Monsters Inc.

The Oscars in March 2002 were the first to have an Academy Award for feature-length animation. In February, on the 3rd to be precise, I had a little prediction after seeing a film newly released in UK cinemas:

‘Watched the highly entertaining future animation Oscar winner (I expect!) Monsters Inc. – A great premise, great characters and some really funny gags made for a very enjoyable viewing. Boo is an unbelievably sweet little kid, I thought the characters’ names were clever and, while things still look much like plastic, CG is getting better and better, especially that Fiz-T technology. My only question would be – if they know kids aren’t really toxic, why all the security? If they are, why no effect?’

In the event, it was not to be a win for Pixar – indeed, Monsters Inc. was one of only two Pixar films not to win the award, along with Cars. In this case, I think the decision was a bad one: Shrek spawned a successful and enjoyable franchise, but that first film was not a great accomplishment – and I would have preferred to see this film win.

Monsters Inc. is another clever take on an old concept regarding childhood. Those scary monsters under the bed and lurking in the closets and cupboards of the world are real – and part of an industry. They harvest the screams of children to power their society. It all works nicely until one of the best ‘scarers’, James Sullivan (I mentioned that I thought the names were clever – and what I thought was clever about them was that they were so ordinary, rather than being fantasy monster names) accidentally brings a little girl back into his world with him. Believing the child to be toxic and dangerous, he and his best friend Mike have to work out what to do with the strange, giggling little creature.

The question about toxicity has been raised since by others: why spread a false rumour that children are toxic? The best answer I’ve seen is that it’s a psychological trick: the workers are told the kids are dangerous to motivate them to do their jobs and get out quickly. That’ll do – it’s only a minor issue in any case.

Monsters Inc. has dated well, probably better than the first Toy Story or A Bug’s Life – although neither are exactly unpleasant to watch. It’s still extremely impressive, how much work has gone into each frame, and those Fiz-T hair effects remain impressively fluid. But of course, the main thing that makes Pixar the success it is would be those strong concepts, great characters and heartwarming developments. That’s why Monsters Inc. was a great success. And that’s why the prospect of a prequel coming out in 2013 is really quite an interesting one…

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)

ドージンワーク/ Doujin waaku / Doujin Work

After much deliberation, our anime society decided that for the term’s final bonus meeting, we would watch Doujin Work. Having seen a few episodes, I was pleased about this, although pointed out that it would continue the year’s reputation for having a lot of loli. Nonetheless, it was me who really insisted on it today and therefore it was Doujin Work we watched: and everyone walked away happy, including myself!

Doujin Work is a very silly show. It follows Genshiken and the like in being a show about otaku, although goes even further to idealise the kind of people who are part of the culture, while being much more exaggerated and comical in tone.

Osana Najimi is a typical genki girl who decides to make doujinshi when she discovers her friend Tsuyuri makes money that way. Along with her rival Nidou and her childhood friend/mentor Justice, a strange man who spends all his time with a little girl called Sora, she sets out to become a great artist, even though she cannot draw and writes terrible trash.

Short enough to marathon, it doesn’t matter that there’s little substance here or that the nepotism that drives the climax of the series feels hollow and makes it drag somewhat. The short series is utter brilliance because its characterisation is so good. Like Azumanga Daioh, every one of the characters is easy to love and provides endless entertainment. Najimi is cute, daft and likeable, but it’s the others who are truly brilliant. Tsuyuri is the most perfectly-done Machiavellian sadist I’ve ever seen in anime, pulling the strings in the most deliciously detached way. Nidou seems like she’ll be a basic rival character but turns out to be an adorable childish oeru. The love interest is funny and put into all sorts of compromising situations.

And then there’s Justice, surely one of the best characters ever seen in anime. A huge silver-haired genius of the doujinshi world, he can be as intimidating or as goody-goody as need be. He is weird, random, aggressive, loving, and commanding – and then he’s also in a weird, kinky relationship with a tiny little girl of about seven who he dresses up as a maid, a fairy, a bee-girl…which is so very wrong it’s hilarious.

It’s a simple but brilliant little comedy, well worth anyone’s time – albeit certainly not something to show someone not initiated into the tropes of anime…

(originally written 8.12.08)

プリンセス・プリンセス/ Purinsesu・Purinsesu / Princess Princess

How much of this can you swallow? While you’d be forgiven in the context of this pervy anime for thinking that question was a nasty bit of innuendo, in fact I really am talking about the premise. Alright, so here we go: -

In an elite boarding school for high school boys, a novel solution has been put forward to solve the problem of what to do about all those hormones flying about in an environment with no girls. They take two or three of the prettiest boys in the year, dress them up as girls and call them ‘princesses’. While as the disastrous debacle of the live action adaptation illustrated, this could never work in real life, since these are anime boys, they can pull it off convincingly. We follow a new boy as he joins the school and is selected as the third princess of his year. To convince the boys, who are of course rather unwilling to be dressed as girls, they are given special privileges. If they still resist, the student council resorts to blackmail. So to enjoy this anime, you must accept the following things: that boys in a boarding school will go wild for other boys dressed as girls, yet never actually, y’know, sexually assault them; that no-one will think of it as homosexuality, because all boys are fundamentally straight – unless it’s a deep dark secret to be hinted at obliquely, because that’s the most fun way; that anyone pretty will be lit with soft light and framed in roses, and that their beauty will bowl away anyone in the vicinity; that sports teams will improve purely because pretty girls are cheering them; that deep down, all boys WANT to be dressing up as girls with their friends; and finally, that blackmail, coercion and ritual humiliation are both funny and cute. Yup, the writers know their audience well. A whole lot of yaoi fans, mostly women between 15 and 45, absolutely lapped this series up.

I could give it a certain leeway because it’s a comedy show. It’s not supposed to be realistic, or serious, or anything but a way to get girls hot under the collar and/or cover. So what if the premise is daft, as long as the show’s funny? Indeed, the episode that worked least well was the one where an outsider came to the school and was shocked and alarmed at the system, only to find out that the system conferred privileges long after leaving the school, so let his objections drop; it was much better when everyone just swallowed the system hook, line and sinker, because if people actually doubted it could work, the fact that it really, really couldn’t was brought back and broke the spell of suspended disbelief.

But the real problem with the show is that it just isn’t funny. Oh look, someone has a huge over-reaction. Now this boy is being teased by the others, who are threatening to reveal his secret to the uninitiated. Now some stock thugs are being scared away by the handsome henchman character with super-strength. Various extremely artificial dramas are resolved in extremely artificial ways, and not one line of the writing is original, clever or well-done. Princess Princess actually made me yearn for Ouran High School Host Club, which had very similar faults but was at least funny.

I contemplated abandoning Puri-Puri (as it is often abbreviated by fans) after the second episode, but watched the rest as something light and inoffensive. In fact, I really should have gone with my gut instinct. Nothing here hasn’t been done a hundred times before, a hundred times better. The art is nice but bland. The animation is cheap and functional. The voice acting is above-par, but since I’m currently re-watching Gankutsuou, hearing the seiyuu who played Albert having to deliver such lame dialogue is a bit painful.

And the tallest princess, voiced by Paku Romi, didn’t even look like a girl except when his hair was up in pigtails.

(originally written 2.12.06)

涼宮ハルヒの消失 / Suzumiya Haruhi no Shōshitsu / The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

I was in no particular hurry to watch Haruhi the movie. I remember seeing that it was being screened while I was in Taiwan, and true, if I’d seen it advertised in a cinema over here I probably would have caught it on the big screen, but since that wasn’t the case, I’ve left it until now. However, I actually feel I should have watched it sooner – because I haven’t liked a Haruhi story this much since the very first episode, which as I’ve said before gave me certain expectations wildly different from what we actually got.

In the wake of the dull and extremely repetitive ‘second series’, I think interest in Haruhi has waned a considerable amount, but to miss out on this would be missing a highlight. The story, as can probably be guessed from the title, is quite simple: in the run-up to Christmas, Kyon unexpectedly finds that things have changed in his school. Mikuru and Yuki no longer seem to recognise him. Itsuki and his entire classroom have gone. And Haruhi is no longer in the class, replaced by Asakura. If Haruhi still exists in this world, she certainly doesn’t know him.

The film is very long – over two and a half hours – but it fills its length with a satisfying progression of events. After the set-up, Kyon largely walks around clueless, having hilarious talks with a Mikuru who doesn’t know him and a Yuki who seems to be a different person altogether. Indeed, this new, diffident, blushing, quick-to-tears Yuki is one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen, bless her heart. It takes some time, but Kyon eventually finds out the truth and with help from his friends – all over time and space – he must choose whether to set things right, or indeed whether to keep the world the way it has become.

Honestly, much of the reason I liked this is probably that Haruhi hardly features, and a central dilemma is whether or not she’s actually someone Kyon wants in his life or not – which of course involves acknowledging her faults and failings as a person. Ultimately, I wish that the choice was different for him: it would be much more interesting to see what he would choose if his decision was not between the way things were and having to give up three years of friendships and affection. What if he had the choice to carry on from where he was but for Haruhi to simply lose those unconscious powers of hers?

But that would probably not have been a choice that could let the series continue, so understandably it wasn’t covered. What we had instead was still very interesting in terms of character interaction and certainly gave Yuki a new side – which I hear proved popular enough that this iteration has a spin-off manga called The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan.

And for the first time, a Haruhi story actually did feel clever. Others have a general veneer of being smart, but looked at closely, are not very original and rely on a lot of magical contrivances. Kyon’s sarcastic style makes the tone seem clever, but there are a lot of clichés and the get-out clause of Haruhi’s power meaning anything can be changed. But here Kyon actually begins to think about his own role in this, and the leverage he has in regard to Haruhi and her past.

Kyoto Animation’s first cinema release had them pulling out all the stops, although of course they produce beautiful animation for weekly television releases. Few anime look as good as this, and the voice actors have been excellent in their roles from the start. I thought it would drag, try too hard and be unfunny, but I was wrong. I might not want to recommend watching all the Haruhi that came before this to appreciate it, but for any au fait with the story, I’d certainly suggest watching this. It was far better than I thought it was going to be.

Astro Boy (2009)

Before I watched it, I was not at all upset that I missed Astro Boy at the cinema. The quality of CG looked substandard, Americanized adaptations of manga are notoriously almost always dire and the trailer, with its focus on butt-guns, made it look like the tone would be patronizing and unfunny.

So I was surprised and delighted when it transpired that I this was a film I adored, to the extent that I’m actually quite upset I didn’t see it in the cinema, and even toyed with the idea of waking early to catch it in one of the last places it was showing. It saddens me that it will always be remembered as a box-office failure with low aggregate scores on film review websites like Rotten Tomatoes – although if you go there, you soon realize that the critics are polarized: there are some who deplore the film as unoriginal and derivative, but others who enthuse much as I am enthusing now. This is the first film in a long time, I think since Pan’s Labyrinth, that has actually made me want to buy the DVD – and that includes Wall-E.

For all the reviewers’ eagerness to draw comparisons with other CG films, though, the one that this was most reminiscent of was A.I., and of course it is well worth remembering that Tezuka was coming up with these concepts in the 50s, albeit in his style of the time, which was rather twee and oversimplified. But this is a film of the new millennium, and anything but simple.

What struck me about this film was its madness. I don’t understand the people calling it formulaic, because it’s amazing to me that the script was passed. Astro Boy deals with a father’s guilt over the death of a child, the possibility of absolute parental rejection, harrowing ideas of identity, belonging and humanity and concepts of social inequality. The emotions poor Toby is subjected to, as well as those of Tenma, really shocked me. I was far more moved here than by The Lovely Bones or its ilk.

Not only did it have surprising depth, but it was also quirky in a very appealing way. The comic relief, done in very British style, was actually amusing, and the inventive action sequences were far cleverer than I had anticipated – plus the sheer scale of the final showdown was impressive, Astro himself managing to fill sweet, pitiable and awesome roles.

There were flaws, undeniably. Parodies of Obama’s slogans, a character design for Kristen Bell’s character that will date very quickly, a warmongering bad guy whose personality just failed to actually have a third dimension and a scene where it seems Astro will refuse to destroy any other robots on moral grounds but then wordlessly trashes dozens could’ve been better thought-through, and yes, in visual terms it was a fair bit behind the pack – although that’s something any Tezuka fan ought to be used to.

Voice acting was generally very good. Freddie Highmore seemed an odd choice to me, a bit old and deep-voiced for the role, but his American accent was good and he brought a real softness and likeability to the role. There were some big names involved, Nathan Lane and Eugene Levy providing witty, if slightly lazy turns, Samuel L. Jackson showing up for one line, and Nicholas Cage and Bill Nighy giving performances I’d like to think they really did care about.

Imagi, the Hong Kong-based company which provided the animation, has now shut down, possibly as a direct result of the financial failure of this film. That is such a shame, and I hope that the planned sequel really will get outsourced and made.

(originally written 26.2.10)

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.

長靴をはいた猫/ Nagagutsu-o Haita Neko/Puss ’n Boots

This makes me very cheerful. Nagagutsu-o Haita Neko is from the glory days of Toei, and another stop on the Miyazaki trail. Considering that in 1969, he was also working on the pretty awful but good-hearted Sora Tobu Yuureisen, Miyazaki’s work as a key animator clearly shaped him in different directions, but if he got one key scene to play with there, here he was given free reign (shared with future collaborator Outsuka Yasuo), and developed the pacing and comic timing of slapstick chase scenes that would last him a career.

The film itself was successful enough that Toei made Pero the Cat their mascot (Pero…Perrault…get it?), and you often hear it referred to as a classic, in Ghibli fan-circles, at least. It sticks fairly closely to the original storyline from the Perrault classic: a poor peasant boy and Puss In Boots (who had boots before meeting young Pierre, here) set out together to make their fortune, trick high society into accepting them and end up besting an ogre, or in this case the Maou (demon king) Lucifer. The trick that ends the old story doesn’t work here, so an extended chase scene ensues, contrasting the epic and the comic to great effect: it’s the last twenty minutes that the film is remembered for, and there that we see the masterful slapstick animation that recurs in such later works as Cagliostro and Laputa.

The art is a little simplistic, much more reminiscent of Disney and other Western houses than the earlier Horus’, perhaps seeking a broader appeal, and oddly enough, there are a few times where the lead characters look strangely like they’re from Family Guy. This is very much a 60s animation, which shows in the palate and the transfer, as well as some odd psychedelic effects, but the animation is smoother and the backgrounds are lovely, and sometimes the colour choice shines through marvellously. Toei Douga had finally found its feet and was producing some classics.

With a conventional plot, the lead characters are a bit thin, but I really liked Pierre, with his girly hair, slightly stoned expression and propensity to blush. It was interesting that even though yes, he develops athleticism and swordsmanship out of nowhere, we also see him failing, for example when trying to jump from ledge to ledge. Remarkable that his voice actress, 19 at the time, would 30 years later be voicing Tai from Digimon. He’s not in the sequels, and that diminishes my interest in them more than new staff does.

The other characters are charming. Pero is actually likeable, for a wiseguy, more like a Kurosawa clown than one from Disney. The dopey smallest cat and the mice are hilarious, but not in an understated way, which is a pleasant surprise: they seem unintentionally funny, which is much more entertaining than someone who thinks they’re hilarious. I’m not sure about Lucifer: I like that he has a comedic side as well as a menacing one, but his design is just a little too simple and unsightly.

Throughout, I was wondering if Disney had been influenced by this in making Aladdin, since there are a lot of resemblances to the parts that don’t come from the folk story – poor kid looking at a princess with unsuitable suitors, masquerading as a noble with the help of a sidekick in order to woo her before admitting it all in a paroxysm of guilt, and a sympathetic bumbling monarch getting swayed by riches – there’s a fair bit that’s reminiscent, and we all remember The Lion King’s relation to Kimba…

Warm, funny and absorbing, there’s not much that’s startlingly new here, and it’s very much a conventional kiddies’ cartoon, but it’s probably as good as kiddies’ cartoons can get.

(originally written 14.8.08)

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)

十二国記/Jūni Kokuki/The Twelve Kingdoms

After hearing a lot of praise for The Twelve Kingdoms, I was initially quite dubious that it deserved it. The anime begins with a typical premise right out of one of Studio Pierrot’s previous successes, Fushigi Yuugi: a young girl and her schoolmates are taken to a strange world that resembles feudal Japan or China, where only the mysterious powers they gain, and those of the mysterious handsome men around them, can save them. The art is nice but simple and flatly-coloured, and it doesn’t look like much will really distinguish this series.

By halfway, you’ll have realised just how sophisticated this series really is, how much richer the stories that come from novels tend to be. It’s not about a zany adventure in a new world, it’s about alienation and guilt and death and responsibility. There are sophisticated political machinations and working social systems. There are the usual epic battles and big speeches and some silly touches, but it all works, because it’s intricate and different enough to hold the interest. Some of the minor arcs – the black-haired Kirin, the side-stories featuring the Enki Rokuta – are more interesting than the main story of Sekishi-jou, but everything hangs together well, and I hope that Studio Pierrot eventually fulfil their promise of continuing the series when the novels have continued enough to enable them to do so.

Part of the pleasure of watching the series is that while the visuals aren’t up there with, say, the similarly-flavoured classical fantasy epic Seirei no Moribito, the anime is a feast for the ears. Not only is the music eclectic and in many places stunning, but a lot of my favourite seiyuu put in prominent performances here. Chief amongst these is Yamaguchi Kappei (L from Death Note, the title role from Inuyasha), who softens his Usopp voice, puts in a bit of Shinpachi’s mischievousness, and manages to sound irresistible as the boy in an obvious homoerotic partnership. Kugimiya Rie puts in another heart-meltingly adorable performance as Taiki in the side-story that forms the real heart of the story, while Kaneda Tomoko’s Chiyo-chan voice brings a lighter form of instant cute to scenes with the travelling theatre. Suzumura Kenichi’s distinctive voice, which made Lavi such a popular character in D.Gray-Man, makes a talking mouse possibly the most memorable and believable character in the story, while Shibata Hidekatsu, who always gets a part when a rumbling, powerful voice is needed (King Bradley in Hagaren, the 3rd Hokage in Naruto) had a great little cameo. A fantastic cast, necessary for a script with large amounts of static conversation.

A surprisingly adult and surprisingly satisfying fantasy series, a detailed painting of another world that outgrows its babies-grow-on-trees and tigers-can-fly daftness to become startlingly real. I’m eager for more.

(originally written 30.12.07)

ルパン三世 カリオストロの城/Lupan Sansei:Kariosutoro no Shiro/Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro

While I may consider Miyazaki one of the very best writer/directors who ever made films, animated or otherwise, that is not to say that I will automatically adore everything he does. Indeed, there are a few of his movies I consider to be good, but not great. This is one of them.

This was Miyazaki’s first movie as a director, and the only one not considered part of the Ghibli canon. True, Nausicaä was made before Ghibli’s foundation, but most of Ghibli's staff was formed from the team that made that film, it’s generally considered part of the studio’s work. Cagliostro takes the Lupin III franchise’s well-known characters (in Japan at least…and perhaps one day internationally if Miyazaki’s fame continues to rise or Spielberg ever does the long-rumoured live-action adaptation) and puts them in a typical perilous situation: tracking down the source of counterfeit bills, Lupin and his nakama find themselves uncovering corruption in the heart of a small country, and of course a beautiful and innocent young damsel to rescue.

Other artists have made Lupin and co look much cooler, but Miyazaki’s design suits the slapstick tone of this far-fetched story well. There’s no magic, but most of the fights and the tricks Lupin manages to pull off are cheerfully unlikely and silly. The story is loose as can be, climaxing in the most slapdash ending of all Miyazaki’s slapdash endings, but there’s a lot of fun to be had with the playful interaction between characters and the inventive setpieces.

It’s not hard to see the huge influence Lupin III had since his manga debut in 1967 (writer Monkey Punch based him on the original Arsene Lupin, of course). The clown that can be very serious when needed is now second only to the innocent young boy on a voyage of discovery as a typical shounen protagonist (and often the two are merged). The cast of Cowboy Bebop are heavily based on these prototypes – replace Ed with Zoro from One Piece and everything would fall together. And this movie is generally regarded as the best Lupin III has to offer.

But it’s really quite slow and predictable, and only sporadically funny. It hasn’t dated too well, shaky framing and washed-out colours reminding me of cartoons like Inspector Gadget – not necessarily a bad thing (oh that the Inspector Gadget movie had been this good) and the animation does hint at glories to come, but watching someone make a good film with what materials they had and watching someone make a genuinely good film is different. Fun as it is to see what will become Miyazaki hallmarks (design, simple and obvious romances, mid-air drama…and this is the first of three Miyazaki movies with ‘Castle’ in the title), that doesn’t make the film itself any better or any worse.

Not a bad movie, by any means. But I would rank it as similar to, say, a middle-tier One Piece movie. A nice addition to a franchise and certainly an entertaining diversion, but no great classic – nothing that I would watch again and again.

(Originally written 26.8.06)

最終兵器彼女/Saishuu Heiki Kanojo/‘She, the Ultimate Weapon’/Saikano

One of Gonzo’s biggest hits, especially on Western shores, has been Saikano, an anime with the kind of premise that unfortunately contributes significantly to the occidental preconceptions of what an anime is. Admittedly, summarising the show makes it sound utterly ludicrous: in war-torn near-future Japan, a teenaged boy called Shuji is dating a cute, clumsy young girl from his school named Chise, only to find out she has a secret – she has been experimented on by the military to make her THE ULTIMATE WEAPON, capable of going into a trance, growing techo-wings and developing an angelic luminosity, then shooting out loads of ROCKETS AND STUFF. Contained within her is enough firepower to level whole cities.

Uh-huh. That’s pretty silly. But while the concept is the biggest problem with Saikano, it’s also what really defines it. I don’t mean that it makes it profound, full of Freudian symbolism about anxiety over female empowerment – I’d really call that projection, or shoehorning. But the way the concept is treated is what makes Saikano interesting.

For most of the series, this isn’t really about a girl who’s full of nukes. It’s about a girl with a job she’s ashamed of, and the way that affects her relationship. It could have been, say, that she had to take off her clothes for saucy modelling or striptease, or that she worked in a morgue, anything that would make her angsty and teary-eyed so that the everyman boyfriend could assure her everything was fine and he would always protect her. Okay, we’re less in Freud’s territory than in Jungian ground here, but it’s a well-known fact that the feeble, childlike girl being protected by the taciturn alpha male sells to the young male Japanese market.

But as I was saying, it’s the way that the weapon-girl plot is somewhat peripheral until it provides a typically 90s-anime apocalyptic, faux-philosophical climax at the end that makes this an interesting experiment, and Gonzo are famous for taking risks. Overlaying what is essentially a typical seinen romance story, in which the male lead is tortured by doubt, angst and temptation while his girlfriend is going through problematic times, with this extreme story of WWIII (the enemies all speak English, though it should be remembered that in anime, ~90% of all foreigners are English-speaking (9% of the rest are Chinese), and it often seems as though foreign=American) very much in the background makes you take the idea seriously – but then you just think, ‘Why not make their problems about something less daft?’ Gradually the focus shifts to the war, and you realise that nothing else could really bring out such extremes of emotion as, well, massacring whole cities, over and over again.

In the end, though, it’s too much, too extreme, too silly. How can you identify with that? Can you really believe someone going through that can just sniffle a bit and find release having sex with their boyfriend in an adorably coy way? It’s an interesting treatment of an extreme idea, but in the end, it comes up short, and emotionally it’s far too shallow. I’m not sure it could’ve been done any other way, except to make it a real-world story, without the war…and then the show would’ve been just another romance story, coming and going without anything to hook people in. It was a brave attempt, but for me, at least, it didn’t work. If what you want is nothing more than a veneer of the cerebral, some explosions and a submissive, mewling teenaged girl looking cute and vulnerable, then perhaps you’ll like Saikano more than I did. Hey, if you watch the utterly superfluous OVA, centred on Chise’s predecessor, you can even see some boobies! That amply demonstrated for me just who the target audience for this show was.

The art is distinctive but in my opinion, those round noses and soft cheeks were kind of ugly, and the animation is very plain, other than some interesting flight-n-fight animations and a great CG tidal wave towards the end, which was somewhat ahead of its time. Gonzo would go on to much greater things, like Last Exile and Gankutsuou, but this was a classic at least worth watching, if not re-watching.

(originally written 16.2.07)

Старик и море and Моя любовь / The Old Man and the Sea and My Love

Aleksandr Petrov is quite unique in the modern animation scene, perhaps in the whole history of the art, not for conceiving of his way of creating moving pictures, but for actually doing it. A student of Yuri Norstein, he starts from a similar basis but his methodology is at once simpler and far more artistically challenging. Petrov uses just one pane of glass and paints upon it with oil, and for the changes between frames, he adjusts the paint where possible, and where larger changes are needed, he repaints. In other words, every single frame of this animation is an oil painting, quite literally.

I discovered Petrov through the twin prongs of Ghibli’s support of him, helping to release his work and including it in their museum library, and his contribution to the Winter Days project, where his aesthetic was unique.

The Old Man and the Sea is his most lauded work, and in my experience the best. It won the Oscar for best short animation and perfectly balances artistry, innovation and a compelling, classic story. Based on the Hemmingway novella, it is the simple tale of an old fisherman who is considered washed up by his community, having failed to catch anything in 84 days. Even his young apprentice is told to find a new boat to fish with, and has to comply despite his loyalty. The old man goes out alone and so begins a battle with a huge fish that threatens to overcome his fading strength. It’s not a novel story but it allows for powerful moments and for an impressive showcase of Petrov’s painting skills, bringing with it as it does chances to paint not just people but shifting water, grand skies and most impressive of all, the fish down in the murky deep.

My Love feels almost resentful, as a follow-up. It feels as though The Old Man and the Sea was a very sincere effort to gain worldwide fame and renown, and the recognition was not enough. Petrov returns to Russian dialogue – The Old Man and the Sea being released in English and French – which is welcome, but the art style is much more impressionistic and less realist, and while the possibilities of the medium are better-explored – the light in an open door becomes the pages of a book, the characters transform to classical lovers and poets, the ground rushes up to become a wave – it all feels forced and contrived. The plot, based on a story by Shmelyov, revolves around a 15-year-old boy coming of age and initiating a romance with two possible love interests, treating them with typical – even shocking – immaturity, could function well for this kind of animation, but it just doesn’t feel like Petrov is interested. I know this is mostly speculative, but I was gratified to learn that Petrov’s contemporaries, including Norstein, found this film to be soulless and more of a technical showcase than a sincere animation. For a story about love, it seems so distant from its characters and almost disdaining. Of course, the technical side would have stunned me but for seeing it done more to my personal tastes in The Old Man and the Sea, which strikes the right balance between painterly and realistic both for animation and for my preferences in oils.

I want Petrov to be given a real chance. I want to see this incredible art form given a feature-length film release and to be amongst the most beautiful pieces of cinema ever seen. But story comes first – and the sincerity and love with which it is told. The Old Man and the Sea was perfect for a short film. It is that side of his art I’d love to see Petrov develop.

원더풀 데이즈원더풀 데이즈 / Wonderful Days / Sky Blue

The truth, perhaps unsurprisingly to those who know of the link, is that the only reason I am watching this is because in the art book for Avatar: The Last Airbender, it is mentioned by the creators as the reason they went to Korea to ask the team behind the film to work on their new animation project. And while there’s a degree of confusion regarding what was provided by Tin House and what by other related studios, one only needs to watch to know the same team worked on this.

A day late because I wanted to track down the original, uncut version with Korean soundtrack, I watched this film tonight and am glad I did so, but likely will not do so again for a very long time. The eye candy here is beautiful – clearly much more was spent on this than on an episode of Avatar, and the ambitious CG backgrounds and fluid animation is frequently stunning. The setting works and the characters are well-designed – regardless of perceived similarity to Avatar characters. But the story lets everything down through sheer lack of momentum.

In 2142, mankind seems all but destroyed. Their renewable energy relies on controlling the weather, and finding solar power inefficient, the citizens of Ecoban instead find a way to harvest energy from polluted air – setting up an opposition between nature and industry that makes Nausicaa look subtle. This of course makes a misery of the lives of those in the nearby colony of Marr, and they plot insurrection. Against this backdrop, law enforcement officer – or similar – called Jay runs into a man she thought was dead when he breaks into Ecoban to steal valuable data. Her superior and childhood friend Cade knows him too – and personal reasons are added to his determination to crack down on the outside colony.

The problem is that there is no actual impetus driving the plot. The bad guys raid the colony in the middle arc, so the threat of them doing it again seems repetitive. The good guys do not have a real goal or an aim, even one as simple as ‘destroy the Death Star’ – they are mostly on the defensive, and have some vague ideas that you know will come as a side-effect of other actions but don’t seem like a goal or an aspiration. As a result, things drag and the main characters seem to meander, and their concerns for cute kids seem to be rather tacked on. The ending brings many clichés with it, but works well and there’s a great moment of redemption, but really it is too little, too late.

Beautiful to look at, interesting for the Avatar connection and hopefully a sign we’ll see more, better films yet from this studio, Wonderful Days nonetheless falls short as a story and just needed something to drive it onwards.

ダ.カーポ / Da Capo (Season 1)

Oh, what a beautiful mess Da Capo is. It comes so close to being something great, but never quite makes it. The trouble is that the studio try to do too much, when really they should have focussed on just one story. But being based on a H-game, there are half a dozen extra girls that have to have their moments in the sunshine. If it were 13 episodes, it probably would have been great - but there just wasn’t a strong enough story to have 26, so we ended up with nonsensical side-stories, padding episodes devoted to bad characters, and poor pacing.

Asakura Jun'ichi is an ordinary student living alone with his sister Nemu. But the two are not blood related, and indeed, may have feelings for one another that go beyond those of siblings. When their childhood friend Sakura appears, still looking like a child and forward enough to tease Jun'ichi, things come to a head. This intriguing love triangle, with the added intrigue of the taboo of incest, could have made a great story in the style of Kimi Ga Nozomo Eien, but there is another element to the tale: a sakura (cherry blossom) tree is in eternal bloom in the town, and grants the wishes of those around it. So the love triangle becomes more of a Tate-Mai-Shiho from Mai-HiME affair, with all the angst of lashing out with supernatural powers, and even worse, the other girls in Jun'ichi’s life have their wishes come true – one can read minds, one is a robot who takes the first steps to becoming human, one…is actually a cat. Uh-huh. There are some very special moments, and there was great potential, but there’re just too many ludicrous elements, and Da Capo doesn’t quite manage to pull it off. But Sakura is very, very cute, and Nemu is also too sweet and too nice to wish heartbreak upon.

Season two looks to be better-produced, with beautiful animation, and takes place 2 years later. Will the story be better? I hope so!

(Originally written 19.8.05)

吟遊黙示録マイネリーベ ヴィーダー/Ginyuu Mokushiroku Maine Riibe Vuiidaa /Wandering Revelations Meine Liebe ~Wieder~ (‘My Love ~Again~’)

As I said in my review of Ouran, it was very amusing to watch that silly series in harmony with Meine Liebe, since the archetypes sent up in the Host Club are almost exactly like the ones presented seriously here. Meine Leibe is about an elite school for the super-rich teens who are destined to become the future leaders of their county. The honoured elite of the students, the ‘Strahl Candidates’, bear more than a few similarities to Ouran’s characters. There is the attractive blonde leader, his loyal sidekick, the cute boy who looks like a small child despite being the same age as all the rest (here fragile rather than hyper) and is friends with a tall silent type, and then in place of the twins, a token Japanese guy who kind of gets ignored when the writers get bored of him.

The school is in chaos in this second series. The headmaster has disappeared, and his replacement is shaking the boat, allowing Strahl candidates to be chosen by merit rather than purely by birthright. None of the existing candidates get demoted, conveniently enough, but several new rivals appear. The conflict barely gets resolved, though, since the last few episodes are devoted to the plucky young heroes foiling an attempted national coup d’etat. This climax is ironically really the series’ nadir. Let me explain: Meine Liebe works, and is fun, because it takes itself VERY seriously, and refuses to ever accept that any of its concepts or scenarios are at all ridiculous – it’s about big, important speeches, angst being overcome and occasional bursts of small-scale action. However, when it gets TOO self-indulgent, and these teenagers make melodramatic speeches that save whole countries and prompt the people with guns to curse that their plans have been foiled, it’s just TOO much. It’s a fragile balance that gets pushed too far. Psychic powers are similarly iffy.

But Meine Lieber wins out by strength of self-belief, a fittingly over-pretty art style with some beautiful backdrops, an amusing lack of prominent female characters (all the better for yaoi fanart and doujins to be made by the target audience) and its wonderful camp excess. It’s with the tongue in the cheek that one has to enjoy Meine Leibe, and the second series is really more of the same. For all its enjoyable qualities, however, the fact remains that silly storylines, a slow pace and some totally impossible plot contrivances keep the anime being nothing more than mediocre.

(originally written 8.10.06)

魔法少女まどか☆マギカ / Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magika / Puella Magi Madoka☆Magika

I didn’t know quite what to expect from Madoka. I’ll admit I was cynical, and for irrational reasons: given where people were making the most noise about it, I assumed it would be the latest in a line of juvenile, schlocky, plotless and brainless anime that were beloved of many and then all but discarded when they finished, starting with Higurashi, through Angel Beats and to High School of the Dead. But that was a snap judgement, and after all, this was a Shaft anime. I love Shaft.

On the other hand, the immediate impact Madoka makes is that its legacy is part of the one Shaft production I really haven’t enjoyed watching: the character designer here was the mangaka for Hidamari Sketch, Aoki Ume, so the look of the piece reminded me instantly of that, making me wonder if this was going to be at all serious. All I had heard about Madoka was that it wasn’t your typical Mahou Shoujo series, and the opening animation made me fear that it was going to be a Moetan-ish send-up. Not so, though. It took a long time to assert itself as truly subverting the genre, even when it got dark, but ultimately it did so, and extremely well – and that opening became cleverly ironic, images of defeat rather than ideals.

The director, Shinbou Akiyuki, also helmed the original Nanoha – and thus he had credentials for directing Magical Girl anime. And not the sort that is actually aimed at young girls – such as Ojamajo Doremi – but aimed at the seinen crowd. However, since Nanoha he has gone on to direct most of Shaft’s best, including the productions steeped in irony and surreal humour like Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei and Pani Poni Dasshu, though at the very least Hidamari Sketch proved he didn’t have to go all-out with the chalkboard gags and utter bizarreness. I expected more depth and irony as a result, but it also struck me that Shinbou hadn’t really done anything requiring a strong narrative and neat ending since…well, probably Nanoha. Not even Negima?! really qualifies for that. Any doubts I had, though, were unfounded.

It took a while to convince me. The first episode was as expected, setting up the archetype to later subvert. Familiar stuff: an innocent girl has a dream about becoming a magical girl, then meets the real thing after getting caught up in an attack by a witch. The only really remarkable part was the way the witches’ reality was represented by techniques that were an extension of the collages used in Hidamari Sketch and played with in Zetsubou-Sensei: essentially, paper cutout animation of the Gilliam school, only with computer graphics making for a whole plethora of kaleidoscopic backgrounds. Striking stuff.

Things take a turn for the dark by the end of the third episode, and though it was signposted a mile away, I certainly didn’t expect it so soon. In a 12-episode series, though, it was well-timed. It was like reaching the darker parts of Nanoha in just a handful of episodes. After that the focus shifted to Madoka’s friend Sayaka, and it becomes increasingly apparent that the subversion comes from the fact that the dilemma is whether or not it’s really good in any way to become a magical girl at all. There are echoes of Bokurano in the motives of Kyubey (or should that be ‘Cubay’?), but instead of any malice or duplicity, he is pleasantly detached from everything and objectively may well be in the right – a nice touch.

Still, for a while I felt quite indifferent to Madoka, feeling it to think itself a bit cleverer than it was, not particularly liking the art and finding it all quite predictable despite the heavy themes. Mai-HiME had done much of this better. But then the tenth episode centred on a background character came along, and I begun to love the series. That episode gives her full backstory, at much greater length than I expected – indeed, long enough that you realise that the entire show is not really Madoka’s story at all, but that of this other character, who I don’t name in case it ruins a surprise. The remaining two episodes don’t seem enough to pack in any more surprises, but the final ending is cleverly bittersweet, arguably not the best solution at all, but certainly great for an aftermath and a satisfying conclusion.

There are a few things I would have liked in greater detail. It’s implied that the power of the wishes corresponds to potential, but it’s still quite vague and I would have liked to have seen more wishes than the final one be actually about the system the girls are entering into, or to give them personal power. Everything was set up carefully so that Homura never actually explains to Madoka the potential final consequence of her action, to the point it gets quite awkward at the end, and it would have been interesting to see the additional conflict if Madoka knew the final effect on the world she would cause.

Madoka set out to be different from other Magical Girl stories, but starting out just like them, continuing like only a few, and concluding in its very own style. The overall story is admirable, but the shift in focus made me love it.

フリクリ/ Furi Kuri / Fooly Cooly / FLCL

So Furi Kuri exists to be weird and silly, and is amongst the strangest anime ever to be made. Because the Japanese love quirky stuff, or perhaps because that rather defines much of their history, it got animated by animation gods Gainax, becoming a high-budget 6-episode series. It’s not just because it’s only a short mini-series that means it won’t take very long to review.

Okay, plot…plot…right, so Naota is a 12-year-old boy who lives in a town with a skyline dominated by a giant iron. Uh-huh. After Naota's brother left Japan to play baseball in America, his girlfriend is on her own, so Naota starts to hang around with her - getting used as a substitute for her affection. Then another girl appears and hits Naota over the head with her bass guitar, making his head an interplanetary transportation device. He gets weird bumps on his forehead, and when he is sexually aroused (which happens quite often, since he’s a pretty twelve-year-old boy, and of course, in anime world, 12-year-old boys get lots of attention from the ladies), huge robotic creatures burst from these distinctly phallic bumps. Riiight. And things get weirder from there, with the girl with the bass manipulating Naota to summon various robots and get absorbed into them until he can call out a godly creature called Atomsk.

The point of this guff is to have a lot of parodies of other anime and movies, plus to just fill every episode with total rubbish. There are countless visual gags: Matrix bullet time, animated manga segments, even a part done in the style of South Park. Why? Because it’s craaazy.

Yeah. Except…for all its expensive animation and extreme zaniness, it’s just not very funny. And that’s that.

(Originally written 14.10.05)

ひだまりスケッチ / Hidamari Sketch (season 1)

Lucky Star, Manabi Straight and Hidamari Sketch: those were the three shows that came out in the same season, trying to appeal to the same audience. All of them featured the day-to-day antics of a group of girls in their late teens, yet drawn to look more like 10-year-olds. All aimed to make the audience laugh with exaggerated characterisations and cuteness. Lucky Star was the huge smash hit that everyone saw, Manabi Straight was my personal favourite, leaving Hidamari Sketch to be, honestly, the loser in this easygoing race.

Hidamari Sketch focuses on four girls living in the same apartment complex, full of art students – although one of them is a young novelist. Episodes tend to be structured around their interaction, with their bizarre cucumber-headed principal, with their cosplay-fanatic teacher, with the cute little sister of the novelist girl who’s supposed to be five years younger than the others but is drawn very much the same as them.

The trouble is how difficult it is to get to know the main characters of the series. Not all of the characters in those other titles were memorable, but it was only one or two of the characters who seemed undeveloped, mostly because they didn’t interact enough with the others. But even having seen all the episodes of Hidamari Sketch, I couldn’t tell you any of the characters’ names…and if I were to describe them, I’d say the ditzy blonde one (stupid and brash enough to be the standout, but a comic sidekick and foil rather than the focus), the cute and childlike one (too bland as a main character), the…uptight book-writing one with a tsundere side and the other one with pink-red hair who was just…there. None of them were very endearing, nothing about their lives was very interesting and the most entertaining character was the self-absorbed teacher who loved to dress up.

What could’ve saved the series would have been jokes. If it were funny, it would have been saved, even if only as funny as Lucky Star. Sadly, despite sharing a director with Negima!? and Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei - namely Shinbou Akiyuki - and having some of that characteristic Shaft quirkiness and disregard for conventional storytelling flow (lots of random little disjointed scenes and random photo collages inserted into scenes), it just didn’t have enough humour or amusing character quirks, and felt like a very poor rehash of Azumanga Daioh.

Without likeable characters, nice art, good humour or sufficient cuteness, this one goes into the small but growing ‘watch but then delete’ pile.

(originally written 29.1.08. Hidamari Sketch has since had two more seasons and several one-off specials.

みなみけ/ Minami-Ke / The Minami Family

Having now finished both seasons of Minami-Ke (Minami-Ke and Minami-Ke Okawari), I found myself pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it, and indeed would really quite like some more.

I wasn’t keen at first, finding the central three girls quite unappealing, the comedy, especially over-the-top animation sequences, somewhat forced and the teardrop-shaped mouths going too far to look like the vaguely cat-like :3 face and ending up just looking like something nasty has happened with a razor blade. Manabi Straight's mouths looked a little odd, but here they end up looking like beaks.

But the good thing about character-driven slice-of-life comedies is that if just a couple of great characters get introduced, they can carry whole episodes. And while Minami-Ke is mostly aimed at getting boys to think the girls are cute, its real stars are the males.

There’s the one who likes the oldest sister, an absolute nutcase who overdramatises everything and tries to reach perfection to impress her (only for her never to notice, while one girl always sees and gets creeped out by his dramatic poses and manliness), and then there’s the boy who likes the middle sister and gave her a love letter, only for her to get convinced it was a challenge and spend the rest of the time being combative. Most especially, though, there is the boy the same age as the youngest girl, who is cute enough when he’s just trying to fit in, but then starts cross-dressing in a convoluted scheme to get closer to his crush, the oldest sister.

It’s the last one, Makoto-kun - AKA Mako-chan - who’s really the most funny and endearing part of this show, especially when he gets paired up with the tomboyish Touma, who is also adorable and gets mistaken for a boy quite often, leading to some classic Shakespearean comedy with gender mix-ups and people put into absurd situations.

And the two of them actually made this show, which might otherwise have been quite dull and low on laughs, both hilarious and endearing. Thus it comes recommended.

(originally written 25.9.08. A third series and an OVA were to follow. The first season was made by Studio Doumu/Daume; the rest came from Asread. Thoughts on the fourth season, from Studio Feel, here)

どうぶつ宝島 / Doubutsu Takarajima / Animal Treasure Island

Here is another chance to see Toei in its golden age, making wholesome family entertainment, and also to see the young Miyazaki cutting his teeth back in '71 as adapter and key animator. This is childish fare, an adaptation of Treasure Island, simplified, made into a slapstick adventure and with all the characters except for the central kids made into loveable animals. The Disney influence is strong, with musical numbers (albeit not actually sung by the characters) and a totally superfluous animal sidekick who is little more than an extension of Jim’s psyche, only slightly more irritating. Often these Ghibli prototype films - and indeed those by Ghibli when it was formed - have cutesy characters that turn out to have a lot of personality and become fascinating in and of themselves, but that is not the case here.

However, this is an excellent example of a kids’ animation film and has some real moments of that Toei genius. Long John Silver is a pig (one of the more obvious of Miyazaki’s fingerprints) and while he is capable of being cruel, even murderous, he is also presented in a humorous style, the butt of jokes and certainly not too formidable to have pratfalls. There is never much seriousness in the action, and lots of amusing visual jokes. Crowd scenes are extremely detailed and inventive, and a lot of the action setpieces towards the end are both silly and clever, much like the frenetic sequences Pixar garner praise for several decades later.

Jim and Cathy are flimsy characters but likeable ones, and though she is the damsel in distress occasionally, Cathy is strong and cool and is probably in distress only as much as Jim is, and their roles are somewhat interchangeable. Both look very young, which is perhaps fitting for the target audience.

On occasion the animation standard slips, like when Silver and Jim are tumbling down a cliff and Jim is essentially a static object turning on an axis, or when you can see an error where a log keeps poking onto the screen right at the end, but in general there is a lot of complexity here, and the art is bold but not so simple that the animation becomes unimpressive. It is not as fun or idiosyncratic as Puss in Boots, and certainly not as clever or intriguing as Gauche the Cellist, but it is great entertainment from a studio at its prime.

(originally written 9.10.08)

Happy Tree Friends

It’s easy to ignore short web animation as trivial or meaningless, but if a half-hour animation warrants written impressions, why not a series of short clips that together make up a longer run-time? And thus, back to 2003 for my thoughts on now rarely-mentioned but certainly well-remembered violent cartoon series Happy Tree Friends.

Back in 2003, I was linked to Happy Tree Friends shortly before Newgrounds began to host it. I’d been visiting Newgrounds since the 90s, when it was a far smaller place than it is today, with early flash animations and a large gallery for the ‘assassination’ of pop culture figures and Pokémon. My verdict on November 26 was that it was ‘perhaps the most psychotic cartoon series ever’, though my mind went back to little animations I myself had made in my childhood that were at least as violent, if not as visceral. I explained its schtick: ‘It features several ultra-cute fluffy animals having primary-coloured adventures until something goes wrong and they all die in a variety of twisted ways. It’s incredibly disturbing…but also hilarious. And I don’t say that without a twinge of guilt…’

And if Happy Tree Friends was a guilty pleasure, it was one shared by many thousand internet fans. Cartoon violence has a very long history, but Happy Tree Frends enjoyed making the characters as cutesy as they could and the violence as extreme as they could get away with. It wasn’t healthy or clever or as ironic as perhaps it thought it was, but there is something hilarious about the incongruity of cuteness and violence that brings big laughs.

苺ましまろ / Ichigo Mashimaro

The best slice-of-life comedy since Azumanga Daioh, this anime is very cute indeed. Ichigo Mashimaro (‘Strawberry Marshmallow’) follows the daily lives of a group of little girls, and it’s by turns sweet, sentimental and ulcer-rupturingly funny. Less wacky than Azumanga, and with no continuous storyline or any significant angst, it was a show that relied purely on its characters to work, and fortunately, the characters are all incredibly loveable. There are five principle girls: Chika, the most normal of the bunch, who worries about putting on weight and tries to keep the others in line; Miu, who steals the show as a hyperactive, self-centred girl who does just whatever she wants and has a wild imagination, but underneath is really starved for affection; Anna (or ‘Ana’, as she writes it), a very sweet British girl who’s forgotten just about everything about being British and is more typically Japanese than most Japanese, to her horror; Mashiro, the most childlike and naïve of the bunch, who still believes in Santa Claus; and Noboe, Chika’s big sister, a sardonic, jaded teenager who nevertheless finds the others irresistibly cute.

It was quite odd to discover that this funny, charming little comedy was aimed at boys in their late teens and early twenties. Even odder was the realisation (especially with the manga, which is full of panty-shots and bath scenes) that I was supposed to find these little girls sexually appealing. Now, I have nothing against Lolicon stuff, and have no compunction in admitting that loli-ish characters tend to be the cutest, but Ichigo Mashimaro works better the more innocent and charming it is. That’s how I felt the anime was presented, and I prefer it that way. It there’s to be loli, I don’t want it pushed down my throat.

Wait, that sounded very, very wrong…

Anyway, this anime is a lot of fun, regardless. It’s charming, honestly funny and very sweet. It’s a shame it was only 12 episodes long, because it was one of the few current anime that was really making me smile. Well worth watching. Whether or not you secretly have a bit of a thing for Anna and Miu. Wait, did I just say that out loud?

(Originally written 20.2.06: two OVAs were to follow)

ほしのこえ/ Hoshi no Koe / Star’s Voice / Voices of a Distant Star

‘Hoshi no Koe was a nicely bleak and different short, produced almost entirely by one man, about a young girl sent to a distant galaxy still keeping in touch with her lover by text message. Poignant and original, but a bit ostentatious and melodramatic.’ That was my assessment on October 13, 2003, and my opinion really hasn’t changed since, after two repeat viewings and the director's first full-length film, Beyond the Clouds, The Promised Place.

This is not to play down the accomplishment of a single man slaving away in his bedroom to produce an impressively high-quality animation. What it lacks in fluidity of movement it makes up for in inventiveness and art quality. And it is admirable that Shinkai Makoto chose to do everything besides the music – even the voice acting in the initial release, along with his partner. But even back in 2003, the half-hour OVA was rather over-hyped, and Shinkai has even been called ‘The Next Miyazaki’. Honestly, though, if this were released by a conventional anime studio rather than having the hook of being essentially a solo project, it would have had the same fate as a thousand other standalone anime OVAs – ignored by all but a very small minority. The concept was nice, but the execution just was not strong enough in story terms to match the lush visuals, and if the storytelling falls short, nothing else can quite redeem that fault, even the fascinating production story.

Far be it from me to take a New Critical approach – but even knowing the interesting story of how one man with an iMac, a grant and seven months made something beautiful and stately, I cannot call Hoshi no Koe a strong piece of animation.

ローゼンメイデン トロイメント/ Rozen Maiden Träumend

Twelve episodes simply weren’t enough for this wonderful series. The director has made comments suggesting that there won’t be any more, but given the show’s huge popularity and the fact that the ending left the plot wide open for a new series, possibly going back to the manga storyline, it seems likely there’ll be at least a little more animated, and I for one cannot wait!

Picking up where Rozen Maiden left off, Träumend restores Suigintou (for reasons still not quite lucid) and introduces the remaining dolls created by Rozen, a dollmaker able to bestow apparent life upon his creations. For all his skill, Rozen demands his creations fight until only one is left, each taking something from the last, in order that the last one standing will become ‘Alice’, the perfect girl.

But it is not the Mai-HiME/Battle Royale-style contest that drives this series. Indeed, the majority of the dolls take up a pacifist stance for most of the series, and cohabit with Jun, a human boy chosen as several of the dolls’ 'medium' – the source of their unearthly powers. This is why the somewhat kitsch concept works so well – the dolls all have distinct, amusing personalities, and their living together makes the tone of large parts of the series more akin to a sitcom than a combat-driven action story. Every one of the dolls, except the sociopathic Barasuishou, are extremely likeable, with their own distinct appeal and flaws. It’s the characters that make the story special; you really care what happens to them.

Aesthetically, it’s hard to fault. The dolls are designed in a fantasised Victorian style, with heavy influences from the mostly Japanese craze of Gothic Lolita, and they look can creepy, adorable, stylish and silly as their personalities, or even simply the situation demands. The music is great, from the unforgettable ALI Project opening to the generic but driving guitar rock of the battle scenes. Fight scenes were very over-the-top, but also undeniably cool.

Everything is wound up pretty quickly towards the end, but even if some of the twists are pretty much deus ex machina (one scene coming over as more of a Christian allegory than Narnia ever did!), they’re clever and unexpected enough for the near-reset ending to work well. The fake Barasuishou is destroyed, with one teasing glimpse of her real counterpart from the manga in the final montage again hinting at the possibility of a third series.

There hasn’t been a weak episode in the whole season. It moved at its own pace, with a simple but elegant overlying plot, and has provided more humour and more hard emotional hits than any other current anime. Highly recommended.

My only complaint is that I want more!

(originally written 30.1.06. In the event, there was an OVA released after this, Ouvertüre)