蒼穹のファフナー Dead Aggressor HEAVEN AND EARTH / Soukyuu no Fafner Dead Aggressor: Heaven and Earth

Of all the anime from 2004 I’ve seen, Fafner would be low on a list of series I’d want to be revived with a feature-length cinema continuation. I’d love to see more from the Gakuen Alice manga, or the strange world of Fantastic Children. More Onmyou Taisenki would be a great guilty pleasure, and what happened to that Hollywood adaptation of Monster?

But this 2010 big-screen release was for forgettable mecha cliché-bag Soukyuu no Fafner, the anime I called the most forgettable I had ever seen. Watching this did bring back various memories, but I’m damned if I remember who most of the secondary pilot characters are, or care about them in the least.

We continue shortly after the bittersweet ending of the series. The island is temporarily safe, but the Festum are still out there. Soshi has given away his existence and Kazuki is not only angsting over the loss of his homoerotic love interest, but losing his eyesight too. Meanwhile, various people who have been assimilated by the Festum are suspended bodily in tubes or wandering the island in ghostly form as some sort of protectors, which if it was contextualised and made meaningful in the series I have entirely forgotten about, with them never managing to be anything but jarring here.

Of course, the Festum come back, mostly still back to their old tricks of trying to turn everybody into crystals because it will in some way help with their infertility problems. This time, though, they send a humanoid Festum to live amongst the humans, using Soshi’s memories to aid it, as well as using its unique personal impressions of the beauty of the sky as a starting point to empathise with the humans. As a kind of surrogate Soshi, he begins bonding in a rather homoerotic way with Kazuki, though he is much more boyish and naïve. The humans don’t accept his proposition of siding with them and wiping out the rest of humanity and all the other festum, so a new battle ensues. Only this time, the Festum have learned human tactics and can use their weapons against them – and there’s a humanoid version to yell at in order to convey true feelings and talk their way out of war by convincing a hostile alien race that nobody wants to fight and everyone should live in harmony. This, of course, involves much tearful yelling and giant robots hugging. At one point, a huge mecha punches through the giant sword of his opponent using its giant fist, rending the weapon in two, because it is so powered up by righteous emotions. Fafner tries hard to be very serious and artsy and elegant, but when it comes down to it, it’s as silly as anything in Gurren Lagann.

And I think I’d forgotten just how homoerotic the series was, a bit of a fixture of mecha since…well, at least Gundam Wing. The pretty boys fighting for their lives are always having meaningful bonds that go deeper than friendship, which I’m sure feeds right into many a yaoi doujinshi. Perhaps this is what Fafner had that Fantastic Children didn’t – angst-ridden, lanky, wide-eyed and vulnerable teen characters that are oh so easy to ship. I’d like to think there was more to it, but… 

今日の5の2 / Kyou no Go no Ni / Today in Class 5-2 (Xebec)

You may notice that the pic is familiar – that’s because I wanted it to directly echo the one for the original Kyou no Go no Ni OVA series (right-click and open the pic in a new tab/window to see it full-sized). When I mentioned this Xebec adaptation there, I expected it to be quite different – much cuter and less full of erotic situations featuring its 11-year-old cast. After all, that series was made by an anime studio that makes hentai – and I described it back in 2006 as ‘ultimate pedo-bait anime’. Xebec mostly make cute stuff like The Third and DNAngel, right? So they’re not going to make it that pervy. Even if they did also make Kanokon…? 

In fact, it was much the same, only without all the gratuitous panty-shots. Sure, not having panty-shots makes for a bit less squirming and eyebrow-raising, but to my surprise, the scripts were still centred on sex jokes, especially for the first half of the episodes. Ryouta is still forever walking in on the girls topless, accidentally falling on top of them and being caught in compromising positions that, for example, make it look like he’s receiving oral sex.

And again, it’s when the series moves away from this that it is at its best. With a full 13 episodes and its own season-based OVA, this version of Kyou no Go no Ni at least gets to develop its characters more. In particular, the boys are given more of a focus – in the old version, they were almost ignored, while here Kouji’s quick-wittedness and Tsubasa’s amusing innocent wisdom get fleshed out properly, and the girls similarly have more time onscreen and get more character development beyond being the archetypes of the tomboy, the childhood friend, the funny spacey one etc.

To my surprise, though, I actually preferred the art style of the original. I’d hoped it was going to look like Minami-Ke, which as I said in my review of the OVA is from the same mangaka, but in trying to move it towards the fad for cute moéblobs it actually ended up looking mostly cheap and clumsy. A lot of the art just looks ugly and off-model and the kids’ body shapes are often weird and malformed in motion. Ryouta looks much better than in the OVA, but other than that it definitely suffers for the comparison, and a more defined and slicker art style would make the characters more distinctive – I more than once mixed up the two short-haired girls Yuuki and Natsumi.

Overall, the series did show the improvements I had hoped for – but only when it had already repeated all the parts of the OVA that were a bit too far. Moéblob art only accentuates that these are 11-year-old kids who don’t suit the sexual-themed humour here – I would have much preferred they were aged up and drawn in a slightly more sophisticated way. I’m not usually one to preach against the sexualization of minors in anime, but this is one of the rare cases in which it seriously detracts from the piece overall, which only gains its charm once the steam goes out of the ecchi humour and more quirky character-based jokes or funny situations –like one with a duck – can come in. 

蒼穹のファフナー / Soukyuu no Fafunaa / Fafner in the Azure

Of all the anime I’ve watched, including all those that are many years in the past now, Fafner has been by far the most forgettable. Even the likes of Ragnarök and Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai, which I barely gave a thought to since I finished them, years ago, left much more of an imprint than this. Without prompting myself, I could remember little more than that it was a mecha series about kids living on a funny crescent-shaped island when most of the rest of the world had been destroyed, and that there was a satisfying final scene with a secondary character fulfilling a dream of being on TV.

The rest – main characters, antagonists, reasons for fighting – were largely gone. I couldn’t even remember the mechas themselves, and all I wrote when I finished the series at the end of March 2005 was a note to say I was ‘watching the final episodes of the angsty, occasionally moving but mostly bland Soukyuu no Fafner.’

Bland, I think, sums up my feelings on the series, another attempt at a new Evangelion that fell well short. Mecha in general is not my favourite, unless it’s funny, like Big O or Gurren Lagann, or does something subversive like Bokurano or, indeed, Eva. Giant robots tend to get in the way of plot development and have never struck me as very cool to watch, which I suppose is their whole purpose. I tolerate them in the likes of Eureka 7 and GunXSword, but when I think back without mecha specifically in mind, I tend to forget they were even there. Macross was another I found very forgettable. About the only time I thought of Fafner again was when I saw Gundam SEED and the protagonist looked so like Fafner’s (same designer).

The plot, as I have now reminded myself, is that the little island of Tatsumiya-jima managed to survive the onslaught of the monstrous Festum only by being cloaked, and the populace grew up in halcyon isolation. One day, though, they are discovered, and their only chance is to deploy their giant robot. Inevitably, the pilot is killed and it falls to a handsome teenager to defeat the enemy. He does, but this brings the island to the attention of both the Festum and the rest of humanity, who want to know why such a powerful weapon was hidden away.

The plot turns tragic quickly, and underpinning everything is melancholy – the children, previously so sheltered, must now fight and very possibly die. The only light relief comes from the aforementioned boy, Hiroto, who wants to be famous.

The main problem with Fafner is that it’s 26 episodes (and an OVA side-story, which I watched later), during which not a lot really happens, and generally the tension comes from people not wanting to take part in any action but stay safe and do nothing. This does not make for very compelling viewing, and perhaps is why I was left so indifferent.

Nevertheless, there is now a film and rumours of another series on the way. And perhaps when there is little else to do or watch, I shall spend a bit of time checking them out.

魔法 先生 ネギま! / Mahou Sensei Negima (original series)

Negima is one of the more popular manga series in Japan at the moment. However, it would seem that nine out of ten fans agree: the anime is vastly inferior to the original. Still, I don’t feel much compulsion to read the manga version. It’s a cute show, and certainly entertaining, but the premise is so daft that I feel I’ve now been exposed to it long enough to have little interest in going any further.

Negi is a ten-year-old magician from Wales. Part of his magical training is to be a teacher to a class of thirteen-year-old Japanese schoolgirls. Naturally. I mean, how can you be a magician without being a teacher on the other side of the world? And why wait until you’re older than your pupils, after all? But there’s more – the girls are all anime archetypes! I don’t just mean ‘the shy one’, ‘the athletic one’ etc. (though they’re all present and correct) – here we have ‘the ghost’, ‘the ninja’, ‘the vampire’, ‘the robot’ and even a scientist girl who can invent things far beyond the boundaries of current technology. So far, so silly, cliché comedy show. And for a while, that’s what this is. Somehow, several of these 13-year-old girls develop a heavy crush on this 10-year-old, and pretty much all the rest think he’s totally adorable. Yes, it’s a harem anime with a 10-year-old protagonist.

Luckily for the girls, not only are there baths for everyone to get naked in as often as possible, but for Negi to awaken his true magical power, he needs to fight with a girl who enters a ‘pactio’ with him by standing in a magic circle (drawn by Negi’s annoying ermine/ferret/stoat-type-thing sidekick) and kissing him. The story centres around the relationship between Negi and Asuna, the one girl who doesn’t seem to like Negi too much, but always seems to be with him just when disaster strikes.

And the series bumbles along in this manner for a while, which is perfectly agreeable. In last few episodes, a bombshell falls, and all of a sudden, the series becomes dark, intriguing, brave and quite moving. It seemed like it was genuinely going to be something quite special. But then the last couple of episodes made the ending of Mai-HiME look sensible, and the writers extracted from a certain cavity a time machine, some sort of rite that mysteriously solves a problem that no-one else had ever solved in a matter of minutes, and a ridiculous battle where ALL the girls get powered up by the pactio and defeat hoards of demons with their individual skills. This includes the fat girl who makes them eat so much good food that they die. Yup.

It’s a shame, because for a while, there, I thought Mahou Sensei Negima was going to be genuinely daring with its ending. Instead, it was a total cop-out. Still, the impact of episode 24 remains, and there’s fun to be had in total ridiculous excess.

(originally written 22.11.05, before the announcement of the Shaft reimagining.)

ザ・サード～蒼い瞳の少女～/Za saado: aoi hitomi no shoujo/The Third: The Azure-Eyed Girl

Last season was a little lacking for good shounen. Having missed Noein and Black Lagoon, I began to watch the bloated Kiba and the bland Jyu Oh Sei. But then there was The Third, something a little bit different, and while it’s by no means on my all-time favourites list, it was certainly one of the better shows of recent months.

However, I’m beginning to suspect that Xebec’s adaptations of ongoing series of manga or novels will always suffer the same flaws – despite nice art and pretty, likeable characters, they will always produce series that are overly episodic and have an unsatisfying ending.

Honoka is a spirited young girl who possesses incredible skills with a sword. In the company of Bogie, the sardonic AI unit of her massive tank, she works as a mercenary-for-hire. But her world is one divided, between humanity and The Third, elf-like beings who control and regulate the technology of their world through the use of a third eye. When a mysterious young man named Iks appears, we gradually learn more about Honoka, more about the secrets of her world.

There’s not much that’s new or especially gripping about The Third, and it does deal with its plots in a neat, pat sort of way that doesn’t really leave you desperate to find out what happens next. Many of them fall flat, too, with silly stories about The Third and mystical fairies and wolves, often crucially lacking in human emotion. It’s actually the episodes between these adventures that are best, for what The Third really succeeds in is its characters and their designs – although the off-model disaster of episode 13 will live in infamy forever more, and I hope an animation studio went out of business because of it. Honoka is my idea of moé – a pretty girl, more than handy with a sword, with a boyish face and genderless clothes, who gets very embarrassed and blushes adorably when contrived circumstances make her wear a form-fitting bodysuit, and whose sense of right and wrong and selfless attitude to others show her decency and compassion, yet who is a little naïve and not above silly jokes. Toyoguchi Megumi pitches her voice perfectly, finding a great balance between the hyperactivity of One Piece’s Nami and the stately but rebellious Sei from Marimite. Great protagonist, and the supporting cast was also excellent, especially the fatherly yet perpetually indignant Bogie (Jet from Bebop’s seiyuu), the teasing, confident, more sexual older mercenary Paifuu (Kobayashi Senae: the Akiras in Hikago and Mai-HiME, Allen in D.Gray Man etc) and the ultra-cute loli Millie, who sadly doesn’t complete the interesting plot arc that starts to develop in her last few episodes.

One irksome thing about the series is its narrator, who earned the name Captain Obvious from me, his intrusive tones cutting in at very inappropriate moments to describe what we could all see anyway. It may have been an attempt to make things more epic, but it was just silly.

Honoka and Millie made this a series I was happy to have watched. But I feel sure that while I will remember them for a long time yet, the finer details of The Third, desert wolves, alien Observers and robotic Blue Breakers will fade away and not be missed.

(Originally written 23.12.06)

かのこん/ Kanokon

I thought Kanokon might be a new Rizelmine or Sumomomo Momomo – something pretty lowbrow and perverted that I occasionally watched in order to turn off my brain and enjoy some silliness. But it wasn’t Rizelmine or Sumomo. If anything, it was more similar to Moetan. Only less funny. And less classy. Yes – less classy than Moetan.

With the recent ruling regarding the moral fibre of Tokyo’s youth, which commentators are calling the end of ecchi, lolicon and shota in the anime broadcast industry, Kanokon may just have gone down as the most perverted thing to have aired as a regular late-night anime, if not for the fact that belying belief, it aired in the morning when kids could see it. It had copious fanservice and nudity – that was basically the purpose of the show - and indeed, the DVD extras are straight-ahead, no-nonsense animated pornography, complete with cheesy music.

It’s actually somewhat of a surprise that this came from Studio Xebec, who usually concern themselves with kiddy or cutesy fare like Megaman, although they were also behind the Love Hina anime. The production values are cheap and nasty, hopefully a last gasp of the moeblob anime, although the flat-chested loli characters are secondary to the giant-breasted principal love interest.

The story, such as it is, goes that an incredibly naïve high-school student called Kouta, with the appearance and voice of a ten-year-old, has transferred to a new school. There, he meets tall, busty Chizuru, who turns out to be a fox spirit. She announces her love for Kouta and her desire to marry him. However, she has competition in the shape of Nozomu, a flat-chested, spacey Lolita wolf spirit. The two begin trying to one-up one another, with more and more overt sexual advances towards the always petrified little boy.

I thought perhaps the idea of having this shota in the anime was to make him a sexualised object, in the vein of Negima, but in fact that assumption was wrong. He appears like a child in order, I think, to make him totally unthreatening to the target audience of straight, lonely males who want to fantasise about the girls involved. He has no prowess, social or athletic; he is scrawny and awkward and undeveloped; he is in every way inferior, apart from cuteness. Thus he is no threat at all, and his basic design – noseless and with simple face and hair shape – makes him easy to imagine away – while his lack of sexual drive allows the plot to be strung out.

And the conceit clearly worked. Not only was the anime already a spin-off – of a light novel – but there have also been manga, drama CDs and a visual novel. The DVDs sold remarkably well and there were even two OVAs.

This is somewhat disappointing. This really is anime at its worst. Ugly, plotless and catering to the lowest urges in the most obvious way, it really isn’t the finest moment of animation, or even close. I can’t really understand anyone finding even the ludicrous pornographic extras appealing, but hey – my taste is not everybody’s taste.

Sex sells, in animation as much as anywhere else, and this is simply an example of that. But oh boy, is it bad.

D.N.Angel

There’s quite a thin line between shounen anime (aimed at boys) and shoujo (the feminine counterpart). Yes, there are obvious shoujo shows like Bokura Ga Ita, purely about a young girl discovering romantic feelings, and there are purebred shounen shows, featuring little other than testosterone-fuelled fighting, like MÄR, but if you think that a lot of fighting automatically makes a show shounen, you’re not seeing the full picture. Like Jyu-ou-sei and Loveless, DN Angel is a show with lots of action, lots of fighting and lots of magical duels nonetheless aimed at girls. The difference really lies in tone and in the characters – shounen protagonists tend to be simple, headstrong characters usually unable to grasp everything about the world they find themselves in but with a strong sense of wrong and right, while male protagonists in shoujo action series tend to be a little bit weak and vulnerable, even useless, guided by some far cooler male figure. Romance, while by no means absent in shounen, tends to be closer to centre-stage, and you’re considerably more likely to see ultra-cute mascot characters (see any CLAMP action series). DN Angel is a good example of such a show, ticking all these boxes and making its male protagonist even more harmless and adorable than most shoujo male leads. Niwa-kun must have blushed at least six times every episode. Indeed, the show was even marketed as shounen-ai, a subset of shoujo wherein there is a lot of homosexuality (ie Loveless), but here, despite lots of contrived circumstances putting Niwa Daisuke and his nemesis Hiwatari in close, occasionally shirtless proximity, there was little more than light hinting, no more than what is found in a fair few shounen series, particularly Naruto and Hikaru no Go.

I watched DN Angel when it first started, but only actually committed to watching it all when I saw some amusing but impressive cosplayers on a little movie made by someone trying to highlight how odd cosplay is by asking ‘What are your special powers?’ and recording the silly answers. It’s a nicely presented show, with Studio XEBEC’s usual cute, wide-eyed character style, meaning that Niwa and his three romantic interests (two twins and a genki girl who speaks with a horrible mock-American accent) are very pretty, and some very nice cel-shaded 3D and some beautiful ideal-Western-hamlet backgrounds making the series generally very easy on the eyes. Music was good and animation was generally of a high standard, although the fights were a bit daft – perhaps it’s another trait of shoujo series, but it does grate on me a bit when fights involve two pretty winged men flying at each other, and then everything freezing with them in nice poses, and then us seeing the aftermath of the strike. Especially with feathers prettily fluttering about. Nonetheless, some of the magic looked very impressive.

The trouble with the show, though, was once again the story. The premise is a bit odd but not bad – a family carries special genes that means the successor can transform into a suave phantom thief with the hilarious name of Dark Mousy, who finds and seals artworks that have been somehow cursed or possessed, all the while being chased by the Hiwatari family, who can channel a spirit called Krad who ostensibly works for justice but truthfully is a bit of an obvious psychopath. Fair enough. But the manga is still ongoing and thus there wasn’t a holistic story to work with. Therefore we get series of formulaic episodes, with Dark generally having to seal an artwork, Hiwatari/Krad getting in the way, and then Niwa giving a heartfelt speech to the spirit that must be sealed and it nobly acquiescing. There was an extra part with the aforementioned genki girl, Hio Mio, turning out to be a tool for a baddie, but it went nowhere, and the final climax was very rushed and artificially put together from dodgy make-up-the-rules-of-a-magical-artifact plotting. The slow development of the Harada twins, and Daisuke realising his true feelings about them was nice, but ultimately his revelations and changes of heart didn’t seem to have enough build-up, making them a bit hard to swallow.

And I have to say, I got a bit fed up with Dark. There’s very little to his character but outward experience. He looks cool, can fly, is great at stealing, can give moving speeches when needed, and everyone fancies him – but that’s all there is to him. He just feels like a cheap trick to me, a badly-written hook for girls who want someone to fancy without actually having to think about them. The one interesting thing he did – kissing the girl Daisuke liked – just disappeared from the plot, lead to no development or tension and was ultimately retrospectively made to seem fine because Dark knew what Daisuke wanted better than he did. Wasted opportunity.

Anyway, DN Angel shouldn’t be looked at for anything challenging, intelligent or particularly well-written. But it’s a nice little anime with attractive characters (with huge spiky hair!), an unchallenging escapist plot and a very, very cute mascot rabbit-thing that eats strawberries and goes, ‘Kyuu!’ If that sounds like your sort of thing, go for it, though I wouldn’t say you were missing much if you gave it a miss.

(originally posted 7.12.2006)