ハイスコアガール / High Score Girl

I was wary for a long time about these CG anime shows. CG crept into anime bit by bit – first vehicles in shows like Last Exile, then mecha, then cute girls strictly when singing and dancing, and now we’ve reached the stage where whole shows are made in CG. I’d still much rather see traditional animation, and CG animation on TV still usually looks awkward and stiff, but slowly these shows are winning me over. I really enjoy watching Koneko no Chii even after its transitionto CG, and Kemono Friends is undoubtedly cute even if the animation style is rough around the edges.

With High Score Girl, I wanted to watch no matter the medium. I love shows that bring in characters or references from all kinds of properties that you don’t often see together. Maybe the trend got a bit out of hand lately with Wreck-It Ralph and Ready Player One and all the rest of it, but the prospect of the show heavily referencing nostalgic video games really appealed to me. There was also a bit of interesting history here, with SNK having made a copyright claim against Square for use of their characters in the original manga, later settled out of court. The very premise of these characters sharing pages with dozens of other retro game characters really piqued my interest.

There isn’t actually much of the game characters in the series. Aside from Guile from Street Fighter, who acts as a kind of guardian angel, generally we just see games as the characters play them. A few others pop up from time to time, but this isn’t a story about video game characters or anything like that. It’s a story about a boy who plays games.

Partly, this show is fun to watch because of the nostalgia goggles. Obviously, I didn’t grow up in Japan, but I did grow up at a time when the arcade scene was thriving. It’s so fun to see someone getting excited over Mortal Kombat or Darkstalkers games, and remembering back when Tekken and Virtua Fighter were the new kids on the block.

At its core, this is a love story. A love triangle story, in fact. There’s a funny-looking kid obsessed with games called Yaguchi Haruo, and the only thing that’s important to him is playing video games, right when they’re emerging. Otherwise he’s a bit useless. Useless at sports, useless in school, useless with girls. Except that one day he comes across his elite, rich, ladylike classmate Oono playing Street Fighter 2. The two of them then become close and begin to bond over escaping the problems of their daily lives by playing games. Not only that but a few years later, another girl called Hidaka is drawn to Yaguchi’s passion and develops a crush on him.

Now, on a superficial level, this is some pretty awkward wish-fulfilment with a certain level of objectification that is uncomfortable. Despite being a scrawny, ugly kid who just loves to game, this boy gets not one beautiful girl but two falling for him. Pretty standard wish-fulfilment. To make it even more questionable, the idealised, universally-adored, wonderful love interest Oono has a defining characteristic – she never talks. The perfect girl that everyone loves is the one who doesn’t ever speak. Just blushes, relies on the boy she likes and occasionally gets angry and lashes out at him in slapstick style. The perfect girl doesn’t speak. Not because she can’t. She just doesn’t, or is never seen doing so onscreen.  

But y’know, strange as that is, Oono is very cute at the same time as being mute. I suppose there’s space to project onto her. And Yaguchi being so hapless yet having one all-consuming passion makes him very easy to identify with. He can be crude or neglectful at times, but it seems understandable, and he often gets the chance to demonstrate that he’s a good guy with a good heart. And that’s why I kept coming back to High Score Girl and will absolutely watch the OVA and any more they animate.

I don’t think this show will go down in history as one of the best, but it was absolutely a fun watch and satisfying from start to end. And the little appearances of some great games of the past definitely sweetened the deal.  

とある魔術の禁書目録 / To Aru Majutsu no Indekkusu / A Certain Magical Index

The To Aru series has been enduringly popular, but I never felt much desire to pick them up. There was something old-fashioned about the designs – especially Touma, with his early-2000s spiky anime hair. But more and more things made me inclined to check it out. Probably the main one was a huge poster in Akihabara when I was there last year, with lots of much cuter characters than I expected to see. Another was the fact that I got into the mobile game Million Arthur, which had its scenario written by Kamachi Kazuma, the To Aru light novel creator.

I’m glad I gave the show a chance...but I have to say, overall I was disappointed.

One thing I can say clearly: Index is totally adorable. Probably the cutest female character in any anime I’ve picked up since The Idolm@ster. Her stubborn, childlike and impetuous personality is adorable and the fact that she’s a nun is hilarious. I could probably do without the show’s endless fanservice and how much she ends up whoops! naked again, but she manages to stay on the right side of annoying with her clinginess over Touma.

So, other than having a nun involved, what is the story here? Well, the series is set in a near-future world where both magic and advanced science live side-by-side. Magicians make use of magic, while Espers have impressive powers through either scientific experimentation or by impressive natural talent. 

In the university-oriented Academy City lives Touma, the boy with the old-fashioned spiky hair who also has a bit of a tedious power, the same that makes everyone think so highly of the central characters of Gakuen Alice and...well, Twilight. 

Touma can nullify all other powers, be they magical or scientific. His right hand, for whatever reason dubbed the Imagine Breaker, stops powers from working, reveals magical tricks and apparently also saps kinetic energy from anything magical that’s moving at speed – though I think that might just be for effect.

Into his life comes Index, a cute young girl and a nun who is essentially a tool for the Anglican church. With the power to memorize vast amounts of information – in a strange robotic mode – she has been implanted with over 100,000 mystical grimoires, which she carries in her mind. This makes her a valued commodity to the church as well as a target. Oh, and her clothes are magically enchanted, so if Touma’s Imagine Breaker touches them, they fall off. Oh my! Et al.

I like the concept, especially the elements related to the Church, even if that’s common in anime and manga – from Hellsing to D.Gray-Man. But To Aru does a whole lot wrong, which is partly why I got bored and took a very long time to finish watching. 

For one thing, it seems like the writer gets bored of Index, and for most of the second half of the show she’s stuck at home while Touma interacts with more interesting characters like Misaka, or ‘Railgun’, who has a long line of sacrificial clones designed to power up the extremely powerful Esper named Accelerator – until Touma intervenes. 

Rather than concentrating on even these two main girls, the plot bounces around – now Touma has to deal with a magic spell that swaps people’s appearances; now all the psychic energy in the city has coalesced into a big-boobed girl who Index has befriended; now we’re following Accelerator as he gains a human side through bonding with a cute loli version of Misaka. 

It’s too much, and other than some vague guff about Aleister Crowley floating upside-down in a giant tube orchestrating everything, there’s no sense of an overarching plot here. The result is that the tension is very low, and the usual tired setpieces of Touma having to pose as Misaka’s boyfriend or walking in on Index changing a million times gets old very fast.

There’s charm here and I probably will watch the rest. The first episodes remain very engaging and most of the storylines that involve the Church were enjoyable. Misaka’s story, especially with the moral question of her clones, has some brilliant moments, but I wish it could have been better-integrated into the existing plot or a completely separate anime. The problem here was that the series felt like it was a new spin-off with every new arc, rather than part of one coherent world, and that was why for all I found the eponymous character adorable and liked most of the other major players, I didn’t feel at all engaged by To Aru Majutsu no Index. 

ねこぢる草 / Nekojiru-So / Catsoup Grass / Cat Soup

Nekojiru-So is a very weird short animation. In weirdness, it’s right up there with Mind Game and even A Country Doctor. The 2001 animation is an adaptation of the drug-influenced manga of the artist Nekojiru – which means catsoup – who sadly committed suicide three years earlier. I must confess, I do not know how much of the trippiness derives from the original work, as I have never read it, nor seen the prior collection of 2-minute shorts Nekojiru Gekijou. But I get the impression her vision is maintained in the out-and-out weirdness here. No surprise, Yuasa Masaaki was a screenwriter here. 

Let me try to recount the plot, as I recall it. The young humanised cat Nyatta almost dies trying to fish his toy truck out of the bath. This near-death experience, apart from letting him pass a group of women gossiping in squeaky voices like Sweep from Sooty and Sweep, also allows him to see his sick sister Nyaa-ko’s soul being taken away. Apparently the one taking her soul is meant to be the bodhisattva Jizou – patron deity of dead children – he looks a hell of a lot more like a cutesy Shiva. Anyway, Nyatta pulls his big sister’s soul back with him, but succeeds only in splitting it in two. When Nyatta recovers from drowning and the dead Nyaa-ko is revived using this half-soul, she is more or less vegetative.

On a quest to buy some tofu, the siblings stop at a circus where the Abrahamic god seems to be performing, sawing up a woman and reassembling her, giving form to his words and presumably being behind the circus’ main attraction, a giant bird full of his cloud-breath that makes pretty colours when it squawks. Inciting these squawks, however, foolish men go too far, the bird fills up with rainclouds and then water, and finally bursts, flooding the whole world.

Nyatta and Nyaa-ko end up on a wooden arc with a pig they treat very cruelly. He offers them tasty fish that gathered to eat the boat occupant’s poop under their toilet, but the cats prefer to unzip the pig’s outer skin and remove the tasty butchered pork cuts from inside him, which they fry up and eat - including the pig autocannibalising himself. Out on the sea, a creature is pregnant with kittens, but eaten by baby pterodactyls, whose poop puts the baby kitten into the flowers the grow beneath them. One fish, meanwhile, has a small adventure trying to make a break for it, but some samurai chop him up into sushi. Undeterred, the fish bone swims on, seeing a giant muck-lump above the surface and then washing up on the shore, where a random child cat eats its eyeball and gets reprimanded.

The beach brings in sand imagery, and God empties the world’s excess waters, so that the world becomes desert. The poor pig is abused by the cats, who use him as a slave, riding in his skin and ultimately killing him. Nyatto loses an arm in the scuffle, but gets it reattached. In the house of some weird degenerate, who feeds them delicious food before putting them in a cauldron with vegetables, donning his bondage gear and trying to cut their heads off with scissors. He gets overexcited and falls in the cauldron himself, and the cats escape, first pulling off his scalp to reveal the robot parts underneath, then chopping off his limbs and shutting the lid on him. These are some violent kitties.

Back in the desert, they dig under a mushroom-y thing to find water, but uncover a water-elephant, which is pretty awesome. It has plenty for them to drink and they can even swim in it, but it finally evaporates in the blistering heat – moments before reaching a shoreline where giant Dalí-influenced mosquitoes stalk along. Cutting a cabbage-thing full of blood, God stops time, and for some reason the cats fall down into giant still scenes mostly of the ocean. In a rather lovely, extremely bleak sequence that follows after one cat finds a woman about to step in front of a subway train and cuts away her teardrop like a jewel, in the attempt by celestial beings to set time right again, everything is sped up, slowed down and reversed. The cats age in moments, car crash victims are restored, and bullets are sucked right out of the heads of the victims of a gangland or terrorist execution – the likes of which I’ve sadly seen from ISIS lately.

Time is turned back far enough that the cats are back on the arc. Jizou had hinted they need to find a flower, and they come across it past some weird steam-powered cat. This restores Nyaa-ko’s soul, so the two can return home – suggesting it may all have been a trip into the world of the dead. Except that back home, when Nyatto goes to the toilet, his family members all get switched off just like the picture on a CRT television. As does Nyatto. And then the screen itself.

Okay, I’ve taken about all the space I have just to summarise the bizarre plot, but that should convey just how weird this was. Like most super-weird anime, though, it is justified by its striking visuals, brief moments of heavy emotional significance and frequently unsettling atmosphere. J.C. Staff are at the most experimental I’ve ever seen them – though I guess if you condensed all Di Gi Charat’s weirdest moments you might come close – but also ambitious. Some of the sweeping shot compositions and the methods of realising vast scales are beautiful.

I can’t help but think I’d have loved this if the cats were a little more sympathetic, though. Cruel little buggers!

変態王子と笑わない猫 /Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko /Pervert Prince and Unsmiling Cat / The “Hentai” Prince and the Stony Cat

For some reason, I had totally the wrong idea of what HenNeko was all about. I was under the impression that despite the title, it was quite a peaceful, sweet and somewhat serious drama, which was quite possibly because some defective piece of my brain was mixing it up with Usagi Drop for no reason but that both have animal names in their titles.

So starting to watch it, I was slightly surprised that it was a very silly, cutesy romantic comedy about the problems that occur when wishes made only half-seriously are granted. In other words, be careful what you wish for, as you might just get it.

This is far from a new concept in anime, and the wishes here are nowhere near as bizarre as those from Midori no Hibi or Da Capo, but HenNeko certainly has plenty of its own character. A long way from a gentle and thought-provoking drama, it is in fact a cutesy fanservice piece that tries to be somewhere in the middle of the largely realistic romantic comedies like Toradora and Chuunibyou and the zany over-the-top jokey efforts like Sumomo-mo Momo-mo or – ever my go-to silly romantic comedy anime – Rizelmine. Unfortunately, this middle ground doesn’t quite work, and it ends up being unsuccessful at doing the things either extreme manages to pull off.

The story here is that up on a hill is a stone cat statue with a rather grim expression. People make offerings to it of things they don’t need, in order to have their desires come true. Our protagonist Yokodera Youto, a perverted high school student who likes peeking on the girls in swimsuits, makes a wish to have his inner self come out more clearly, as the front he puts up is ending up with him having inconvenient responsibilities put onto him.

Meanwhile, the wonderfully-named Tsutsukakushi Tsukiko wants to be seen as less childish by wishing for her face to stop giving away all of her emotions so easily, and when they both make their wish, the mischievous cat’s mouth twists into a smile and their wishes come true – twisted, of course, into an inconvenient form. Tsukiko can no longer show any expressions whatsoever, being the unsmiling cat of the title rather than the statue, and Yokodera-kun is so unable to stop himself blabbing about what he really thinks that he quickly earns a reputation as a ‘pervert prince’.

Though initially it seems that the series has some interesting things to say about the very Japanese concept of honne and tatemae, as Yokodera gets his tatemae – façade – taken away to reveal only his honne – or true feelings. Tsukiko had trouble with her tatemae, but gains an extreme one. They do not simply swap, though, as it turns out that it is another girl, popular beauty Azusa, who gains Yokodera’s façade, going so far as to construct a fake image of herself to keep others at arm’s length.

Predictably, this mix-up soon becomes a conventional harem series. Anything interesting that could have been said about Japanese society is soon hidden beneath slapstick comedy, far too much tsundere character writing and fanservice aplenty. Not only these two girls fall for Yokodera and start to have a rivalry over him, but other anime clichés join in – random loli whose outrageous frankness can’t be sustained so she is only in it for a couple of episodes; big sister with big boobies and violent tendencies but the most dere characteristics of all the tsunderes; even the apparent lesbian with the crush on the big sister whose rivalry with Yokodera soon becomes playfully erotic. It’s tired, overdone stuff, and very little depth is added when the characters go back in time to see the truth of the sisters’ relationship with their deceased mother and why Yokodera can’t remember his past. It’s all very derivative of Key, but even more blatant and superficial, and thus bland.  

But it’s also very, very easy to watch. It’s only 12 short episodes, and it is one of the cutest-looking anime I’ve seen for years. Nice production values and adorable character designs that look more like 12-14 year olds than high school students and make this the latest loli-show-masquerading-as-high-school-romance in a way only marginally less obvious than Moetan. On the other hand, not only the girls are cutesy, but the boys too – Yokodera, like Yuuto in Chuunibyou, is a cutey to match the girls, a shota amongst the lolis, which is slightly odd but a whole lot better than the millionth Kyon clone of the decade.

Thus, I found the series a guilty pleasure. I knew it was bad, and unoriginal, and the writing was all over the place, but I still enjoyed the parade of cuteness and easy romance. Just keep your expectations very low, and you will enjoy. 

とらドラ! / Toradora!

I didn’t think I was going to bother with Toradora! Another moé anime with loli ovretones, I thought, about a mismatched pair of teenagers who end up in an odd couple relationship but will inevitably realize their feelings for one another after a while. But hey, it’s in a format that I can put on my PS Vita to try out its improved movie player, and I have plenty of space on my memory card. I might as well slip them over.

And then after two or three episodes I got hooked. The truth is, the series is more or less everything I expected to be – it centres on the cuteness of a diminutive high school girl who looks much younger than she is called Aisaka Taiga. She has such a fierce reputation she has been nicknamed ‘Tenori Taiga’, or ‘Palm-top Tiger’, but has a very Shana-like soft side, putting her squarely into the ‘tsundere’ character mould. She is neighbours with Takasu Ryuuji, a gentle boy who loves cleaning but, like Sawamura Seiji in Midori no Hibi, is constantly judged for looking like a violent delinquent, though unlike Seiji has never earned this reputation by getting in fights. Each has a crush on a classmate who is friends with the other, and Taiga needs someone to look after her in her chaotic home life, so they become allies. Throw in a successful model who has a rough and judgemental personality beneath her sickly sweet façade and you get end up with a compelling love hexagon.

 Most of the series follows the usual high school romance clichés – we get a beach episode, a Christmas episode, a school trip episode and all the rest – but somehow, by centring its emotional heart on the theme of people being unable to express their true feelings and putting up a front, tied in with those old Japanese cultural nuggets of honne and tatemae, it manages to resonate beyond JC Staff’s usual fanservice and cuteness.

Ultimately Toradora! isn't what I would call special in any way – it’s all been done before, some episodes are very dull and the humour is often strained slapstick – but it is worth a watch. Because Taiga’s vulnerability, Ryuuji’s believable indecisiveness, Ami’s just-perceptible loneliness, Minori’s selflessness and Kitamura’s likeable but impenetrable ways of distancing those around him seem to cut that bit deeper than most anime characterizations, possibly reflecting the series’ roots in light novels rather than manga. I also like the little deft touches like the explanation for Ryuuji’s face – it comes from his bad-boy, absent father – and the theming of tigers (‘Tora’) and dragons (‘dora(gon)’) for the two main characters. Once or twice there seemed to be a gentle pushing of the envelope, with jokes based on sex and the Japanese word for ‘penis’, as well as presenting the possibility of lesbianism without it being absurd, disgusting or a one-sided played-for-laughs crush.

The last few episodes pushed forward all of Toradora!’s strengths with a surfeit of melodrama, with many tearful pursuits, grand gestures, unkind words that pushed relationship and family dramas to a head and secondary characters left waving off their friends with smiles that faded as soon as they were left alone, and I have to say that it all just worked. It’s a very strong example of its kind, and what holds it back isn’t the writing, the characterisation, the acting or the art – all of which were very high-standard – but merely the fact that I’ve seen all this done before too many times and at its core, it remains a moé tsundere fanservice series with a loli element: witness the cuteness of Taiga on tiptoes!

 After the main series, a few more bits and pieces have followed, including silly chibi SOS gag shorts (wherein silly parakeet Inko-chan got his own mini-segment) and a throwaway OVA where Ryuuji gets obsessed over making the best bento box for lunch – the latter of which actually had the biggest laugh of the series for me, when Ryuuji brought in a rice cooker and tried so ardently to pretend it wasn’t his. I’m not desperate for more Toradora!...but if more arrives, I will most probably watch.

デ・ジ・キャラット ウィンターガーデン Di Gi Charat: Winter Garden/Winter Garden from Di Gi Charat

Note, 10.2.07 Ehhh? What is it with Di Gi Charat and King Crimson? First a reference to the inside cover of the first album, and now the front cover appears on the door of a ‘Prog Club’ in Puchiko’s school in the serious reimagining OVA Winter Garden. 

Initial Impressions, 25.4.07. Bizarre, seeing the bizarre made mundane. Entertaining, though. That final twist was obvious from the beginning of the episode. Nice to hear the girl who debuted as Takahashi in Bokura Ga Ita in another role

Final thoughts, 18.9.12. I have to say, I didn’t notice that ‘Prog Club’ from five years ago when I rewatched the Winter Garden OVAs. Maybe between broadcast and DVD release the sign got changed. It was the weirdest moment in the otherwise largely naturalistic adaptation (along with a twitchy cameo for a piece of ‘art’…!), with the sign changing every few moments, and I’d certainly have noticed such an iconic image. This time I just smiled at how Puchiko was joining the Keiongaku club – and imagining her in K-On.

Anyway, five years later the idea of a complete reimagining of a series isn’t such a new idea for me, and at least to my mind this strange little nugget of seriousness in a franchise known for its ultra-cutesiness and insanity strikes me as very funny. It’s less like Mai-HiME becoming the rather different Mai-Otome, and more like the skits in Rock Lee’s Springtime of Youth being spun out to whole episodes and played much straighter, which lends considerable subtlety. It’s more like imagined universes with the Vocaloid characters, or, I suppose, Xenoglossia with the girls from The iDOLM@STER. The studio even changed: from Madhouse to J.C.Staff.

Winter Garden is not funny, other than a few little moments, mostly with Puchiko being either blunt or a cutey, having brought more of her personality from the original than her sister did. It’s not zany. It’s actually a very, very typical love story, starting with lots of coincidental meetings, and then being given tension with a misunderstanding and the possibility of separation. What makes it funny is the very idea that it’s based on Di Gi Charat, that these sweet, ordinary girls are based on Dejiko and Puchiko – that Rabi-en-Rose is a recognisable but consistently dismissed minor celebrity. It’s just a funny concept, and the disappointment of viewers like me who didn’t get told the nature of the adaptation beforehand and expected more me-kara-beams and kuchi-kara-bazookas masked that.

Well, years have passed now, and while it’s sad that more Di Gi Charat doesn’t seem anywhere on the horizon, I consider this one a bit of gem overall and am happy it’s part of the DGC canon, confusing all who stumble upon it unprepared.

And, y’know, it’s adorable how Dejiko doesn’t even seem like herself until she gets to the verge of yelling, and the old Dejiko can just be heard in that voice. Only just! 

闇の司法官ジャッジ / Yami no Shihosha Jadji / Magistrate of Darkness: Judge

It seems like the concept of the powerless being able to exact grisly revenge on people who think they have gotten away with their crimes is a rich source of Japanese horror manga – and the anime based upon it. Jigoku Shoujo in particular pivots on the idea. But Judge is considerably older, less concerned with elegant aesthetics and…well, sillier.

The plot of the 50-minute OVA is simple: an unassuming office worker has a secret – he is really the Judge of Darkness, damning those criminals who human justice has failed to pin down. Apparently mostly only the ones he happens to know. Luckily, he knows some really nasty pieces of work. One is dispatched easily, but the other gets some defence: a Christian priest with a bindi – or a mole that looks like one – who will defend anyone in the spirit world if they pay his price. After a magical confrontation the defendant gets taken to the spirit world to face ten huge Buddhist-style judges – and, yes, is judged.

Released in 1991, with animation from Animate, co-produced by a very young J.C. Staff, this was never going to be the pinnacle of beauty or sophistication, but I ended up surprised it was as good as it was. The start is slow, the main character uninteresting and the designs are goofy – the fish eyes of the main bad guy in particular were a constant source of amusement. But the clash between the judge and the priest, as well as the appearance of the ten true judges were genuinely fun to watch.

One thing the version we watched suffered from was the terrible translation and dubbing. The priest character could have been genuinely cool without the silly voice, the judges’ big reveal got undermined by lame acting and there were way too many unintentionally hilarious lines: ‘I’m good with love vibrations…’, (as an aside) ‘It’s made of human skin’, ‘Oh my God!’ It’s a pity, because it would be easier to take at least slightly more seriously with a better dub.

But even imagined well-translated and well-acted, this remains a frivolous, shallow story with little to engage an audience and some very silly aesthetics. It just isn’t as flatly terrible as it may at first seem. That, of course, doesn’t make it good.

エイリアン9 / Alien Nine

I was expecting all the wrong things from Alien Nine. A lot of the anime and manga I love subvert expectations. Princess Tutu begins as a daft shoujo piece and then later on starts playing with your mind and you realise just how clever it has been. Narutaru begins a cute show with dark edges, and then evolves into a dark show with cute edges. 20th Century Boys purposely revolves around the kind of clichés preteen Japanese boys love. So when I heard it had dark elements, I thought Alien Nine might be similar. In the end, though, the only subverted expectation was that the annoying character flaws of the protagonist would be overcome and she would prove herself in some way – but no, despite several apparent set-ups for this occurrence, Otani remained the whiney crybaby she always was. The lolicon writer probably thought her bursting into tears every two seconds was moé moé. It really wasn’t. And attempts to make proceedings somehow more legitimate and adult by showing a lot of alien creatures getting graphically butchered and (though I suppose this was an ends in and of itself) Barbie-doll nudity for one of the ten-year-old lolis only cheapened everything and made it gratuitous.

And this is the kind of stuff that gets dubbed and distributed in the West. No wonder the uninitiated regard Japanese animation as porno splatterfests. And it falls into the trap of setting much of its climax in the minds of its characters, too, trying to be freaky and unsettling but mostly just being cack.

I watched this along with Ergo Proxy, somehow under the impression they would compliment one another. Well, it does quite amuse me that I thought they might be similar when in almost every way they are polar opposites, in terms of art, budget, sophistication, target audience, scope…but the only reason I’ll ever watch this again is to laugh at it, or to illustrate how sexualised even the cutesiest lolicon anime can be without being parodies or ecchi comedies.

(originally written 15.1.08)

ラブレス / Loveless

Okay, how’s this for a yaoi fangirl’s dream? 12-year-old Ritsuka’s life has been one long torture of angstiness since his big brother Seimei died. His mother, seeing the change in him, has gone mad and abuses him because she doesn’t recognise her beloved little boy in him. One day, he meets Soubi, an adult with beautiful long hair and a strong, quiet exterior, who knew his brother. Adorably embarrassed to be talking to a grown-up, he goes with the stranger for a talk in the park, and Soubi kisses him.

The bewildered Ritsuka is drawn into the mystery surrounding his brother’s death: it turns out that Seimei was part of a hidden school that trains fighters, who attack one another with the physical manifestation of words. Crucially, these fighters operate in pairs: the ‘fighter’, who attacks, and the ‘sacrifice’, who takes the damage dealt out by the opponent. Seimei and Soubi were the strongest there ever were, and Soubi had been brutally conditioned to be utterly devoted to Seimei. Normally, a fighter cannot live without his sacrifice: why, then, does Soubi seem to be replacing Seimei with his brother? Is it simply because that’s what he was ordered to do? Then does he really love Ritsuka, as he says he does, or is he just carrying out another's commands?

Loveless is pure fanservice. The two main characters are there purely so that shounen-ai fans can squee. The fact that everyone else in the anime seems to find them utterly irresistible doesn’t hurt, either, though all the rest generally get relegated to comic relief. Character development is just about non-existent: Ritsuka’s problems get solved, his character flaws rectified, so abruptly that it’s hard to believe they were ever problems at all. Soubi screws with everyone around him, but in the end admits to his true feelings, and his taciturn exterior of utter coolness yet utter subservience is actually very annoying. Because he got whipped into submission by his teacher (literally), his characterless banality is supposed to be profound? And if you’re going to make all the minor characters totally flat, doing little but lusting over the two protagonists (even the psychologist falls for the 12-year-old!), don’t devote several of only 12 episodes to them!

Another anime where vagueness substitutes for profundity, including the fighting system, which (like that of Yu-Gi-Oh) is so devoid of proper rules or limitations that it’s incoherent. Ritsuka was occasionally cute, but his character just wasn’t believable enough for me to really care about him. Cheap fodder for fangirls. Cat-ears and all.

(Originally written 11.11.05. The manga offers a little more depth, especially in finding out the truth behind Seimei, but also shares most of the anime's flaws)

R.O.D. the TV

I’m sure I mentioned before that Read or Die (the OVA) was the first thing I ever saw with the Cambridge anime club – and it was a riot! A ridiculous premise, a big-boobed character with power over paper, daft Engrish names…and a whole variety of stupid action sequences. But R.O.D. the TV turned out to be far better – less laughable and considerably cooler. It was a spinoff, essentially, but the characters, style, pacing and basic ideas seemed to be a step up from its predecessor.

The series was such a success because it took something so bad it was good and turned it into something so GOOD it’s good. At least until they have to get back to the main plot, when it all gets silly again – but the first half of the series is fantastic…because it focuses on the characters, and in particular Anita King – the pink-haired, strong-willed, utterly adorable girl with a harsh past. It’s not her fighting skills or her past that really matter, though – it’s seeing her going to school, making friends, then finally having to say goodbye to them that’s really important. It’s the soap opera of the action show that make it special – and other characters, especially Maggie and Junior (who for some reason have almost identical personalities), just make the whole thing work, despite the daft story they have to keep going back to: while this means amusing glorification (and disgrace) of a mythologised British Empire, it also means a lot of nonsense about the mind of one ‘Mr. Gentleman’ and a war between China and Britain’s secret services. And really, ‘Ziggy Stardust’?

The show is at its best when the lives of its characters are in focus, and Junior and Anita make such an adorable pair. It’s so rich with ideas. But…when the shounen parts take up too much time, I end up longing for the shoujo elements.

For a story about characters who have magical paper-related powers, based on one of the most absurd animations I’ve ever seen, R.O.D. the TV managed to be one of the best shows of its decade. And the music wasn’t half bad either.

(Collated from impressions on 6.12.03, 16.12.03 and 12.8.05)

Sky Girls (Series)

It’s over four years now since I watched the Sky Girls OVA and giggled at the stupidity of it. I eagerly started to watch the series when it begun, but for a variety of reasons, including hard drive failure, backing up the files to some obscure corner of an external hard drive to wait for the last DVD specials, conviction there would be a second series and, of course, plain laziness, I only just watched the final bits and pieces this morning.

The full series of Sky Girls is more of the same. The three moé stock lolis from the OVA are given a much larger platform for their struggle against the mechanical menaces the WORMs, not to mention love interests who mostly look like their fathers and some adorable angst designed to evoke the desire to give a big hug. There are also two new Sky Girls for the show, both expanding the ethnic base: first, the blond-haired, Teutonic Elise, who looks even less likely to be in her middle teens than the other characters and makes the show yet more obviously derivative of Evangelion by acting bratty and conceited in a way that is very reminiscent of Asuka. Then there is the enigmatic Indian girl Aisha, who like many token characters with bindis, has mysterious mental powers.

Predictably, there isn’t much story to spin out into 26 episodes, so the pacing is woefully slow – and yet the ending is still rushed and the heavy-hitting emotional climax at the end of it all basically gets completely ignored after the event. The Worms are never interesting and the love interests are kept cutesy by means of much blushing, stuttering and awkwardness, and while that’s pretty adorable, it never actually leads anywhere, so the show ends up with no momentum at all, instead relying on a series of rather contrived mental issues.

But obviously, nobody should be surprised that Sky Girls is shallow. This is the show that features scantily-clad teenagers who look about 11 held in big flying machines that contort their bodies in all sorts of demeaning ways. This is not meant to be cerebral, or heavy, or emotional. It’s supposed to be moé moé. And with its incredibly cute art, it is undeniably that. Every face pulled by Otoha or Elise or Karen or indeed any of the girls is a poem on what is adorable and innocent and pure in anime. It’s cute children doing their best, and that is always going to be heart-warming. Even when you pretend they’re 16 and put them in skin-tight clothing.

I’ve mentioned the last gasps of the moé trend a few times now, how there seems to have been a backlash after the likes of Lucky Star took everything too far, and how fashions are now turning away from cutesy and more towards zany or violent to a degree that seems like a fetish. I can’t say I want to hold up Sky Girls as an example of how good things used to be, as it is undeniably brainless, objectifying, rather paedophilic trash, but at the same time if I had to watch it or more Panty and Stocking, I’d definitely have more fun with Sky Girls.

Well, there’s still Strike Witches for more of the same. But I have to say, I’m yearning for another Monster or Ergo Proxy. Maybe I should get back to watching Dennou Coil instead of just cycling through the big shounen shows…

Sky Girls (OVA)

Ah, Sky Girls makes me giggle. It has no qualms in acknowledging that it is what it is: a daft throwaway half-hour of loli fanservice, with some nice ideas, pretty good animation, cute characters and a guaranteed feeling of being dirty afterwards.

Here’s the amusing plot: after a war with bio-mech monsters called ‘Worms’, humanity is devastated. 90% of all males between 20 and 30 are dead. Thus the military has to rely on…why, what else? Little girls piloting giant robots!

What’s better, the three girls the show focuses on, who are supposed to be 16-17 but really don’t look it, pilot robot exoskeletons reminiscent of the loader in Aliens – except that these ones fly, transform between jet and human modes, and require the girls to wear ‘nano-armour’. This is, of course, an excuse for them to wear very skimpy little outfits complete with neko-tail for plugging themselves in and to be suspended in full view while piloting the robots, hanging in the air almost as if they were being held up by…oh, I don’t know, tentacles?

And of course our three heroines fit neatly into moe anime types: there’s the stern tsundere one, the shy but very intelligent one and the genki one, and all of them blush at just the right moments to make otaku squeal.

Combining Lolita fetishes with over-the-top action sequences, this is a perfect example of bad, bad anime – and also of how much fun it can be to watch it! Bring on Strike Witches, Gonzo’s stab at a very similar idea!

(Originally written 18.10.06)

あずまんが大王 / Azumanga Daioh

When I couldn’t sleep last night, and wanted to watch something that suited my good mood, I knew what to put on: Azumanga Daioh. When I say that this show is amongst my top five comedies of all time, I’m not just talking about anime: I mean in any format. This was one of the anime that our uni anime club was showing when I matriculated, and I fell totally in love after watching the first two episodes.

Being based on four-panel gag strips, the show has a very simple storyline, and jokes every few seconds, but there are moments of great poignancy and stillness amongst the chaotic humour – and what brilliant humour it is. Azumanga thrives on its characters, and does so with more success than any other show I know.

I am not exaggerating when I say that the characters in Azumanga are some of the finest comic creations I’ve ever come across. In all of literature and televised comedy, I can think of only a few characters who evoke in me the same affection as these girls. In all of Shakespeare, perhaps there are as many brilliant characters as there are in this one show. No overstatement.

The anime follows a group of girls through high school, and their ordinary everyday lives, punctuated by summer trips, sports days and two memorable trips to a theme park called ‘Magical Land’, which, in a stroke of storytelling genius, is never actually shown, and is all the more special for it. This simplicity is the key to the show’s brilliance – every episode simply concerns the girls, their personalities, and their relationships, and because they are such perfectly-sketched and familiar characters, they are always a joy to watch.

The main cast consists of Chiyo-chan, an 10-year-old prodigy who has been moved all the way to high school because of her intelligence, but is of course still a sweet, innocent little girl, often teased by the others, but of course protected by them, too. Then there is Sakaki, a quiet girl who towers over all her classmates, and is idolised by another girl called Kaorin, who doesn’t know that beneath Sakaki’s cool, taciturn exterior, she just loves cute things like kittens, and is always trying to stroke one particular cat: which never fails to bite her. There's also Tomo, always hyperactive and a little bit dense, and her best friend Yomi, always the rock in the midst of Tomo’s tornado, although she does have a complex about her weight. Later, they are joined by Kagura, who has a real competitive streak, but isn’t too bright – though she’s the only one who can match Tomo’s hyperactivity. Finally, there is Osaka-san, real name Kasuga Ayumi. Words cannot describe her brilliance. A little slow and spaced-out, her lateral ways of thinking about things give some of the best laughs in the series. In addition, there are the teachers, childish Yukari-sensei, her long-suffering, sensible childhood friend Kurosawa-sensei, and then Kimura, easily the strangest man in the world, with a predilection for high school girls & a constant expression of vacant amazement.

These elements make up the perfect comedy team, with no weak links at all. Everyone has their favourites (mine are Chiyo, Yomi and Osaka-san), but it’s the chemistry between them, the superb direction (with flawless comedy timing), the plaintive music and the endless brilliance of the observational comedy that really makes you care for these characters, and laugh along with them for the whole series.

(Originally written 27.4.2005)

灼眼のシャナ / Shakugan no Shana

While based on an intriguing idea, Shakugan no Shana embodies all that is generic and unimaginative in anime. From the obvious love triangles to probably the most predictable and cheesy deus ex machina I’ve ever seen (topped only by the fact that it doesn’t even have the promised repercussions), it treads the same tired ground as a thousand other anime, and uses all the fantasy gubbins it can muster in place of having a decent plot.

But despite that, Shakugan no Shana is fun. Clichés got to be clichés because they're enjoyable, after all, and there’s much enjoyment to be had in a run-of-the-mill anime series.

The story goes like this: every person in the world has a certain amount of ‘power of existence’, craved by demon-like entities known as Tomogara, who are served by subordinates called Rinne. In order to feast, these creatures freeze the world, suck the life out of humans, and then move on. So that no humans notice their friends and family disappear (though why the demons should care, I don’t know – perhaps it happens without their volition), the victims are replaced by ‘torches’, false replacements for humans that slowly vanish as the people around them forget they ever existed.

When one such ‘torch’, a high school student called Sakai Yuuji, finds himself able to move when the Tomogara freeze the rest of the world, it is clear that he is different from the rest. A huge doll-like Rinne comes after him (to eat him again, I suppose…), but he is rescued by a young girl with incredible strength. She is a ‘Flame Haze’, a hunter destroying the Tomogara to maintain balance in the world. Yuuji pursues the girl, managing to protect her, and although she at first sees him as nothing more than an object, they become friends, and he gives her the name ‘Shana’.

Based on a series of light novels, one of the series’ strengths is its playful use of words. Most of the characters have a second title, usually something wonderfully excessive like ‘Chanter of Elegies’ or ‘Judge of Paradoxes’. The pompous tone really suits the gleeful obviousness of the series, making it hard to take seriously, but easy to enjoy. The plots tend to be very weak, though, usually involving a baddie arriving with some contrived magical plan, and then a fight climaxing in an even more contrived magical solution, or just some old-fashioned arse-kicking. Better is the character development: the series was probably at its best when it was dealing with the uncertainties of love and two girls competing for the affection of one boy. The drama and angst was very typical of the genre, but also very cute, and all the characters were very likeable and sweet. The supporting cast was also fun, from the creepy Tomogara with a doll fetish to the huge-breasted, brazen, provocative Flame Haze Margery Daw, who chants iffy translations of British nursery rhymes before attacking. All very silly, but fun. There was also an extended flashback to Shana’s past, but it was mostly rather daft and I ended up wanting to get back to the main plot long before it reached its conclusion.

The art was rather lacking. I have a feeling that like MAR, Bleach or Naruto, a lot of the monsters looked good in the manga but when simplified for anime, ended up looking very childish. The novels were first made into a Deneki Daioh manga (though the novels featured illustrations), and the seinen audience is firmly targeted. As a result, most of the ‘high school’ characters look about 12, with eyes the size of jet engines. Shana (who unlike some of her classmates even has the figure of a small child) is naked or clad only in bandages countless times during the series. I think in the last fight, there were more shots of her knickers than of her face. It all just added an extra layer of cheesiness.

But as I say, despite the extreme cheese (perhaps in part thanks to it), Shakugan no Shana was good fun, and some of the soap opera moments in the main romantic story were genuinely very sweet.

(Originally written 31.3.06)

ハチミツとクローバー / Honey and Clover (season 1)

First impressions - 6.5.05
Today, I watched eps 1 and 2 of Honey & Clover, which I downloaded on a whim and had heard absolutely nothing about. I am already totally hooked. This looks to be the anime of the season for me. I went into it with no expectations, and finished episode 2 longing for more. It’s a simple shoujo at first glance, but brilliantly funny – not just in a zany, insane way, but also warmly and wittily funny. It’s the story of the lives of several students. The two main boys are the sweet and quiet Takemoto, who I’ve taken a real liking to, and his mad sempai (upper-classman) Morita, who is endlessly entertaining!

The first half of the episode is a genuinely hilarious sequence wherein Takemoto tries to wake up a seemingly comatose Morita in order for him to attend a class that will allow him to graduate. Poor Takemoto tries everything, with the help of his friend Mayama, but nothing works. In the end, Mayama takes a photograph of Takemoto with a clock in the background as proof that he TRIED, which will, according to Mayama, ‘fend off at least 30% of his curse’ when he wakes up. Brilliant. At college, the boys are introduced to and immediately fall for the adorable Hagu, a doll-like 18-year-old who looks more like 10. She’s very cute, but the more teenaged-looking Ayumi is the more interesting girl.

But, aside from a very weird claymation opening sequence (reflecting the fact that these are art students) and a rather dull ending one, this anime is stunningly beautiful. People raved about the way AIR looked, but H&C is much more aesthetically pleasing. The characters are beautiful, but not in a saccharine or distorted way (except maybe Hagu’s first scenes), the animation is smooth, the backgrounds look like lush watercolours and the music is superb. Best, though, the characters, while interesting enough to be engaging and very funny, are also real enough for me to care about them, and wonder what is going to happen to them. Best anime of the season so far, without a doubt.

Final Thoughts
Hachimitsu to Kurovaa, or Honey and Clover, is something a little bit different. It’s a romantic shoujo story, but not saccharine, nor full of wish-fulfilment. It is not even told from a predominantly feminine perspective. Like many naturalistic shoujo stories, it could just as easily be live action, and I hear that a live action version is actually in production, though it’s doubtful that the charming prettiness of the show will remain intact.

Takemoto is a somewhat naïve and extremely sweet-hearted boy attending an art college, living with his peers in student accommodation in Tokyo. One day, his teacher introduces a new girl, the cripplingly shy and awkward Hagu, who looks more like a prepubescent child or a doll than the 18-year-old she is. Takemoto sees how vulnerable, how nervous, but how incredibly gifted she is, and falls in love. However, Hagu, in her own quiet way, seems to be more interested in Takemoto’s crazy, unpredictable, but also remarkably gifted roommate Morita. Meanwhile, their classmate Ayu is deeply in love with Mayama, another of Takumi’s housemates, but he is devoted to another, older woman. These two difficult love triangles form the basis for the dramatic structure of the show, with much melancholy yearning, plus plenty of unrequited feelings and embarrassment. However, to balance this angst, there is a liberal amount of quirky humour, lots of warm-hearted scenes of friendship and devotion, and a healthy amount of Japanese culture. In summary, it sounds limited, but the atmosphere of the show sucks you in and the humour is genuinely funny and bizarre.

The only things I found irritating were minor – a propensity to draw Hagu too much with her expression of stylised shock, the somewhat difficult to swallow idea that some of these art school geniuses are already making big changes in the world, the sometimes heavy-handed poeticisms of the character’s inner monologues, but overall this show was utterly charming, elegant and moving, and I find myself wishing for a second season.

(originally written 12.10.2005. The second season has since aired.)

ちっちゃな雪使いシュガー / Chiccha-na Yuki tsukai Shugā / Little Snow Fairy Sugar

It’s undisputable. Even with such incredibly cute series as Bottle Fairy and PitaTen as competition, Little Snow Fairy Sugar takes the crown as sweetest anime show I’ve ever seen.

Saga is a girl with a painful past. She’s lived with her Grandmother since her mother’s death, and learned to cope with her loss in two ways: by playing her mother’s piano, which the music shop has for sale but which is out of the means of just about anyone in her small European town, and by making sure her life is run on a tight schedule, with no time to sit and dwell on the past. One day, she finds a tiny fairy girl unconscious in the road. Saga revives this little curiosity by feeding her a waffle, only to discover that the diminutive girl has a very, very big personality.

Sugar is an extremely energetic, childlike snow fairy. She is only little, and in training in the human world to become a fully-fledged snow fairy by finding ‘twinkles’, though she and the other trainees don’t know exactly what these ‘twinkles’ are. She is delighted that Saga can see her, since fairies are invisible to most humans, and liked the waffle so much that ‘waffo!’ becomes her general exclamation of delight (since it sounds a lot like ‘wahoo’ in Japanese pronunciation – VERY cute!). Saga, however, is not so thrilled. Her schedules are thrown into disarray, Sugar’s boundless energy grates on her, and she gets into embarrassing situations because she’s the only one who can see the fairy. However, before long, she begins to feel more affectionate and even motherly towards the little fairy and her two best friends, the quiet and feminine Pepper and the typically boisterous boy Salt.

Yes, all the fairies are named after condiments and herbs. There are also the mischievous duo Basil and Cinnamon, plus senior fairies Ginger and Turmeric (which actually makes a very nice name!).

The series revolves around the fairies attempting to find out what a twinkle is, and the ups and downs of Saga and Sugar’s relationship. Everything is very sweet, alternately being fluffy and adorable and pulling gently at the heartstrings.

It must be said that there is nothing very original here. The characters are all right out of anime stock, and the various storylines are oft-rehashed cutesy fare. The most obvious comparison is PitaTen, where very similar characters appear, a human and a non-human bond, and the drama comes when the non-humans must return to their own worlds – and that’s not even mentioning the fact that Koge-Donbo was behind the character designs of both series (but as far as I know had no input in the actual story of Sugar). However, stock characters and typical storylines become overused because they work, and startling originality isn’t the name of the game here. It’s about taking a familiar story and doing it damn well. And that’s what we have here.

Like several other of my favourite anime, the show works well by taking hackneyed ideas and then developing them extremely well. This can be in little touches, as when the focus moves briefly to Salt, who begins to have doubts about whether he really does want to be a sun fairy, or in the bigger storylines, such as when Sugar and Saga fall out because Sugar tried to write a sorry note to Saga and used her mother’s musical score as paper. The charm is in the details: the little hints of deeper emotions than the ones on the surface, the genuine emotions.

It is also a beautiful show to watch. The characters are, as expected from Koge-Donbo, incredibly cute, and, when it comes to the fairies, their clothes are imaginative and witty, tied in with their fairy jobs. Special mention must be made of the town and general culture, which is broadly north-central European in that typical anime way, but wonderfully realised, giving a fairy-tale sense to the aesthetic even with such typical anime character designs.

Little Snow Fairy Sugar thrives on using tried-and-tested anime themes, but doing them very well, with each episode packed with more cuteness than an entire forest full of early Disney animals – and rather less creepy, too.

(originally written 29.11.05)