The Idolm@ster: Side M

Idol shows continue to dominate the anime time slots on Japanese TV, with more and more of them being devoted to cute boy idols instead of cute girl idols. One of the most prominent of these is the continuation of the Idolm@ster franchise focusing on the boys and men in 315 productions.

It may be all the rage right now but this sort of set-up is nothing new. Focusing on male entertainers with a wide cast so that everybody has a type they like has been old news since long before Uta no Prince-sama, and this sort of cast with episodes devoted to lots of different cast members is in the time-honoured tradition of adapting visual novels and otome games. The likes of Love Live! and School Idol Project have devoted fans willing to spend a whole lot on merchandise, so it only stands to reason that the companies making this trash should go after the fujoshi dollar too. Or yen, I should say.

And it is trash, but that’s unlikely to be a problem for anyone who enjoys it. Nobody wants to have existential revelations watching idol shows, or be overawed by the original writing or characterisation. They want to see cuteness, familiar safe storytelling and – in probably the biggest departure from most visual novel/otome game adaptations – no romance, thank you very much. Idols are above that sort of thing and strictly forbidden from having relationships. Besides, it’s probably more fun to imagine them getting together with one another than someone from outside the pretty little circle.

And all this is very similar, be it girl idols or boy idols. I doubt there’s many people around who, like me, watched both The Idolm@ster and The Idolm@ster: Side M and found them equally enjoyable. In general, though, they’re basically the same thing. In anime it’s often next to impossible to tell a character’s gender without exophoric references, and these androgynous characters are the ones I usually find cutest. So I liked tomboyish Makoto in The Idolm@ster and here, the small and girly male idols like Pierre, Shouta and Jun. The lack of likeable tomboys is probably why I haven’t been able to maintain an interest in Cindarella Girls, though I’ll likely finish it at some point.

If there’s a difference in the shows, it’s that in the shows about all-female companies, all of the girls are to some degree cute. Some try to be dark and mysterious or have an ice maiden persona, but they still have cute moments. So everything is generally on a continuous level of sweetness, some characters breaking out into being adorable on occasion. But with the male units, there has to not only be cute but also cool. I mentioned the cute boys, some of them very similar to girls, but then there are the men as well. 315 hires not only young teenagers for its Johnnie’s-like entertainment – two cute but slightly obnoxious former school soccer stars being hired right from the hospital in one episode – but also full-grown men. The anime’s main trio are Dramatic Stars, whose gimmick is that they are former professionals – lawyer, doctor and airline pilot. Another is all former teachers. Honestly, these groups are some of the most unlikeable in the show, full-grown men who are meant to be cool rather than cute, but I just don’t find a goateed lawyer doing twirls to a disco beat to be cool.

Thus the problem I had with this show, more than with the previous seasons of The Idolm@ster, was that there were some episodes that focused on characters I liked, which was fun, and then some that were focused on characters I really disliked. Just about all the girls were likeable enough to carry an episode, but 20 minutes of some stuck up former doctor being rude to everyone and demanding to take on more work until, surprise surprise, everyone was right and he collapses of exhaustion … it’s just not characterisation I enjoy. I don’t even know that girls who enjoy the aloof, know-it-all type would enjoy seeing him being such a fool either.

When it’s cute, though, the show is definitely cute. And definitely fun. It worked best when the ensemble was together, like when they all went off to stay at a training camp together. That way, nobody gets too tedious. That includes for people who don’t like endlessly bright and optimistic boy-princes with girly voices, of course, and I can totally understand why a lot of viewers would find Pierre annoying as well. Unfortunately, there really aren’t many episodes in this short season that find the balance, and too many episodes just weren’t engaging at all.

Because there were only 13 episodes, the anime also cut out a lot of the cast from the game. Several of them got little random cameos, usually passing the main cast on the street and getting a few lines or something like that. For someone like me who doesn’t know the majority of these characters, the moments were very jarring and bizarre. That said, I do wish they’d included fussy violin prodigy Kagura Rei. He looks totally adorable.

Technically, the anime is by-the-numbers. Climactic concert scenes have a bit more work put into them, though I’m still not a fan of the interpolation of cel-shaded CG to make animating dances easier, especially as in this show they sometimes have normal animation in the foreground and computer animation behind. The songs are generic and a lot of the guys have kind of annoying nasal singing voices. Animation is on the cheap and stiff side, but character design is nicely varied and fits in with the overall style of the wider franchise very nicely.

Just like the original, I’d categorise this one as a guilty pleasure, and when it was cute it was very, very cute. There’s a Pierre figurine I just might buy and regret not pre-ordering before the price went up 50%. But I can’t say I didn’t hope the show would be better, and I certainly think keeping the focus on Jupiter, like in the pilot, rather than on the uninteresting and unlikeable Dramatic Stars, would have made for a much better show.

小提琴 / Xiaotiqin / The Violin

For my first animation impressions in a few months – a break I took while I set up a new life in Japan, plus a temporary shift towards watching live-action properties – I thought something simple and artsy would be a nice idea. So this cute little animation project that made some ripples online seemed to fit the bill.

The Violin is the first animation on my blog from Singapore. Indeed, it’s the only animation from Singapore I know of, though I’m not unfamiliar with the country – it’s where my uncle lives and I’ve visited many times. A short animation from a small studio called Robot Playground Media, the film uses simple visuals reminiscent of European comic books to give a brisk overview of Singaporean history over the past 80 years. There is no dialogue – unsurprisingly, the soundtrack is dominated by the instrument of the title – but the past century has been a turbulent one for the little city-country, so there is ample opportunity to mix the schmaltz with big historical moments, and the one scene not in Singapore is of one of the atomic bombs falling on Japan.

Essentially, the concept is a lot like War Horse, only with a musical instrument rather than an animal and a story that stretches over decades rather than years. But it is similar in that the violin passes through the hands of a series of characters on the edge of important historical events. After being given to a boy on the quayside of 1930s Singapore, it is lost when the boy’s family flees the Japanese invasion, before being picked up by a representative of the allies after the war ends and given to a girl who becomes a famous violinist. As she hones her craft, Singapore struggles for independence, and later establishes a strong identity and becomes the city of skyscrapers and shopping malls it is today.

The animation is simply-executed in Flash, and while at times it is clumsy enough to be called lazy, at other times it is delicate and artful and certainly can be praised for the effort that has been put into a small-scale project.

This is a piece of animation very much tied up with its country of origin, and unashamed of it. It’s a Singaporean animation that celebrates the history of Singapore, and can show a wider audience something of Singaporean culture and national identity. It may not redefine storytelling or animation as an art form, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a small-scale animation that touches on major events, and well worth the time it takes to watch it.  

映画けいおん! / K-On! The Movie

Well, much as my review of the second season of K-On! centred on getting tired of the girls, the slightly vain draw of seeing them in my hometown as tourists was irresistible. And yes, K-On! in London proved very entertaining, even with how obviously many of the backgrounds were essentially the research team's photographs drawn over. I even had a bit of a bizarre moment as my old workplace - above Harper's Café which the team obviously thought picturesque enough to snap on their trip to Borough Market - was pictured. I could see the very window where I used to sit! And it's not exactly a place one expects to see rendered. Then there was the scene in Baker Street, the visit to Denmark Street, where I'll be heading after work today, down the road from where I lived a few years ago, and all those familiar scenes from Camden Market, Kensington, The King's Road, Waterloo and Hyde Park...it's always going to be a pleasure to see your city from the point of view of outsiders, especially cute ones, and this was no exception. The Shard being half-built dates the film to a very specific time, but I suppose fashion, car styles and numerous other things more or less do that anyway. 

While in London, the girls are roped into an impromptu gig in Camden as well as an open-air performance in Waterloo, try rather adorably to speak English, and muck about in their hotels - the four graduating girls trying to secretly write a song for Azusa, which makes her suspicious. There's even one adorable yet fanservicey scene where she thinks Yui is making an inappropriate lesbian advance on her, which is really very sweet. The trip is bookended by a silly opening gag that includes the unlikely scenario of the girls miming along to a tape recording actually convincing Azusa that they're genuinely playing (a gag on dramatic changes of direction) and then at the end, the girls have a farewell gig in their classroom before school, which while not all that interesting was sweet and at least musical - indeed, it felt like the girls actually did a lot more related to music in this film than in the entire second season.

As a send-off, I enjoyed this. If I got tired of the girls in the series, having them in this novel new place, and knowing this was a real send-off - something the existence of this film denied the second season - made it more enjoyable than anything much since the beginning of the show. It wasn't just cute girls doing cute things, it was cute girls visiting a new country, playing gigs and writing songs. It was cute musicians doing cute things, and that's something the season rather lost. 

K-On's massive success is, I would say, somewhat unwarranted. But on a small scale, it's very cute and I don't regret the time I gave these girls. But waifus? None. Obsession? Not for me. More? I won't object, once I've had time for absence to make the heart grow fonder, but if that's all the K-On I ever get, I'm quite satisfied. 

けいおん!! / Keion!! / K-On!! (season 2)

I know that it's actually going to be quite difficult to write about the second season of K-On!, differentiated from the original by the extra exclamation mark. Where the first season managed to stay afloat of being boring by having just 13 episodes (and an OVA), the second is a full 26 episode (and an OVA), with the promise of a movie yet to come. 

And if the first season could be criticised for being nothing more than cute girls doing cute things, the second season takes great pains not to challenge the status quo. 

It established its cast with Azusa's joining the club in the latter half of the first season, and it doesn't change that - not a single new member gets recruited and we stick with the cast of airheaded Yui, shy and feminine Mio, energetic and free-spirited Ritsu and rich, slightly spacey Mugi. Azusa tends to regard her sempai as slightly bizarre, while they cheerily use her as their cute prop. 

And...they do cute things. Nothing more. Their band doesn't play much, and appositely, they have after-school tea a lot. Sometimes their teacher is sick and they decide to visit her, or their pet turtle needs a new tank, or the cultural festival is on and Ritsu and Mio get the fanservicey roles of Romeo and Juliet, though possibly not cast the way you initially expect. It's the same old school plot cliches, only with this particular cast, and a gentle, slow kind of humour. 

It's also the centre of the late-2010s backlash against moé that now sees, thankfully, more shows like Kill la Kill and Attack on Titan. There comes a point watching this sort of thing that you think, 'Yes, they're cute, and this is pleasant to watch, but is this really all there is to it?' As Yui does something ditzy for the millionth time and Ritsu makes Mio blush yet again, it starts to feel totally expendable and, indeed, like rather a waste of time. 

And that's as far as K-On!! can go - it pushed the concept too far and went on for too long, or at least, oversaturated the market. 

There's too much of this to support nothing happening and schoolgirls being cute for this long. Azumanga Daioh at least had its frenetic pacing, brilliantly-built-up comic setpieces and emotional conclusion to sustain it, but K-On!! does much less in considerably more time. The possibility of an emotional graduation comes, but is kind of neutered by the fact the girls are all going to the same university and there's more to see yet with the graduation trip to London. 

There's the movie still to come. I'll watch it because I'm curious about the girls' adventures in my homeland, with the outsiders' perspective they'll bring. 

But I'm rather glad to see the back of them. And for girls who are designed to be likeable, and indeed, who are likeable, that's probably the worst thing to have happened - for me to get bored of them and no longer want to know what they're up to. But that's the problem with too much of a sweet thing - eventually it gets sickly and unpleasant. 

けいおん! / Keion! / K-On! (season 1)

When I first entered the anime fandom, it was very popular to detest Dragonball Z. All those prolonged fight scenes and stupid cuts of characters just yelling at each other and powering up. Much better to watch this quirky little shounen about ninja called Naruto. Of course, the time for hatred for Naruto came along, and Dragonball was ever more associated with the halcyon days of childhood and is now well-loved and its deficiencies ironically celebrated. I expect the same to eventually happen with Naruto. The next trend was to ignore big shounen titles and to only watch late-night anime, which were often shows about young girls that were usually based on pervy visual novels – things like Da Capo and Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. This trend melded with the successes of cute, funny slice-of-life shows like Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro and suddenly, the moéblob trend was everywhere. It perhaps reached its pinnacle in the season when Lucky Star, Manabi Straight and Hidamari Sketch all came out at the same time, but the show that has become emblematic of the subgenre is K-On!

The life-cycle of a notable moé anime seems to follow this pattern: great immediate success where the pretty art and likeable characters endear themselves to almost everyone watching the newest anime; a swelling fanbase of more casual fans; a lot of the original audience realising that (a) the show is going to meander along and nothing interesting is going to happen and that (b) people they feel oh-so-superior to are now latching on to the same show; a backlash in which people get on their soapboxes – often the same ones who were so keen at the beginning – and decry the series as dull, inconsequential, annoying. Then after that comes a sudden and final drop in popularity, where the more fickle fans move on and the more vociferous ones pretend to never have liked the show in the first place, leaving only a hardcore who have fallen somewhat in love with one of the characters and the casual fans who occasionally get reminded of that show they watched a few months ago. This happened with Lucky Star. It happened with Kanon and Air, and to an extent with Haruhi. But emblematic of the concept of ‘moéblob’ – syrupy cuteness with a loose art style – is K-On!

You may notice that all of those shows are from Kyoto Animation. This is certainly true, and their shows have suffered severe backlash, but that’s more a result of their success than anything else – moé shows like Kyou no Go no Ni and C3 would get at least as much vitriol if they were as wildly popular to begin with, but because they’re more obscure, people care less and thus complain less. The iDOLM@STER got off lightly because by the time it came out people who disliked shows like K-On! knew to avoid it. Other shows like Ika Musume noticed that what allowed Azumanga Daioh to be cute, have very little happen and still be well-loved was a lot of quirkiness and a lot of laughs – something Kyoto have taken notice of with Nichijou. The moéblob fad is passing because frankly, its appeal was always limited and there are better alternatives already being mined that don’t mean the cute girls who look good on body pillows disappear.

To K-On!, then – explosively popular at first, now much-derided. I watched episode 1 when it aired in 2009, and then didn’t continue until about a month ago, three years later. The fact was that it didn’t hook me in. I knew what to expect, I more or less knew how it would be treated by its fanbase, and I didn’t particularly like the art style, which was far looser than Kyoto’s best. When I came to watch it, I knew very well that it was a show about cute girls doing cute things – and not a whole lot else. I had no complaints about that – after all, so are Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro. But K-On! makes two big mistakes – firstly, it ignores its gimmick, which is music. Music is the reason the five central girls get together and become friends, and one of Kyoto’s strong points – the concert scenes and dances in Lucky Star and Haruhi were highlights, and K-On! has great opening and ending themes. But other than short diversions to have band practices and a school concert, the music club does very little music-related and more time is spent on things like shopping, agonising over love letters and going to the beach. It’s not until the OVA that the focus turns to music performance, and it’s a real shame that this strong episode wasn’t in the series. But that’s rather the point – the music club is just an excuse to get the funny little girls together in one place and have them interact. But therein lies the second flaw – so little happens that it just doesn’t matter. Apart from possibly Ritsu when she wonders about her love letter, the girls never get any depth, keeping them always on the surface – Yui is the ditzy one with the adorably responsible little sister, Mio is the slightly stuffy one who is cute when she gets scared, Ritsu is tomboyish and irresponsible and Mugi is classy and elegant but with a cheeky side. Later, Azu-nyan is…just sort of there.

In Azumanga Daioh you get the heart-wrenching graduation and the hook of surrealism. In Ichigo Mashimaro Miu’s antics are extreme enough to be hilarious, but her vulnerability and loneliness make for a key scene. In Minami-Ke all the cuteness is broken up by potential romances. Even The iDOLM@STER knows to inject some healthy angst to give the series structure. K-On! stays true to the course set – cute girls do cute things – and ultimately feels utterly inconsequential, even boring.

I quite enjoyed the lightness of K-On!, the easy simplicity and the fact the brain does not need to be engaged whatsoever. But that was over 13 episodes and an OVA. Harsh as the backlash is, K-On! was still a major hit, spawning a 26-episode second season, another OVA and a feature film. I’m not too sure how much I’m looking forward to watching those, especially since the conceit of introducing a new character (usually a way to prolong interest into a second season) was used up before the 10 episode mark – but I will watch. Because, really, it’s simple and easy to do so, and it’s cute. 

アイドルマスター/ The iDOLM@STER

Honestly, I expected to hate The iDOLM@STER. I didn’t know much about it before I saw it – it was based on some fanservicey game full of cute girls that seemed to be part dress-up doll and part visual novel; it had catchy songs like the one that kicks off Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga; Hatsune Miku was going to show up in the second game as DLC; and its characters had already been in a weird-looking mecha anime which hadn’t gone down well called Xenoglossia.

I thought it came too late. I thought it was very much part of the moéblob fad, which really came to an end with the backlash against K-On. The world, I thought, had moved on from anime about the ordinary daily lives of cute girls, and the likes of Nichijou and the anime of Shaft were pushing us back towards off-kilter surrealism. The Idolm@ster would be too late, too obviously fanservicey, too dumb and too ordinary, I decided. And then I started actually watching it.

I understood it was manipulating me very easily, chewing me up and spitting me out. I understood the characters are from stock and the storylines are very familiar. But oh lord, I adored it.

In the game, you play the role of the producer in an all-female idol talent agency, 765 Pro (765 pronounced ‘Namuko’). As the screen shows what the producer sees, he never appears, is never named and generally it’s all engineered so that the player imagines himself in the role. There are almost no other males in the story, certainly none threatening – a faceless older man as the company’s president, and vague shapeless people doing wota-gei with their glowsticks for audience members. These girls have very little contact with their fans, and don’t go off smoking, drinking and having casual sex. They’re perfect little angels with different personality quirks, and they only have eyes for the player. The anime can’t sustain this, so gives the producer a body – a nice inoffensive bespectacled design – but his name remains ‘Producer-san’. It actually works well, and he’s identifiable yet non-threatening as a proxy. And the girls are incredibly cute – they seem so obvious at first, from the athletic wildchild to the spoilt little madam, but through various episodes showing them interact or one at a time, they endeared themselves to me, and I found myself unable to stop myself loving them all. The writers know exactly what they’re doing, and each girl gets developed just enough for it to matter to the viewer if they’re happy.

It helps that the show is very visually appealing. It resembled the art style of aforementioned K-On, via the lovely fluid cuteness of A-1’s feature film Welcome to the Space Show, making this look somewhere between KyoAni and movie-Madhouse, no bad place to be and certainly better than Kuroshitsuji, the only other A-1 series I’ve seen thus far.

Predictably, it was the cute tomboy that I liked the most, especially as she only wanted to be a pretty girl who could pull off frilly dresses – Makoto was adorable. Then I loved stuck-up but sweet-natured Iori and the childish twins Ami and Mami. This was largely an episodic series, following the girls progressing from unknown to successful, occasionally coming into conflict with the evil president of 961 (‘Kuroi’) Pro who uses underhanded tactics to push his (also cute) boyband. Other plotlines involve things like a wedding shoot getting mixed up with a real wedding (and numerous other farcical things), the sad past of one of the more serious girls coming out and our main girl Haruka getting sad that the idols are drifting apart. There was also one particularly fun episode in which involves the girls putting on a variety show. This not only involved cute things like Makoto trying to put on girly dresses and being totally rejected, but an awesome little mecha pastiche for which they actually got Imaishi Hiroyuki (of Gurren Lagann) in to do the storyboards and do justice to the fandom favourite evil Haruka. Chuck in obscure references to silly things the voice actresses have done in their shows and you have an episode pandering to fans – yet still very funny, cute and still pretty witty.

After I finished the series I watched the little OVA that was included in the Live for You! game, animated by small studio Actas, responsible for Moetan. The art came over as pretty ugly, reminding me of a more frequently off-model Peto-Peto-san, but it was nice having the little extra vignette. It even made me realize that I’m now keen enough on these characters that I’ll enjoy watching Xenoglossia just imagining that they’re little actors. I’m so easily manipulated by cuteness…

There’s sure to be more – at the end we glimpsed new characters, including the only trap I ever took an instant dislike to.

Happy Feet 2

There is a tendency to remember the original Happy Feet in a…selective way. It gets looked back upon very favourably, as people remember the singing penguins, great mash-ups in the Moulin Rouge tradition and spectacular dances. But I also remember weird scenes in zoos, preachy messages and a slightly awkward ending where we saw something of an alternate world, in which the whole world goes to see the dancing penguins and as a result does not over-fish the waters of the Antarctic.

It was always, I felt, going to be a hard film for which to make a sequel. And I wasn’t filled with optimism when I saw it announced. Aside from thinking the plot could be problematic, I thought Animal Logic should be concentrating on that Watership Down update. Well, as it turns out, Animal Logic weren’t involved here – director George Miller founded his own animation studio, Dr D, as part of his Kennedy-Miller-Mitchell Films company. Whether he took key personnel with him from Animal Logic I couldn’t say, though this film very capably recaptures the look and movement style of the original. But if he did, I’m sure they’re regretting it – the poor box office performance of Happy Feet 2 has reportedly led to 600 of the studio’s 700 personnel being laid off, with only vague hints at being re-employed in a new KMM studio next year as a silver lining.

Oh, and two of the voice actors from the original film had passed away – one of them a central role.

In spite all of my misgivings, the underperformance and mixed reviews, though, I was quite looking forward to this bit of animation. The musical style was always an attraction, penguins are always going to be cute and it looked like adorable fluffy ones would be put centre-stage. After having seen it, I felt it was uneven, too small-scale and musically lacking, but a sequel that worked and deserves to make a modest profit during its run. Whether or not it really needed to be made I cannot say, but I’m actually rather glad a film with such a totally bizarre final act got a largely conventional sequel.

The film is prefaced by a Warner Bros CGI Looney Tunes cartoon (not the first one either – a Road Runner short played before Legend of the Guardians), setting the old ‘I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat’ song – with the original vocals set to a new score – to modern animation. Cute, but the old Looney Tunes style of violence seems anachronistic and backward now.

The main film was structurally neat: Mumble and Gloria (now played by Pink after Brittany Murphy’s passing) have a little chick called Erik. Erik doesn’t seem to fit into penguin society, comfortable neither singing like Momma nor dancing like Pop, and the first time he tries he embarrasses himself badly. (It’s pretty nasty.) When flamboyant Adélie Ramone sets off for his hometown, Erik, along with two chick friends – a stereotypical English girl and a stereotypical fat African-American boy – tags along. Ramone finds a new chica – and a new face in town, centre of attention: Sven, the penguin who can fly, heads a cult of personality. Mumble goes to fetch the chicks, but Erik is now enamoured of Sven and believes if he can try hard enough, he can do anything, even fly. On the way back, after an encounter with an elephant seal where Mumble proves he’s not useless – but which Erik sees as proof of his faith in Sven – an earthquake traps the emperor penguins. The humans try to help, but a snowstorm and frozen sea prevent them doing too much, and when called on to deliver on his promises Sven is eventually revealed as a fraud – not a penguin but a puffin. Now Mumble must bring everyone together to save his people.

Meanwhile, two tiny krill set off to defy the herd mentality and move up the food chain. They may be confronted with the hopelessness of their cause, but they may also learn a thing or two during the course of their bromance-tinged adventure. The message there seems to be that we should celebrate individuals, and anyone can make a difference – within the system.

The overall structure works well, gives time for nice things like speeches about self-belief and cooperation, spectacular shifts of ice and underwater adventures – and of course musical numbers. The trouble is that there are too many things that seem undeveloped. We have lots of strands set up that don’t really get anywhere – Erik not liking to dance, the krill interacting with the wider world, Sven getting redeemed, Erik learning that while he can have big dreams he is still bound by nature (and cannot fly), Gloria being a loyal mate. Some are just dropped, others seem like they should never have been raised if they’re just dealt with in a cursory way. And we never do see why humans lost interest in dancing penguins.

And the music, despite a superb original belter by Pink that makes her not just a replacement but a real star, is lacking. The opening number is strong, but we saw it in the trailer. The rest doesn’t live up to it, and there’s not much mashup stuff going on. There’s a nice Queen number, but it’s straightforward, and a bizarre moment where Erik, with voice provided by baby Mumble’s original actress with chipmunk effect added, sings a piece from Tosca about her dad being awesome, which is pretty ill-judged. It all lacks the awesome stylistic freedom Mumble’s parents brought to the original.

Voice acting is strong, with Wood still personable and Weaving still hilariously hammy. The kids are all adorable and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon have a lot of fun as the two krill, making a difficult side-story work. Plus even if it feels like someday soon we’ll all turn on Robin Williams for his numerous horrible stereotypical characters, that day isn’t here yet. He’s great.

Visuals are still spectacular and the 3D worked well. Just a shame story and character weren’t quite there.

Hatsune Miku Live Party 2011: Sapporo (screening)

Screened tonight on a high-quality projector in one of London’s West End Odeon cinemas, with horribly inflated ticket prices, was the Sapporo part of the 2011 Mikupa, which was the rather shorter of the two concerts on the Blu-ray, with a much quirkier set-list. I would have rather watched the Tokyo set, being longer and having more of my favourite songs (‘Trick and Treat’, ‘Kokoro’ and ‘Meltdown’, for starters – and one companion’s beloved ‘Double Lariat’), but hey – it’s bizarre enough as it is that one of the big chains put on a night for such a niche audience, and it’s not as though I can’t have a private screening of the Tokyo one for friends with one of my projectors (probably during a con) so I’m certainly not complaining. It was quite the novelty to be able to watch something like this in a cinema.

And the novelty had made people make an effort – the cinema was full of girls in cosplay, guys trying to imitate that awful Japanese habit of doing nothing for the whole concert but pulsing their glowsticks into the air, and anime fans.

Kicking off with ‘Kocchi Miute Baby’ put us in a giggly mood, because we always associate it with the infamous Project Diva videos of Kaito swapped in for Miku and doing some very disturbing moves. We then sobered up for a series of rather less well-known songs like ‘Albino’ (always fun to watch the changes between 3/4 and 4/4 confuse people with glowsticks – but Miku got some pretty wings for a few seconds!) and a great rendition of Hachi-P’s ‘Musunde, Hiraite, Rasetsu to Mukuro’, which I never thought I’d see in one of these concerts. The twins became the focus for a while, with a Rin song I didn’t know (‘Iroha song’ – I’d have preferred ‘Gekokujou’) and then the Daughter/Servant of Evil pair, which I’ve always disliked – shrill, annoying songs with horrible stop-start dynamics. Luckily, there was the treat of the night to follow, in my eyes, at least – Len singing ‘Fire Flower’, one of my very favourites of his. Miku returned for a few songs, most notably the crowning evil of Project Diva ‘The Singing Passion of Hatsune Miku’, and then it was Ruka’s turn. Thankfully, the choices were good – ‘RIP=RELEASE’, my favourite of her songs, and ‘Ruka Ruka Night Fever’, which I like despite preferring ‘Rin Len Romantic Night’. Then it was Miku again until the end – a nice segue from ‘PoPiPo’ into ‘Hello Planet’, two fun tunes, and fan favourites like ‘Melt’ and ‘Yellow’. The highlight for her was a beautiful version of ‘Though the Song has No Form’. Rin returned for a duet with ‘Colorful X Melody’ and it all ended surprisingly on a (lovely) song I didn’t know, ‘Starduster’.

This was not a set of crowdpleasers, which was a bit of a surprise. I expected more Ryo, and certainly more Livetune. At least a bit of Travolta-P and some OSTER. ‘Melt’, ‘PoPiPo’ and the Evil songs were really the only ones I expected everyone there to know, with most knowing ‘Kocchi Miute Baby’ and ‘Yellow’. But no ‘World Is Mine’, ‘Butterfly on my Right Shoulder’ or ‘Love is War’, no ‘Kokoro’ or ‘Packaged’. I was quite happy, and very pleased to discover some great new tracks – but I could tell a lot of the audience weren’t getting what they hoped for, a fair few of them probably hoping to more or less hear the Project Diva soundtrack or even the Supercell album. I was pleased they tried different things and went for pleasing the more hardcore fan, but I can’t help but think the atmosphere would have been better had they put in a few more obvious choices. I’d even have loved to have seen a ‘Matryoska’, though ‘Musunde, Hiraite’ was damn good.

Beyond the choices for the concert itself, though, it was fairly weird just seeing the concert footage. Essentially, the cameras treated the big screens as though a real Miku were there, with shots and direction to match. A better idea would have been to actually get the original footage and interpolate it where the director wanted close-ups, because as anyone who’s tried to film a TV knows results aren’t always good. Up close, there were obvious problems with angled edges (though more anti-aliasing would only be a bad idea), the image wasn’t very clear and there was even some tear at the start.

It was good having live band, and these clearly were interpretations by musicians playing live, which was great. Shame the drummer didn’t make the most of the little swing part in ‘Kocchi Miute Baby’ and of course the beat from ‘Rolling Girl’ was never going to survive intact, but it was a shame there was as much overdubbing as there was, and more than once a cymbal was hit with no sound, which made me wonder just how live things really were. That said, it’s much better having musicians to look at than just the screen, and they were a fun, cheery bunch.

To sum up, this was an odd experience – watching a distant concert up on a big screen in a cinema – and I wouldn’t repeat it (though I’d definitely go to a live, something I very much doubt we’ll get in the UK despite a petition). The song choices were strange, which was good for me, but probably could have been better for a lot of others. And the Tokyo version was clearly superior. But this was a novel way to spend an evening, and I very much enjoyed it.

Cheer up, Len! It was pretty good overall!

Ghibli Shorts – Night of Taneyamagahara, On Your Mark, Ghiblies, Sora-iro no Tane and CMs

(more to come when I get the extras with Ghibli ga Ippai)

種山ヶ原の夜 / Taneyamagahara no Yoru / The Night of Taneyamagahara
The honest truth is that if not for the fact that this was a Ghibli short film, directed by superb background artist Oga Kazuo, I would not have bothered. It’s a little folk story by Miyazawa Kenji, the mind behind the wonderful Gauche the Cellist and Night on the Galactic Railroad, but is only a tiny fragment of a story and barely animated.

Very much like cheap educational television animations and Jackanory-style storytelling programmes, it is less a piece of animation than a series of still images with the camera panning over them while a soft voice reads out a story. In this case, the plot is that when a man falls asleep in a group on the Taneyamagahara mountain, he dreams the grass and oak trees are talking to him, asking him to care for them when he buys the land, and not to cut too many trees down to make charcoal. Just as he is coming to an agreement, he steps on a young lightning god by accident and is punished. That’s about it. There’s a nice, wistful mood, yes, but very little to identify with or see progressing.

And honestly, while the art is lovely in terms of its backgrounds, they’re not the visual spectacle of Iblard Jikan and the human characters are clearly intended to seem ordinary and unglamorous, but end up not very appealing at all. Plus, perhaps unsurprisingly, when much of your screen time is devoted to talking leaves, things get a little dull and repetitive.

オン・ユア・マーク/ On Your Mark
Wow - the music video Studio Ghibli made for Japanese Rock duo Chage & Aska’s song ‘On Your Mark’ in 1995 is so unutterably beautiful that I was stunned. So much story, so many fascinating questions raised in such a short time that it’s got to be the best non-performance music video I’ve ever seen.

(originally written 1.9.06. Even now when I see clips of the short video appear in things like AMV Hell it takes me aback how high the quality is, particularly for a mid-90s piece of Japanese animation, and how ambitious it was)

ギブリーズ/ Ghiblies 1&2
It’s been a long while since I watched the Ghiblies shorts – about five years – but they still make me smile. Crude 4-koma-like art not so distant from that of Tonari no Yamada-kun or Sazae-san portrays the everyday lives of the Ghibli workers – albeit fictionalised into the ‘Giburi’ studio, based on the joke that the way ‘Ghibli’ is said in Japan (‘Jiburi’) is a misreading of the Italian word, which should have a hard ‘g’. With a great little bassline in the second short and some fun jumps into a more realistic style and CG experiments, it records what are clearly funny moments from the office.

Only a few minutes each, they’re well worth the watch for any fan, if perhaps a little baffling for the uninitiated.

そらいろのたね/ Sora-Iro no Tane / The Sky-Colored Seed + Nandarou
Funny, childish little animations for Nippon Terebi, these little animations are cute bits of nothing. Nandarou, meaning something along the lines of ‘Thingy’ or ‘wassat?’. In the TV spots created for their 40th anniversary in 1992, it variously shoots out mini versions of itself, reabsorbs them and eats some characters of the studio logo before turning into various other, similar-looking things. Oh, and one where it goes all huge and CG. These are just little bits of fun for a few seconds each.

Sora-Iro no Tane was created at the same time, directed by Miyazaki. A cute, colourful animation looking like a typical kids’ cartoon, it has a bit more substance than Nandarou, albeit still being somewhat hallucinogenic. A small boy trades his toy plane for a sky-coloured seed from an anthropomorphic fox. The seed sprouts into a house at first big enough only for a little chick. It keeps growing, until a cat can fit in, then the boy, and soon elephants and numerous other creatures want to be included. The fox decides the trade has been unfair so swaps again so that he can have the whole house to himself, but the edifice gets too close to the sun and pops, presumably teaching him his lesson. A minute and a half of innocent fun.

Various commercialsThe Nisshin Seifun commercial is probably the best thing Miyazaki Goro has yet worked on. Storyboarded by him and directed by Katsuya Kondo, it’s about a silly fat cat chasing a butterfly drawn in a nice line-art style. A fun bit of frivolity.

Miyazaki Hayao’s House co. commercials are probably the most richly animated snippets for TV the studio has made. The lovely little clips show 50s kids from the point of view of adults, delighting in catching sight of (presumably) their parents. Beautifully done and endlessly adorable, they’re indispensable viewing for fans. An odd, warbly song from a Ghibli seiyuu about the chicchana onna no ko called ‘Okaasan no Shashin’ (mother’s photo), though, which if anything I’d have changed.

Umacha, or ‘Delicious Tea’, were two short ads for an iced tea from Asahi. Oddly, it was made in tandem with a live-action version. It’s done in the Yamada-kun watercolour style, and essentially the idea is that the tea is very refreshing. Directed by Tanabe Osamu, they seem to me somewhat throwaway, perhaps reflecting a lack of input from studio writers.

Bremen (manga)

It’s been a long time since I started to read Bremen. It was one of the first series I started reading when I discovered the joys of online fan scanslations, so it has a special place in my heart. There’s also the fact that it’s just good. Very silly indeed, but great fun. The scanslators fizzled out when their flagship series all got licensed or ended, leaving Bremen with three chapters remaining unreleased. Fortunately, I’ve finally gotten hold of the last ones from a different group and finished the story.

Bremen is a manga about a rock group of that name – indeed, I almost wish I’d thought of the name myself because it’s such a good name for a band, being a reference to the Aesop fable The Musicians of Bremen. Unlike, say, Beck, which tried to be realistic and thus looked ever more goofy as it got harder and harder to swallow the drama injected into the story, Bremen dispenses with realism from the off. Putting emphasis on rock spirit and ridiculous excess, it follows the Mohawk-toting guitarist and straight man Renji as he meets Romio, a wild teenager with ridiculous strength and total amnesia but a great singing voice. They set off to make the perfect rock band, soon joined by a convincing transsexual named Ryo on drums whose sideline in S&M helps develop the whipping action needed to play, and a bassist called Ran whose previous band won’t let him go so easily. Their names all beginning with ‘r’ is never commented upon.

The band have to fight their way out of all sorts of scrapes, be it the members’ pasts catching up with them or challenges from other bands with extreme philosophies, but usually end up getting in a big fight, then playing with such great energy and such amazing vocals that they win over even the people who wanted to kill them. They get more and more successful until the final chapters, where there’s a half-arsed and silly story arc about a hidden society that really drags the whole thing down a bit.

But when the manga is just having a lot of fun with big exaggerated fights and a celebration of the spirit of anarchy, fun and community inherent in rock, it really puts a smile on the face. Well worth a read, and if there’s ever an anime adaptation, I’ll be the first in line.

(originally written 29.9.06)

BECK / BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad

I had mixed feelings all the way through Beck. In the end, I can only say I really enjoyed a handful of the episodes. In general, having tried out both, I'd say that the manga is high-quality, but the anime adaptation lets it down. The plot is simple but effective – a young boy called Koyuki, picked on at school and without any real friends, meets an older boy called Ryuusuke, a keen guitarist who used to be in a band with one of the most successful rock artists in Japan.

Koyuki-kun soon takes up the guitar, helped by his eccentric teacher, Saito-san, and practices as hard as he can. Soon, he’s good enough to play rhythm guitar in Ryuusuke’s new band, along with some other strong musicians – a band named after Ryuusuke’s dog, Beck. It is only when Koyuki reveals his angelic singing voice that the band truly begin to shine, and through Ryuusuke’s connections and a successful American independent release, they get to headline the third stage at a popular festival.

The band seems to be falling apart, based on the impossible wager that they can get more people watching the third stage then either of the others, and Koyuki is the only band member willing to perform. He goes up and sings a Beatles song, gradually joined by the other members, and they play such a storming set that the unlikely (indeed, faintly ridiculous) feat of drawing the biggest audience slowly comes about – helped by the fact that the main stage band have no integrity (as if THAT really matters!) and the second stage’s equipment broke down.

The real charm of the series comes from the relationships Koyuki has – the achingly ambiguous relationships with girls, the friendships with band members, the comic relationships with certain adults. Where the series gets somewhat daft is in a crazy crime-subplot about Ryuusuke’s stolen guitar, which involves people coming in helicopters to see him, assassins and shadowy rock legends.

The real trouble with this being an anime, not a manga, is that no band, no voice, is ever going to do justice to what you can imagine when you’re told that this band is incredible. I can forgive the dodgy Engrish and terrible animal noises. But I never once believed that Beck could be a success, because they just weren’t a good band. That, along with an often slow and far-fetched story means that this anime will never be a favourite.

For all I was unconvinced by the band, though, Beck had one of the most catchy opening theme songs I've ever heard.

(originally written 6.4.05)

金色のコルダ / Kin'iro no Koruda / La Corda D'Oro

La Corda D'Oro refers to a golden string - in this case, the string of a violin. This is an anime about classical music.

The set-up is one that’s familiar from other hobbyist-centric anime, most notably Hikaru no Go. An ordinary protagonist is thrust into an unfamiliar world of competition and a skill by supernatural forces. In Hikago, that’s a ghost that inhabits a go board. Here, it’s a very cute but slightly naff little fairy, guardian spirit of a school with an accomplished but mostly independent musical wing, who blesses the main character Hino Kahoko with a magical violin and makes her enter the joint schools’ musical concourse. The violin with its golden strings allows her to magically play to a very high standard, and she holds her own against what it soon transpires is a concourse full of shoujo bishounen archetypes – the simple, sporty boy with his trumpet, the aloof but soft-hearted violinist, the princely flute player with a dark side, the spacey cellist and, a little later on, the fellow non-music student from the football team with a hidden prodigious talent for the piano. There’s also one other girl, a pleasant, shy and thoroughly peripheral clarinet player who really exists so that it doesn’t look too silly that the only people in the concourse are the main character and her potential love interests.

Various circumstances throws Kahoko into positions where she can bond with the boys and grow to understand them, as well as realising how wonderful it can be to play the violin. As with most such series, she soon starts to feel that her magical gift cheapens what she and everyone else is doing, and ends up starting again from scratch, but while Hikago did this cleverly, allowing Hikaru to go back to the beginning on his own, Kahoko is in a very contained environment and while people think it’s weird that she goes from expert to beginner just like that, it’s only a few weeks before she’s playing proficiently. Not with virtuosity, but the expression in that little Elgar piece at the end is a long way from anything a beginner can do.

The bare bones of this show are quite weak. The characters are obvious, the structure (derived from a romance game for girls) meandering and the situations very contrived and superficial. But somehow, despite being the kind of dumbed-down piece that requires voice-overs drowning out musical performances explaining how wonderful they are, and treating music as though it’s never a struggle, never frustrating, always enriching, it really does manage to be effective as a piece of drama revolving around classical music and how it affects people. There are some wonderful abbreviated virtuosic performances of superb pieces, notably by Chopin and Paganini, and while the idea that people can’t help their moods affecting their performances is typical of anime and totally opposite to what experience in the world of classical music will teach you, it does provide good drama.

If you like classical music, a bit of chaste romance, and nice easy drama, you can do worse. If there’s a Secundo Passo, or whatever that ought to be, I shall most certainly watch!

(originally written 13.11.07)

Additional: OVA impressions, 15.6.11

The charming little classical music anime La Corda d’Oro had a continuation in this OVA, subtitled Secondo Passo. On the other hand, it was intended as a promotional tool for a game, and thus feels like the opening two episodes of a new season – with nothing more to come. Two new musician students and a new director of the academy are introduced, and there’s a neat set-up about all the musicians playing together for a performance – except for Hino, who lacks the skills.

It’s quite annoying, having a set-up but only the loosest of progressions to go with it, but there’s two things I like about this OVA – that Hino, despite jumping too quickly from absolute beginner to mediocre violinist in the series, here is somewhat stuck and certainly not about to master the instrument in weeks, as many anime with this general outline have; and that there’s at least one character who’s cynical about this ‘putting the heart into your playing matters most’ business, which while it is accepted by all the sympathetic characters, does need a voice of doubt to swallow.

Happy Feet

I’m going to agree with what most reviewers have said – for the first half, perhaps the first three quarters of this movie, it feels like it could be an instant classic, possibly even the best animated comedy ever. And then it all gets spoilt at the end.

Happy Feet has a clever and charming basis. Our anthropomorphic Emperor Penguins attract the loves of their lives by singing their ‘heart songs’. Taking cues from Moulin Rouge, the film’s soundtrack is a delightfully tongue-in-cheek mash-up of popular tunes, with numbers from The Beatles, Queen and The Beach Boys as well as cheekier nods to more hip-hop-flavoured tracks like Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ (obviously, just the refrain); at one point, a penguin throws in, ‘Let’s talk about eggs, baby / Let’s talk about you and me.’ While it’s all fantastically silly (all I could have hoped for was a few more real tap-dancing-era numbers; a brief My Way snippet in Spanish didn’t cut it), it’s also quite uplifting, and the opening scene is done perfectly: Nicole Kidman, pretending to be Marilyn Monroe, sings Prince’s ‘Kiss’, only to be joined by Hugh Jackman’s best Elvis impression. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ joins the medley, and we know the two of them are meant to be. The peerless CG on an iMAX screen, coupled with the superlative sound, make for a breathtaking spectacle.

Jackman’s character, the subtly-named Memphis, drops the couple's egg during a long, cold night, and when little Mumble hatches, it’s clear he is a little bit different. He can’t sing a note, but he can dance. Dancing, however, is taboo. ‘It’s just not penguin’, his father tells him, and by the time Mumble is grown (albeit not having lost his downy grey feathers like all his peers), voiced now by Elijah Wood in a suitably obvious, harmless way, he is an outcast, indulged only by his mother (even more subtly named Norma Jean) - as well as his childhood friend and love interest Gloria, huskily voiced by Brittney Murphy. Even the latter can’t help hurting his feelings when his tone-deaf squawks ruin her spirited performance of ‘Somebody to Love’, and Mumble’s undignified exit leads to his being chased by a leopard seal in one of several brilliantly-realised underwater sequences, and ends up meeting a gaggle of funny little Adelie penguins, who speak with broad Latino accents. Adelies place less emphasis on singing, so Mumbo fits in and starts learning to be proud of himself as he is – Hakuna Matata and all that.

It’s a very typical kiddie plot. In their first full movie, Sydney-based CG effects studio Animal Logic are playing the Pixar game – giving us a very familiar plot, overlaying it with a clever and appealing gimmick and then treating it with warmth, humour and respect – and actually beating them at it. Even Robin Williams, who plays two roles and does them both with silly accents (he’s the lead Latino, and also a prognosticating penguin with a silly soul voice a la Barry White), doesn’t go too far and ruin the humour. He’s fairly subdued (for him, anyway) and it works well. This is when the Ugly Duckling goes back and wins everyone over with the power of dance, when Rudolf shows that despite growing up as an outcast, he can do something no-one else can, and they all live happily ever after, right? Well, yes and no.

While this inevitable plot conclusion begins, religious fundamentalists (led by a crooked old thing with another silly accent – this time Hugo Weaving as a raving Scotsman), unable to accept any deviation, blame the shortage of fish on Mumble, and he sets off on a quest to appeal to the strange beings who are eating all their fish – human beings. After a disjointed trek, Mumble ends up following a fishing boat and ends up in a zoo, where he begins to lose his mind (especially since he’s surrounded by other penguins who talk like HAL. Explicitly. Even calling him ‘Dave’), until he tap-dances for a girl. They let him go back to the wild with a tracking device, and the young penguins are easily persuaded to dance, while the elders condemn them. Then the humans show up in a helicopter and the elders decide that’s proof enough that their god doesn’t exist (see, this is why tackling theological debates in your penguin movie isn’t gonna be THAT hard-hitting) and dance too. The world sees this dance and as a result, decide to fish the Antarctic waters less. I blink at the screen, stunned.

I understand Babe director George Miller wanting to make things a little more ambitious. I understand wanting an ecological message. I understand the need for a bit of a serious quest aspect to the film. I even understand a stab at the religious right. But this? This deus ex machina? This guilt-trip? This total oversimplification of how food chains and habitats work? This implication that humanity cares about cute things that dance, but is totally indifferent if they don’t, or if they’re ugly sea elephants? This idea that the ostracised will find acceptance just because they overwhelm their peers with things they haven’t seen? Okay, looking on the plus side, it was all so rushed that I doubt kids will really take it in or care, and will love the film anyway, but I take even films about tap-dancing penguins seriously in story terms, and this was a real shame.

Take the tried-and-tested route, and a tried-and-tested climax is advised – although a brave sad ending in the zoo would have won points from me, though doubtless never have gotten past screening audiences. As it is, yes, the film was brilliant fun, clever, warm and witty. But we don’t have a penguin’s ability to open our throats; we won’t swallow whatever you chuck at us, as long as it looks about right. What a shame, since even with its flaws the film remains very good indeed.

(originally written 10.12.06. Happy Feet 2 here)

The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride

Disney’s sequels don’t have a reputation for being high-quality stuff. Disneytoon would churn these things out, and other than a watchable sequel for Aladdin, they were – and are – pretty dire. But TLK2, although of course nothing to the original, has a fond place in my heart as, for me, the most impressive direct-to-video sequel Disney ever made.

Two things make The Lion King II distinct, in my view: the first is Shakespeare, and the second Lebo M. The former because as a sequel to a film that took many of its cues from Hamlet, this one drew from Romeo and Juliet, and the latter because several of the songs were not actually written for this film at all, and thus stand alone better than might be expected from songs for a direct-to-video animation.

Let’s look at this historically. After the huge success of The Lion King in 1994, a CD was released by Disney of songs that were inspired by the film but not part of its soundtrack. All of the tracks but one (by Elton John but cut from the film) were written or interpreted (or both) by Lebo M, who was responsible for the Swahili segments in the original film, including the famous opening to ‘The Circle of Life’. This CD, released in early 1995, was called Rhythm of the Pride Lands. Several of the standout tracks made their way onto the soundtrack of the Broadway adaptation of the film, which opened in 1997, including the original ‘One by One’ and the hauntingly beautiful ‘Lea Halalela’, based on one of Hans Zimmer’s themes, which with English lyrics by the stage version’s director Julie Taymor would become the superb ‘Shadowlands’.

‘He Lives In You’ was the standout original composition. As well as being in the musical (twice), it opens the sequel, echoing the role of ‘The Circle of Life’, which was always going to be a hard act to follow. The rest of the film’s songs are either somewhat mindless, like the sappy ‘Love Will Find a Way’ or the extremely cheesy but eventually rich ‘We Are One’, or character-driven, like the enjoyably overblown ‘My Lullaby’ and ‘He Is Not One of Us’ with all its silly ensemble voices. I’m sure getting Robert Guillaume to sing seemed a good idea in a board meeting, too, but in practice…it isn’t a highlight.

So that is the progression of the music from original to this, the 1998 sequel. I was very eager to get the VHS tape when it was released, pre-ordering and getting a poster and little toy Kiara for my efforts. I was part of the early Internet fandom at the time, in the days of dial-up and only about 10 kids in the school having an email address, so I was quite alone in my excitement, though managed to persuade some friends to be interested too. The film was not quite everything I’d hoped, but it pleased me, and I’d happily watch it again today – far more readily than I would The Lion King 1 ½.

The story is that the little lion baby we see at the end of the first film grows into playful cub Kiara. She is adventurous and smart, and in an act of rebellion against an overprotective Simba, sneaks into the Outlands. There she meets a cub called Kovu, child of the sinister Zira, who was exiled by Simba for supporting her beloved Scar. Kovu was fairly obviously conceptualised as Scar’s cub, but presumably because of romances between cousins (once removed) not being something Disney was keen to promote, he is suggested to be not related to Scar, but instead chosen by him as successor. Zira, along with her other cubs Nuka and the awesome Vitani (who sadly had several lines cut for release, which exist only as animated storyboards), plots to use Kovu to get close to Simba in order to get revenge, but where will Kovu’s loyalties ultimately lie?

The plot is no great piece of innovation, but it does allow for a nice developed cast, solid pacing and a strong climax. It does not have the stature, production values or smartness of the original, but few can have expected it to. Released shortly before Disney’s traditional animation department went into its 2000s slump, it could perhaps have had a little more heart and soul, but for what it is, it could certainly have been far, far worse and I for one rate it highly.

グラビテーション / Gravitation

Really, Gravitation is three different shows: first, a rather sweet romance between an older and a younger man; second, the story of a J-Pop band following their idols; and third, a zany screwball comedy with lots of Super Deformed art, bizarre costumes and visual gags. Sure, there is a lot of cross-pollination, but the three elements are fairly distinct.

It’s a shame, because the first of these ingredients, the main draw, promises an enticing dish, but the others spoil the flavour and leave behind a taste that in the end is overwhelmingly sour.

Gravitation is a short series: 13 episodes. There is also a two-part OVA, which predates the series by a year or two, and presumably paved the way for it; the series covers some similar ground, but with a less rushed narrative and higher-quality animation. Both suffer from the same failings.

I really wanted to like Gravitation. The beginning was auspicious, with a promising love story centred on the typical anime same-sex coupling of a stern, emotionally repressed older character and an optimistic, cheerful younger one. The former worries the latter doesn’t care, while really their love of life is teaching them how to open up, and all the rest of it. (See also: Loveless, Maria-sama ga Miteru.) I identified rather more with the austere, emotionally repressed writer with a dark past, Yuki Eiri, than perhaps I would like to, and the winsome, cuddly, needy Shuichi Shindou admittedly seemed adorable. So far, so good. Yes, the flashback angst was a little overwrought and the push-pull dynamic got a tad repetitive, but if there was anything I cared about in this series, it was the central characters.

But they were left woefully undeveloped, because instead the series decided to get cheap adrenaline rushes from concert scenes, and I was subjected to probably the worst rising-band storyline I’ve ever seen. Yes, Beck made me sneer once or twice, but it was a mirror to the world compared to Gravitation. Bad Luck, Shindou’s band, go from unknowns with barely any material to million-selling artists after one or two publicity stunts. Yes, it’s J-Pop (the band has a guitarist, keyboardist and singer, but sounds like a nightclub), and whiffs of Johnny’s abound, but the story is so ridiculous, with so many daft insertions of how real-life drama affects every aspect of Shindou’s professional life that it really annoyed me.

But the comedy killed this series for me. Like Furi Kuri, it just wasn’t as funny as it thought it was. There were amusing parts, undoubtedly, but after the ninetieth ridiculous costume, explosion, stupid SD face or fatal-looking slapstick fall, I never wanted to see Shuichi Shindou again, the annoying little tit.

(originally written 30.3.06)

デトロイト・メタル・シティ / Detroit Metal City

It’s gratifying when an anime comes along that is completely different from everything else around it, but still becomes a big success. Detroit Metal City only ran for 12 episodes, each just 15 minutes long, and yet it swept through fandom and hit a note with English-speaking anime enthusiasts. Happily, though, the reason it was such a big success isn’t just because it had a good concept or subject, but because the humour in it is just sheer brilliance.

Negishi is a timid, awkward country boy who longs to play his twee romantic pop to a fashionable audience. Yet somehow, he has ended up in Detroit Metal City, a death metal band who sing about rape and death, wear corpse-paint and perform extreme live shows involving a short, fat man in bondage gear getting abused. Negishi’s life becomes a struggle to balance his wild onstage persona with his real, timorous self – and yet when he’s needed, it only takes a quick change for him to become Krauser II, Emperor of Hell. So why do his problems only get worse?

Based on a seinen manga, everything can be more extreme than is found in the majority of anime comedy, more sexually explicit and more unpleasant. But it’s also clever, with Negishi getting into a lot of bizarre but brilliant situations and the surreal humour piling on top of itself to a great climax. It’s the contrast between reality and the onstage persona that makes this so much more enjoyable than, say, Metalocalypse.

I didn’t have much of a qualm with the music not actually being death metal. It was pretty heavy, growly and shrieky, really not that far off, say, some of In Flames’ songs. They wanted to shift soundtrack units too, of course.

I also watched the live-action adaptation, which doesn’t quite match up to the anime, mostly because the acting was that little bit too broad, the actors trying too hard to be funny so that they ended up just being a bit annoying. That said, it was one of the better Japanese live-action films I’ve seen, and Tetrapod Melon Tea were so perfect that it was hilarious. The way the singer runs is just spot-on. Despite overacting and not really looking quite right as Krauser, I eventually got behind the guy who was L in Death Note as Negishi and was impressed by his singing voices…he just went too far with things like his dancing and the run he did (pay more attention to the TMT guy!), so that it was too exaggerated to believe. The humour was toned down too, which I suppose wasn’t a surprise, but a bit of a shame. On the other hand, I liked how they expanded the mother’s role, the president was perfect, Aikawa was cute, and I much preferred the way Jack Ill Dark was presented here. Not only did they get someone of the stature of Gene Simmons to play the part (KISS being a big influence on the anime, as you may be able to tell from its title), but the competition between the two vocalists and its resolution was much more believable than in the anime, as well as making The Emperor of Metal actually seem formidable.

The mere fact that there was a real-life Metal Buffalo made me very happy too.

I’m a little sad there isn’t more of this anime. There’s more manga, and other than a poor first chapter in which Negishi tries to get laid by a groupie, which doesn’t fit with his character through the rest of the series, it seems just as good as the animation it inspired, so I shall keep reading. An extremely fun show.

(originally written 11.5.09)