骸なる星･珠たる子/ Mukuro Naru Hoshi, Tama Taru Ko / Dead Star and Girl’s Jewel / Narutaru/ Shadow Star

Commonly listed as a ‘mindfuck’ anime, NaruTaru starts out somewhat cutesy, rapidly grows darker and ends with a subplot that, while perhaps not the most gory or shockingly sexual piece of animation ever to come from Japan, comes suddenly and with such a shift in tone that it tends to catch people off-guard and leave them reeling, especially when they are not forewarned. However, the anime is also undoubtedly a mess. Its scant 13 episodes introduce main characters, begin to build a larger world and hint at revelations to come, then veer off into a sidestory before coming to an abrupt end. The problem was that it was far too early to adapt Narutaru into an anime when minor studio Planet decided to do so.

NaruTaru, then, does not stand alone. It’s one of several anime adaptations that only show one part of a manga’s overall story, and then end too soon for the rest to be unveiled. And it is not easy for an English-speaking fan to find the rest: it was popular enough for the first few volumes to be officially licensed for distribution in the States by Dark Horse, which put a stop to unofficial translations. But Dark Horse seemingly didn’t know what they were in for, and when the tone became extremely violent and frank in depictions of sexuality, they reacted first with censorship, and then by relegating their translations to a short-lived magazine without releasing volumes, and finally with abandonment. It took half a decade and the success of Bokurano, mangaka Kitoh Mohiro’s follow-up – with its theme song even immortalized as part of the Nico Douga Ryuuseigun mix that was such a hit in Japanese fandom - for fans to return to NaruTaru and complete translations.
All the conclusion of the manga brought to the fore, though, was that the anime didn’t go nearly far enough. The cheap kicks of violence and easy sex there are no match for the bleak way Shiina reaches her maturity, suffers through great loss, tastes imperfect and damaged love and remains always fragile, lost and yet optimistic. As in Bokurano, the adolescents here are not idealised or glamorously emotional, but stupid, cruel, selfish and vulnerable; they make mistakes and hate themselves. Cute things are not to be trusted, and the ones we support are not protected just because we like them. The world of Narutaru is brave for a mangaka, but mature, depressing and moving, so that despite the over-the-top final conclusion somewhat souring the final taste, it is a manga I will always count as one of my favourites – one of the cleverest, strangest and most elegant.

I would certainly welcome a second attempt to animate NaruTaru, or another studio deciding to continue what Planets started. Online fandom still exists: it remains popular in Japan to produce parodies of the opening sequence, replacing the characters with those from another series – my favourite being the girls from Higurashi – but NaruTaru was fragmentary and had no true ending, so remains too flawed to endure as a full piece of animation. On the other hand, there is no way whatsoever any anime company could animate the final episodes for television, and it’s doubtful an OVA would make money.

So it seems that like Wings of Vendemiaire, this work will remain one for Kitoh fans to seek out if they are interested, and unlikely to ever be animated in full. In truth, I’m grateful even these episodes were made, and introduced me to Kitoh.

(adapted from manga impressions, 13.10.09)

: ヴァンデミエールの翼 / Vandemieeru no Tsubasa / Wings of Vendemiaire

I read Wings of Vendemiaire for one reason: because it was written by Kitoh Mohiro, also behind the excellent and harrowing NaruTaru and Bokurano. And I ended up wishing this obscure two-volume title could be less obscure, and could be animated to a high standard, perhaps as an OVA series. It may not be the best of his works as a whole, but I think it quite probably the best of his premises.

His debut manga, it is remarkably sophisticated and elegant, with many of the themes of his later work, including adolescents sacrificing themselves, flights in airships and jaded cynicism about the value of life. In a European post-war setting, there exist strange living puppets, made of wood but living beings with distinct personalities and, it would seem, feelings and desires of their own. The puppets are known as Vendemiaire, which they also take as their names. Some are somewhat empty slates, learning mannerisms from others, while others have manipulative owners who have forced them into specific roles.

Prefiguring Rozen Maiden, and particularly the more angst-ridden sub-plots featuring Souseiseki and Suigintou, the whole work is pervaded by Kitoh’s characteristic melancholy. The stories are beautiful and tragic and simple, and the art is his usual mixture of fragile youths, faces that do not necessarily signify beauty and beautifully-rendered aircraft in the midst of a lot of white space.

The only way I would see this improved would be the addition of more than a handful of small references to tie together all the Vendemiaire puppets, perhaps some common cause for them as a climax. But the disparate, episodic nature lends to the bleakness of the situation and this is after all not intended as a conventional story. But it is too beautiful to be an obscure two-volume release read only by fans of other Kitoh Mohiro works. I want it to find a wider audience.

Bokurano: manga

Uninstall, uninstall…

The same pattern occurred here as happened with Kitou Mohiro’s last manga, NaruTaru: I first encountered it as an anime, later picked up the manga, and ended up far, far more deeply emotionally invested in it than I had expected to be, and more deeply moved by what happens to these characters than those of almost any other manga, novel, book, play – any story in any media. As I said when I finished reading the penultimate volume, as someone who almost never cries, and never at all over fictional stories, I was astonished how often this manga took me close.

Just as with NaruTaru, Kitou starts a series with familiar clichés that the systematically get disassembled, examined and ultimately reimagined in the most harrowing and tragic ways that end up leaving very deep impressions. There, it was magical girl archetypes, while here it is that age-old fantasy of giant robots. If 20th Century Boys took the idea and showed audiences how it might look in reality, Bokurano examines the real psychological impact of giving that much power to emotionally unstable adolescents, exacerbated by a very real, immediate cost each has to pay.

And once again, while the anime skipped some of the most adult subject matter and ended prematurely, the manga is given freedom to really explore the ideas of death, self-sacrifice, revenge, family and the survival instinct. Sadly, while the anime’s ending gives some degree of relief, it rather betrays the principles established at the start, while the manga gets to take them to their conclusion, even if of course, each individual’s situation is unique.

Despite similarities in characters and circumstances, the dynamics are very different from those in NaruTaru. The sense of empowerment is completely different, and while no-one suffers or learns quite as much as Sheena, they better understand what is happening to them, which makes for a more reflective work with characters better able to embody ideals and, ultimately, a much tighter plot. I was probably even more emotionally invested in NaruTaru, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel a great deal for the characters of Bokurano, or very surprised at the pasts unfolded, the decisions made by these kids or the surprising way the series comes to an end.

A lot of licence has to be given in order to swallow the premise, the pseudo-science, the arbitrariness of appearance and facilities and the extremely reductive concept of infinite universes in infinite divisions of time, but really, to fixate on the mechanics is to miss the point – the emotional and philosophical place that the pilots find themselves in when they receive great responsibility and power at great personal cost.

The reason the manga is such a success is that it takes its concept very seriously and imagines how people face death and sacrifice, fear and love, while retaining the adrenal rush of mecha. Normally, giant robots don’t interest me, precisely because shows featuring them tend to come with shallow posturing and a total lack of real consequences, which is why Bokurano is so refreshing. If a show like Gurren Lagann will take the shallow aspects of a concept and make them ridiculously fun, a manga like Bokurano goes for depth, and produces exactly the opposite emotions. Sometimes, it is good to feel those, too, and tragedy has always been perceived as more worthy than comedy. Both have a valuable cultural place, but you can’t beat something genuinely powerful and moving, like this.

ぼくらの/ Bokurano

I thought I’d read the original manga before progressing past the first three or four episodes of this anime, after hearing the director disliked the source and because of my admiration for Narutaru, the mangaka’s previous work - but in the end, it was the first anime in a long while that has left me craving more and more, so I happily consumed it all.

Apart from the character designs, quite a lot is familiar from Narutaru – the serious presentation of the extreme hardships teenagers can experience, and the near-fetishising of their suffering and burgeoning sexuality; the cute and bizarre mascot-like characters that you soon start to think of as sinister, and the affection for aircraft and weaponry. But the premise is much more direct and simple. It’s one of those anime concepts that makes you roll your eyes until it’s developed in full, and realise that it can really be taken seriously.

Fifteen children start to play what they believe is a video game, controlling a giant robot to fight off enemies. But of course, it turns out to be more than that, and they soon realise that those who play are ending up dead.

If it seems like a brainless concept in the beginning, and the kids seem to be drawn straight from stock, you soon realise that there’s a lot more going on under the surface, and remember that really, the things these children are feeling can’t be so much different from what goes through young soldiers’ minds when they are going to fight in a war. The situation is grossly exaggerated, but as a medium for provoking thought about mortality, battle and self-sacrifice, it works extremely well. Like Mai-HiME, which ended up in similar territory towards the end, sometimes it makes you uncomfortable watching it, with the inevitability of the characters’ suffering, especially when you start getting attached to them, and there’s no cheesy Sunrise magical resurrection ending to fall back on here. It’s blunt, abrupt and macabre, but also absolutely fascinating.

It’s not an anime to show to newcomers. It works by taking anime fans’ expectations and subverting them. Giant robots are fighting with advanced technology, but they’re also prisons and execution chambers. There are funny cute things, but they’re just avatars for twisted minds. Kids come to heroic decisions, but it doesn’t change their fates or make them anything more or less than the cowards.

A startling and grim anime, and certainly one I’ll be eager to watch again one day. Great theme song, too.

(originally written 23/1/08)