ノーゲーム・ノーライフ / No Game No Life

NGNL fell short of everything I wanted it to be. Obviously, I never expected it to be sophisticated like Paranoia Agent or epic like Seirei no Moribito, but I hoped it would be a silly, entertaining bit of fluff I could watch with my brain switched off. Sadly, it aimed for a little more than that, and the result was a mess I mostly found annoying.

The No x No Life formula is common in Japanese uses of English. Tower Records in Shibuya has a huge plaque reading ‘No Music No Life’, for example. No Game No Life, unsurprisingly, centres on two characters whose entire lives are devoted to playing games. Instead of an amusing Welcome to the NHK study on a NEET not fitting into society or a Rozen Maiden take on how a fantasy adventure can lead to a person making changes in their everyday life and getting over psychological issues, No Game No Life is a wish-fulfilment fantasy. Though it is interesting in that the light novel was written by a writer who was not born in Japan – Brazilian born Thiago Furukawa Lucas, who writes as Kamiya Yuu – ultimately I am quite surprised it’s as successful as it is, even with its heavy fanservice.

Two siblings game together as ‘Blank’, largely online. They hate the larger world and have no place in it. They also have a rather dubious relationship – 18-year-old big brother Sora and 11-year-old little sister Shiro are attached to one another in a way clearly designed to appeal to loli fans. After being approached by a god who takes the form of a little pageboy named Tet, they are sucked into another world where everything is a game. Of the sixteen races – equivalent to one side of a chessboard – humans are ranked lowest, but with Blank on the scene that’s all going to change.

The drama of the series has no tension at all. Blank are ridiculous. They are so good at games that they surpass human limits, can effectively predict any enemy’s actions and have the physical ability to do things like force a tossed coin to land on its edge by moving a pavement slab with a foot. They are overly perfect despite having lived an absurdly unhealthy life, with Sora handsome and suave – with women constantly throwing themselves at him – and Shiro blank-faced, submissive and prone to getting naked a lot, as well as acting suggestively to other girls. Both have the ability to play games on a level that’s plain stupid, and though sometimes the way they win is clever – like when they use an NPC’s movement to put a team member in the right position to counteract cheating – sometimes it’s just unnecessarily convoluted to give the appearance of something smart, like with ‘dematerialisation shiritori’.

These overly perfect protagonists quickly assemble a harem of girls who lack any sort of character whatsoever. There’s the stooge girl, the subservient angel, and the two former antagonists who are in somewhat of a lesbian relationship, but of course so enamoured by Sora that he becomes centre of their lives. Later there’s the cute girl with the animal ears who is their final challenge in this series.

Other than social anxiety, which is played for laughs, and an absolute need to be with his sister, Sora is without flaw. His mind runs calculations beyond those anybody else who has ever existed can possibly manage, he is capable of impressive physical feats with a gun, and he is handsome enough that every woman is beguiled. People complain about the Mary Sue archetype, but Sora is a Gary Stu of an order that makes Kirito in Sword Art Online look like a joke. Since every other character is either there to look stupid so that Sora looks good, or look impressive until Sora makes them his sex slave – including 11-year-old Shiro, if we’re honest – there isn’t a single likeable or fleshed-out character in the entire cast. I could probably deal with this if the humour had been good, but it was terrible – all ‘look, her panties are showing!’ or ‘look! Sora doesn’t care about Stephanie and so she gets hurt a lot!’ It doesn’t even get old – because it was never funny at the start.

Add to this the fact that the series doesn’t actually get anywhere near a conclusion – only to the defeat and takeover of one other nation – and you can see that this is a story not even half-told, and thus deeply unsatisfactory. I don’t really want to see more, but I probably will now, because not finishing a series I’ve started irritates me – part of me still itches to watch the rest of Hidamari Sketch. The saddest thing about this series is that its success clearly shows this IS what a lot of young Japanese males want to be – removed from their world and put in another one where they can be lauded by all for their cleverness, have little girls and big-boobed women alike throw themselves at them, and never think for a moment that they should think for themselves or dislike being used. Sure, it’s wish fulfilment – but I can’t approve of those wishes.  

おおかみこどもの雨と雪 / Ōkami Kodomo-no Ame to Yuki / Wolf Children Ame and Yuki / The Wolf Children’s Rain and Snow

Six years after The Girl Who Leapt Through Time transformed him from a director of Toei anime episodes and occasional feature-length tie-ins to an interesting new light in the world of anime auteurs, and three years after Summer Wars cemented his place there, Hosoda Mamoru's latest film is very characteristically his work yet subtly different. Honestly, I don't think it was the best choice of story if he wanted to take up the place left vacant by Kon Satoshi's tragic passing as an anime feature director second only to Miyazaki Hayao in being prolific, recognisable and internationally well-known, but I liked its quirkiness and the way it took its somewhat silly premise and put it through the filter of calm, day-to-day Ozu-like struggles with everyday life, aligning it much more closely to Takahata than to Miyazaki in the Ghibli sphere of reference. As a result, unlike his previous two films this one doesn't have a very conventional third act of action and triumph, but rather a steady progression and comparatively open-ended conclusion.

Ookami Kodomo follows the life of quiet but remarkably strong-willed Hana, who meets a strange, taciturn but ruggedly handsome young man attending her university lectures even though he isn't a student. Though he is initially gruff and unfriendly, she perseveres in helping him and their mutual desire to learn underpins a brief but convincing romance that in minutes was in my book much more convincing than the whole first Twilight book. Fittingly for that comparison, it turns out that the boy is in fact a werewolf, perhaps the last of his kind. The couple's romance progresses quickly and they soon have two children a year apart, who they look out of the window and imaginatively call 'Yuki' (snow) and 'Ame' (Rain). 

Sadly and perhaps inevitably, their father soon dies in an accident and the earnest human girl is left to raise two children who have both inherited their father's ability to turn into wolves. Here, the film takes its interesting turn away from the horror/supernatural romance that is so overdone in current media, and instead becomes about a mother raising two children alone who are very difficult for her to deal with. Eventually she decides she can't cope with living with such a secret in a dense urban area and moves to a secluded, run-down house in the countryside. This of course has its own hardships, until in a pleasant echo of Only Yesterday the city girl learns with the help of locals to work the land. Those seeking action may find this the dullest part of the film, but personally I found it the highlight, with a focus on the characters' humanity and a wonderful gruff patrician character. 

As time passes in this new life, the focus shifts to the kids. I very much liked the way that at first, they defied gender roles and then later, they defied what could have been expected of them from their temperaments as young children. Yuki is a boisterous tomboy who throws tantrums, delights in gathering disgusting things and has trouble hiding her wolfish side, while Ame is an adorably wet little boy who is constantly moaning, frightened of everything and seems likely to be the one who sublimates his wolf side. Yet going to school, Yuki starts wanting to fit in with her feminine peers and experiences an adorable puppy love - appropriately enough - that ties her to her human side, while a closer tie with animals and eventually a kind of mentorship from a wise old fox leads Ame to become the oddly detached, far more lupine one. 

The transition into maturity is marked with a gradual change in art - cutesy little wolf-kids with somewhat silly animal forms that retain their hairstyles grow less and less human. There's some drama with severe weather towards the end, but really it's something of an artificial attempt at a conclusion and the fact is the story just hints at the future rather than concluding strongly. If there's a flaw here, it's that the film doesn't have a storyline that hooks, only an intriguing concept played with gently. It's something very different in the werewolf genre, and could be interpreted as an allegory for mixed-race parenting (albeit would suit that very clumsily), and hints at a new maturity for Hosoda without quite finding the right balance just yet. 

That said, I loved the production - I very much liked the designs, the soft music, the restrained voice acting (though a scene where the siblings fight as wolves is a bit clumsy), the focus on gorgeous backgrounds with the characters generally occupying less space on screen than is typical in anime, and the characterisation. I was even somewhat unsettled that in the credit sequence, key snapshots from the story were disproportionately the same ones I'd chosen to take for my review quite without my knowledge. 

This is a step towards Hosoda becoming a more interesting, perhaps more cerebral filmmaker, and I'm interested to see where he goes with his new Studio Chizu - founded for this film but as yet more subsidiary of Madhouse than standalone studio, though that may already have come to an end by the time his next release comes out. Coming with him are key personnel like Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, the famed Evangelion character designer who also worked on The Girl who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, and Hosoda’s usual screenplay collaborator now working on the live-action Kiki’s Delivery Service Okudera Satoko. There’s no faulting the calibre of this staff, but ultimately the film just felt unsatisfying. It needed either a stronger story or to fully take the plunge and leave behind anything that could be considered childish to go entirely for the arthouse angle, because the place it sits just now doesn't quite have the strengths of either. 

ドッグデイズダッシュ/ Dog Days’/Dog Days Dash

Last year’s Dog Days was a funny, pretty little series that, perhaps because it followed Madoka so closely, everyone expected to take a darker turn. This didn’t happen, despite hints at darker elements, so that in the end it felt almost incongruous, how simple a moé series it was. A cute boy went to a cute kemonomimi world where there was no danger of dying in battle, became the hero of the country and won the hearts of all the girls, then had to go home amidst tears and promises of a swift return.

Well, that return came here. But while at the end of the first season I was surprised by the lightness of the tone throughout, here I ended up more disappointed. Rather than explore any of the hints from the original series about areas where the spell preventing death in battle doesn’t hold, or the origins of the world, Dog Days Dash is determined to have very little happen in a very cute way. It is inconsequential, superficial and adorable. But I wanted more.

Shinku returns to the world of Biscotti and Pastilage to again act as the hero of the dog-eared cuties against the cat-eared cuteys. But this time, he’s brought the girl who used to beat him in the Sasuke-esque challenges to serve as hero for the cats. And his best friend – a girl named Becky – is along for the ride. Of course, a third country – squirrels – gets involved and have Becky as their own underdog hero. And so the games resume.

That’s about it, really. They end up doing a variety of the usual things that fill moé series – bathe together, have awkward romantic moments where they fall on each other and accidentally kiss, magically swap bodies and go to visit each other for tea. About the most interesting thing they do is free an ancient evil – who of course turns out to be pretty harmless, does perverted things and then along with the ancient good who counters him, becomes something of a mentor.

The cast becomes rather too large – there are a lot of random knights and guardians who barely get any screentime, or who become interchangeable – and with only thirteen episodes some characters get rather more attention than they really ought to. The worst part, I thought, was the way poor Éclair was treated, especially since while Shinku would be cute in a couple with just about any of the girls interested in him, she was my favourite – she gets about the most dramatic relationship moment in the series, a bit of the fall-out from it, but then it never really gets fully addressed and she doesn’t even get a goodbye scene in the final episode of the series.

I get the feeling Dog Days is a hit in Japan. It got a second season, after all! But there was a real chance to be ambitious here, only for the fanservice option seemingly to be more appealing. I can only hope Dog Days gets a third chance, and this time takes a few risks instead of treading water. If not, though…well, I have to say I’ll keep watching, enjoying and feeling the brainless pleasure that comes from looking at irresistibly cute character designs in cute contexts.

And perhaps if there’s a third season, I’ll see more of London. I have to admit, I got a kick out of seeing Soho Square. 

ドッグデイズ/ Dog Days

Dog Days, which just ended at 13 episodes, seemed oddly out-of-place in a 2011 season. Perhaps it’s just the lingering shadow of Madoka, or the fact that this was animated by Seven Arcs, who tried so very hard to make Nanoha darker than it looked, but I spent the whole thing expecting the cutesy series to take a dark, depressing turn.

It’s no bad thing that it did not. The story is not dissimilar to that of MÄR: a Japanese schoolboy is mysteriously transported to another world, where he finds himself a warrior hero and pretty popular with the ladies – while at the same time looking for a way back home again. Unlike Ginta, the protagonist here (シンク, variously transliterated by fansub groups as ‘Shinku’, ‘Cinque’ or even ‘Sink’) is a gifted athlete on Earth, too, and the world he finds himself in is not threatened by a malevolent overlord. In fact, two things define it: firstly, there are two nations at war, one of which has mostly feline characteristics while the other seems more canine – the latter having summoned Shinku and presumably given the anime its title – and secondly, a form of magic is in place which allows those who fall in battle to simply turn into a cutesy ball-with-a-face rather than dying. So with little real risk, warfare has evolved into what is essentially a huge gameshow.

The series hints at directions the plot might take, but none of them end up taking a darker turn. The areas outside the reach of magic are not explored – perhaps in a second season? The queen on the opposing side sees a dark prophecy, and tension comes from her acting on the premonition without explaining her actions, but nothing comes of it and a dramatic battle with a third party soon comes along to make the tearful apologies at the end flow more easily. Ultimately the last episodes revolve around the angst of saying goodbye, but it is all clearly a set-up for big smiles and an impression of ‘to be continued’.

But if Dog Days stays very superficial, it certainly suits it. Dog Days is the cutest action-adventure I’ve seen since…hmm, I don’t know, Mai-Otome? Its character design looks like characters from Haruhi Suzumiya redrawn by the mangaka of Bamboo Blade, and every character is adorable, from boyish, sensitive Shinku, who in that great tradition of half-Japanese, half-European anime characters is so blonde and blue-eyed Hitler would cringe, to the female captain of the guard who is voiced by the seiyuu who was Azusa in K-On and embodies the ‘tsundere’ concept better and more likeably than any other character I can think of. Then there is the sweet childlike princess Miruhi, who goes into adoring disciple mode when around the opposing army’s princess Leo, the bookish head researcher Rikotta, always trying her best, and the sweetly bratty cat-prince Gaul. Everything here comes from an already somewhat tired moé moé tradition, but is done with affection and sincerity, and works.

There’s not much to this show. It doesn’t even seem very well-conceived, starting off with an idea of warfare through athletics that is soon dropped, telling us things like Shinku is from Cornwall that never really gain relevance and hopping between mini-arcs in a desperate plea to keep the audience’s attention. But while it could perhaps have made a much greater impact, as a piece of fluff it was always fun to watch and enjoyable, and in 2011’s more cynical seasons, refreshing too.

Season two: here

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)

ちょびっツ / Chobits

I remember when Chobits first came out, it generated more buzz than the manufacturing plant for Toy Story action figures. I watched the first two episodes, and thought they were good fun, but for some reason never watched the rest until now. Chobits’ success has been huge – it’s on all sorts of ‘top anime of all time’ lists online, the robot ears are iconic, and it helped propel CLAMP even further to the fore than Cardcaptor Sakura already had, for better or for worse. I enjoyed Chobits rather a lot, thinking it was very cute, but with some huge flaws – certainly not one of the best anime I’ve ever seen, but still well worth seeing.

Hideki is a Japanese country boy who failed his university entrance tests, so moves to Tokyo in order to attend cram school. In Tokyo, everyone has a persocon (which is what the Japanese call their personal computers in real life), a computer looks just like a human being, only with cute metal cat-like ears. Initially distraught that he can’t afford one of his own, Hideki finds a persocon dumped in the trash, and takes her home, only to find she can only say one word – ‘Chii.’

Hideki decides to call her ‘Chii’ and sets about teaching her Japanese. In that typical way of TV language-learning, she seems to be able to understand corrections and instructions despite not knowing any words, and soon learns to communicate like a small child, and remains unaware of things like modesty or sexual allure. Because Hideki is a good soul and not the kind of teenaged boy who would just rape Chii even more senseless because she is, after all, just a very sexy machine, he gets very embarrassed and tries to teach her how to behave.

Now, it changes the way one perceives Chobits quite significantly, knowing that it was conceived by CLAMP, an all-woman group of mangaka. Chobits is a seinen manga, aimed squarely at older teenaged boys like Hideki. And Chii is presented as the perfect girl. But she is a robot who knows nothing except being joyful at her master’s happiness, serving him absolutely, and being adorably hapless. Isn’t there something wrong with that being all a boy should want in a girl? If it was written by a man, it would seem very possible that it was just a misogynistic but straightforward piece of wish-fulfilment. But from CLAMP…it feels like a cynical exercise in manipulation that exposes the superficiality of male tastes. Perhaps I’m just thinking too much about this, but it is kinda sad that someone would think Chii was perfect, being so utterly docile and simple.

But Chii is very cute. Given Takana Rie’s recent psycho characters, it’s odd to hear her doing such a gentle voice, but her voice is perfect for Chii, plaintive and sweet. She gets dressed up in all sorts of gothic-loli dresses and looks extremely sweet. You can’t imagine her really having a relationship with anyone, but I can see why anyone would have paternal protection instincts when her character was revealed. Other characters are very entertaining – a lot of people don’t like Hideki’s exaggerated character (he talks to himself, is totally sexually naïve yet honourable, and is an all-around moron – in other words, a typical shounen protagonist), but his huge over-reactions made me laugh and he was a good person. Hyper-genki Sumomo, a tiny portable persocon, was extremely cute and always entertained me, although she did cross the line into being plain annoying in the Chibits short spin-off.

When the story starts out, it’s mostly a cute comedy about an attractive girl who doesn’t know anything. It works well in this idiom, and is charming and funny – great viewing. As the show continues, it begins exploring relationships with persocons, how people fall in love with them, or use them to replace lost loves – and in general, it seems to suggest that a robot can never replace a real person, even if the love one has for it is genuinely pure. But towards the end of the series, it all goes a bit wrong. There’s a bit of a harem feel to the first episodes – Hideki has several potential love interests apart from Chii. But they all get brushed aside in the most far-fetched ways. The teacher goes off with Hideki’s best friend, the landlady turns out to have been married and is key to the whole mystery of Chii, and Yumi, the girl who seemed most likely to be the best partner for Hideki and was shown to blatantly have a big crush on him, is suddenly paired off with some guy Chii works for, given a backstory, and we’re expected to swallow that it was all platonic.

Then comes the stupid story of Chii’s creation. I can accept the magic technology that made her also enables her to have mysterious powers, but the super-elite persocons chasing her? The landlady being a technological genius who made Chii, even though it was (presumably) a coincidence that Hideki came to live with her? Why was Chii in the trash anyway? All rather silly, with a lot of big plot holes. And then, of course, comes the possibility that Hideki’s true love for Chii will make her more than just a robot, so they can live happily ever after. Rubbish!

Chobits should have stuck to being a silly little comedy, because it did that really well. Trying to inject angst and epic back-stories and cool leather-clad characters just cheapened the rather charming premise. A shame.

(originally written 16.3.06)

猫の恩返し/Neko no Ongaeshi/The Cat Returns

Of the kids in the Ghibli playground, Neko no Ongaeshi is one of the outsiders. While it’s really a spin-off of Mimi-o Sumaseba, its premise derived from a minor plot point therein, in other ways it seems considerably more distant from the rest of the Ghibli films than they are from one another.

For one thing, it is the sole film thus far directed by Morita Hiroyuki, and evidently had a smaller budget than the films the studio was making at the time (Sen to Chihiro was released the previous year). For another, it's a return to the more childish style of slapstick and scaled-down epic adventure the studio hasn't really employed since Laputa - even Totoro had a very different take on the winsome, being more of an adult look at childhood than an adult's attempt to appeal to a child. And then there's the fact that for once, the human cast isn't drawn in Miyazaki's style, something I was rather glad to see.

A young girl called Haru rescues a cat from a road accident, and is surprised when it thanks her in human speech, though not nearly as surprised as she is when she’s visited by the Cat King, who in return for her saving his son's life wants to take her to his kingdom to become a princess. Haru doesn’t want to be taken away from her home, nor does she want to marry the cat she saved, and doesn’t know what to do. When a voice tells her to seek help from a 'Cat Bureau', she meets Muta and The Baron, both from Mimi-o Sumaseba, enlisting their help just before she is whisked away.

It's a freewheeling and charming story. You can tell that the writer whose manga served as basis for the screenplay (or perhaps Miyazaki, who is credited with the concept) simply came up with a nice typical story basis (normal girl has mysterious things happen to her) and ran with it. It's not a sophisticated plot, nor is it devoid of dubious coincidences, but it's fun and fast-paced, with lots of big setpieces, an interesting two-act structure (the two different worlds being very different) and some great little touches. Lots of little details from early in the plot come back later with that satisfying feeling of a nice little twist, and the characters are great - The Baron is undeniably very cool (another example of the refined upper-class character that seems so very Western yet works so well in anime – like Shinku in Rozen Maiden or Saber in Fate/Stay Night), the greedy and lazy Muta is a perfect foil and companion to him, and a variety of other minor characters really leave a mark. For example, there's Yuki, the sweet cat who looks like she escaped from a Disney film, the hilarious slightly-sinister-tour-guide-type, the crow who provides a great mise-en-scene at the end...and then there's Haru, whose clutzy manner and bewildered asides make her very endearing, in a similar vein to Sen/Chihiro. Indeed, the two characters are close, but while we're encouraged to see the real vulnerability of Sen/Chihiro, Haru's world is purposely more silly, more superficial, more safe. She is very rarely left without friendly guardians, and it never really feels like she’s a little girl lost.

Yes, the tone of the film is very light. There is a lot of slapstick, from hapless and inept guards falling over to the defenestration of some unfortunate felines who fail to adequately entertain the King and his guests, which at first looks like it's going to be horrible, before you realise it's played for laughs. The climactic duel is far from dramatic, and there are a lot of very silly clichés - a tower blown up with a big button on a remote control, a clownish character's formidable past being revealed, a character having appeared earlier than you might realise at first, but as I said before, these little twists feel very neat, and make you smile, make you laugh, make you realise this is not a serious action piece but a cute and somewhat daft comedy. And it works in that idiom well.

However, that does make it feel rather more like a Saturday Morning kids' show than most of the later Ghibli films. This impression is reinforced by the cheaper art and animation than is typical of the studio in the last 10-15 years. While some of the backgrounds are superlative, be they modern Japanese streets or the fantasy Cat Kingdom, and the animation is smooth, art is often simplified when there are a lot of characters, or they're moving in a complex way - this is especially visible when a lot of guards are on the screen at once. The colouring is much simpler than in Sen to Chihiro or Mononoke-Hime, and overall it's all less of a spectacle than I'm accustomed to from Ghibli, but frankly the material suited it well and it was all good fun. Also, I’m glad my Japanese is getting good enough that I mostly rely on subs only for vocabulary words now – the reinterpreted English version (subtitles for the dub rather than a straight translation) used a lot of painful cat-related puns and really made some characters far more abrasive and hard to like.

This is far from the best Ghibli film. Indeed, it's nothing special. But it's immensely enjoyable and a joy to watch; I very much doubt anyone who saw it would feel they'd wasted their 75 minutes, even if the experience wasn’t exactly life-changing. I'd say that after Porco Rosso, this was the best of Ghibli's light adventure movies. Not up with the heavier classics, but closer to them than the likes of Laputa or Nausicaa, in large part because it achieves what it sets out to do.

Besides, I have to say I find nekomimi (cat ears) inordinately cute. I blame watching Thundercats as a child. Not that they have nekomimi...

(Originally written 22.10.06)

かのこん/ Kanokon

I thought Kanokon might be a new Rizelmine or Sumomomo Momomo – something pretty lowbrow and perverted that I occasionally watched in order to turn off my brain and enjoy some silliness. But it wasn’t Rizelmine or Sumomo. If anything, it was more similar to Moetan. Only less funny. And less classy. Yes – less classy than Moetan.

With the recent ruling regarding the moral fibre of Tokyo’s youth, which commentators are calling the end of ecchi, lolicon and shota in the anime broadcast industry, Kanokon may just have gone down as the most perverted thing to have aired as a regular late-night anime, if not for the fact that belying belief, it aired in the morning when kids could see it. It had copious fanservice and nudity – that was basically the purpose of the show - and indeed, the DVD extras are straight-ahead, no-nonsense animated pornography, complete with cheesy music.

It’s actually somewhat of a surprise that this came from Studio Xebec, who usually concern themselves with kiddy or cutesy fare like Megaman, although they were also behind the Love Hina anime. The production values are cheap and nasty, hopefully a last gasp of the moeblob anime, although the flat-chested loli characters are secondary to the giant-breasted principal love interest.

The story, such as it is, goes that an incredibly naïve high-school student called Kouta, with the appearance and voice of a ten-year-old, has transferred to a new school. There, he meets tall, busty Chizuru, who turns out to be a fox spirit. She announces her love for Kouta and her desire to marry him. However, she has competition in the shape of Nozomu, a flat-chested, spacey Lolita wolf spirit. The two begin trying to one-up one another, with more and more overt sexual advances towards the always petrified little boy.

I thought perhaps the idea of having this shota in the anime was to make him a sexualised object, in the vein of Negima, but in fact that assumption was wrong. He appears like a child in order, I think, to make him totally unthreatening to the target audience of straight, lonely males who want to fantasise about the girls involved. He has no prowess, social or athletic; he is scrawny and awkward and undeveloped; he is in every way inferior, apart from cuteness. Thus he is no threat at all, and his basic design – noseless and with simple face and hair shape – makes him easy to imagine away – while his lack of sexual drive allows the plot to be strung out.

And the conceit clearly worked. Not only was the anime already a spin-off – of a light novel – but there have also been manga, drama CDs and a visual novel. The DVDs sold remarkably well and there were even two OVAs.

This is somewhat disappointing. This really is anime at its worst. Ugly, plotless and catering to the lowest urges in the most obvious way, it really isn’t the finest moment of animation, or even close. I can’t really understand anyone finding even the ludicrous pornographic extras appealing, but hey – my taste is not everybody’s taste.

Sex sells, in animation as much as anywhere else, and this is simply an example of that. But oh boy, is it bad.

陰陽大戦記 / Onmyou Taisenki / Great Yin-Yang War Chronicles

Onmyou Taisenki is in the same sphere of existence as Otogi-Zushi Akatsukin: not quite down there in the lowest-brow bracket of Pokémon, Beyblade et al, but really not elevated from them by much.

The story is straightforward: a young boy finds a mysterious Digidrive-esque piece of equipment and finds that it allows him to summon a cute Bengal tiger-type catboy. Of course, not long after this revelation comes the inevitable appearance of another with a similar ‘drive’ and anthro companion, and they must do battle. After a few fights, power-ups and life lessons, the boy starts to learn that his own past is in some way tied up with a history that will threaten the entire world.

So yes, a generic plot. Blatant toy tie-ins in the drives. Borderline furry designs. But Onmyou Taisenki works, and while it didn’t have much substance, it had enough to sustain its 52 episodes in enjoyable style, and while far from life-changing it was well worth a watch.

I picked it up simply because a sample of the manga appeared in one of the Jump spin-offs I picked up in Japan and quite liked the designs, especially for (furry jokes aside) Kogenta, the aforementioned catboy. Otherwise, I probably never would have heard of it, since it’s one of those kids’ anime that gets subbed by groups that for some reason don’t seem to publicise their releases in the usual places.

The presentation is very Sunrise, all prettiness and cute round faces and smooth but economical animation. While it sounds formulaic, though, the anime is actually very idiosyncratic, mixing conventional moé with sheer bizarreness: when the ‘shikigami’ anthros appear, they have a kabuki-themed entrance where screens open to reveal them and they list their name and affiliated ‘house’ with the obligatory ‘kenzan!’, and while these are initially straightforward, they soon veer into sheer bizarreness, like the lion-man whose intro is a pastiche of noir detective stories. The comedy is genuinely funny, from the cute kitty that seems to turn demonic when only one person is looking to the typical childhood-friend-with-huge-and-adorable-unrequited-crush angle, and the series juggles lightness and its winsome stabs at the epic and emotional deftly, with strong performances from its well-established group of seiyuu. And as ever in these shows, what matters most is the character relationships, the frosty rivalries softening into affection, the betrayers looking for redemption and of course one young boy’s growing bond with his tiger-spirit friend.

Nothing special and certainly not the show to present to cynics to illustrate why anime should be taken seriously, but for a light and charming diversion, quite a pleasure.

(Originally written 19.10.08)

狼と香辛料 /Okami to Koushinryou/Wolf and Spice/Spice and Wolf

Arguably, Wolf and Spice is one of the titles that set off the whole moé trend, with its adorable lead female and tsundere tropes. But it came before the moéblob explosion, Horo doesn’t look like a baby, and it has always been a little more sophisticated than the likes of Lucky Star and K-On, which I notice have gone out of fashion again.

I watched the first episode of Wolf and Spice back when the first subs came out, and this is why I’ve never quite been able to get used to the official English title of Spice and Wolf. I think that Wolf and Spice sounds better anyway, and seems to fit with the two series, the first seeming to focus more on the wolf, the second on the trading aspect.

For what makes Wolf and Spice stand out is that its plotline sounds utterly bizarre at first: the wolf part is nothing wholly original, an ambitious, personable trader in a medieval European-style world coming across the wolf god Horo, who shows herself to him as a human girl (with kemonomimi and a tail), sparking an unlikely companionship. What makes the series special, and somewhat peculiar, is the way that in the episodes that follow, the two of them engage in a number of trades, most of which have a clever twist or hidden factor to them that require you to pay attention to such things as the value of salt in the region, or the pecuniary standing of the church in a town. It makes for an elegant, cerebral and delicate series that I not only enjoyed but rather admired.

And Horo is something special, too. While I cringed a little in early episodes, where she was naked most of the time and it all felt very juvenile, her character – proud but vulnerable, wise yet not very self-aware, vain but insecure – is developed extremely well, and the sometimes tempestuous relationship that unfolds between her and the merchant, Lawrence, as well as the business acumen she soon acquires, make for an excellent through-line for a series.

While small animation studios Imagin and Brains Base were sometimes inconsistent with animation quality, Wolf and Spice consistently looked better than the average anime, and when it was at its best, it was visually exquisite. Imagin’s work (series one being, I believe, the only time I’ve seen a show of theirs that they produced solo) was particularly painstaking and often brave in terms of angles and mise-en-scene, and the background work on this show was some of the best I’ve ever seen. The voice-acting also could not have been better.

It’s been over a year now since the second season ended, and I remain hopeful for a third. There’s plenty of story to tell, and the second season admittedly ended on a rather abrupt and unsatisfying note…it was the only way that the story arc could have ended in a way that made sense, but the turnabout in the final episode was far too brief, and its aftermath much too short. I really would like to see more of Lawrence and especially Horo, with her wacchi and nushi!

ぴたテン / Pita-Ten

First Impressions
PitaTen is the adorable story of a little boy’s relationship with a teenaged angel who moves in next door, and utterly adores him – much to the chagrin of his little childhood friend, who is in love with him and for some reason has big cat-ears. Love triangles and unrequited affection drive so much of anime, whether anime or comedy, and this is a fluffy, gentle and cute show with lots of manic humour, which is just the sort of relaxing stuff I’m looking for at the moment. Plus it has music that sounds just like Postman Pat, which HAS to be a bonus in anyone’s book.

Final thoughts
CUUUUUUUUUUUTE! That’s the only word to sum up PitaTen. With that many ‘u’s. Cute, cute, cute and a little teeny bit of angst – more in the manga, apparently. Cute as Bottle Fairy, but with more of a storyline, it’s perfect for putting on when you need a break and want to watch something that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Kotaro is a normal little schoolboy, other than the fact that he lost his mother in a car accident several years earlier. Bizarrely, his seiyuu was also stately, feminine Shinkuu in Rozen Maiden. He goes to school with his friends Ayanokoji and the teeny, adorable, cat-ear-wearing Koboshi, who even more bizarrely is played by Alphonse Elric’s seiyuu. I can hear the similarity between Al and Hotaru from Gakuen Alice, but hyperactive, squeaky Koboshi-chan? Quelle surprise!

But I digress…

One day, Kotaro opens the door to see that he has a new neighbour, the ever-cheerful, klutzy, loud but always adorable Misha, who soon turns out to be an angel-in-training, and not a very good one at all. She becomes obsessed with Kotaro and begins to follow him everywhere, but soon they become fast friends. Add to this spoilt brat Hiroshi, known as Dai-chan, his tomboyish sister Kaoru, a soft-spoken girl called Shia who has a bad-tempered talking cat called Nyaa and is about the nicest person in the world (thus the worst demon-in-training possible) and a tangled mess of unrequited loves and you get a silly, high-energy comedy show that works a formula, but works it well.

It isn’t clever and it isn’t original, but the characters all look totally adorable, the jokes are simple and funny and the characters have just enough depth for them to be a pleasure to watch. It won’t change anyone’s life, but just for a few hours, it’s sure to bring some happiness.

(Originally written 27.8.05)