夏目友人帳 陸 / Natsume Yuujincho Roku / Natsume’s Book of Friends Six

Natsume Yuujinchou continues to be a slightly-under-the-radar success story in Japan. I see toy Nyanko-senseis all over the place, but I have to say even there, I’m not sure if they know the character or just bought what they thought was a cute generic cat. Certainly there are a lot of fans watching this anime, going to the themed cafes and buying the figurines, but it simply doesn’t feel like a big anime, in the way that Yuri on Ice or Attack on Titan do.

Yet it’s continued into a sixth season now, sadly only 11 episodes but going strong. No cute fox-boy episode this time, but a lot of new development for Natsume himself, then interesting twists at the end where Natsume finally shares the secret of his book of friends with another human, plus starts to think about his grandfather.

The show remains episodic, of course, as it always has been. Natsume and his supernatural friends help out more interesting youkai, from a funny old fellow who leaves flower patterns on rocks and has lost his apprentice to an interesting crow-boy who fell in love with a human but left her without closure – only for her to trick him in a fun reversal of the usual folklore stories.

The art has settled now – it doesn’t have its own clear style, but it always looks pleasant. Something that wasn’t guaranteed in the first couple of seasons. Natsume is pretty and likeable and oddly touchy-feely with his friends and mentors in this season – perhaps aimed at the female fanbase.

There was very little real development except in the final double-episodes here, but Natsume is getting inexorably drawn into the world of the exorcists – and I want to know what happens when he can no longer escape their pull. 

夏目友人帳 伍 / Natsume Yuujincho Go

Quietly, without causing many ripples and certainly without grabbing the attention of the Western anime scene, Natsume Yuujincho has become one of the most important and successful animes of the decade. Last time I was in Animate, Ikebukuro, the café was themed for the show. I probably see Nyanko-sensei charms hanging from young people’s bags more than the mascots of any other show – though it’s possible some were bought without actually knowing the character, just as a cute cat. But the anime keeps getting renewed, almost to the point of being a long-runner. The fifth season ended a few weeks back, and the sixth is already announced for April. It’s also one of the very few shouji titles where there are plenty of figurines available – usually it’s only the extremely homoerotic shows like Free! and Kuroshitsuji that get figures.

I have no complaints. I really enjoy this show. It was more of the same, with a few more kernels of information about the wider society of exorcists and a bit of backstory for Natsume’s adoptive parents, and some kind of season finale rather than a slow ‘Natsume gets sick and the ayakashi contemplate how ephemeral human life is’ episode would have been nice. I was also a little sad the whole season went by without an episode with the Little Fox, the show’s most adorable character, but Natsume himself had plenty of adorable moments.

Perhaps the cutest episode centred on a little girl youkai searching for a man who was kind to her fifty years earlier, another iteration of the show’s recurring theme of time seeming different for beings who exist for millennia. There are also several funny and memorable youkai this time, from a funny babyish giant bird to little rabbit-type spirits and a funny stubborn mushroom with big dreams. One nice episode focuses on a youkai trying to blend into normal human society, though of course it’s never quite possible.

The pace remains slow and the show always subtly celebrates a traditional, unhurried, community-based Japanese lifestyle, which really helps give a feeling of softness and warmth to everything. Natsume himself is certainly a feeble and unthreatening protagonist, but it’s hard to dislike him. If anything, he makes people want to look after him.

Slow, soft, enjoyable but sometimes hilarious, Natsume Yuujincho is a show I’ll watch as long as they keep making it. 

夏目友人帳肆 / Natsume Yuujinchou Shi / Natsume’s Book of Friends season 4 (plus OVA)

It’s been two and a half years since the end of Natsume Yuujinchou season 4, which is the longest gap yet between seasons, with only the OVA about a weird snowman creature at the beginning of this year since, but I’m still hoping there’ll be more made yet, because I very much enjoy this world, these characters and the bittersweet atmosphere throughout.

As I made clear in my reviews of other seasons, this is actually where I began watching. I simply assumed the action started in medias res and until the appearance of Natori – clearly known to Natsume but lacking a proper introduction – I didn’t even realize I hadn’t started at the beginning.

So yes, the first and the last Natsume Yuujinchou I saw was from this season, but I don’t regret that. I saw some of the best episodes early on, because this is a good series and I’m glad I got hooked. The extreme cuteness of the opening sequence helped, too – because it, like much of this season, is focused on finally fleshing out some of Natsume’s past.

There are plenty of smaller-scale episodes: one with a little furball resembling a tribble, one where Natsume gets shrunk and put in a jar so Nyanko-sensei has to go to school looking like him. Then there’s a slightly more serious couple of episodes where he has to impersonate a god and take part in a contest to prevent an environmental disaster.

But the heart and soul of this season are links to Natsume’s past. Links through old friends and old mementos, but chiefly a visit to his old home, where he once lived with his late parents. It’s very sweet, really – this somewhat damaged young man who now has good friends thinking back over his difficult past. He was always ostracised for his strange behaviour when he was forced to interact with invisible spirits in front of other people. He made the other kids in his foster homes ostracise him and would often disappear. His coming-of-age story is particularly significant not just because he found a loving home – which is touching enough – but because he’s also at an age where he can have a degree of independence. He may well still behave oddly at times, but he doesn’t need to be protected so much.  

While this is progress, it still feels like there’s a whole lot of real story yet to be revealed. I know there’s a manga to read, and one day I may go seek it out. But I’d like to see more animated. Brain’s Base got progressively...gentler with how they animate this show. Things looked more and more clean, smooth and delicate and that made things just a little prettier with each season.

We still have more to learn about Natsume’s parents, about the guild of exorcists who have taken an interest in him, and of course – though we may never get there – whether or not Natsume will keep his end of the bargain up when it comes to giving Madara the book when the time comes. It would be a very sad epilogue if the series ended there, and I don’t think it would need to, but it could certainly be very affecting done well.

I grew to very much like this anime over its four seasons. I sincerely hope I get to enjoy more. Especially of the lil’ fox boy! GODDAMN HE’S TOO CUTE.

夏目友人帳 参 / Natsume Yuujinchou San / Natsume’s Book of Friends season 3

I didn’t realise until I went to Japan a couple of months ago how popular Natsume Yuujinchou is over there. With Nyanko-sensei toys in every arcade, little models everywhere there were gachapon and the manga prominently displayed in bookshops, it was probably the most visible I’ve seen any non-Jump anime be there since I went over at the height of Fullmetal Alchemist’s popularity – and it doesn’t have the hot-new-property quality Danganronpa had when we visited last year. 

The fact is that the funny fat cat who acts like a petulant middle-aged man and the pretty-boy sidekick who is meant to be the show’s main character clearly resonated, and the show is more successful than I had realised.

And yes, I got a couple of little gachapon toys, featuring both Natsume and Nyanko-sensei.

Series 3 was effectively more of the same, but there were subtle changes, both in presentation and in story. The art seems to be simpler and effectively looks cheaper, yet somehow small changes have made Natsume himself look much cuter. 

The series isn’t scared of broaching homoerotic elements, while trying desperately to avoid being vulgar about them, for example by letting Natsume be possessed. We also see more of Natsume’s lonely, misunderstood past, and the overall message of the show – especially its final episode – that it’s good to have friends and comrades is sweet. Even if they’re a bunch of weirdoes. 

His human friends are also given greater insight into how he lives, now, especially those who also have some sense of the supernatural, and essentially this is a series about strengthening bonds.

Gotta say, though – sorry, humans, but when your bonds are with hilarious huge-faced spirits and giant awesome horse-spirits, that’s gotta stand for something.

There’s also an episode devoted to the ridiculous adorable little fox character, learning to stand up for himself and rely less on others – though he still has his enormous boy-crush on Natsume, bless ’im. I’d happily watch a whole anime about fox-shota adventures, but I’m afraid that’s not really what’s on offer, haha.

If there’s a problem with this series – and especially having already watched half of season 4 by accident I know this won’t be rectified – it’s that there’s no real progression. The show has always reminded me a lot of Kekkaishi, which similarly suffered from stagnation, but at least Kekkaishi felt like there were big loose ends dangling that needed to be tied up, and immediate tensions with Yoshimori’s family members. 

With Natsume Yuujinchou, there’s the huge question of what happens if Natsume returns all the names – not that I think it’s even vaguely likely that Nyanko-sensei will truly become a vengeful murderous beast, formidable though his true form may be. I like this set-up and I’m actually a little upset that it will come to an end because it’s so fun and comfortable to watch, but before too long I’ll think the show really needs a strong direction to head in, and the only way I can think of for that to happen is for the tensions between Natsume and the organised exorcist household to really come to a head.

続夏目友人帳 / Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou / Natsume's Book of Friends Continued (Season 2)

Perhaps appropriately, given that it is the only season to be titled as a continuation rather than being given a number like a sequel, Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou is the only time a season starts without an opening episode that repeats the exposition to explain the premise...which is why I didn’t notice when I started watching season 4 that it wasn’t the beginning.

The second season is really more of the same. It kicks off with an imitator of Nyanko-sensei, who turns out to be a powerful youkai, and generally the series goes on exploring Natsume’s situation and developing his relationships extremely slowly. We also begin to have the theme of everyone else but Natsume wanting to choose a side – abandoning humanity to spend time with the youkai like his grandmother Reiko, or treating them like tools or animals like the exorcists. 

There are even humans who will use a youkai as bait to catch another. Natsume spends more time with the famous actor Natori – including a hot springs trip with him, a new level of homoeroticism. Otherwise, things are generally episodic again – Natsume might buy a painting that turns out to be the object of obsession of a kind-hearted spirit, or meet an old lady who met a mermaid in her youth and fears she cursed another with immortality.

Though the cute fox boy is not back in this season, he will return in the next. Instead, there’s a little dragon-boy who hatches from an egg who is quite absurdly cute – especially as powerful demons want to eat him – and another somewhat emo young spirit whose name was taken by Reiko and tied to a tree. 

There’s also a very interesting young boy called Kai who is prickly but of course warms to Natsume – and in the two-part season finale turns out to be more than he initially appears. His design seems almost a nod to Mushishi, but grey/white hair and a fringe that covers one eye isn’t exactly unique. It’s a little unconvincing how he departs to neatly round off the story, but it was interesting to watch nonetheless.

As the series gets closer to the present day, the animation marginally improves, but it’s never really what one would call stunning. Still, Brain’s Base get the art style nicely, and a slightly less bombastic style suits it.

The only thing I’m starting to find unconvincing is that Natsume’s supposed spiritual power manifests generally in one punch to the face whenever he’s in trouble, and that always seems to sort out even the most terrifying threat – before, of course, Nyanko-sensei intervenes.

I suspect that looking back, I’ll consider season 2 the most underwhelming of the Natsume Yuujinchou seasons, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless, and will happily continue with season 3.

夏目友人帳 / Natsume Yuujinchou / Natsume's Book of Friends: Season 1

As I said in my thoughts of Genius Party, I had a weird start to my experience of Natsume Yuujinchou. I started watching season 4 without any idea it wasn’t the beginning. And the odd thing was that it took until episode 6 for me to realise that I wasn’t watching from the beginning – because there was clearly a backstory to the relationship between Natsume and a celebrity with a moving birthmark/tattoo that I hadn’t seen. Every other relationship – from the cat to the more minor friendly spirits to the schoolfriends – I could take as natural elements of a story starting in medias res. Which, I suppose, is a sign of some very good writing. Or even if it was just me being dumb – by the time I got that far I was hooked.

Natsume Yuujinchou is the story of a boy with the power to see spirits. One day, one of the more powerful of them becomes Natsume’s ally and Natsume is drawn to their society while at the same time having to be aware that nobody else around him can see what he can. So far, very Bleach. But the execution is very different, in part because this is a shoujo series, not a shounen one – though it blurs the lines. If I were to compare it to any other series, it would probably be Kekkaishi, with a similar relationship with a protective spirit, family tradition and much emphasis on a rather goofy teenage male protagonist and how he interacts with his peers – rather than how much butt he kicks.

Though he has had a difficult time as a child, passed between family members and foster homes as his ability to see things creeps people out – a bit of a Sixth Sense backstory – Natsume has mellowed into a pleasant boy who doesn’t want to cause problems for others. But from his grandmother, who had the same ability but spent her life challenging spirits, he has inherited the ‘book of friends’ – a list of the names of spirits. These names allow the owner to summon and command the powerful beings, and though it doesn’t seem Natsume’s grandmother ever used the book for that purpose, it is a valuable relic and in the wrong hands it could be a terrible thing.

Into Natsume’s life comes a mischievous spirit who is arguably the series’ main draw, the childish, vulgar, impetuous and selfish spirit Madara, who takes the form of a fat cat and so gets the nickname of Nyanko-sensei. This cute, beckoning cat-style guardian spirit offers protection to Natsume in exchange for getting the Book of Friends upon his death, in a somewhat less creepy echo of the central relationship in Kuroshitsuji. His cat form is a kind of brilliant ugly-cute and his grumpy old man personality hiding a formidable power is a classic of Japanese storytelling, as seen everywhere from Toshiro Mifune characters to Muten Roshi in Dragonball. And, of course, Yoda. He’s hilarious and a key part of the series’ appeal.

Once the set-up is dealt with, the series becomes largely episodic, not too far from Mushishi in terms of Natsume encountering new spirits and hearing their stories, then sorting them out. He doesn’t travel much, but sometimes he’ll go to, for example, an old abandoned train station his grandmother went to once, and there discover a spirit that needs to be reconciled with his friend but has been waiting for decades for Natsume’s grandmother to return. In a way rather reminiscent of Western cartoon writing, these little stories will also be framed by something to parallel them in Natsume’s life – like friends in his school needing to reconcile. It’s neat, it’s simple and it’s very, very cute.

Not everything is episodic. Many characters recur, especially significant humans – we’ll see more of the exorcist, as I mentioned. Natsume’s schoolfriends stay in his life, especially one who has some small power to see spiritual elements: the season finale centres on Natsume’s developing kinship with him, which borders on the homoerotic. Significant spirits also come back, from comedy mid-level, rather bureaucratic spirits to a huge horse-like spirit who becomes a strong ally. There’s also the heartbreakingly cute story of a lonely little fox spirit, who is saved from bullies by Natsume and begins to hero-worship him. It’s absurdly cute and made my man-ovaries squeal. Dammit, I’m still too young to want kids, especially fox-spirit kids. But oh lawd, that kid was too goddamn cute.

I wouldn’t have been satisfied with just these 13 episodes. The story barely seems to have gotten going, there was no overarching plot to this particular season (ie not the same one that runs through the entire story) – but of course there are three more seasons to watch, so that doesn’t trouble me. And I think that if the story isn’t satisfactorily wrapped up, I’m going to have to read the manga. Because though I can’t say the series stands out in terms of animation, character, concept or performance, I became really emotionally attached – and that’s the most important thing.  

デュラララ!! / Durarara!!

I started watching Durarara!! when it began to air, back in the beginning of 2010, and was being hyped up as the next big thing – which, arguably, it was. After a few episodes, I stopped to watch Baccano! My reason for doing so stemmed from a misunderstanding, really – I read that Isaac and Miria from Baccano! were in the show, so I decided I didn’t want to see these characters without understanding their origin story, and only when I resumed Durarara!! did I realise that in fact they only had a momentary cameo in a single episode – but I’m glad that’s how I did things.

You see, it's not just that they are from the same author and are made by the same anime studio, with the same director. In many ways, Durarara!! leads on from and is informed by Baccano!, and I really feel I understood a lot more watching the series after having seen that great, stylish, stylised story.

It’s not hard to make direct comparisons: both have a large cast of characters, all of whom have their own stories. Both have supernatural elements, and a lot of fighting. Both are about the strange things that can be found beneath the surface, and both are more slices of larger, ongoing stories than complete beginning-middle-end narratives. In more direct terms, too, it’s quite useful to draw comparisons: Baccano! probably has the more original and compelling setting, but Durarara!! has a more tight-knit story. While Baccano! has a few characters who are likely more interesting than any in Durarara!!, the latter develops its full cast more completely. Durarara!! shows from the very start that it has a lot of supernatural happenstances, so there is no jarring appearance of magic potions or slight disappointment things aren’t kept more naturalistic, but the stakes in Baccano! are much higher and its timescale far broader. The truth, though, is that they really compliment one another, and really work best seen concurrently – and trust me when I say that the weirder elements of Durarara!! seem to make more sense after having seen Baccano!

An ordinary boy with the brilliantly fancy name of Ryuugamine Mikado (with which his incredibly ordinary online handle – Tanaka Tarou – is an amusing contrast) moves to Ikebukuro, a built-up part of Tokyo that not many English-speaking tourists go to, and which I know primarily as Mami’s stomping ground in Super Gals! and for having an affinity with owls (‘bukuro -> fukurou, which means ‘owl’). What seems at first a simple story about a naïve country boy moving to the big city, meeting his childhood friend and his funny friendship group gets more complicated as it becomes apparent Ikebukuro has some crazy personalities: a waiter who goes on rampages with his super strength, a dark-skinned Russian immigrant who enthusiastically sells sushi in broken Japanese but is about the only one who can stop such rampages, and most iconic of all, a biker clad all in black who is actually a female spirit from Ireland searching for her head – a dulluhan, the creatures that inspired the likes of The Headless Horseman. Beneath the surface are other factions – delinquent gangs, a demon sword who possesses all it slashes, a man who loves to toy with others’ minds and some very silly doctors for the criminal underworld.

Unlike Baccano!, conflicts between the characters will most likely lead to cartoon violence rather than anybody’s life actually being in danger, but if anything that makes the contrast between daily lives and the big, exaggerated second lives the characters lead more believable. As the spotlight is turned on each character in turn, I found myself liking just about all of them, and never being bored – especially as there’s enough of a plot that episodes flow into one another rather than coming across as repetitive or, indeed, episodic. The fact that the most likeable characters, other than the boys at the centre of it all, are the most outlandish ones – the dulluhan who can only communicate through typing, the gentle giant from Russia, the misunderstood ultra-strong guy who so often ends up throwing about enormous pieces of the scenery – is testament to some clever writing. It’s also funny, and I love the nods to other anime – not just Baccano! but things like Wolf and Spice and Shana.

Durarara!! isn’t constantly the best-looking anime, but it’s definitely nice on the eyes and some of the effects –like Celty’s powers – are spectacular. There are some fun character designs, like the daft gals, and you definitely see a lot of things you won’t see anywhere else, like men hurling vending machines at one another. Witty, strange and yet also a little more heartfelt than its predecessor, I’d recommend it highly – but it’s best enjoyed after having seen Baccano!

バッカーノ! / Baccano!

I’m glad Baccano! became quite a hit upon its release in 2007, and continues to enjoy excellent word-of-mouth, especially when very loosely-connected follow-up series Durarara! not only became an even bigger hit, but sends people back to check out its precursor. That’s actually how I came to watch Baccano!, although I’d been intending to for a while before that: I enjoyed the first few episodes of Durarara! but decided I wanted to see the whole of Baccano! first.

It’s taken me a very long while to finish – I started watching around the same time as I was enjoying Paranoia Agent – especially because the three OVA episodes were hard to find in good quality, but now I’ve happily watched the whole lot, and I not only like Baccano! and its eccentricities, but I respect the daring and unorthodox approach that went into it.

Takahiro Omori has directed some unusual anime in his time, but usually their complexity comes from empty ambiguity, as in Jigoku Shoujo and Haibane Renmei, the latter of which he worked on as an episode director. He also isn’t averse to cutesiness: he adapted and directed the anime for Gakuen Alice. Somehow, though, Baccano! feels much more mature and idiosyncratic than those, and not purely because it isn’t centred on young girls. Ultimately, the sophistication here comes from the source material, though – a light novel series that I get the impression unfolded the story in a rather more obvious way than the series, which takes quite some time to reveal its supernatural elements.

One factor that marks out Baccano! as something different from the usual crop is its setting: at the centre of the sprawling plot is the Italian mafia based in prohibition-era New York. It is not a setting you see much in anime, and an attempt at a realistic presentation is a very long way from how the mafia is presented in the likes of Reborn!. Though some utterly ridiculous character names (the most obvious being ‘Jacuzzi Splot’) remind you that this is not a setting the author is wholly familiar with, the feel and the aesthetic work nicely, and there’s the great decision to have the majority of the real action of the series unfold on board a train.

The cast is huge and varied – rival gangsters and hired mercenaries, rich and poor, hitmen and small children. All have their own agendas, but get mixed up with one another’s intrigues and grudges during the journey on the Flying Pussyfoot. And through it all, capering like jesters, are the loveable comic relief duo Isaac and Miria, winsome and clueless and yet endearing themselves to almost all they meet.
A backstory involving a sinister patriarch soon comes to the fore, and it becomes apparent that many of the cast members are bound together by a long history. Beneath the turf wars and mafia hits is the rediscovery of an elixir that first surfaced in the early 18th century, and owes just a little to Highlander. Its effects give an added interesting dimension to Baccano!, as ideas of very old minds in young bodies and the limits of pain humans can cause one another get explored.

There were elements of Baccano! I did not like. There was a degree of the annoyance many felt towards Lost – it was soon apparent that novels were basically made up as the author went along, with no real overall structure and arbitrary pacing, and the closing scene where a man with a monocle lectures a small girl about how stories are most interesting when they are open-ended and can just go on forever was a total cop-out and annoyed me despite the man’s hilarious intonation. And while if you can accept magical elixirs, you really ought no to have complaints about other magical elements, I would rather everything was natural except for this one conceit: fun as it is to see guys fighting with ridiculous prowess and strength, it just didn’t feel right in the world of Baccano! and I would have rather seen everyone within human limits apart from the results of the magic potion. Claire was fun, but his supernatural skills just seemed out of place.

But overall, Baccano! does a lot that other anime do not, and does it well. It is not a perfect, polished work, but it is an incredibly fun one, with superb characters and compelling, multi-layered stories. Impressive and well worth watching.

紅 / Kurenai / Crimson

Make a mixture of the serious tone and subversive organisation themes of Black Lagoon. Spice with just a dash of the body-modification angst of Saikano. Now mix in large quantities of the sweetness, young man-little girl bonding and slice-of-life silliness of Aishiteruze Baby and Kurenai will look familiar. While it evokes these other titles, however, it closely resembles none of them, and can hardly be called unoriginal. The distance between those different titles ought to give some idea of how easily categorised - or otherwise - a show like Kurenai is.

Kurenai Shinkurou is an ordinary young man, except that after school, he works for an underground organisation, involving himself as the neutral party in some shady affairs and training hard so that he can look after himself when things turn nasty. He even has some secrets for when he’s out of his depth. However, he is an unassuming and rather inept young man who is a long way from professional.

His boss gives him a chance to prove himself with a more important job – acting as bodyguard to a little seven-year-old noble-born girl Kuhouin Murasaki. The bulk of the series is given to this adorable, sheltered little thing learning about the world and growing attached to Shinkurou, until towards the end, when it is discovered just why she needs protecting from her own large and wealthy family.

A nicely-animated work from a small studio, Kurenai won’t cause very large ripples but has a lot of appeal for those who watch it. It has sophistication, extreme cuteness, impressive fights and some very funny scenes. It deftly weaves together its overarching and serious plot with heartfelt slice-of-life moments, and there are some excellent characters on display, put into often absurd situations but still believable and easy to identify with.

Some things seem odd: the body-modification angle is the only really supernatural thing in the series and thus seems totally superfluous and somewhat jarring. The other major problem with the series is that while its characters are rich and its tone indicative of the literary source (albeit a light novel), at only twelve episodes, it doesn’t quite manage to flesh its world out in the necessary depth, leaving a sense of incompleteness to Benika’s organisation, Shinkurou’s past and a fair few characters.

Well above average, but not essential.

(originally written 30.11.08. An OVA has since been released)

風を見た少年 / Kaze-o Mita Shounen / The Boy Who Saw the Wind

Kaze o Mita Shounen is a curious one. It has the feel of one of those classics of anime that not many people pay attention to, deeply 80s in its old-fashioned tropes and values, its idiosyncratic and slightly ugly character design and its naivety. But at least in the States, it was heavily marketed, and as you watch it, past those odd designs and outdated, cheesy good/evil divide, you see some CG, some ambitious effects. This film was made in 2000.

A young boy in a fantasy world of early 20th-century aircraft and simple water tribes discovers he has special talents – healing with a warm light, talking to animals, and even being able to see the wind when the sun shines on it. After his scientist father runs some tests, warmongering government agents become interested in this strange new energy source, and when his father burns his laboratory and attempts to flee, young Amon’s parents are killed. He is taken away to be experimented on, until an eagle tells him to escape by flying on the wind, which he does.

Of the many things Kaze o Mita Shounen tries to be, it manages to be none off them. It goes for heartwarming, manages it for a while, then succumbs to a clinical, dull and cliché final arc. It goes for epic, but there is never much sense of threat. It goes for both child-friendly and at times, shockingly stark. And perhaps most whole-heartedly, it goes for early Ghibli, flight scenes and shattering rocks taken almost wholesale from Nausicaa and Laputa. But it has none of the warmth, sincerity or sense of wonder. And much as art should be taken for art’s sake, it’s also true that the bar has been raised since those films, neither of which I’m a huge fan of in any case, and what allowances may have been made for this film if it were from the 80s do not apply when it is less than ten years old.

It does have its moments of beauty, and it is worthwhile observing that it is based on a novel by C.W. Nicol, a very curious figure - a Welshman who moved to Japan, became a 7-Dan in karate and is now a well-known celebrity figure there with a string of bestsellers for adults and children and a lot of political clout as an environmentalist. I read online, though would need more reliable sources to believe it wholeheartedly, that Miyazaki’s interest in Wales, reflected in Laputa’s miners and later adaptation of Wynne Jones, stems from this man’s influence.

Ultimately, though, what he created was a dull story with weak characters, and despite some gorgeous settings and stunningly beautiful scenes, this film is dragged down by them to be left nothing more than mediocre.

(originally written 1.3.09)

狼と香辛料 /Okami to Koushinryou/Wolf and Spice/Spice and Wolf

Arguably, Wolf and Spice is one of the titles that set off the whole moé trend, with its adorable lead female and tsundere tropes. But it came before the moéblob explosion, Horo doesn’t look like a baby, and it has always been a little more sophisticated than the likes of Lucky Star and K-On, which I notice have gone out of fashion again.

I watched the first episode of Wolf and Spice back when the first subs came out, and this is why I’ve never quite been able to get used to the official English title of Spice and Wolf. I think that Wolf and Spice sounds better anyway, and seems to fit with the two series, the first seeming to focus more on the wolf, the second on the trading aspect.

For what makes Wolf and Spice stand out is that its plotline sounds utterly bizarre at first: the wolf part is nothing wholly original, an ambitious, personable trader in a medieval European-style world coming across the wolf god Horo, who shows herself to him as a human girl (with kemonomimi and a tail), sparking an unlikely companionship. What makes the series special, and somewhat peculiar, is the way that in the episodes that follow, the two of them engage in a number of trades, most of which have a clever twist or hidden factor to them that require you to pay attention to such things as the value of salt in the region, or the pecuniary standing of the church in a town. It makes for an elegant, cerebral and delicate series that I not only enjoyed but rather admired.

And Horo is something special, too. While I cringed a little in early episodes, where she was naked most of the time and it all felt very juvenile, her character – proud but vulnerable, wise yet not very self-aware, vain but insecure – is developed extremely well, and the sometimes tempestuous relationship that unfolds between her and the merchant, Lawrence, as well as the business acumen she soon acquires, make for an excellent through-line for a series.

While small animation studios Imagin and Brains Base were sometimes inconsistent with animation quality, Wolf and Spice consistently looked better than the average anime, and when it was at its best, it was visually exquisite. Imagin’s work (series one being, I believe, the only time I’ve seen a show of theirs that they produced solo) was particularly painstaking and often brave in terms of angles and mise-en-scene, and the background work on this show was some of the best I’ve ever seen. The voice-acting also could not have been better.

It’s been over a year now since the second season ended, and I remain hopeful for a third. There’s plenty of story to tell, and the second season admittedly ended on a rather abrupt and unsatisfying note…it was the only way that the story arc could have ended in a way that made sense, but the turnabout in the final episode was far too brief, and its aftermath much too short. I really would like to see more of Lawrence and especially Horo, with her wacchi and nushi!