’s better to focus on the incidental pleasures, such as classic calculators

or cigarette lighters

or girls wearing skin-tight space suits. (Never mind that the suits are basically three millimeters of silicone rubber, and the story is set in the tropics. Heatstroke doesn’t happen in anime.)

The story zips right along, and there’s no time for teen angst. Yukari, spending her vacation in the Solomon Islands looking for her father who disappeared seventeen years ago, is variously bewildered, shocked, appalled, outraged, exasperated, disgusted and just plain angry as she learns just what her “part-time job” entails and discovers a few things about her family. If Yukari really had sense, she would run away from all these crazy people as fast as she could, but then there would be no anime. She’s soon joined by Matsuri, a native islander, and one of Yukari’s classmates from Japan should arrive on the island shortly.

Despite all the nonsense and the bad computer animation, Rocket Girls is enjoyable. It’s partly because it doesn’t take itself terribly seriously, and partly because, although the show gets the details wrong, it gets the story right. The people who made Rocket Girls, I think, really do want to go into space.

Ludicrous though it is as Shakespeare, if you ignore the characters’ names, Romeo x Juliet becomes a generic fantasy action show, a bit slicker than most but otherwise of no particular distinction. If it’s something truly ridiculous you want, I recommend Sisters of Wellber. In the first episode we have swords, guns, sword-guns, plate armor, a fairy, cigarettes, facial markings, a guy named Galahad, artificial intelligence and a tank that talks too much. There’s also mention of a “Killer Bee Man.” This isn’t schizotech; this is just plain silly. I suppose it’s part of the writers’ strategy: if anything can happen, you don’t have to worry about consistency. What’s frustrating is that there might be a decent story about interesting characters here — the principals are a princess who may or may not have killed a prince from a different kingdom, and the thief who becomes her protector — but it’s lost under all the senseless gimmicks.