No. 6

A few things held No. 6 back from becoming the classic series it could have been. But chief amongst them was the thing I thought would be its greatest boon: being part of the increasingly famous noitaminA time slot on Fuji TV at quarter to one in the morning on Thursdays. (‘noitaminA’ is ‘Animation’ backwards, and sadly pronounced as one word – I had hoped it would be like ‘Vitimin A’!) A series of extremely popular anime have been aired in the slot, including Honey and Clover and Eden of the East, and when Black Rock Shooter takes over in 2012 I expect it to go stellar.

The problem is that it has become traditional for noitaminA anime to have just 11 episodes in a half-season, as opposed to the more usual 13. And 11 episodes quite simply was not enough for No. 6 to breathe. They had two options, with the source novels as they are: to rush the character building to get a convincing overarching storyline, or to flesh the characters out well and have a quick, unsatisfying ending. Neither choice is great, and they plumped for option 2.

Shion was a nice, normal kid in the near-future city No. 6 until a chance encounter with a wild fugitive boy who called himself ‘Nezumi’, which means ‘mouse’ or ‘rat’, changed everything. For giving the suspicious boy shelter and food, Shion and his mother are penalised by the Orwellian authorities in the city and Shion loses his right to a privileged education. Four years later, Shion is working a low-wage job hoping to fund himself into a comfortable middle-class life when he sees a coworker mysteriously die. It is Nezumi who comes to save him from the corrupt investigation, but the only place to run is out of the city, where there is a whole different world for him to discover, and it soon becomes apparent his utopian city is not so perfect after all.

At the heart of No. 6 is the relationship between Shion and Nezumi. The first episode, when they are children, is sweet to the point it is almost romantic. A few episodes later, even before Shion’s hair colour is changed when he almost dies just as his coworker did, it is clear there is going to be a homoerotic theme to this story, and that Shion and Nezumi are going to get very close. Of course, this lost No. 6 some insecure male audience members, but I can’t help thinking that’s not much of a loss. Nor, obviousness aside, is it a first for noitaminA (see Jyu-Oh-Sei). Then again, it took me a while to shake the annoying impression that because Shion and Nezumi were drawn so absurdly like Allen and Kanda, the whole thing was a strange alternate universe D.Gray-Man fanfiction. Still, the romance is quite subtle, very sweet and makes both characters much more sympathetic, so was well-judged, and the image of a kiss meaning farewell becomes perhaps the most powerful of the whole concept.

No. 6 would have been vastly improved were its plot simply that Shion and Nezumi have to rescue Shion’s friend Safu (also his female love interest, rather mistreated by events here and gotten out of the way of the central relationship in an artificial way, but with arguably a fate better than anyone else’s), with Nezumi going ahead with his ulterior agenda when they infiltrate the Correctional Facility. It could have kept the best of the plot and those great character moments in the last episode where Nezumi decides he’ll protect Shion by playing the bad guy and pushing him away, but would have removed the things that didn’t work, which were the bits of supernatural nonsense. We didn’t need daft killer bees to give the message scientists playing god is wrong. We could have seen huge walls torn down without stupid yellow cyclones. We most definitely didn’t need death reversed by a literal deus ex machina, tacked on for an emotional suckerpunch but far more a swing and a miss.

No. 6 was an excellent 9, even 10 episodes of build-up. Interacting with the fun tsundere wildgirl Inukashi; struggling to prove his independence to Nezumi and finding out his side-job; getting messages back to his mother and learning the truth of the city he was raised in – those were the things that made No. 6 great, and Bones did a very nice job with the design and world-building, especially in that everyone’s lives were believably normal and repetitive beyond the action of the series.

This is just an example of supernatural concepts introduced to try and make a series more high-minded. If anything, though, they made it seem lazy and made emotions more hollow. But that doesn’t stop No. 6 being very, very close to greatness.

Shrek IV: Shrek Forever After

Going to see the fourth Shrek film, three years after seeing what I had thought would be the final part of a trilogy, I expected a limp and inconsequential milking of the cash-cow, but in fact it was actually an affectionate and entertaining final adventure for what have become well-loved characters. Indeed, they were well-loved even for one such as me, who disliked the first film. It was a neatly-crafted concept for getting another story out of a franchise that, really, had ended – spinoff prequels aside – and a satisfying mixture of action, comedy and sentiment peppered with great visual gags.

Now enjoying marital stability and a certain celebrity, part of Shrek will always yearn for the old days, when he was an ogre to be feared and respected, with independence and no responsibilities. But nasty little Rumpelstiltskin, who has a grudge against Shrek, is in a position to take advantage of this midlife crisis, and soon Shrek finds himself in an alternate world where nobody knows him, and none of the people whose lives he affected have lived quite the same lives. In true fairy tale fashion, the solution is true love’s kiss – but that’s not so easy to get from someone who never met you because you were never born.

Not a film I’d feel the need to buy and rewatch, nor, in truth, what you would call necessary, but enjoyable nonetheless.

(expanded from impressions, September 2010)

One Piece Movie 6: オマツリ男爵と秘密の島 / Omatsuri-danshaku to Himitsu no Shima / Baron Festival and the Secret Island

The sixth One Piece movie was rather different from what I had been expecting. It had a weird, weird art style, which put me in mind of the episodes of Naruto where the art gets really sloppy so that the animation can be exceptionally fluid. Despite the parallel, though, and despite the movie budget here, the visual effect actually wasn’t so impressive and Oda’s exaggerated expressions really didn’t look right in the style – a problem compounded by them being held far too long. While it’s respectable to try something different, I was not very keen on the aesthetic, and ended up suspecting too much of the budget went on the impressive CG – because most of the One Piece movies have superior animation and art.

On the other hand, the plot grew from something really unimaginative (The Davy Back Fight – the movie!) into something very dark, with some genuinely nightmarish visuals. Some of the decisions made towards the end were quite brave…but it’s still probably been the One Piece movie I’ve enjoyed least.

Only later did I discover that this was the first feature film directed by Hosoda Mamoru, who only a year later would make the beautifully-told and very nice-looking Toki-o Kakeru Shoujo and then the stunning Summer Wars. He had previously only worked on episodes of Ojamajo Doremi and Digimon, as well as the first two half-hour Digimon films. Despite the latter two plus a third from another director being truncated into ‘Digimon The Movie’ for the West, this was his first feature-length work as a director.

Well, I can’t say I’m not pleased he got the chance. He’s a big star now. I just wish I’d liked his One Piece film more.

(Expanded from impressions, 29.5.07)

The Simpsons movie

The timing of The Simpsons’ movie adaptation was a little bizarre. Though the story goes that Matt Groening had been eager to make a film since the series’ early days, it certainly seemed to me that the right time had long come and gone without one, so there was real desire to get the hugely successful animated family up on the big screen, where other adult-oriented animated franchises like South Park and Beavis and Butthead got their shot. By 2007, when this film finally found release, The Simpsons was beloved more for what it was than what it had become: generally even its fans believed it had jumped the shark and its glory days were long past.

But perhaps holding out was a shrewd decision. Releasing the film at the height of its initial popularity in the early nineties or in the glory days in the run-up to the Millennium. Supposedly there was a very long production time, from signing on the actors in 2001, through development from 2003 and over a hundred different script drafts before the final version. Releasing in 2007 probably still got as many ticket sales as opening in 2000 would have, with so much of the English-speaking world still loyal in some way to the production, but also had the effect of reviving interest in a flagging series and reminding a younger generation that the franchise was still relevant.

I had low expectations. I went in expecting something atrocious, but I could not call the Simpsons movie that when I left the cinema. With animation coming from the usual US-Korean studios behind the TV show – Rough Draft, AKOM and Film Roman - it broke almost no new ground visually other than having some nice CG shots, and really was just an extra-long episode of the TV show with more high-budget sequences than could usually be justified.

But it was entertaining, that’s undeniable. A lot of it relied on familiarity built up by the show – unlike what happened with the South Park movie, I couldn’t imagine many who were unconvinced would change their opinion of the show after seeing this – but there was some funny writing, interesting action setpieces and some good character moments, especially from Marge, though anyone who’s seen the series has seen her be the affecting voice of reason dozens of times already. Bart and Lisa’s little plotlines were totally undeveloped and the satirical bite that the series often utilised was absent, even with sequences based on government decision-making. Some of the jokes fall flat, especially the ones that are overly surreal yet too obvious, like the people Bart draws or Homer’s commentary on moviegoers, and there was really too much reliance on slapstick (that wrecking ball wasn’t funny in the trailer, so it definitely wasn’t gonna be funny in the movie). But hey, at least a good portion of it was amusing, and the moments of pathos work fine. Not life-shattering, not especially impressive, but no disaster. Still, it cannot hold a candle to South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

(expanded from impressions, 5.8.07)

パパとKISS IN THE DARK / Papa to Kiss in the Dark / Kiss in the Dark with Papa

These pervy shotacon anime are not for me, I fear. The closest one has come to working was Boku no Pico, and that was more hilarious than anything else. Actually, Enzai probably worked best, but would have been vastly improved if the shotacon part that was its whole reason for being had been taken out. I can understand the appeal of the concepts behind these, but in execution they’re mostly terrible. I realise I am not the target audience – these are (Pico excepted) written by Japanese women for Japanese women, the so-called fujoshi who cross the cultural divide in the form of yaoi fangirls in the Occident. But at the same time, I’ve found lots of manga on these subject I really enjoy, from short doujin to full anthologies by the likes of CJ Michalski, which take the time to set up a good scenario and care about character development. More mature takes on the general themes, like the current divisive success No. 6, also work far better.

But Papa to Kiss in the Dark is a two-part OVA all about a 15-year-old boy’s love affair with his father. It was rubbish. I really disliked all the characters except the childhood friend. And it wasn't the least bit sexy, or naughty, or in any way enhanced by the element of incest – which was very unpleasant anyway. I also dislike how the weaker of these stories all have a central boy who everyone in the vicinity seems to love and adore for the most superficial reasons – I’m looking at you, Loveless – and the most artificial drama gets injected through cheap storytelling methods revolving around jealousy – bow your head in shame, Gravitation.

Papa to Kiss is just one in a sequence of samey shotacon teasers, only with an additional layer of unpleasant incest overlaid on it – or two layers, really, when you find out more about the actress. It’s only 50 minutes of fluff, so hardly too much to bear, but there’s little to recommend it. Like other Boys’ Love anime, though, it will have its vociferous young female fans who have very little to compare it with, so will find it both fulfilling as a story and erotically satisfying. It is, I suppose, good they can enjoy it and need nothing better-written to please them, but I can’t count myself amongst them.

(expanded from impressions, 6.12.07)

FernGully: The Last Rainforest

I have very little love for FernGully, an early 90s animation from Fox, with the likes of Rough Draft providing the actual animation, before Fox realised they really ought to go to Don Bluth if they wanted something good-looking. I didn’t see the film at the time, so the nostalgia goggles were off, and besides, Disney’s contemporary films had far, far better writing.

Without the least compunction I can say that this film was terrible. Ugly character designs poorly copied from 50s Disney, a preachy, banal and hypocritical environmentalist message, the most anticlimactic defeat of a villain ever, underdeveloped personalities and character relationships, really irritating protagonists, and the false impression of a happy and hopeful ending when what we were actually given was anything but.

The animation was poor, the inbetweening making everything wobble. Rough Draft was still a young studio, probably chosen because they offered their services extremely cheaply. The voice acting was passable, but Robin Williams – giving a remarkably similar performance to his much-lauded one as The Genie in Aladdin (released later the same year, which surprised me, as I had assumed this had been on the coattails of that performance) – was really on autopilot. Only nostalgia could make me like such a horribly manipulative and badly-thrown-together bit of claptrap. But I’d like to think even as a small child I would have found this film lazy, exploitative and dull.

At least Zak doesn’t learn in a few days to be the most skilful fairy who ever lived. That would be the last straw.

(Expanded from impressions, 7.1.09 – after I’d probably have had more to say about Cameron’s Avatar stealing the plot)

Ratatouille

Ratatouille was a lot of fun. Mark Kermode was on The Culture Show last night saying he didn’t like the film because it was too polished, too perfect, but I disagree. Pixar are still taking risks, still pushing to get a different flavour from the last film, and the one before. Ratatouille was a familiar Pixar premise – underdog fights against adversity, with a little help from friends and family along the way – but taken to extremes. A rat wanting to be a Parisian chef? That’s as underdog as you get.

It bumbled along, checking boxes, having tensions and resolutions just where you expected, although the pacing got a bit wobbly towards the end where what seemed to be the main conflict was cleared up just in time for a new one to take over, but thanks to just the right amount of warmth and humour, it pulled through. Brad Bird’s storytelling voice is also a little different from other Pixar directors’, a little more glib and quirky, which makes for films that on the plus side are less obvious and predictable, but also seem to have a slightly greater distance between audience and storyteller, a small wall to overcome.

I didn’t like everything here – the puppeteering aspect was a bit hard to believe, and the laziest storytelling possible occasionally came out (opening voiceovers, a way to make the main character talk to himself to simplify exposition, institutions represented by individuals etc). Perhaps it’s having seen too many anime like Hikaru no Go and La Corda D’Oro in which a protagonist is given an artificial way to become a great success, only to soon realise how shallow and meaningless that is, leading to a yearning to excel with their own talent – but here we didn’t get that, and Linguini, while soon realising Rémy needed credit where it was due, never showed a desire to learned from his extremely gifted little friend. Quite strange, to see a big Hollywood film saying not, ‘With enough hard work, anyone can succeed,’ but rather, ‘Some have great innate talent, and allowances should be made for them.’

Visually, Pixar are still at the top of their game. It is the duty of animation to put in front of our eyes stories that no other visual medium can express so well, and Ratatouille is full of instances that fulfil this stipulation. Chase scenes between a diminutive man on a moped and a rat, a camera that sweeps through tiny cracks in walls and soars like a bird, a drawing in a book coming to life while always remaining that same illustration even in motion, a room shaped exactly like a coffin – moments of sheer visual excellence. And on smaller scales, too: it is well worth noticing that the depth of field is extremely shallow when the shot is of a rat’s face, as it would be were there truly a camera on something very small. Such a subtle, clever way of replicating a real lens. The Pixar animators are to be applauded.

I found it interesting to see how the writers set the film in France, yet relied so much on English-language puns and wordplay that will be hard to translate. I wonder how these elements were rendered in other regions.

On the whole, then, a clever and enjoyable film, visually stunning, but with some storytelling issues that prevent it from being quite up there with Pixar’s – and Bird’s – best. Oh, and I must say one more thing: Peter O’Toole is awesome.

(expanded from impressions, 15.10.07)