Author: Don

Given the creators of Ghost Hound, I was afraid that the show might be pretentious, incoherent or incomprehensible. The first episode suggests a worse possiblity: it might be dull.

Tarou has a recurring dream, which he describes into a voice recorder when he wakes up. He falls asleep in class. Two other students are introduced who are probably going to be major characters. One is a smarmy newcomer, the other is a surly outsider. Also making appearances are Tarou’s parents, the school psychologist with a curl in the middle of his forehead, and a girl who appears both in Taro’s dream and on the road home from school.

So far, it’s been mostly introductions, a little backstory and a little strangeness. Nothing much happens, and none of the characters are particularly engaging. The liveliest part was the fly buzzing in Tarou’s dream. This is just the first episode, of course, and presumably Chiaki Konaka and Ryutaro Nakamura are setting the stage for serious weirdness. Still, I was underwhelmed.

Konaka and Nakamura earlier collaborated on Serial Experiments Lain, which will be ten years old next July. After viewing the first episode of Ghost Hound, I watched the first episode of Lain again. There they didn’t waste time on introductions but plunged straight into the strangeness. Perhaps they ought to study their old work to see how it’s done. (Or perhaps they should have drafted Yasuyuke Ueda and Yoshitoshi ABe.)

What is Sawaki looking at?

Sawaki, who has just begun his studies at an agricultural college in Tokyo, can see microbes with his naked eye and even pluck them out of the air. What he sees doesn’t much resemble the pictures in books. To him, bacteria and fungi have cute little faces. Nevertheless, he can accurately identify species.

The first episode of Moyashimon serves mainly to introduce the main characters. Besides Sawaki, there’s his friend Kei; Professor Itsuki, whose mouth is hidden by his mustache except when — well, you’ll see; and Hasegawa, who doesn’t dress like a student at an agricultural college and who refuses to believe in Sawaki’s ability. There’s also lots of friendly yeast floating around.

What kind of story Moyashimon is going to tell isn’t clear yet. The alternate title of the series, “Tales of Agriculture,” suggests that it’s likely to be a episodic microbe-of-the-week show. Whether it continues to be interesting once the concept’s novelty wears off remains to be seen. (I hope the writers don’t try to top kiviak. Ugh.) There was no indication of any romance (though Hasegawa’s outfit hints at something else), so one can hope that Moyashimon will be angst-free. I’ll definitely be watching more of it.

A pleasant surprise (for me; YMMV): the ending theme is by Polysics, the outstanding exponent of hypercaffeinated neo-Devonian rock ‘n’ roll. The lyrics have nothing to do with the show, or anything else, but I don’t mind.

Here are some notes on the biology involved in this episode.

*****

Seven years ago, when Shion was very young, she witnessed her parents’ murder. She hasn’t spoken since then. Under her foster parents’ tutelage, she has become a prodigy at shogi, the Japanese version of chess. The first episode of Shion no Ou deals with events at a women’s shogi tournament. Poor traumatized Shion may be the least complicated character in the series. We’re only one episode in, and already it seems that everyone else has either a secret or an agenda. There are also strange men observing Shion’s every move.

It sounds ridiculously melodramatic, and the story might eventually collapse under its own weight, but the beginning of Shion no Ou is quite watchable. I’m curious to see how it develops.

*****

The second episode of Rental Magica provides some background for the president and the Celtic magic specialist, and the hell with it. I’m sorry, but the story is not interesting and I don’t give a damn about any of the characters.

*****

I enjoyed the second episode of A Young Person’s Mushishi, a.k.a. Mokke, more than the first, partly because it wasn’t the horror story I was expecting. The spirit Mizuki encounters this time is friendly and helpful, but it doesn’t quite get the distinction between right and wrong. The story suffers slightly from preachiness, but not fatally. It looks like this will be a good show for kids.

*****

In my notes earlier about Baccano!, I don’t think I sufficiently indicated that it’s often a very funny show. There’s plenty of bloodshed and fair amount of horror, but comedy is likely to strike at any time, particularly when Isaac and Miria are around. I’d like to put an excerpt or two on the video weblog, such as Isaac’s recounting of their criminal career in the sixth episode, but the fansubs are in Mac-hostile mkv format, grrr.

Update: I added the opening of Baccano! to the video weblog.

*****

Nota bene: as a matter of policy, I do not approve anonymous comments with obviously phony email addresses, e.g., doesntwork@donttryme.bleh.

While waiting for Ghost Hound and Moyashimon, I’ve been watching Baccano! Four episodes in I’m beginning to get some idea of the story. The series could be first-rate, or it could be a massive trainwreck (in more than one sense). We’ll see.

It’s set in Prohibition-era America. The characters cover a wide ethnic range — can you name any other anime featuring a Czeslaw? — though quasi-Italian names predominate. A lot of them are mobsters from the Mafia and the Camorra. Many, if not most of them, are immortal. You can shoot them full of bullets and cut them up, but in a little while the blood oozes back into the bodies, severed fingers and heads reattach themselves, and wounds magically heal without a trace. Some of them are pretty nasty — one is a outright psychopath who favors white suits because splatters of blood show up so brightly. Others seem nice enough.

The story focuses on the events on the train the Flying Pussyfoot ((Originally the Grand Punk Railroad, if I’m interpreting the book titles correctly.)) between Chicago and New York. Something is hidden on the train, perhaps a couple of bottles of immortality elixer, perhaps a bomb. The passengers include many mobsters and many immortals. There are also Isaac and Miria (the former played by Masaya Onosaka at his most clownish), a pair of enthusiastic nitwits to complicate the already complex proceedings. Bloody hijinks ensue.

Ordinarily a show this violent wouldn’t interest me, and if the narrative were presented in straightforward fashion I would have quit after the first episode. Baccano!‘s novelty is that the story is is told in bits and pieces, skipping backward and forward in the years from 1930 to 1932. Following the plot is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Even if the series is ultimately disappointing, there is still the pleasure of fitting the pieces together.

The story might be worthwhile. Baccano! is based on a series of light novels, and that is often a good sign. The main problem, aside from the level of violence, is that we never spend much time with any one character. Thus far, most are one-dimensional, though a few of the quieter ones hint at some complexity.

I doubt that Baccano! will ever have much of a following. It expects the viewer to pay close attention and remember what he sees, and some of it is brutal — when I rewatch the series, there are several sections I’ll skip. Still, on the basis of the first four episides, I’d rate it the second-best series from the summer that I’ve sampled, after Mononoke.

The Wikipedia page focuses more on the novels than the anime, but it does have a list of characters that might be helpful to keep on hand while watching. There are no serious spoilers there yet, though that might change.