家庭教師ヒットマンREBORN! / Kateikyoushi Hittoman Riboon! / Home Tutor Hitman Reborn! (Seasons 1-3)

When listing the significant long-running anime based on Jump comics, even fans would be forgiven for forgetting Reborn! – while it had quite a notable impact, a successful anime run of over 200 episodes and plenty of merchandising, fanart, cosplay and the other hallmarks of a success story, ultimately it’s just…quite forgettable.

Recognisably a shounen work by a female mangaka, it has that seemingly characteristically female-mangaka protagonist, reminding me of D.N.Angel and the pilot for D.Gray-Man – a hapless, innocent, very childlike young adolescent boy who is adorable by grace of being the runt of the litter, very feminine and rather whiny, but with a hidden strength that comes out when needed. If most shounen protagonists are clowns who have a hidden powerful side, there’s a definite subtype that is very often seen from female writers that is very reminiscent of the ‘uke’ in yaoi writings, perhaps at least in part explaining why this series and many like it are hits with the fujoshi crowd.

Sawada Tsunayoshi, known to his friends as Tsuna, is hopeless in school – no good at studying, no good at sports, and no good at acting on his crush on pretty classmate Kyoko. One day, a strange baby in a sharp suit who introduces himself as ‘Reborn’ enters his life, informing him that as the great great great great grandson of a prominent Italian mafia boss, he is now in line to inherit the title – and this the baby, one of Italy’s elites, is there to tutor him and to teach him what he needs to know to become a mafia boss. Since he is not very good at this, Reborn often uses a special bullet shot from the gun form of his magical chameleon to induce a state of near-death in Tsuna – who as he expires regrets the things he didn’t manage to do just before dying, then resurrects with a flame on his forehead and all clothes but his underwear being torn away through the sheer force of his ‘dying will’, and sets about rectifying the things he regrets with superhuman strength and speed.

It’s a very silly set-up and only gets sillier as more outlandish characters are introduced – the baseball nut who turns his bat into a real sword; the boy who creates supernaturally accurate rankings while objects float around him; the little Chinese girl who when flustered turns into a human bomb; the mafia assassin who kills with her ‘poison cooking’ but seems unaware of it being deadly and tries to give it to her friends; and especially the little boy with a big afro, horns and a cow-print romper suit who calls himself ‘Lambo’ and sometimes disappears into a bazooka to switch places with himself ten years into the future.

Eventually, as is pretty inevitable with these things, the silliness gives way to action and tournament-like set-ups are emphasised, with a conflict over ‘vongola rings’ marking the point that not only a series of easy-to-write one-on-ones can take place (familiar to anyone who’s seen Naruto’s chuunin exams, the latter stage of the exam in HunterxHunter, most of Fairy Tail and One Piece or the entirety of MÄR), but where things take a more serious tone and Tsuna uses his powers – no longer involving shedding clothes – to save his friends’ lives rather than lend a hand in sports or take on the role of a support teacher.

While I enjoy the light fluffiness, have fun with the daft characters and enjoy seeing the tone get more serious, the trouble is that Reborn! never really goes anywhere. It never captures the attention very much or makes you feel concern for the characters. Artland’s very simple animation looks cheap and ordinary, but the real issue with engagement comes from the writing: a lot of characters are very much defined by one quirk, usually not very interesting, and I spent much of the first 50-odd episodes wondering just what any of the fans saw in these uninteresting characters.

By the end of the Vongola Ring arc, I am beginning to get it. The more mature edge is making it a series I feel less inclined to ignore. The only problem is that it took so very, very long to get there that I think that’s going to overshadow everything else. I may only be a third of the way through the series but if it feels like it’s only just getting off its feet after 76 episodes, I find myself doubtful it will go much further in another 130-odd. But we shall keep watching – and we shall see.  

蟲師 / Mushishi

Mushishi, the story of an itinerant man in pre-Westernised Japan who meets people whose lives are affected by supernatural entities and offers help and advice, has been a critical and commercial success story, albeit no smash hit. Slow-paced, stately and serious, as well as occasionally really very beautiful, it made the transition from Afternoon manga to anime, and then to a live-action film. It is certainly a series with a great deal of unique character, but for all that it is pleasant to see an intelligent, mature series become a hit and win numerous awards in Japan, I could not bring myself to feel very strongly about Mushishi. I like it, but I am a long way from loving it.

Ginko is a mushishi, a master of the ‘mushi’, which are somewhat analogous to bacteria, with magical properties. Every episode, with a few exceptions dealing with his past, Ginko encounters someone whose life has been deeply affected by interaction with mushi, from people who can’t hear through to people who have seen family members resurrected as babies, or given birth to children who are growing at abnormal rates and clearly are not quite human. Even had it not become his vocation, Ginko himself would have a life very much affected by the presence of these strange godlike but with some exceptions unintelligent entities, for a childhood incident left him with white hair, one eye (the other is covered by his fringe) and an unnatural propensity for attracting mushi, which he has to keep at bay with smoke from special cigarettes.

Thus, the series is extremely episodic, only Ginko appearing every week, and even then, not always as an adult. Even towards the very last episodes, I expected a more continuous storyline to emerge, but it never happened. Thus, it joins the likes of Jigoku Shoujo and Shinigami no Ballad for being extremely episodic, which gives a slow, strange and distancing feel to the overall series - especially since unlike the former, there is no recurring cat-and-mouse side story, and unlike the latter, the show runs for a full 26 episodes. Ginko is likeable, a very laid-back and stoic character despite all the situations he finds himself in, but the problem is that ultimately it’s very hard to engage with the world of the story, or the one link we have to it.

And the problem with the concept overall is that there’s really very little inherent drama to the idea of mushi. This is essentially a medical drama, only because the diseases are supernatural, the symptoms can be anything. While occasionally this makes for some brilliant stories with the kind of moral dilemmas that can only be posed in hypothetical worlds – whether a man can kill something he has grown to love as a child, or sacrifice himself to give life to another, or give away his very memories – it also has the problem of always being easily solved by Ginko naming the mushi and claiming the problem can be undone with some special potion. At least real medical dramas require meticulous research, and even there, the need always arises to take the interpersonal dramas of recurring characters further in order to keep an audience engaged.

So while Mushishi was sometimes breathtakingly beautiful and fascinating to watch, at other times it was slow, utterly lacking in tension and as a result uninteresting. The animation varied from excellent to plain lazy and character design got rather repetitive. It was an anime to take out occasionally to admire, like a fine jewel, but looking too often only throws tiny flaws into focus, and eventually becomes boring.

However, if I thought that the solution was to bring many of the stories together, linking them in a coherent overall story, the live-action adaptation taught me that a whole lot more development would then be necessary, for that is precisely what the filmmakers decided to do. The result is a messy, uneven and overlong film that I’m sure would be very confusing for the uninitiated. Taking the time to develop each story at least builds a world. Rushing through them only highlights how necessary a central plot is to a feature-length film, and without one, there exists only a single actor, who for all his reputation for coolness simply did not have the charisma to make Ginko interesting for two hours.

(Originally written 28.02.10)

僕等がいた/ Bokura Ga Ita / We Were There

Be it because of cultural differences, the filter of Internet culture or because there are few casual female anime fans here, it's generally true that in the West, far more girls watch more shounen than shoujo, proportionally to their Japanese counterparts. Shounen is aimed at boys, shoujo at girls. Of course, plenty of girls watch shounen, and Shounen Jump are always being accused by Japanese detractors of purposefully including homosexual subtexts and lots of pretty boys in order to entice the sort of fangirls personified by Ogiue in Genshiken. But the shoujo market, of manga made by women for consumption by girls, is largely sidelined over here, and thus while a series like Bokura Ga Ita can be massive in Japan, it can be all but ignored on occidental shores.

And Bokura Ga Ita is true shoujo. Most shoujo series need something more than just romance to hook in the audience - the art-school dynamic and humour of Hachimitsu to Kuroova, or the rock music elements to Nana. In fact, the most direct romance stories I see tend to be aimed at young men, based on erogames and centred on male leads (like Kimi ga Nozomu Eien or Kanon, though there are some supernatural elements there). But Bokura Ga Ita is just a high-school romance story, and it's that simplicity, that purity, that makes it so good.

When she comes to her new school, sweet young Takahashi is just one of several girls with their eyes on Yano, the most popular boy in her year, and no-one is more surprised than she is when he almost indifferently agrees to go out with her. But Yano of course has a complicated past, and issues about his ex that need to be sorted out in his mind, and while Takahashi wavers, unsure whether or not the relationship can work, Yano's best friend Takeuchi begins to show an interest in Takahashi, too.

I know it's not in my assigned gender role to like slushy romance stories, but despite my dislike of Jane Austen books, I've never given much of a damn about gender roles - and I like Charlotte Bronte. Sometimes I don't want to watch anime about things blowing up, or girls showing their knickers, and want something level-headed, sweet and emotional. I began to watch Bokura Ga Ita because it looked quite similar to Hachimitsu to Kuroova, and while I am very fond of that series, I found myself liking this rather more. Where Hachikuro sometimes went over the top, and juggled several storylines which made you sometimes wish you were watching one of the others, BgI has some melodramatic elements but never pushes credibility, and always focuses on the love triangle between its three central characters, plus Yano's relationship with the sister of his deceased ex.

The series wins points for realism. Takahashi is amongst the most adorable anime characters ever created, but she isn't perfect. She is sometimes selfish, sometimes petulant, often a pushover, but that only makes her easier to identify with. Yano, meanwhile, is damaged goods in a very romantic way - handsome but with issues, being popular and confident but always hiding his true feelings. Takeuchi seems a far better match for Takahashi, but that's not how love works, after all, and we must question him for even entertaining thoughts of stealing his best friend's lover away. In 26 extremely slow-paced episodes, these adolescents explore their feelings, all experiencing happiness and heartbreak and a whole lot of uncertainty, until the open ending that only promises more to come - and there's plenty of manga to adapt, after all. All events are really minor - break-ups and make-ups, drama about graduation, competition between the boys – but it's the emotions that drive everything. Anyone can understand these three characters, and form their own opinions. Me, I adored Takahashi, identified with yet disliked Yano and rooted for and admired Takeuchi, though of course all of them behaved in ways that made me like them more and less over the course of the series. There may be a cultural gap between us and the Japanese, but as characters in a story, they are totally understandable, and nothing seems unfamiliar to me in the idea of going for dates to movies and zoos, going to take purikura sticker-photos, wanting to have sex but hesitating because of the moral questions raised. These kids seemed very real to me, and there are few better things I can say for characters.

The presentation of the series was strange. An interesting choice was made to cast dilettante voice actors in the leading roles. Takahashi was making her debut, and Yano had barely done anything except appear in the Prince of Tennis musicals. The result is excellent - a really understated, heartfelt performance that seems so unpolished that it somehow gains verisimilitude. It seems realer than smooth, well-enunciated voice-acting. The art style is odd, with nice, pretty but very simple character art, lots of soft-focus and light spots, but also a weird inclination to draw faces with only one eye to make an expression more enigmatic, and some very ugly facial profiles.

It mostly worked, and was presumably an adaptation of the manga's style, but a slightly nicer look would have suited the show, particularly since the animation must have been so low-budget, given how little happens.

I found myself really wanting to know what was going to happen to Takahashi, whether Yano could really prove himself, or whether Takeuchi would get a chance to prove himself a better match. I feared I was more like Yano than I wanted to be, and wondered what I would do were I him, were I Takeuchi, even were I Takahashi. It made me smile with the characters, worry when they were upset, and I soon stopped doubting them as characters and accepted them as people.

The best that proper shoujo has to offer. I doubt many people will give this slow, uneventful series the time it needs, but it's their loss, and I hope I get to find out what happens next to these adorable young teenagers in love.

(Originally written 18.3.07)