サンリオ男子 / Sanrio Danshi / Sanrio Boys

I recently wrote in my Aggressive Retsuko review about how since coming to Japan I’ve learned a lot more about Sanrio and their cutesy mascots. I’ve also been watching a lot of sillier, cuter and trashier anime lately, so when I heard there was going to be an anime about boys who love Sanrio mascots, I thought it would be hilarious to watch.

I have to say, Sanrio Danshi was totally different from my expectations. I thought we’d get lots of silly, cutesy fun, the Sanrio characters maybe acting as the cutesy sidekicks in some kind of magical girl scenario, and a tone not far from Gakuen Babysitters. Instead, I got a BL scenario without the BL, a whole lot of angst and deep-rooted psychological problems, and then a very forced and unconvincing final drama for the characters to overcome. It was a whole lot more grounded in reality than I thought it would be, and commensurately less fun to watch, though certainly it had its cute parts.

Basically, it centres on a teenaged boy called Kouta who loves Pompompurin, the dog-flan hybrid thing. Only he’s in denial because he has deep regrets over cruel things he said to a beloved family member before she died. When he discovers two popular boys in the school love My Melody and Hello Kitty, his repressed emotions lead to an outburst, but after confronting all his angst and accepting his true self, he becomes friends with them. They are later joined by two more boys, who stepped right out of BL. Little Twin Stars fan Ryou is a cute, shy, sometimes acerbic blonde boy who was raised in England and likes to watch student council president Seiichiro practice archery. Seiichiro is a huge hulking manly teenager who everyone thinks is perfect, and who likes Cinnamoroll. When Ryou’s insecurity makes him lash out of the other Sanrio boys for being girly, the two help each other to a resolution – after various teary misunderstandings – and soon become very close. These two are just like the characters from terrible BL anime Okane ga Nai, only a little less horribly drawn.

Most of the series is about these characters confronting their issues. Some are quite interesting, like coming to terms with the death of a family member, or feeling like an outsider who everyone treats like a doll, or having a sister who is basically emotionally abusing you. Others, like being more selfless on the football team, are less gripping. It comes together nicely when the five members finally become friends and go to Puroland together, having a magical time. They decide to put on a play about noblemen from different Sanrio-based kingdoms fighting, basically Meine Liebe with sillier names, which of course everyone will think is magnificent even if it’s incredibly awful. On top of this, some awful subplot about the everyman character getting whiny and violent because he resents being an everyman while everyone else is ‘kira-kira’ (shining brightly) really doesn’t work.

The usual lazy Pierrot animation is at play here, and the show looks dated and pretty ugly. I was surprised the Sanrio characters literally stay characters and don’t have any deeper significance or role than a weird mutual interest that causes these characters to come together, at first in hostility (repeated for two separate main characters) and later in mutual understanding.

I did like the adorable androgyny of Ryo and the cute straightforward character Kouta has before he has his meltdown, and at the beginning this was a fun, harmless show. But it needed to do more than regurgitate otome game cliché scenarios (down to having a weird first-person scene with the ‘viewer’ before each commercial break) if it wanted to hold the interest. By the end, it was a bit of a chore to watch, even if you like similar cute-boys-doing-cute-things properties. Still, with a manga, game and characters in the franchise not yet introduced (who love Keropii and Batsumaru), perhaps we haven’t seen the last of the Sanrio Danshi.  

ユーリ!!! on ICE / Yuri!!! on Ice

Perhaps last year’s biggest anime, there was no getting away from Yuri!!! on Ice hype, especially if you have a predilection for this kind of homoerotic, overly passionate sports anime, as I do – for whatever reason. As moé fizzles out and straight male anime fans begin to tire of idol shows, this style of female-targeted anime only grows in prominence.

Certainly, homoerotic sports and games shows are nothing new. Prince of Tennis had many of the same tropes, and the underlying passionate rivalry is what made me love Hikaru no Go so much. Haikyuu!! is incredibly popular just now, and with a long list of basketball, soccer, cycling and imaginary card game-based manga and anime provide more and more fodder for the ladies of Ikebukuro Animate. Arguably, Free! brought the subgenre more to the fore, mixing atypically good art with homosexual overtones. So the path was clear for an anime like Yuri!!! on Ice.

The choice of figure skating was no surprise. Japan has for a few years now been giving a lot of attention to Hanyuu Yuzuru, a slim, pretty-faced young figure skater who won gold in Sochi. He won hearts with his optimistic attitude and love of Winnie the Pooh, and has since gone down the usual ‘talent’ road with photo books and acting appearances. While it would be a bit much to say he’s single-handedly responsible for the current prominence of figure skating over here, he’s certainly a central figure. Thus the choice of skating for last season’s homoerotic sports anime came as no surprise.

Indeed, the main problem here is that nothing was a surprise. There was a sense that this was a groundbreaking show in some way – for example, there was some fuss over a moment that was maybe-or-maybe-not a kiss. And then the main pairing exchanged rings that could have been a platonic symbol or could echo engagement. They bathed together, lived together and often drove one another to tears. And I guess there were a lot of people in the audience thinking boundaries were being pushed for a mainstream anime. After all, Free! never went this far. But for me, I kept thinking of No.6 and how much more realistically and respectfully it portrayed a gay relationship in an relatively mainstream Noitamina anime.

Not that the anime needed to be groundbreaking to be enjoyable. With good characters, compelling pacing and interesting relationships, it could have been great fun. The problem was that for me, I didn’t connect with any of the characters, find them realistic or likeable. The main character, Yuri, struck me as self-pitying, judgemental, unkind and ungrateful, which was bad since he was meant to be the heart and soul of the piece. His enigmatic mentor and love interest, Victor, did what he was meant to do, being an impetuous, compelling, often bizarre selfish genius type – he was what he was meant to be, but that doesn’t mean I like that kind of character type. Then there was the other Yuri, young Russian Yuri Plisetsky, who is a skinny, feminine, totally beautiful 15-year-old Russian boy. His appearance is cute but his personality is harsh and cruel, and though his tsundere side occasionally makes him more sympathetic, he was still a totally unlikeable brat. Most of the other characters are the kind of total oddballs that often populate sports anime, though mostly a little too exaggerated for the overall tone.

The only characters I actually liked were Phichit from Thailand, who strove to please others and whose main fault was just being dull, and Kenjirou, a chirpy younger skater who idolises Yuri, does the cutest skate of the series and then gets relegated to the cheering division for the remaining episodes.

In technical terms, the anime had some nice fluid skating animation, but often looked scrappy or made bizarre decisions in terms of camera distortion, especially when it came to Swiss Christophe’s ‘sex appeal’ skates. I can’t say I felt strongly impressed by the skating animation, and it often looked awkwardly rotoscoped.

Certainly the show was light and often funny, and some of the cross-cultural observation was insightful, and I’ll probably watch a continuation if and when it appears, but overall I have to say I felt Yuri!!! on Ice was mediocre even in the fujoshi-bait world of homoerotic sports anime. 

フリー！エターナルサマー / Free! Eternal Summer

As predicted, there was a second season of Free!. Very probably there will be more, too. And I must say, I didn’t mind. This second season did a lot of things wrong, but a lot of things right as well.

The problem with Kyoto Anime follow-ups is that they often stagnate. The characters are established and liked by the fandom, so we get the likes of K-On!! Where cute girls do cute things. And this continues until the fans get bored and reject the show, which sours any early success.

This series looks badly like it is going in that direction. For the first half, not a lot of swimming happens, and there’s a whole lot of regurgitation. There’s another struggle to find new members (none arrive, at least for the main bulk of this season), worries about what the boys are eating, and a cultural festival where they have to run a foot race in their swim clothes. There are rather dull episodes about each of the characters, usually revolving around a misinterpretation where the others think something serious is going on, which turns out to be nothing. The best of these is when Makoto seems to come to realise that he’s not going to be able to keep up with the prodigies around him but would be better off thinking of becoming a teacher – being naturally good with kids and caring enough to check on their well-being outside his classes.

But what the series does well is to break out of this closed circle and look elsewhere for more interesting stories. The most obvious place to do this is with Rin’s swimming club. Rin himself is developed a lot here, and becomes far more likeable as his story is fleshed out, he begins acting less selfishly and actually does some very kind things for others. We also get new characters, lone wolf Sousuke, brooding and stirring up competition yet having a tragic fate (of course), and chirpy, naive comedy loudmouth Momotarou. Aiichirou also gets a lot more development, falling behind badly but working extremely hard to catch up and being vindicated – as well as being the straight man in a fun manzai comedy-like relationship with Momotarou.

There are really two emotional threads running through the season, which work quite well. One, presumably relating to the title, is the grim inevitability of happy times ending. The older characters are going to graduate, new relay teams are going to have to be formed, and kohais are going to have to accept that their sempais are going to leave their lives, or at least their daily lives. The second, closely related to this, is the coming-of-age of the characters and the need for them to find their true paths. Haru in particular is just uninterested in his future, or taking any responsibility, feeling that career paths inhibit his ability to be free. The high point of the season, perhaps of both seasons thus far, is Rin spontaneously taking him to Australia to show him the competitive swimming scene there, opening his eyes to the wider world. It’s a very sweet gesture and works well. Even with some rather awkward attempts to make Rin sound fluent in English.

Of course, the series is still aimed squarely at the fangirls, and in all honesty, the homoeroticism gets strained here. As I suggested in my review of the third season of Inazuma Eleven, these aren’t a bunch of young kids who might all be very confused about their sexuality and ignore it. 

They’re young men, and there’s a certain point where the obviously unusual intimacy between these guys simply wouldn’t go unspoken – even in Japan. The way these boys act, people would be making a whole lot of comments. The closest the series gets to addressing the possibility of homosexuality is when Rin gets angry that the hotel he’s booked for himself and Haru has a double bed. As a result, I found it all very contrived and unconvincing, especially since I continue to not actually ship any of the muscly men together at all (though Nagisa and Ai finally got some scenes interacting with one another, hoorah! If they didn’t have such weird bodies, I’d totes ship it). And I ship characters very easily, from just about everyone who isn’t hideous in Inazuma Eleven to the vast majority of the pretty girls in Saki. I just don’t see the men in Free! as cute in any way. (Flashback versions are another story of course!)

I don’t know that there’s much more that can happen in Free!. It may be better to leave it open as to how well Haru does in the adult world, and who the new swim team recruits might be. But if there’s a movie, or another series, or even just some OVA, I’ll probably tune in. And I’m all for more series like this, treating boys just the same way that anime has long treated girls. But preferably slightly less...bara. Please. 

げんしけん二代目/ Genshiken Nidaime / Genshiken the Second / Genshiken Second Generation

What a long way Genshiken has come since I started watching it eight years ago. I doubt many of the fans it picked up back in those early days would have expected the 2013 season to be quite like this – a very long way away from the video game tournaments, pornographic doujinshi and figure-collecting of the male-dominated first season and heavily into fujoshi and trap culture for the third. Of course, since Ogiue came on the scene, the comedy involving BL/yaoi was in place, but the Genshiken itself with the addition of a whole slew of rotten women became very female-centric.

This is a good example of why sometimes even as a manga reader it’s a good idea to watch the anime adaptation, especially if there’s a good couple of years between reading the chapter and watching it played out on the TV. The second generation – introduced in chapters several months apart at first – didn’t really resonate with me at all in the manga, as I said in my review of the first seasons. Yoshitake I found lacking in character, Mirei grumpy and uninteresting and Hato, who soon becomes the focus as a real-life trap character – and fudanshi to boot – I found quite sweet but too defined by that one facet, with little indication of the actual personality beneath.

Well, the anime restarting brought those characters to life again, really – and sent me back to catch up with the manga, where I was soon finding Yoshitake absolutely hilarious with her mischievous plans and perversion, Mirei very relatable with her constant bewilderment and brilliant tsukomi moments, and Hato…well, Hato by turns tragic and deeply enviable, most likeable as a boy but still the same character when dressed up as a girl, and with many laughs arising from his admittedly complex and painful situation. 

Then of course there was the wider cast – Sue being mad as ever with her random quotes (kudos to the manga translators for getting all the references), Madarame now all grown up and having to face reality – at least somewhat – Ohno trying to shut out reality and getting herself into a deeper mess and Ogiue now not only a professional mangaka but the voice of reason. They’ve grown up, and it’s lovely. And I’m even looking forward to the third generation, with Yoshitake’s reverse-trap shota-loving sister looking to bring a whole lot more laughs.

Going over to Production I.G. for this new season – presumably the relatively cheap leftovers from whoever is doing the Titans anime – the animation remains functional but is very pretty and the odd character designs really shine through, no longer seeming occasionally disjointed, even when there are characters with dots or fried eggs for eyes. 

The new characters are utterly perfectly cast, and I love that not only do the references from the manga make it (Madoka cosplays!), I.G. add a few of their own, including the rather self-deprecating scene of Kuchiki doing the deviant Titan’s run that I pointed out in my review of Shingeki no Kyojin was so absurd…but has certainly made a big impact. I was sceptical in general about the last episode, which was an anime original hot springs trip – kinda understandable they didn’t want the next sequential chapter, being an extended gag about a misunderstanding over a buttplug – but that scene was well worth it, and they deepened Hato’s dilemma quite neatly without shutting the door on what happens next in the manga.

Nidaime is really Hato’s anime, and since I’m a sucker for traps and reverse traps, that was always going to appeal to me. There’s a deft mixture of the melancholy of Hourou Musuko and the hilarious misunderstandings of Minami-ke in the treatment of gender-bending, and as the series points out with a visual novel, traps remain a big trend in Japanese culture just now. It’s respectable that Genshiken tries to cover that, as well as the ambivalence over sexuality that comes with it, and Hato is so gentle and awkward that I really rooted for him. 

I do wonder how much of the anime audience, especially in the West, is on the same page, though, as after all this is a long way from Genshiken’s roots, and from most other comedies around it.

If Genshiken has closed itself off to some, though, it is their loss, for it remains a brilliant drama and one of the funniest shows currently airing. It is also genuinely very funny, and as soon as I finished it all I wanted to do was catch up on the manga again. I know I can’t recommend it to everyone, but honestly, I rather wish that I could. 

フリー！/ / Free! / Free – Iwatobi Swim Club

Believe it was something quirky doing the rounds organically or believe it was all a cynical viral marketing ploy, the fact remains the same – KyoAni’s short promotional film about some boys showing off toned bodies as they swam did the rounds of the Internet anime fandom, Japanese and international, and a broad audience became somewhat ironically enamoured of it. Those who didn’t care for the rippling muscles found the absurdity of the premise and the distance from the moe-moe girls of previous KyoAni efforts very entertaining and soon there was quite the buzz about the possibility of a full ‘swimming anime’.

And of course, it came to pass, and ended up quite the hit. Fujoshi took to it for obvious reasons, churning out their pornographic fan-comics incredibly quickly, while straight male fans continued to watch because something so camp and silly made them laugh. Of course, there were some detractors, mainly people who didn’t see any irony and found the whole thing boring and girls with a slightly holier-than-thou attitude of having been into homoerotic anime long before one was a hit on this scale, so they couldn’t possibly deign to watch it, but Free! was marketed very well and got bigger and bigger.

I liked Free!, but I don’t think I was quite doing it right. I would certainly tick many of the boxes in any fudanshi test, but I didn’t watch Free! for the shipping – none of the pairings appealed to me, the muscles I found most unsightly (even cute shota Nagisa had a chiselled chest) and if I were forced to chose a ‘ship’ I would probably go for Nagisa and random-other-team-uke Aiichiro, which is definitely doing it wrong. They never even interact. I didn’t want to see these half-naked guys making out. And nor did I want to laugh at the stupidity here. I mean, it was stupid, and that’s what’s enjoyable about a lot of sports anime (just look at Prince of Tennis and Inazuma 11), but if that was all there was to it, I would only get to about episode 3 before growing to dislike it. Personally, I am actually a sucker for the classic embittered-rival-grows-passionate-about-surpassing-the-main-character storyline, which I associate most with Hikaru no Go but is everywhere from Code Geass to the movie Amadeus.  I didn’t like Rin, but I was very interested in his interactions with natural genius Haruka.

Not a lot happens in Free! – the boys decide to revive their school’s swimming club, struggle to recruit the fourth member who will allow them to compete, train hard and then go to the Nationals for the relay. Meanwhile, they have to struggle with the politics surrounding the presence of their rival Rin, who had been the final member of their dream team back when they were adorable shotas. Of course, athletic performance is directly linked to frame of mind, and when the boys are together they begin to see the most absurd symbolic elements like their spirit animals swimming ahead of them. But it is enough drama to sustain 13 episodes, and it’s no surprise that the final screen hints at more to come – after all, KyoAni are known for wringing every last drop out of a successful property…just look at K-On!.

Everything about Free! is obvious and superficial. The comedy is broad but occasionally inspired, from Nagisa’s penguin fixation to Rei simply sinking when he tries any stroke but the butterfly. The writing is obviously aware that fandom will pair off the guys and pushes certain ‘ships’, like ReixNagisa, which is probably the most annoying thing about the show. Emotions are broad and guys will grab each other and start swinging fists and rolling in the dirt together when they have a deeply-felt point to make. Kohais care deeply for their sempais and will come close to tears when they see them in a bad mood. It’s cute and dumb, but it’s meant to be, and it thrives on that.

I can’t say Free! is a great piece of anime writing, or that I’d watch it again. But it kept me amused and interested throughout, and I will tune in for more. Just don’t expect me to coo at the hot boys or to laugh at the stupidity. That’s not why I like Free! – I like it for its bare bones, not its gimmicks. 

少年メイドクーロ君 ～天使の歌～ / Shounen Maid Kuro-kun: Tenshi no Uta/ Boy Maid Kuro: Angel’s Song

Warning: Not only is this anime hentai, but it is shotacon yaoi.Read on only if you accept that rather disturbing premise.

It’s a little sad to admit, but even though my blog gets good traffic these days, the entries that consistently get the most hits are for hentai. Yes, in just about every case I complain about how terrible they are, and no comments get left – but that’s what people are searching for, sometimes to stumble their way into here. And…well, even though I usually only criticise them, I still keep getting curious and watching more. I have a few lolicon OVAs from the 80s to watch, and some of the ‘classics’ of the genre like Bible Black, but one that made me pay attention was this – the spiritual successor to the infamous Boku no Pico. Kuro-Kun was made by 37°C Binetsu, who at least according to EncyclopediaDramatica are the renamed Natural High. I’m not entirely sure that’s the case, but stylistically at least this shares a lot with the Pico animations. Only with a whole lot less attempts to project innocence and cuteness, and much more bondage and fetishism.

The plot, which is very much like the execrable Okane ga Nai and I’m fairly sure was lifted wholesale from a C.J. Mikalski manga down to the disjointed childhood flashback scene, is a cliché of yaoi: a young boy takes on extreme family debts he can never pay off, but is rescued by a fabulously wealthy older male. But of course there are strings attached to the deal, and little Kuro-kun is not free, but rather becomes a sex-slave. The plot thus dealt with, the rest is sex based around various fetishes – first voyeurism as Kuro changes into a maid outfit and humiliating lingerie, then food as Kuro has to serve as a dish for his master’s meal, then finally some outright BDSM, in terms of mental roles as well as whips and chains. There is a distinct post-2010 flavour here that Pico managed to avoid, that further cheapens the already very, very cheap, not just in the fetish trends of having ‘traps’, as the English-speaking fandom has it, but in Kuro being a tsundere type, complete with the violent outbursts and shouts of ‘baka!’ Thus ends the OVA, and though I really felt like I’ve seen too much of that particular cliché, I must say I’ve never seen a flying roundhouse kick delivered by a naked underage boy, thoroughly enjoyed by its recipient. Nor did I think that was a sentence I’d ever be typing.

Yes, not only is Kuro-kun pornographic, it is paedophilic, just like the Pico series. Though there’s a rather alarming opening shot in a bizarre introduction that not only made me think that Kuro was going to die at some point during the episode, but that made it appear for a moment he is going to look about 8, he in fact looks about 13. I can’t say that's much more acceptable, but at least he’s reached puberty. I’m quite glad for the censorship, though everything that is unpleasant about anime porn is here in abundance – horrible squeezed sponge sound effects, thick gunk flying everywhere, and what look like very ugly genitals behind the censors. If anime on TV got toned down after particular laws were passed, it hasn’t reached the specialist DVD markets. Oh, and the animators were nice enough to keep some horrific, inflamed, alien-looking anuses uncensored for you until they are violated. How kind. And I thought the scarily oversized boy-nipples were too much.

For all it’s a new addition to a growing niche genre made by what are seemingly old hands, this wasn’t exactly as nice-looking as Pico to Chico, say. Animation is more limited, colouring is far simpler, and the designs are really not very nice – Kuro is a generic pretty-boy who really might as well be a girl, and his seme, personality-free Miisu, has a very dated face that reminds me of Keith from Psychic Force (from the early 90s), though that may mostly be the way his eyes are on top of his hair in that awkward way some character designers draw big fringes.

The bottom line here is that it’s stupid. But it doesn’t care. It’s meant to be shotacon anime based on fetishes, and that’s what it is, with stupid stock tsundere temper tantrums to transition between scenes. But if you’re looking for anything else here – other than trolling material – I’d have to question why. It’s not really what I’d call erotic, nor cute, and even with its whips and chains doesn’t come close to the dark fetishy mood of Enzai, but if you find it hilarious to send these sorts of things to friends and make them go ‘yoooooooooooo’ (or similar), certain scenes might push this even further. And that scene with the food, incidentally also the part that Kuro looks the most gender-ambiguous, actually manages to be cute. 

蒼穹のファフナー Dead Aggressor HEAVEN AND EARTH / Soukyuu no Fafner Dead Aggressor: Heaven and Earth

Of all the anime from 2004 I’ve seen, Fafner would be low on a list of series I’d want to be revived with a feature-length cinema continuation. I’d love to see more from the Gakuen Alice manga, or the strange world of Fantastic Children. More Onmyou Taisenki would be a great guilty pleasure, and what happened to that Hollywood adaptation of Monster?

But this 2010 big-screen release was for forgettable mecha cliché-bag Soukyuu no Fafner, the anime I called the most forgettable I had ever seen. Watching this did bring back various memories, but I’m damned if I remember who most of the secondary pilot characters are, or care about them in the least.

We continue shortly after the bittersweet ending of the series. The island is temporarily safe, but the Festum are still out there. Soshi has given away his existence and Kazuki is not only angsting over the loss of his homoerotic love interest, but losing his eyesight too. Meanwhile, various people who have been assimilated by the Festum are suspended bodily in tubes or wandering the island in ghostly form as some sort of protectors, which if it was contextualised and made meaningful in the series I have entirely forgotten about, with them never managing to be anything but jarring here.

Of course, the Festum come back, mostly still back to their old tricks of trying to turn everybody into crystals because it will in some way help with their infertility problems. This time, though, they send a humanoid Festum to live amongst the humans, using Soshi’s memories to aid it, as well as using its unique personal impressions of the beauty of the sky as a starting point to empathise with the humans. As a kind of surrogate Soshi, he begins bonding in a rather homoerotic way with Kazuki, though he is much more boyish and naïve. The humans don’t accept his proposition of siding with them and wiping out the rest of humanity and all the other festum, so a new battle ensues. Only this time, the Festum have learned human tactics and can use their weapons against them – and there’s a humanoid version to yell at in order to convey true feelings and talk their way out of war by convincing a hostile alien race that nobody wants to fight and everyone should live in harmony. This, of course, involves much tearful yelling and giant robots hugging. At one point, a huge mecha punches through the giant sword of his opponent using its giant fist, rending the weapon in two, because it is so powered up by righteous emotions. Fafner tries hard to be very serious and artsy and elegant, but when it comes down to it, it’s as silly as anything in Gurren Lagann.

And I think I’d forgotten just how homoerotic the series was, a bit of a fixture of mecha since…well, at least Gundam Wing. The pretty boys fighting for their lives are always having meaningful bonds that go deeper than friendship, which I’m sure feeds right into many a yaoi doujinshi. Perhaps this is what Fafner had that Fantastic Children didn’t – angst-ridden, lanky, wide-eyed and vulnerable teen characters that are oh so easy to ship. I’d like to think there was more to it, but… 

黒執事/ Kuroshitsuji: OVAs

 I have to say, I didn’t think that I’d be writing any more impressions about Kuroshitsuji, but as it turned out the franchise has been proving enduringly popular with its target demographic (ie young Japanese women), so there have been a stream of vocal albums, a lengthy ‘Red Valentine’ event for the voice actors and these, an extensive list of OVAs. Had there been two or three bits of extra animation, I probably wouldn’t bother to write anything – I never wrote thoughts on Rozen Maiden Ouvertüre, and I loved that – but this was quite a lot of animation. There was a single OVA for the first season – a godawful mess where the cast butchered Hamlet and the writers had a very odd idea of how audiences will react to dramatics – but the second season had no less than six episodes. That’s more animation than there is in quite a lot of the things I review.

They are a very mixed bag, all trying different things, and none of them simply being episodes that could be slipped into the main series, which is quite a nice idea. Unfortunately, the ideas generally aren’t very good ones, probably the best amongst them being ‘The Tale of Will the Shinigami’, which is a flashback featuring William T. Spears and Grell in their early days, becoming qualified in their jobs as shinigami and learning to be heartless. Unlike, say, the absurd caricature in that Hamlet OVA, Grell is written a little better here, flamboyant but still proud and formidable rather than a mere joke. Other than the absence of the main cast, it could have been one of the stronger episodes in the weak second series.

The rest are on the very odd side. The most prominent, perhaps, are the two ‘Ciel in Wonderland’ OVAs, a lazy concept that is also some of the worst crap associated with the much-reviled series. Clearly an excuse to put Ciel in another dress, there is very little to it – over the course of the two episodes, Ciel meets various cast members based on the characters of Alice in Wonderland, and much is made of him growing and shrinking. In the end, nothing much happens other than that Ciel is shown to be greatly dependent on Sebastian, which seems to be rather the titillating thrill for the series’ audience. The only part I found curious and interesting was the way Ran-Mao was presented – here in a daft skin-tight toadstool outfit, her role as a sort of plaything for Lau becomes warped into a figure of overt female sexuality. She goes for cross-dressing Ciel with her large breasts and her shapely bottom, and it is presented as absurd and repulsive. This is an interesting social phenomenon, for me – here is a very homoerotic anime based on a suggestive pederastic relationship, primarily celebrating the pretty men and boys who are attracted to one another. Left to their own devices and delivering OVAs that are very much based on fanservice, the anime makers present being a provocative woman as rather horrific.

But this is not to say that the female is inherently repulsive, as seen in the odd ‘Welcome to the Phantomhive’s’ episode, which hints that a woman is likely to have a wonderful, slightly thrillingly dangerous time in the company of the cast – as long as she is stately and decorous, in-keeping with the idealised version of Victorian England. The episode makes a direct attempt to place the viewer in the role of a woman visiting the Phantomhive house, which is one of the oddest things I’ve seen attempted. The entire episode takes place from a first-person perspective, in the manner of a visual novel. She is introduced to the various loveable but mysterious characters, and is later shown as having a sinister ulterior motive for being there, though is easily thwarted – yet still treated gently. It’s a peculiar and fascinating piece of wish-fulfilment, as blatant as could be, on the face of it high camp but also a glimpse into giving an audience exactly what it wants.

The other two episodes are a little more straightforward, though one is far stranger than the other. One is just another snippet of life with Alois, who I found intensely annoying so didn’t care very much for, damaged goods or no. The triplets getting to speak their minds was quite amusing, but the butterfly element was painfully trite. The other episode, ‘The Making of Kuroshitsuji II’ was peculiar indeed. I’ve seen mini-episodes before where the premise is that the characters of the series are real but act as themselves to make the show – Naruto has done it more than once in post-episode skits – but never quite on this scale, and never quite so self-congratulatory. The episode takes the tongue-in-cheek viewpoint that Kuroshitsuji was an international smash-hit, and that its characters are huge celebrities now. Quite amusing though the exaggeration was, the more subtle effect is of course that the viewer feels part of something grand and inclusive, which is bound to be encouraging.

These episodes are at once horribly bad and quite cleverly-done. They’re only for fans – but that’s rather the point. They know what they’re making is going to look stupid or even reprehensible to the outsider, but that’s no different from what you get in the OVAs for moé series, or in visual novels. But in terms of going to the extreme, being extremely upfront about pleasing fans and casting out all semblance of subtlety, this is a very interesting little set of animations.

ふしぎ遊戯 / Fushigi Yuugi / Mysterious Play

Oh my, I’ve neglected this blog recently. Apologies for that! On the plus side, a few days ago I passed 100,000 views, which is always nice! Anyway, to today’s impressions – which this time are of the classic series Fushigi Yuugi.

Like several other anime I’m writing about at the moment, it took me a long, long time to get to finishing this 1995 series and writing my thoughts. I think I started to watch it in 2006 or 2007, when the first thought I had of this story about two girl transported into a mysterious world by a magical book and ending up leading legendary warriors into battle was of how strange and jarring the rhythms of the humour were. When I saw Teen Titans, it struck me that the sudden goofy swings between realistic and silly SD styles that were meant to be tributes to anime were a little off – but Fushigi Yuugi showed me that I had simply not been watching the right shows, for the same odd, jerky, often ill-timed changes were here, too. But the story was a simple and effective one and I found the characters very interesting – Tamahome with his skilful fighting and that kanji character on his forehead; Chichiri with his mysterious powers, funny way of ending sentences with ‘-no da’ and awesome hidden face; cross-dressing, clownish badass Nuriko and, eventually, adorable little Chiriko. Miaka was a likeable enough protagonist and the rivalry at the centre of the story was compelling. The antagonists also had some good designs and some interesting stories, especially Amiboshi and the psychotic Nakago.

However, by 2010 I had tired of it, finding it quite embarrassing to watch anywhere but in the comfort of my own home: an episode I watched on a train on March 31^st contained ‘attempted rape, girls restrained in underwear, twin boys kissing and lots of clothes getting ripped up’. This may have been a simplification, but it spoke to the reasons I became a little uncomfortable with Fushigi Yuugi and how it was written. I don’t mind the reverse-harem in shoujo action series, especially when the characters are as rich as these. I certainly don’t mind homoeroticism. But more and more, Fushigi Yuugi reminded me, of all things, of Twilight (though obviously predating it by years). The depiction of the female characters did not sit well with me – they were always damsels in distress, needing rescuing or getting abused. Again and again, the spectre of rape rears up – invariably as a horrible fate that is actually quite thrilling when narrowly escaped. Sex is treated as something very special and reserved for just one person, which I thought a positive message, but it is also presented as quite titillating to be treated as an object – if only for a while. Plus, while I liked Amiboshi and his story, the way identical twins were treated came over as very patronising and immature, making them seem at best like doppelgangers who sap the energy from one another, and at worst like sexual curios bound to be thought of as incestuous.

And, quite honestly, it all got rather dull towards the end, with it becoming increasingly apparent that the antagonists, the Seiryuu Seven, had no hope at all of prevailing, and that Yui was mostly just bonkers – again, rape or the impression of rape the rather cheap catalyst. The art was not terrible but the animation had dated very badly by the time I saw it, and while the voice acting was very strong, several of the voice actors still being very prominent today (Chichiri’s has been in everything from One Piece to Full Metal Panic to Lucky Star. Tamahome’s was Heero Yuy from Gundam Wing. And I find it hilarious that the voice actor for the emperor Hotohori went on to voice Excalibur in Soul Eater), the dialogue was often utter drivel with far too much of Miaka dramatically yelling out various names. It’s also painful when subs don’t get the nuances of ‘okama’ (here: the misleading ‘homo’). Still, I watched to the end happily, and there were tragic moments that were really very well done.

What delayed these thoughts by several years was having to watch the OVAs, which I really didn’t enjoy. The first batch were anime-original stories, and apart from some entertaining omake at the end of the episodes, they were very dull stories about Tamahome living in modern-day Japan and then mysteriously disappearing. Confusingly, the second batch went back to the stories from the light novels and this time, Tamahome is reborn as Taka, and must regain his memories of his old life. The final set of OVAs were a little better – by 2001-2, Studio Pierrot were able to make rather nicer animation, and these episodes, especially in the faces of (older) Chiriko, the young reincarnation of Hotohori and Hotohori’s little brother, reminded me of the character designs for their anime version of Hikaru no Go, no bad thing. The anime also had some rudimentary CGI which didn’t look bad considering the age of the anime (certainly not as jarring as the more recent MÄR adaptation, and not that far behind the gaichuu in Tegami Bachi) and was again based on the stories from the novels. There were episodes focusing on the backstories of particular characters, which were the highlights, but also a central story about gathering the reincarnated warriors to battle a bratty new priestess trying to replace Miaka. This part was rather more ill-judged, firstly because the antagonist girl was so over-the-top and so lacking in backstory she was absurd. And secondly because…well, the reincarnations apart from Nuriko’s were stupid, so we ended up getting a talking baby and a tiny little boy with a booming bass voice. It was all unintentionally hilarious, yet not to the extent it became entertaining.

Flashes of brilliance, strong characters and some very funny moments sadly don’t add up to something that warrants the ‘classic’ status this anime enjoys. 1995 actually isn’t that long ago, and there were much, much better anime out at the time – the most obvious choice being Rurouni Kenshin. 

お金がないっ/ Okane ga Nai / No Money

Here it is, then. The worst piece of animation I have ever seen. Stephen Fry writes in his autobiography about the guilt he felt giving a book a bad review, but I feel no compunction calling this the worst anime I’ve ever seen: it’s not anyone’s personal baby but the mangaka’s, and after all, it’s the lowest sort of trashy porn so I seriously doubt she has any great attachment to it.

Yes, this is another review of a hentai – although I suppose it may be trying for shounen-ai rather than yaoi, featuring as it does ridiculous arty angles and shining lights rather than pixellated genitals. And yes, it’s another homoerotic one, although it’s actually been a while since I last watched anything like this, unless you count the tedious Junjou Romantica – which I suppose it has more in common with than, say, Words Worth.

You may point out that I always seem to give homoerotic anime a hard time. I didn’t like Papa to Kiss in the Dark, I stressed how much better Enzai would be without the porn and Boku no Pico remains more funny than anything else. Loveless and especially Gravitation really tried my patience, and Sensitive Pornograph was dire. So why keep watching them?

Well, the fact is that there are good stories along these lines out there. This show covers similar themes to many a CJ Michalski or Yamakami Riyu publication, only with everything that makes it unique also being everything that makes it utterly horrible. Why animation companies should choose to animate a manga like this and not something decent I don’t know. So I am not naturally predisposed to hate these shows – they are just very bad examples of their kind.

Okane ga Nai – and I sigh as I write this – is about a girly-boy university student who looks like a mutant little girl stretched out and given ten thousand eyelids around his terrifying eyes. He is voiced by the seiyuu who did characters I really like, like Riku in Onmyou Taisenki, Gauche in Tegami Bachi and Albert in Gankutsuou, which makes me strangely sad (and he was also Grell in Kuroshitsuji, which makes me mostly confused). Through no fault of his own (a reckless family member), he is in debt by millions of yen to a huge scary (but handsome) 'businessman' (One Piece’s Arlong and Naruto’s Asuma…). Unbeknownst to the boy, he once showed kindness to the man at his most vulnerable, so the man is actually in love with him. The man thus decides to express his love by saying that the boy can pay off his debt by moving in with him and becoming his whore.

Romantic as this may sound, it gets worse. Not only does the man keep his feelings hidden for some reason, making the boy feel he is being mercilessly raped, he has powerful enemies. Thus, the main crisis of the OVAs comes when the boy gets kidnapped, drugged and the bad guys strip him with intent to rape him on camera. The man comes sweeping in to save the day – too late to stop the boy being violated by a suppository and exposed to the camera, and with the great plan of bringing in one of the rapists’ daughter and threatening to slit her throat. And then just using brute force instead. To celebrate the boy being saved from almost being raped on camera, arrangements are made to make a nice sex tape of him, now that he’s found out the man actually genuinely has feelings for him. This is, of course, supposed to be hilarious.

I hate everything about this, except that it was only four episodes long. I hate the art, with the absurd giant seme and ridiculous stick-limbed uke. I hate their faces, one some sort of golem and the other with creepy eyes that look like an unkind anime parody – though the original manga seems to look less terrible. I hate the rape fantasies even more than I hate them in just about all erotic anime (as it’s sadly prevalent) – this time it’s even more of a nonsense because a few words would totally change the issue. I hate that the boy is supposed to shrug off the fact a whole room of men saw him abused and violated. I hate that he’s supposed to fall for his abuser. I hate that the characters are such distorted ideas of lovers.

This is really like banging my head against the wall. I’m aware that it’s like watching a live-action porno and complaining about how unbelievable the plumber’s character was and how the naughty nun’s lines didn’t ring true. But dammit, this sort of thing is a huge industry in Japan, and straight hentai is getting surprisingly good. Yaoi has its big names, and some of them are big because their art, story and characterisation is good. So why is rubbish like this still made?

ヒカルの碁/ Hikaru no Go

I find it more or less impossible to answer when someone asks me my favourite anime. There is too much diversity, I think. Too many great series and too much variety – how can you weigh Azumanga Daioh against Paranoia Agent or Spirited Away? And then I feel inconsistent, because I know full well what my favourite manga is, despite there being even more titles and even broader degrees of variation and experimentation. My favourite manga is Hikaru no Go.

My feelings for the series are simply too far in advance of those inspired by any other. Since the final chapter in 2003, I’ve periodically revisited my favourite volumes, and they still always have me hooked. The characters, the realism, the setting, the drama, and in particular the art – all are the very best of the shounen manga world. And while Obata’s art improved vastly during his run on this series, it was at its pinnacle by the end, and visually I prefer the balance he finds here to the shadowy look of Death Note or the stylisation of Bakuman.

Nothing else has ever excited, moved, tickled and warmed me quite so much.

But even if the manga is my favourite of all time, the anime is not quite up there. Another of Studio Pierrot’s Jump series (along with Naruto and Bleach), it ran for a respectable 75 episodes (plus a special), had superb voice acting and music, and didn’t look half bad, even if it could never quite match the lovely visuals of the manga. Yet…there was some spark missing. The timing of scenes often seemed off, or slightly off-model faces seemed to ruin scenes. The final arc never got animated, and as the ending disappointed so many, I don’t expect a HunterXHunter-style revival any time soon (though a year ago, I didn’t expect that one, either, so who knows?). But I would be so happy to see one, and it saddens me when it feels like Hikago is forgotten.

The story is simple: a normal, slightly rebellious young boy finds an old board for playing the complex traditional game go, or igo. Hearing strange voices, he passes out, and when he awakes, he is haunted by a ghost from the heian era called Sai. All Sai wants is to play go, and to see others play, although he does have a childlike wonder for the marvels of the modern world, like a TV screen showing footage of fish. Hikaru upsets a lot of people by letting Sai play through him, especially when he beats the passionate young Akira, a prodigy destined to be amongst the best in the go world – sparking something of an obsession. Before long, Hikaru develops a desire to excel on his own, not through another.

Those who don’t give it a chance miss out on a lot. I love how go is the perfect sports manga subject – physical sports too often require farcical superhuman talent (see Prince of Tennis) or are very raucous and manly (ie Slam Dunk), but go has a stately seriousness that makes it perfect for a realistic manga – and what’s clever is that Sai is the sole supernatural element of the series. I love how just about every minor character gets fleshed out. I love the fact that Hikaru wears such fashionable clothes while Akira has the most horrible dress sense. I love the way you can see the artist and writer evolve over the course of the series, and how a goofy little idea about a ghost and a board game becomes so serious and so moving. It’s just such a perfect scenario, such a great way to meld reality and fantasy, such a neat way to make fantastic drama right from the beginning.

Hikaru is just an everyman, albeit a very likeable one. It’s Touya’s passion and shattered confidence that drives the story from beginning to end. It’s the same heated rivalry and affection that drives Naruto and Kingdom Hearts, but female mangaka Hotta Yumi does it far better, and with far more believable, human, relatable reasons for the rifts that lead to drama. How strange that the best teen relationship drama I’ve ever read is between two boys in a Jump series – and while it’s easy to jump to conclusions, any shounen-ai undertones are actually kept as undertones.

Hikaru no Go was a perfect balance of humour, drama, triumph and angst. I’ll always recommend the manga first, but the series is very much worth watching, and contains some of my favourite characters and twists of any anime.

(With elements originally blogged 12.4.06, 9.11.06 and 23.4.08)

No. 6

A few things held No. 6 back from becoming the classic series it could have been. But chief amongst them was the thing I thought would be its greatest boon: being part of the increasingly famous noitaminA time slot on Fuji TV at quarter to one in the morning on Thursdays. (‘noitaminA’ is ‘Animation’ backwards, and sadly pronounced as one word – I had hoped it would be like ‘Vitimin A’!) A series of extremely popular anime have been aired in the slot, including Honey and Clover and Eden of the East, and when Black Rock Shooter takes over in 2012 I expect it to go stellar.

The problem is that it has become traditional for noitaminA anime to have just 11 episodes in a half-season, as opposed to the more usual 13. And 11 episodes quite simply was not enough for No. 6 to breathe. They had two options, with the source novels as they are: to rush the character building to get a convincing overarching storyline, or to flesh the characters out well and have a quick, unsatisfying ending. Neither choice is great, and they plumped for option 2.

Shion was a nice, normal kid in the near-future city No. 6 until a chance encounter with a wild fugitive boy who called himself ‘Nezumi’, which means ‘mouse’ or ‘rat’, changed everything. For giving the suspicious boy shelter and food, Shion and his mother are penalised by the Orwellian authorities in the city and Shion loses his right to a privileged education. Four years later, Shion is working a low-wage job hoping to fund himself into a comfortable middle-class life when he sees a coworker mysteriously die. It is Nezumi who comes to save him from the corrupt investigation, but the only place to run is out of the city, where there is a whole different world for him to discover, and it soon becomes apparent his utopian city is not so perfect after all.

At the heart of No. 6 is the relationship between Shion and Nezumi. The first episode, when they are children, is sweet to the point it is almost romantic. A few episodes later, even before Shion’s hair colour is changed when he almost dies just as his coworker did, it is clear there is going to be a homoerotic theme to this story, and that Shion and Nezumi are going to get very close. Of course, this lost No. 6 some insecure male audience members, but I can’t help thinking that’s not much of a loss. Nor, obviousness aside, is it a first for noitaminA (see Jyu-Oh-Sei). Then again, it took me a while to shake the annoying impression that because Shion and Nezumi were drawn so absurdly like Allen and Kanda, the whole thing was a strange alternate universe D.Gray-Man fanfiction. Still, the romance is quite subtle, very sweet and makes both characters much more sympathetic, so was well-judged, and the image of a kiss meaning farewell becomes perhaps the most powerful of the whole concept.

No. 6 would have been vastly improved were its plot simply that Shion and Nezumi have to rescue Shion’s friend Safu (also his female love interest, rather mistreated by events here and gotten out of the way of the central relationship in an artificial way, but with arguably a fate better than anyone else’s), with Nezumi going ahead with his ulterior agenda when they infiltrate the Correctional Facility. It could have kept the best of the plot and those great character moments in the last episode where Nezumi decides he’ll protect Shion by playing the bad guy and pushing him away, but would have removed the things that didn’t work, which were the bits of supernatural nonsense. We didn’t need daft killer bees to give the message scientists playing god is wrong. We could have seen huge walls torn down without stupid yellow cyclones. We most definitely didn’t need death reversed by a literal deus ex machina, tacked on for an emotional suckerpunch but far more a swing and a miss.

No. 6 was an excellent 9, even 10 episodes of build-up. Interacting with the fun tsundere wildgirl Inukashi; struggling to prove his independence to Nezumi and finding out his side-job; getting messages back to his mother and learning the truth of the city he was raised in – those were the things that made No. 6 great, and Bones did a very nice job with the design and world-building, especially in that everyone’s lives were believably normal and repetitive beyond the action of the series.

This is just an example of supernatural concepts introduced to try and make a series more high-minded. If anything, though, they made it seem lazy and made emotions more hollow. But that doesn’t stop No. 6 being very, very close to greatness.

パパとKISS IN THE DARK / Papa to Kiss in the Dark / Kiss in the Dark with Papa

These pervy shotacon anime are not for me, I fear. The closest one has come to working was Boku no Pico, and that was more hilarious than anything else. Actually, Enzai probably worked best, but would have been vastly improved if the shotacon part that was its whole reason for being had been taken out. I can understand the appeal of the concepts behind these, but in execution they’re mostly terrible. I realise I am not the target audience – these are (Pico excepted) written by Japanese women for Japanese women, the so-called fujoshi who cross the cultural divide in the form of yaoi fangirls in the Occident. But at the same time, I’ve found lots of manga on these subject I really enjoy, from short doujin to full anthologies by the likes of CJ Michalski, which take the time to set up a good scenario and care about character development. More mature takes on the general themes, like the current divisive success No. 6, also work far better.

But Papa to Kiss in the Dark is a two-part OVA all about a 15-year-old boy’s love affair with his father. It was rubbish. I really disliked all the characters except the childhood friend. And it wasn't the least bit sexy, or naughty, or in any way enhanced by the element of incest – which was very unpleasant anyway. I also dislike how the weaker of these stories all have a central boy who everyone in the vicinity seems to love and adore for the most superficial reasons – I’m looking at you, Loveless – and the most artificial drama gets injected through cheap storytelling methods revolving around jealousy – bow your head in shame, Gravitation.

Papa to Kiss is just one in a sequence of samey shotacon teasers, only with an additional layer of unpleasant incest overlaid on it – or two layers, really, when you find out more about the actress. It’s only 50 minutes of fluff, so hardly too much to bear, but there’s little to recommend it. Like other Boys’ Love anime, though, it will have its vociferous young female fans who have very little to compare it with, so will find it both fulfilling as a story and erotically satisfying. It is, I suppose, good they can enjoy it and need nothing better-written to please them, but I can’t count myself amongst them.

(expanded from impressions, 6.12.07)