魔法使いの嫁 / Mahoutsukai no Yome / The Mage’s Bride / The Ancient Magus’ Bride

Apart from watching much less anime these days than I used to, I also tend to watch trash. Trash is relaxing, enjoyable and brainless. If it’s not trash, it’s mostly light shounen fare that’s only slightly above trash, or sequels to series I began ages ago. Beyond that, well, what have I watched recently and finished? There are a couple of shows I haven’t quite finished yet, but discounting those, probably nothing since Boku dakega Inai Machi, over a year ago.

So this show was if anything a pleasant contrast to the rest of my anime fare. And very enjoyable it was too: a supernatural story with a slow pace, strong characters, a British setting and some really iconic visuals. It put me in mind of several strong series – Natsume Yuujincho, for the whimsical feeling and the supernatural influence on everyday life, only the introverted main character who attracts supernatural beings and slowly opens up thanks to getting close to them is female rather than male, and the mythology is British rather than Japanese. Kuroshitsuji for the British setting and strong but dark deuteragonist, only with less abrasive humour and without that unpleasant taste in the mouth recent manga chapters of that series have left me with. And Fullmetal Alchemist, for the physical presence of the deuteragonist, snappy but tasteful humorous style changes and strong supporting cast. Pretty impressive company to be in.

Mahoutsukai no Yome follows a young Japanese woman called Chise has a difficult and traumatic childhood, compounded by terrifying experiences with supernatural beings (expanded in the rather slow OVA prelude episodes), as she sells herself into slavery and is bought by Elias, a strange combination of fairy and human who appears like a huge man wearing the skull of a wolf with the horns of a ram. A pretty fantastic design. Elias buys Chise for two reasons – because he wants to understand humanity better, and because she is a sleigh beggy, which in this world is not a little fairy from the Isle of Man, but a kind of human spiritual conduit, able to draw magic from all around it and from within.

The show has a rather charming approach to British folklore and culture that occasionally shows fantastic research and precision (I used to feed ducks at that exact spot in Regent’s Park!) and sometimes just makes up its own systems or seems to take vaguely British images and throw them together in what seems right to a Japanese sensibility (was that…fish and chips served as a side dish to a proper meal in an upper middle-class household?!). The episode titles are taken from what seems to be a very dated book of British idioms (I doubt anyone has said ‘What is bred in the bone will not [come] out of the flesh’ in a hundred years, especially when we have ‘The apple never falls far from the tree’).

But uneven as it may be, it’s always a thrill to see England represented in anime, whether it’s K-On girls running around Camden or aerial battles between dolls in Rozen Maiden, or even the first arc of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. They don’t have to get every detail right, and it’s always enjoyable to see things like Anteros at Piccadilly Circus made the location of an exciting climactic showdown. There’s some fun mythological elements, too – Shakespeare seems to have been heavily referenced, for we not only get Titania and Oberon as king and queen of the fairies, but a helpful little spirit called Ariel. Otherwise, we have a cute Selkie – though not as cute as the one in Song of the Sea – and of course some mighty dragons who are unless they lose control somewhat less fearsome than the ones in Arthurian or Christian mythology.

Probably the most interesting element of Western mythology is the use of the Cartaphilius character. Thankfully the term is never used, but this is the Wandering Jew, who was cursed by Christ never to die in response to jeers on the way to Golgotha. I don’t know whether the mangaka changed this to ‘The Wandering Sorcerer’ for politically correct reasons or simply thought the audience wouldn’t understand if the term was left unchanged, but either way he generally goes by the names Cartaphilius or Joseph, two names that have been given to the legendary figure over the years. The show creates a new an interesting backstory for the character, implying there was an original cursed figure and that Joseph was an (adorable) innocent whose body and identity were essentially stolen while the memories and suffering remained, but he is the primary antagonist, is capable of extreme cruelty and yet still evokes sympathy. An intriguing and compelling enemy, I wonder if we’ll see more of him in the future and whether he’ll be properly punished for what he’ll do. The characters may forget his crimes, but there was one scene where the voice-over, delivered by a very sweet-sounding seiyuu, was pretty devastating to hear. One of the darkest moments in anime I’ve seen since Bokurano, and rather surprising from what was a generally pretty safe and harmless anime – excepting where Cartaphilius was concerned.  

Well-made, well-acted, pleasant to look at, intriguing conceptually and occasionally emotionally resonant, I really enjoyed this show and want to see more. I believe it was quite a hit, and certainly the visual impression Elias makes will stick with most people, so hopefully we’ll see a fair bit more.

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Well, after going to see the enjoyable but flawed Maleficent, it felt like the right time for a viewing of this classic. And this may surprise some, but this was in fact – barring, possibly, as a baby – the very first time I ever saw Sleeping Beauty. I’ve seen bits and pieces, of course – clips of Maleficent’s big entrance, that most persistent of earworms ‘Once Upon a Dream’, which rather makes me think Disney should lift melodies from great composers more, Prince Philip’s kiss of true love – but I am almost certain that this was the first time I’d seen the full film. The most exposure I had to Disney’s version of Sleeping Beauty has been through Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

It may be a result of this lack of experience, but I had a lot of misconceptions about the film, and honestly I think they’re pretty widespread. For one thing, with Aurora being part of a trinity of the most iconic fairytale princesses with Snow White and Cinderella, the film feels like older Disney than it really is. Sure, Cinderella is 1950 and Sleeping Beauty is 1959, the same decade, but for all the continued involvement of the Nine Old Men, the Disney of Alice in Wonderland and the Disney of Sword in the Stone feel rather different, and the difference is visible here, not least because there is a clear attempt at a distinct, stylised, sharp-edged style, especially in the opening sequence of crowds gathering for Aurora’s christening.

Other misconceptions I had included that the main character was Aurora, or even King Stephan – really, quite oddly, the central figures of the narrative are the three fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, who are also the only characters who really get any development. I was also under the impression that one of Maleficent’s main problems was that unlike this film, it shows Aurora as asleep for only a matter of hours whereas the real story has the princess sleep for a hundred years. In fact, the same problem exists here – Maleficent leads Aurora to prick her finger and fall into an enchanted sleep, which she remains in only for as long as it takes the fairies to free and arm Philip and get him to his love.

I understand why this has been done – like many modern readers, the Disney writers clearly had a problem with the idea that the princes wakes when total stranger arrives and kisses her, which is hardly true love. Maleficent even dismissed the idea that two young people who meet once and are attracted to one another can be said to share ‘true love’s kiss’ a day later. All of which, of course, is more pleasant than the infamous older versions in which the prince impregnates the enchanted sleeper without her even knowing about it and accidentally wakes her by sucking on her fingers and extracting the splinter that had caused the enchanted sleep. Creepy, man.

But from my point of view, even this very 50s view of romance seems creepy. Aurora is messing about with the cute woodland creatures, the owl and squirrels very much like those who will feature prominently in Sword in the Stone using Philip’s coat and boots to pretend to be a prince, and seeing this and chuckling to himself, Philip steps in and takes the place of the cutesy animals. Rather than screaming and getting out the mace, Aurora finds this charming and loveable.

But the fact is that the romance, 50s or not, is functional and the plot still works. It is also tempting to be influenced by Maleficent and imagine that ‘Good’ King Stephan was actually a very nasty piece of work who had set Maleficent against him, and that Maleficent herself was sympathetic, but as I said in my review of that still-enjoyable film, one of its main flaws was that it had to write its own story rather than successfully managing to weave into the classic narrative. Thus the fairies were different and it was Maleficent herself who provided the ‘true love’s kiss’ get-out, and the ending was a complete departure.

Intriguing as the reinterpretation was, the cartoon Maleficent is wonderful, easily one of Disney’s top villains – and they do villains so well. She is evil because that is her nature, not because of her twisted backstory. She turns into an awesome dragon, rather than transforming her henchman. Her scenes are not without humour – as when her minions reveal they have been looking for a baby for fifteen years. And her devilish, elegant, regal design is a thing of brilliance.

Too bad Aurora and Philip are so bland – and I have real difficulty perceiving Aurora as just-sixteen when she looks 25. But again, it’s the fairies who are the film’s true centre, and they are very clearly defined, especially the likeable, fussy Merryweather. Diablo also gets remarkably good characterisation for a bird with a very minor role.

It doesn’t feel Disney is showing its greatest strengths here. The musical centrepiece is Tchaikovsky’s. The animation, while fine, is less ambitious than it was decades before, with repeating parts and some lazy colouring. The story relies on a very brief love affair, bland heroes and a sleeping beauty who sleeps for less than a day. Yet it just about hangs together on its quirkier strengths, as well as the better-chosen borrowed parts. But it is less impressive than many Disney classics. 

ソードアート・オンライン Extra Edition / Sword Art Online: Extra Edition

Not a whole lot to write about this 'special episode', but since it is, after all, movie-length, I thought it worth an entry. 

Extra Edition is a mishmash of throwaway extra episode - about an underwater quest that gives Kirito yet another chance to be the one who saves the day - a recap of the series and a whole lot of swimsuit fanservice of the main girls. None of them are particularly interesting, and it's quite odd to say that it was actually the part that usually so rankles - the flashbacks - that I enjoyed the most. Because it reminded me of what Sword Art Online looked like it was going to be back when it first aired. 

I don't think that the backlash against any popular season has been so universal and so harsh. Attack on Titan is beginning to have the customary backlash every popular series has, but it's still mostly small pockets of detractors against legions of fans. My personal dislike for Code Geass outweighs my dislike for Sword Art Online, but I was aware that was a minority view. With Sword Art Online, though, not only was the swing from it being a big hit to what seems like every anime fan in the world sneering at it more extreme than even what the likes of Naruto and Dragonball Z suffered, it happened before the initial two-season run had even finished. 

Which, of course, SAO did to itself. What the recaps reminded me was that the series began with great promise - a likeable, vulnerable adolescent protagonist adrift in a fantasy world, stuck yet given the tools to protect himself, even putting himself forward to be seen as a villain for the greater good. Only later did it devolve into the meanderings of a do-no-wrong sap and his bland harem overcoming the constraints of computer programs through the power of feelings. For a while, Sword Art Online looked like it was going to be very good. 

Which is why, I suppose, it got a big fandom, and why episodes like this could be made. But what follows is pretty embarrassing. The underwater adventure is sub-Digimon prattle, without a likeable crew to spice up the journey. And the swimsuit parts are the kind of brainless fanservice that people rolled their eyes at - yet bought - in the early 2000s. Everything about this feels regressive, well-trod and boring. I didn't even watch the whole thing in a single sitting, or even two - something very rare for me. 

Yet something keeps me coming back. This was bad, but I know that if another special were released tomorrow, I'd watch that too. I still like the art style, and Kirito's design - and want to see him become vulnerable and interesting again. I still like the concept and am curious about the other worlds I've seen on the covers of the light novels. I still feel like something clever might come out of the whole thing, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And if I'm a sucker for thinking so, oh well - it's not a whole lot of time to commit, and I will go on being suckered for as long as they pump this stuff out. 

Epic

Despite the killer cast, I didn’t catch Epic in the cinemas, and I didn’t regret that. The trailer, mixing FernGully with Honey I Shrunk the Kids while centring the piece on the oh-so-witty dialogue of the most plain-looking female protagonist I think I’ve ever seen in animation and a romantic lead that looked like the offspring of Robert Pattinson and an Easter Island head, did absolutely nothing for me, so I thought it should be one I leave until I see it on a plane. Which worked out quite well, because that’s what I did. On our trip to Japan, it was one of the (vaguely) new films on offer.

It was what I expected it to be – a bit clinical and charmless, but entertaining enough all the way through to be very watchable. Nothing that will have a big impact or take Fox into the truly big leagues of feature animation, but also not an embarrassment. So in-keeping with Chris Wedge’s other films.

A young woman who is feeling an emotional disconnection from her ‘stranger’ of a father because of his utter obsession with catching fairies becomes shrunk down and involved in an apparently epic confrontation between the ‘Leafmen’, who guard the queen of the forest, and the Boggans who wish to see everything rot. The queen has been gravely injured and is passing her power on through a pod, which young M.K., uptight Ronin and wildcard Nod have to protect. If it blooms in the moonlight of the solstice, the forest is saved, but if it blooms in darkness...

It’s predictable stuff, but spiced up by some lively performances – Colin Farrell doing his best noble Irish warrior, Christoph Waltz finally getting to do a full-out hammy bad guy yet still introducing nuance to the role, and Beyonce and Steven Tyler rocking up to steal their scenes. Then there’s a comic relief slug and snail duo, who manage to stay just on the right side of annoying, and also a crazy three-legged pug, which you can’t really go wrong with.

The trouble really was that perhaps excepting Colin Farrell, none of the major characters seemed to care very much what they were doing or believe in their lines. About the only character I rooted for, despite an initial distaste for the cutesy not-far-from-Alice-in-Wonderland personified flowers, was the young flower girl enamoured with the Queen, who despite having an important role in the grand scheme of things barely gets 5 lines – but does them with a real infectious enthusiasm.

It would be more interesting to see the film actually deal with the ideas of fathers wasting their lives and failing to be good parents, and with its multiple strands coming together rather better, but ultimately, it just about satisfied. 

MÄR -メルヘヴン- / MÄR: Mär Heaven

MÄR has been in my life a long time now. I wrote my thoughts on the manga in 2005, after having read it for a couple of years back in the days of SnoopyCool. And today, I finally finished the anime - so that’s probably a full decade of slowly consuming the media based on the adventures of Ginta and co from the creator of Flame of Recca. And maybe I’ll find some time soon to finish off MÄR Omega too.

By the makers’ standards, I suspect MÄR is considered a success. It ran for no less than 102 episodes, through four seasons, and being aimed squarely at kids, I have no doubt it had a decent TV slot – no late-night anime for adult otaku this. There were spin-off games and an American dub. That’s longer thanOnmyou Taisenki, longer than Hikaru no Go, and almost exactly the same as D.Gray-Man. They must have thought it was worth continuing for so long, too, because even when they ran out of manga material to adapt, they shoehorned in lengthy filler that apart from giving more screen time to Loco was almost entirely terrible.

But I suspect that a significant contributor to this was also what was really the main reason this adaptation was a disappointment. Small studio SynergySP, in their first solo animation project (after the group effort of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch) took all the tips from parent studio Toei to make a long-running season on the cheap. Like Yakitate!! Japan, this one was a real disappointment when it first came on, because I wanted to see the impressive world of the manga on the screen, and it looked dismal. Unlike Yakitate!! Japan, when it comes down to it the manga didn’t have much going for it other than the visuals, so reducing the extremely detailed fairy tale-inspired designs of the manga to the level ofPowerpuff Girls Z really, really damaged it.

You see, MÄR is about as generic as shounen manga can get. A schoolboy slips through a mysterious doorway to a magical world, where he discovers that the red sun…sorry, the reduced gravity gives him enhanced strength and agility. After getting himself a very special ‘ÄRM’ to fight with, our hero Ginta joins the struggle against the Chess – and the rest of the series is basically a tournament of one-on-one fights, so typical of Jump titles, though at least Naruto interrupted its one when it started to drag. I was very disappointed with the final chapters of MÄR because the much-vaunted knights’ battles were no more challenging than the rooks and bishops who had come before them. And then there’s an obvious little twist for the King and the series ended. The manga spins it out some more, with the King being more formidable and even killing off most of the cast before they inevitably come back through the power of friendship, but essentially it’s the same.

Which leads to the main problem of the visuals being so underwhelming. The very basic colouring and clunky animation only make the fairly neatly-done CG look more daft because of the contrast, and especially as the more outlandish characters appear, and this only leads to disappointment. 

First impressions, 16.04.2005: Episode one: not bad. Not great, but not bad, either.

The anime, like the Manga, should get a lot better once it gets into its stride. The first manga chapters were pretty awful (thank god we lost the talking rocks) - though I'm looking forward to seeing Chappu and Moku-sama in ep 2. The voice cast was good: fairly generic, but servicable. Ginta's voice was fine, though he didn't look runty enough in the beginning. Dorothy, Alvis and Babbo all sound great - not quite as I imagined, but great nonetheless. The only voice I didn't like was Ginta's schoolfriend's - and the OP was very unimaginitive and dull. Some of the CG looks great, some not so much. Still, I have high hopes!

Mär is never anything but generic shounen, but it becomes GREAT generic shounen when the main plot kicks in.

Rise of the Guardians

Rise of the Guardians – not to be confused with the strigine Legend of the Guardians – had an awkward marketing campaign that I have to say had an adverse effect on me. Someone, somewhere, decided it was a good idea to preface most of the season’s animated films with an extended preview for this feature, prefaced by an extremely awkward introduction by Hugh Jackman, looking uncomfortable as he talked about his role as the Easter Bunny for an audience of kids who couldn’t be expected to understand the irony. This gave way to an overlong sequence taken from the film’s first act, which despite good humour, lovely visuals and a very strong premise had little going for it in terms of originality.

But that premise, those interesting characters, the cute design of Jack Frost and the promise of spectacular action held quite some appeal, plus I heard crew from the brilliant How to Train Your Dragon were involved, so I was keen to go see it. 

Arguably a follow-up to that previous Dreamworks film and bringing with it the same treatment of a comedic premise with a serious, epic sort of a narrative and a protagonist a couple of years into adolescence rather than a little child. In short, going for the young adult crowd rather than the littluns or the knowing adults who like Shrek.

The idea of an ass-whupping, fighting Santa Claus is hardly original – it’s where South Park began, after all – but the hook here is that the happy optimism of the children around the world is maintained by four guardians. Santa has his spring counterpart in The Easter Bunny, while the Tooth Fairy takes care of not only milk teeth but the happy memories of childhood. Then there is The Sandman, whose happy dreams are key to contented nights worldwide. But the Boogieman, the sinister Pitch Black, has made a move to tip the balance towards fear, and the guardians are no enough to stop him, so the God-like Man in the Moon appoints a new guardian, the fun-loving but deeply lonely Jack Frost, who remembers nothing of the time back when he was human, before he was chosen.

The designs of the small but iconic cast are great, as are the performances that give them life. Santa is portrayed as a patriarchal but merry Russian in a performance Alec Baldwin clearly enjoyed very much. Jack Frost, who after seeing Star Trek I never would have expected Chris Pine to voice with such vulnerability – only for him to be perfect – has an inspired design, simple and yet complex, with skinny jeans and a hoodie to put him bang up-to-date with the modern crowd and a strangely compelling face that isn’t what you would call handsome or pretty or idealised yet makes him very cute and expressive. Jackman going against type makes for some of the bigger laughs in the show, especially when he goes through a transformation towards the end of the film, and the mute Sandman is a classic cartoon character. There’s a touch of tokenism about the Tooth Fairy as the only female guardian, so that she’s soon awkwardly flirting and her little fairies become a mass of damsels in distress, and Isla Fisher phones in the same likeable but forgettable performance from Rango, but it works and she’s got a pretty scaled design. Then there’s Jude Law as the Boogieman, something that sounds slightly odd in a British accent (where the term is ‘bogeyman’). He’s simplistic and slightly too often made a buffoon, but when he’s manipulating or in command, he’s quite brilliant – and I suspect many a teen girl will be producing fanart and fanfic of him with Jack. There’s a touch of Scar about his mixture of malevolence, gloating and cowardice, though he’s not quite on that level of charisma. There are also a gang of credulous little kids who are written with the tough roles of being fickle enough to believe and stop believing in the guardians over the course of just an hour or two, but especially with the addition of the expectation-inverting Cupcake, a memorable, briefly-sketched little gang.

The plot is simple but neatly-done. Jack is only given his motivation – finding his memories – because he is brought into contact with the guardians, which is neat, and also sets him up for his downfall and guilt later on. Pitch’s downfall comes because he throws balance out, and one neat thing about having a story about Jack Frost and Santa in a story based around Easter time is that it will be appropriate for airing on TV networks at multiple times during the year.

It won’t go down as one of the great classics of animation, of that I’m sure – there’s too much of an emotional barrier between supernatural beings and the audience. It needed to be heartfelt through some great emotional moment, and never quite gets there – it’s more a superhero film without having the coolness to appeal to adult superhero fans. But just because it’s not destined to be a classic, doesn’t mean it wasn’t excellently-done – it was, and now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get a Rise of the Guardians Happy Meal. Did I mention that the marketing wasn’t exactly subtle?

デュラララ!! / Durarara!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

MÄR: Märchen Awakens Romance (manga)

From the maker of Flame of Recca, MÄR is very, very formulaic, being in large part based on a one-on-one tournament so typical of shounen manga, but is nonetheless extremely enjoyable. The story begins with a nerdy high-school loser being whisked away from his classroom to a mystical land, where he finds to his astonishment that (owing to, of course, the weaker gravity...) he can run extremely fast, is incredibly strong and has no more problems with stamina. An adventure begins involving a powerful weapon, a young princess uncannily similar to his one true friend at home, and a destructive organisation known as the chess no koma, who rank their fighters by strength, from the menial pawns to the powerful knights - with a great Queen lurking in the shadows.

It is a simple, unchallenging story, but where it truly succeeds is in the exuberant character designs. From the recurring villains to the single-encounter enemies - even the insignificant minor characters (like the wonderful Moku-sama and Chappu), they are sometimes derivative, but almost always bizarre and great fun to see in action. And Halloween the Crucified has to be seen to be believed - a strange little figure with a bound body, big pointed shoes and a tomato that's been carved like a hallowe'en pumpkin for a head, chained to a large cross, I don't think I've ever seen a quirkier character design, and that I genuinely do feel animosity to such an outlandish antagonist speaks volumes.

I'll be delighted when I see this charming, simple shounen animated.

(written 20.2.05 - before either the anime or the sequel, MÄR Omega, was released)

FernGully: The Last Rainforest

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

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

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

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

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

瓶詰妖精 / Binzume Yōsei / Bottle Fairy

Why did I ever stop watching Bottle Fairy? I was really enjoying it when it first began, but then for some reason I just stopped. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was enjoying too many HEAVY things at the time.

Because Bottle Fairy is cute, fluffy, silly fun. It’s about four little fairies who live for some strange reason with a teenaged boy they call Sensei-san, and try to learn about the human world through the somewhat dubious sources of information they have access to – books, and the little kid who lives next door.

In many ways, it’s the spiritual successor to Azumanga Daioh, which remains amongst the very funniest series I’ve ever seen, anime or otherwise. The fairies themselves bear strong resemblances to Osaka, Tomo, Sakaki (though a little more boyish) and Chiyo (though they ALL have the supremely cute factor), and the humour is very similar. The direction, with quick, sketch-like scenes and character-driven, surreal comedy comes from the same school.

While it doesn’t have Azumanga’s emotional range, it does have a more accessible premise and, since it doesn’t have a background of realism, can be even more bizarre.

I must watch the rest. I was missing out, and series 2 is on its way!

(originally written 1.4.05. Sad now that there was no second season!)

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)