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.  

ソードアート・オンラインII / Sword Art Online II

By the time SAO’s first season ended, I had gone off it in a big way. At the start, pretty-faced Kirito was an underdog I rooted for, sweet-natured and ostracised in an unoriginal but interesting world. By the end, he was the undisputed master swordsman of all the universe, replete with powers that were his alone and not just a beautiful and adorable – if rather dull – girlfriend, but a whole harem of girls to suit any taste. Including those who like the idea of their sister having a crush on them. He was no longer in any way an underdog, the way situations resolved themselves were very contrived, and the cloying way everyone worshipped his every action – including pseudo-government types taking him on as a kind of consultant – became annoying. Kirito became far too like a male Bella Swan, who everyone also loves for no reason.

For all that, though, I was willing to give the second season a chance. There was a lot of talk about the later arcs being much better from fans of the books, and it was after all a cover of Kirito with a mysterious cute boy that drew me into the series in the first place...though the boy, Eugeo, has yet to appear. Guess I’ll have to see in season 3.

Sword Art Online’s big problem is Kirito, and this season doesn’t quite deal with that problem – though the second arc here finds an interim solution. Kirito is just not very likeable, nor identifiable as wish fulfilment. His skills continue to be a cut above, and he seems just a little smug about that, and more crucially the stakes are very low now. He’s in online games, not fighting for his life. Plus he is pretty enough that when his character gets long hair, people think he’s a girl. Perhaps that’s meant to make him the butt of a joke, but its effect is to make him seem yet more perfect and beautiful. And it’s annoying!

The reason he has a new avatar is that he’s sent into a new game to track down a killer. A mysterious figure seems to have the ability to shoot a gun in the game and kill someone in real life. Of course, Kirito is the one to be sent to sort this out. Though this is an American shooting game, Kirito of course not only adapts to it immediately but decides to use a lightsaber and charge down all the campers and duellists. Because he’s super special.

Of course, he finds a new girl whose deep mental issues he manages to solve with a few platitudes, so he can add one more to his harem. Sinon is a sniper and using the game as therapy. By sheer coincidence she has a personal connection with the bad guy in the picture, and super Kirito figures everything out.

After a brief and not very interesting side-quest wherein Kirito and the gang finish a quest that might have destroyed their whole world and of course rewards Kirito with Excalibur, Best Sword in the Game, the final arc begins – and yes, it’s the best arc since the first one. That’s largely because Kirito is taken out of the picture – a little like how the best part of the Suzumiya Haruhi franchise is when she disappears. Instead, Asuna is placed centre-stage when an incredibly good swordswoman takes an interest in her and recruits her into defeating a boss with just a small but elite party. Not only does Asuna figure out why the party had been failing until that point (they are being spied upon) and lead them to final victory, she comes to understand the swordswoman well. Yuuki and her friends have come together because they are all terminal patients with extremely weak bodies, eager to make a lasting impression at least on a virtual world, which will record their names. Some parts of the story I find rather weak and exploitative, with overwrought sexual tension between the two girls screaming fanservice rather than something sweet, and the set-up being blatantly contrived to have an attempted tear-jerker ending. As a result, I found it rang a bit false.

But overall, it was beyond a doubt a breath of fresh air. Asuna may not be a very interesting character, but she was given some new dimensions here. The scenes in the real world were quite delicate and sweet, especially when Asuna fixed it so that she could take Yuuki’s virtual presence with her for an ordinary day at school, and I’d quite like to know more about the other group members...especially the cute boy whose name – a little gratingly for me – was Jun. Perhaps they’ll crop up in future episodes.

The fact is, I’m fairly sure there’ll be more Sword Art Online, and that I’ll watch it. But I can’t say it will be with much enthusiasm. The series outstayed its welcome, and thus far not enough has been done to make it better. It’s one of the success stories of recent years, but really it’s a show that’s still trading on its strong opening episodes and cute designs...

That said, it surprises me that Kirito remains a very popular character. There’s still a very loyal fanbase to this series! I guess there are people who don’t want to root for the underdog – but want their avatar in a story a bit overly perfect. Which I suppose would also explain No Game No Life.

中二病でも恋がしたい! 戀/ Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren / Second-year Illness aside, I want Love! In Love

Chuunibyou was popular enough to warrant a continuation, but continuing a series that focuses on romance is always difficult. From Da Capo to Clannad, second seasons have often struggled to find a way to continue while keeping up dramatic tension when a series has really revolved around which girl a central male character will get with.

Comparatively, it was more obvious who Yuuta would end up with in the original series, but where Chuunibyou could go after its central couple got together was a tricky point, one explored through these twelve episodes. And personally, though Chuunibyou Ren was still pleasant to watch and likeable, I can’t think of many ways the series could have continued its love story that I would have found more tedious.

There’s psychoanalysis to be done with this, to be sure – about the otaku culture’s love for the pure, unadulterated female character, who wants to be in a romance but finds it all too embarrassing and hides away like a frightened mouse or, y’know, a twelve-year-old girl who despite her canonical age she rather resembles in how she’s drawn. The series begins to revolve around how despite having been in a relationship for months, Yuuta and Rikka haven’t so much as held hands. She’s too bashful to kiss, and right at the end of the series they build up to her kissing Yuuta on the cheek. Sure, it’s all very adorable, except that I don’t see it in terms of Rikka’s interesting character and neuroses as an individual, but rather in terms of the male audience, the ‘male gaze’ as Tumblr types would put it, and that Rikka isn’t behaving this way because yes, there are girls that averse to intimacy and it’s interesting to consider it, but because (a) the romance story will otherwise lose momentum, and (b) anime has inherited from aidoru / wota culture absurd ideas of purity and innocence. It all feels to me like a desire for an easily-controlled girlfriend with no prior, threatening sexual experience, and rather makes me long for another anime like REC. There’s coy, and then there’s annoying – and it all takes me out of the story to think about the audience this targets.

Aside from this rather strained central relationship, spiced up with the addition of a bland rival in love, childhood admirer Satone, who fancies herself a magical girl and calls Yuuta ‘Yuusha’, meaning ‘hero’. Conceptually this works as a foil but she never really develops an interesting enough relationship with another character to fit into the fold.

What is really good about the series, bizarrely enough, is its padding. Several episodes are devoted to the minor characters, and in particular episodes about the rivalry / affection / sexual tension between Dekomori and Mori Summer. These are rich and amusing enough characters that, crucially, seeing them out of character is very entertaining. The girl whose personality is defined by sleepiness and the hapless boy courting her lose what charm they had in the first season, though, and come over as very tiresome.

The times that the characters’ delusions are represented on-screen remain very entertaining parts. Visually they are great fun and the ridiculous, huge weapons remain very funny. That the new girl Satone brings more opportunities for this, as well as jokey transformation sequences (in the Lite omake animations), which is one reason to be somewhat pleased she exists. As usual, KyoAni provide some excellent animation and pretty art, and the shots of the characters rotating in the intro are technically pretty impressive.

There’s a lot going for Chuunibyou and I actually wanted this second part to be good. The trouble is that the romance part makes the whole thing seem stagnant, though, so all the well-done peripheral parts feel like without something solid to lean on, they only fall down. KyoAni seem to need to learn that sometimes, one season is just the right amount. Just look at K-On!...and Haruhi...and, though this is only a premonition, most likely Free as well.

フラクタル/ Fractale

I start watching Fractale. It looks like a pretty normal anime. Nice characters. Looks like a Germanic world. Very classic. And then Clain’s parents appear. One of them seems to have a bowl of water for a head. The other is defined by giant lips protruding from either side of her robotic head. What is this?!

An anime like Fractale occasionally comes along and reminds me why I love anime so much. The kind of anime I instantly fall in love with and must watch through as soon as possible, and will stay with me forever. They’re usually accessible but with an element of high-concept, often with sci-fi elements. I think the last I had such a strong reaction to was Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, but Fractale very directly follows on from two recent anime I’ve adored and aired at more or less the same time: Dennou Coil and Kaiba.

Like Dennou Coil, Fractale explores the interesting concepts that arise from being able to project digital data into the real world, and create avatars as well as whole new landscapes. Like Kaiba, it raises the philosophical question of what humanity will do if given the chance to wholly choose their outward appearance – albeit to much less depth and without nearly so much darkness as that anime, which remains an all-time favourite. Fractale is slightly less ambitious than these, wrapping its ideas in a fairly conventional young-boy-meets-strange-young-girl-who-is-centre-of-a-world-changing-conspiracy-and-joins-a-rebellious-airship-crew-to-protect-her plot exemplified by Eureka 7 but also seen in the likes of Xam’d. At only eleven episodes, that noitaminA hallmark, it perhaps could have been given slightly more room to breathe, but in the time it has, takes us to a whole lot of interesting, thought-provoking places.

Clain is a pretty young adolescent boy who despite living in a world of great technological advancement, loves old-fashioned relics – mostly from our own era, which is cute. Unlike most in the world, he stays in one place – not even his parents live with him, as the possibility of digital avatars (‘Doppels’) means that it’s the norm for people to drift around the world wherever they please and interact with their loved ones only remotely. One day, he rescues a strange girl from some daft Team-Rocket-Meets-The-Blues-Brothers pursuers, falls for her, but wakes up to find her gone, leaving behind only a locket – which contains a very unique doppel, advanced enough to give tactile feedback and look like a real human.

While the world is pretty utopian – under the ‘Fractale’ system, nobody has to work or runs short of food – the fractale system is starting to go wrong and displace large numbers of people, and ‘terrorist’ groups try to espouse the virtues of living free of the system. Those behind Fractale are also pretty sinister, a group of priestesses who demand daily ‘prayers’ and are after our heroine. Clutzy, thoroughly adorable Clain thus ends up on a quest not only to find out the truth behind the young doppel Nessa, but to reunite with the girl Phyrne – and the only way to do that is to join up with the terrorists.

With A-1’s usual high standard of good design  and cuteness (in conjunction with the fledgling Ordet), doing what has rapidly become their hallmark of filling a cast with very cute teenage girls and at least one very cute teenage boy, it succeeds in making its lowbrow elements the comic relief and foregrounding the epic adventure, working rather better than, say, No. 6, which attempted something similar. It was certainly more consistent than Sword Art Online, if not such a big hit. Clain is also probably the most sexualised shota since Ciel Phantomhive, with a girly look reminiscent of Joey Jones.

For an eleven-episode series, Fractale was paced well. The expository episodes did a superb job making us like Clain and Nessa, though they’re both character types I love – well-meaning but goofy, pretty-faced young boy and naive, innocent, energetic, wholly good-natured little girl. When joining up with the airship crew and being made dogsbody, apparently a signature of these series, things did not drag and the simmering rivalry with the captain Sunda actually worked, as well as the comedy and cuteness from tsundere Enri. When there are losses in the ranks, they are actually deeply sad. And the ending, while it was never going to be that profound, is nicely open-ended while giving a sense of bittersweet closure.

If there were things I didn’t like, they would be Phryne’s ‘father’ figure, Barrot, who in his slimy, groping ugliness is a bit too exaggerated for the sake of trying to make Phryne more complex, and the fact that the ‘doppel’ system feels like it needed more exploration. I was also no fan of the opening – indifferent song over kaleidoscope images – or the ending – one shot, still until the end, with an awkward rendition of a Yeats poem. But these were far outweighed by how much I enjoyed Fractale, the world we glimpsed and especially the delightful characters we got to know. 

咲- / Saki- (season 1)

I haven’t the faintest idea how to play Mahjong. You sit around a table, taking it in turns to draw tiles and trying to make hands that you have to memorize. You set these up by putting tiles on one side of the table, and there are advantages and disadvantages to being the dealer. Throwing in sticks ups the stakes. And there are also some dice in the middle, but I have no idea what for. Even after watching Saki, I would still call myself almost entirely unaware of how Mahjong works.

But I am aware of how sports anime work – encompassing competitive board games – and after all I knew nothing about go when I started Hikaru no Go, and that became my favourite manga of all time. Knowing that I would probably enjoy the way the anime worked, I got hold of Saki, though soon forgot that I had it, so that when I started to watch I had entirely forgotten that it was a mahjong anime – for all I remembered, it was going to be about H.H. Munro.

But no. Based on a Young Gangan manga, it is a typical but nonetheless highly enjoyable sports anime. It follows a tried-and-tested formula: a rather ordinary young person reveals an uncanny talent for a competitive game in front of an established top youth player. The youth player becomes a bit obsessive – with a hint of romantic attraction – and manages to coax the peculiarly talented one into playing competitively. Though there is a hint of rivalry, the series settles into a series of matches in a competition format, with the sympathetic team encountering opponents with unusual approaches to the game, and after reaching some inner revelation, overcoming the challenge. Meanwhile, the simple actions of the game become highly dramatised, so that the power of moves may be represented by strikes of lightning, visions of mighty creatures or sudden changes in air pressure. This is almost exactly the formula Hikaru no Go had.

But for all the similarity in outline, Saki is very different in feel from HikaGo. With its predominantly female cast, cutesy art style and readiness to have really bizarre character types – including a girl so hard to notice that even her tiles begin to disappear, and a tiny loli who is effectively kept chained up for her immense mahjong prowess – it is rather more like Bamboo Blade. There’s also a propensity to put all the characters into romantic pairs – all but the goofy main guy and the childish teammate being lesbian pairings – that owes something to Maria-sama Ga Miteru, though with about a fiftieth of the subtlety and gentleness. This is a series happy to send its almost all-female cast off to bathhouses and hot springs so that they all get naked together, and does not hesitate to use the old trip-over-and-fall-on-top-of-the-one-you-like conceit.

But that Saki doesn’t mind being a bit lowbrow about its presentation is part of why it’s so much fun. It’s bold and obvious and very obviously geared towards otaku tastes – but that’s why it has an infectious exuberance. It’s just enjoyable to watch, enjoyable to rush through and enjoyable to laugh along with. It’s not trying to change the world or to offer something new and daring, but wants its audience to enjoy – and I certainly did.

It’s no Hikaru no Go – it doesn’t have the sincerity that allows for much more heightened emotion, but then again anyone who might find HikaGo tedious would be better-served here. I think mahjong is fundamentally less-suited to this sort of presentation anyway, being much more luck-based, whereas go has no random factor. Mahjong is evidently about trending towards winning rather than winning every time, but that’s not what this anime shows, and even with my lack of knowledge I know that a lot of the amazing winning hands shown are amazing because they involve ridiculous luck, not just in arranging your hand but in picking a random tile to complete it.

Since I know nothing about mahjong, though, it doesn’t really matter to me how realistic the presentation is. What I enjoy is the absurdity, and the sense of triumph when a character wins. The anime is also very, very good at making the audience root for every character it gives a background to, when of course only one player can win.

This was only the first of three seasons. There is very little sense of closure here – it’s made clear the national tournament is the real goal of these characters, and this entire 25-episode series, after the exposition, is about the qualifying tournament to get to the nationals rather than the tournament itself. It also seems that when Studio Gokumi split off from Gonzo, they took Saki with them, so after this there comes a change in studio – if not staff. I may not swallow it up quite so ravenously, but I will certainly be watching the rest of Saki 

風立ちぬ / Kaze Tachinu / The Wind Rises

I have mixed feelings about how the film is so heavily emphasised as Miyazaki’s swansong. Not because I think he’ll return to the helm, as he did after Mononoke-hime, but because he’ll still be a dominant force in the studio and even if he only writes rather than directs, the likes of Porco Rosso 2 are going to be very close to being ‘Miyazaki films’.

But aside from that, I am very happy that Miyazaki got to make this film. It’s the love story to flight that he’s hinted at his whole career, and it’s clearly in many ways autobiographical despite being ostensibly about historical figure Horikoshi Jiro. It’s also easily his most sophisticated and straightforward film as a director, the one time that he has been more Takahata than Miyazaki, more Ozu than Kurosawa, and that is something that I’m very pleased he proved he could do before the end of his career. Thus, the fantasy here is limited, more along the lines of magical realism than in the rest of his oeuvre, and the historical setting is key rather than something distant and whimsical. For the first time, he writes about the second world war, and how disastrous it was for Japan – even hinting at the taboo subject of Japan’s conduct in China. The Bomb looms just off the page, and it is very interesting to remember that at one point not so long ago Japan wasn’t leading the world in technology, but scrambling to catch up. Accordingly, the film has been Miyazaki’s most controversial, politically.

It’s only right that the war enters this picture, though. At the heart of Miyazaki’s evaluation of Horikoshi is that the weaponization of planes, while what provided his funding, stunted his creativity and stood in the way of his genius. Of course, this is a nice, idealised angle – as critics have pointed out, leaving out much of the darker side of Mitsubishi’s wartime production – but then, this is like so many of Miyazaki’s films centred on the changing world and nostalgia for what is lost. The things that he portrays of his engineering hero make sense, and the film makes no claims of historical accuracy.

Hiroshiki from early childhood has a series of visionary, consistent, often prophetic visions, many of them involving his hero, Giovanni Caproni – who apparently believes the Japanese boy is appearing in his dreams. Inspired to become a flight engineer, he studies at Tokyo University and meets a lovely young rich girl by chance during an earthquake. Though I thought there would be a touch of genius about having a story of Horikoshi narrowly missing out on love all through the narrative, but the fairytale romance Miyazaki gives us is also fascinating, gives some of his most beautiful imagery in the wedding scenes, and gives a bit more narrative structure to what is after all a film that lacks drive. The subtle meditation on the divided loyalties of a man devoted to both his work and his wife, as well as the sacrifices a woman can make, clearly have a lot to do with Miyazaki’s own thoughts on his home life, and make for some very interesting ambiguity.

Though the idea is taken from the novel on which the film is loosely based, the film also has scenes in a sanatorium based on the one in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and its protagonist appears as an eccentric but loveable foreigner with a huge nose and very broken Japanese – performed by former Ghibli board of directors member Steve Alpert. There’s similar casting dynamics at play in the casting of Horikoshi himself – he is played by Evangelion mastermind and Nausicäa wunderkind Anno Hideaki. This is quite a strange choice – the things Jiro is most recognisable for here are his glasses and his odd nasal voice. While Anno’s performance was jarring at first, something about his unpolished performance actually worked very nicely – it seemed natural and awkward in an appropriate way.

Technically, the film was a triumph. Those flight sequences he does so well are of course to the fore here, and the technical elements are beautifully-done. The characters look great – and some of the more comic seem more like something out of Ghiblies than the usual films, though never so much so that they seem out-of-place. The sound effects are often done by voices, like a more refined version of Yadosagashi, which felt nicely like it had almost been a personal preparation for me. It’s strange and otherworldly, being a little odd when it comes outside of fantasy sequences, but I think it works well. The choice of music is also a good touch.

This isn’t a film for everyone – the audience will likely be a lot smaller than that for Spirited Away or even Howl’s Moving Castle. Not everyone will want to sit through it, and it’s much more arthouse. But it is also assured, moving and quite brilliant. A real gem in an already world-class career. 

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. 

Le Jour des corneilles / The Day of the Crows

Here is an example of how sad it is that we in the English-speaking world are so closed off from the idea of films in foreign languages. Here is a remarkable Western animation project that cost seven million Euros, was funded with money from France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Canada, has a roaring performance from a big name like Jean Reno, and contains many very remarkable elements that simply don't make it into American feature-length animation or, indeed, Japanese anime. Films like TekkonKinkreet can come along that stand out remarkably, but they will have a very different, far less gentle quirkiness to them. For The Day of the Crows is characteristically, recognisably French, and benefits immeasurably from that.  

And for all it's ignored by English-speaking territories - for all, very possibly, it's purposely kept that way because the French have no interest in marketing outside the lands that speak French, rather pretending that all they have to offer is Code Lyoko and Totally Spies - the best French animation is in a good place. Though I long for Kerubim to end and Wakfu to return, Ankama remain the studio doing the best things in Flash (and yes, I include Ponies in that), the lazy A Cat in Paris actually did get marketed to the US to an extent after its Oscar nomination, and though I still wish they'd chosen another animation form, I continue to enjoy the second season of The Mysterious Cities of Gold. 

But Le Jour des corneilles stands apart from even those properties. Not necessarily better, but interesting in a very different way. It is less accessible, less obvious, less immediate. More challenging, more artful, and very much my sort of thing. And - perhaps reflecting that it is less obviously marketable - it is hard to find much information about, having only a French Wikipedia page (thankfully very easy to read with my lacklustre grip of the language). I must be grateful, then, for The Internet, that merry place where people can talk about properties others may not have heard of. It was following discussions of Wakfu and Mystérieuses Cités on Plus4chan that I found out about this - and where I had previously found out about Leafie, just so we're clear it's not all based on French-language works. 

I consider Le Jour des corneilles something of a gem. It thrusts you into a barely comprehensible world at first, where we are not sure what time period the piece takes place in, or what country, or what world. A scrawny, feral boy - never named - lives with his enormous brute of a father in the forest. The boy is not strong, but is quick and skilled, easily able to hunt and to help his father, who is a forest-dweller very capable of taking care of himself. Things become even weirder as we see that the boy also speaks with mute forest spirits, unsettling beings with human bodies but animal heads, wearing fairly modern clothes - of a hundred years ago, perhaps two. One of them he calls his mother, while others help him with his problems. One day, his father is badly injured while railing at a storm, and to help him, the animal spirits lead the boy out of the forest - the 'outre-monde' where his father says people disappear never to return. 

Outside the forest is a town, and it soon becomes apparent that this is not some post-apocalyptic world or fantasy, but that the father is simply a half-mad pariah from the nearby town, and the boy is more or less feral because of no contact with civilisation. He manages to find a doctor, who treats injured soldiers - perhaps giving a firm setting I'm afraid I couldn't definitively call - and drags his father in for treatment. Here, the boy has human contact for the first time, and when the doctor ropes in his daughter to keep the boy out of the way during an operation, an unlikely bond comes about - yet a rift between father and son is created. 

Though there are some stretches - one must accept the idea of the spirits of the dead lingering, and believe that a forest boy can establish a bond with a crow that extends to it doing him favours and even speaking rather like Pichu in Les Mystérieuses Cités D'Or - but this film thrives rather brilliantly on presenting fantastical, seemingly inexplicable things and then making them rational, and fitting them into what is essentially a realistic, even stark world view. The heart of this story isn't strange animals - though they do give a very, very beautiful climactic scene to this animation that wouldn't have worked in any other medium - but the story of lovers torn apart by disapproving parents, madness, bitterness and petty small-town politics. It is sophisticated and elegant in a way few animations are - which will also no doubt have critics claiming it has no audience. 

Admittedly, it is not made to be pretty. It is not meant to be - it is making a point about outcasts and the possibility of nobility in the ugly and base. But I did have problems with the design of the main, feral boy. He looks very much out of a French comic book, like Tommy Pickles from Rugrats redrawn by Astérix artist Albert Uderzo, but I think the film would have been a better commercial prospect and more immediately accessible if a design could be found that was still wild and feral-looking while also being a bit...well, cuter. With the adults so absolutely perfectly-designed, especially the father, the wicked old woman and the doctor, it's a shame that the fils just didn't quite seem right, and the same for the little girl he befriends. 

But at the heart of this film is its story, and that is done quite brilliantly. The pacing of the revelations is pitched exactly right and the lack of easy answers is refreshing. This is a film of mature animation, with challenging ideas, strange and unique visuals and no regard for conventions of comedy or action in animation. For that reason, it will go all but ignored worldwide, and that strikes me as real shame. 

Frozen

For me, Frozen is unusual in the Disney canon in that in a reversal of what I so often feel, my head tells me I should like it but my instinct is one of mild dislike. 

It has a lot of overwhelmingly positive things - a good story that makes some political statements for Disney, excellent performances, the best songs since Mulan (though admittedly I have a soft spot for the ones from The Tigger Movie), genuinely funny comedy, likeable characters and another box ticked in the 'Disney adapts classic fairy tales' list. 

And yet...I felt like for all the achievements, there was always something pulling the film down, so that in the end, I have to say that except when it came to songs, I much preferred Tangled, to which despite the creators' insisting that the adjectival titles are not linked, this is really very much the spiritual successor. It felt like a whole package, whereas to me, Frozen didn't quite seem complete. 

Though I'm well-used to supporting Disney totally changing their source material, I felt like this adaptation of The Snow Queen was a bit of a missed opportunity. Apparently, the concept was in development hell for such a long time - discussed but shelved in the 40s, revived in the 90s, considered as a Pixar film in the early 2000s and then finally given to Disney long-timer (one of the numerous future big names on-board for The Fox and the Hound, as I listed in my review of that film, and later the director of Tarzan) Chris Buck to shape into Frozen. They had difficulties with the character of The Snow Queen being so sinister and remote - and, presumably, too White Witch-ish - but had a breakthrough when they made her sympathetic. There are strokes of genius in this, especially how nice it is that for all the film looks to be leading towards the girls needing to be saved by a man's love, when ultimately that's not the important thing at all, but...

Well, I miss Kay and Gerda and the Thief Girl, and the fact is that The Snow Queen is one of the only - perhaps the one and only - classic fairy story where the boy is the one who's the captive in distress and it's the girl who sets out on the epic quest to rescue him. Despite the step forward for female empowerment that comes from Jennifer Lee being a co-director here and the first woman to ever have that position in Disney, sticking to the original's format, I think, would be much more the political statement for Disney, as well as being a story I always like hearing. Oh well, there's always TMS's World Masterpiece Theater-style anime adaptation, which is rather closer to the source...but I haven't actually managed to finish watching in eight years and really need to start again from the beginning. 

All that remains of the original, though, is the fact that there's a queen with powers of ice and snow...and the idea of a shard in the heart. Well, and that there is a reindeer and there are trolls, I suppose, though the latter are nice ones whose aesthetic - Troll Dolls meet Rock Lords via Jim Henson - just about ends up working. Other than that, well, about the only other point of influence is the vague cold-parts-of-Europe setting, mostly Norwegian but with very Western Russian high society and the Danish hangovers from the original. 

Otherwise, this becomes a story of two princesses in the fictional kingdom of Arendelle (no, not Arundel), one of whom secretly has mutant powers. When she accidentally nearly kills her little sister, she and her parents decide to essentially lock her away and for her powers to be kept secret forever. Of course, this is not so simple, and when she comes of age and is crowned queen, a bit of drama brings out her dangerous side and she flees to make her own Superman palace and hide away. However, she has inadvertently brought out an eternal winter and must be stopped. 

Loose ends are neatly tied, ice effects are beautiful and despite the rather cringy non-rhymes that reminded me far too much of the joke that was Crazy Town's 'Revolving Door', the big belting lead song 'Let It Go' is a triumphant ear-worm that ought to be one of Disney's enduring tracks. I actually know next to nothing about Idina Menzel, having to be told that she is acclaimed for being the original and definitive Elphaba in Wicked (and not being able to stand Glee), but this song was clearly written for her and her impressive lungs, and works well - with some very modern sassy moments so that it doesn't feel derivative. Both her Elsa and Kristen Bell's Anna (most recognisable possible Norwegian names for Americans, methinks) are believable, likeable, flawed and sympathetic. Hans, while rather cardboard, fits the story well and Kristoff - though I wouldn't mind a better transition from his childhood to his apparently solitary adult life. 

Then there was Olaf. I really think that Olaf was very misjudged. He was excellently written, with a series of fantastic jokes - especially his song about his absurd dream - and the vocal performance got the annoying-likeable balance just right. But...the design really, really didn't. I couldn't stand the design for the snowman - buck-toothed, repulsive, goofy and seemingly derived from what an artist from the Beano might have thought looked funny in the seventies, I really, really thought the film (and extended trailer featuring a skit with him and the reindeer) would have been much more appealing had he looked...well, more like a snowman, and less hideous. 

So yes. There was a lot to celebrate here, and Disney's main CG studio is in a very strong position after Tangled and especially Wreck-It Ralph, but several factors held me back from wholeheartedly liking what I saw. 

Also worth mentioning, though, was the short that came before the main feature, Get a Horse!, which was a rather sweet attempt to recreate classic-era Mickey Mouse with a modern twist. Also directed by a woman - Simpsons and Avatar episode director Laura MacMullen - which makes her the first ever woman to direct a Disney film solo, it is a conscious attempt to be classic, featuring Mickey, Minnie, Pete, Clarabelle Cow and Horace the Horse - and even for one moment that made me fanboy for a moment, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Opening with a very passable imitation of the Golden Era (though with its smooth in-betweening, non-jerky rhythms and scale of characters on screen (as well as lack of random violence to animals) is easily identified as a modern imitation even before the gimmick - of bursting out through the cinema screen into CG and being able to manipulate the film to rescue Minnie, that is. They also quite charmingly decided to opt for sounds extracted from the archive of the early cast - including, of course, Walt himself - which is only slightly stilted and awkward. Generally, a fond nod to days past that I found quite charming. I really need to revisit the early cartoons more myself.