アイドルマスター/ The iDOLM@STER

Honestly, I expected to hate The iDOLM@STER. I didn’t know much about it before I saw it – it was based on some fanservicey game full of cute girls that seemed to be part dress-up doll and part visual novel; it had catchy songs like the one that kicks off Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga; Hatsune Miku was going to show up in the second game as DLC; and its characters had already been in a weird-looking mecha anime which hadn’t gone down well called Xenoglossia.

I thought it came too late. I thought it was very much part of the moéblob fad, which really came to an end with the backlash against K-On. The world, I thought, had moved on from anime about the ordinary daily lives of cute girls, and the likes of Nichijou and the anime of Shaft were pushing us back towards off-kilter surrealism. The Idolm@ster would be too late, too obviously fanservicey, too dumb and too ordinary, I decided. And then I started actually watching it.

I understood it was manipulating me very easily, chewing me up and spitting me out. I understood the characters are from stock and the storylines are very familiar. But oh lord, I adored it.

In the game, you play the role of the producer in an all-female idol talent agency, 765 Pro (765 pronounced ‘Namuko’). As the screen shows what the producer sees, he never appears, is never named and generally it’s all engineered so that the player imagines himself in the role. There are almost no other males in the story, certainly none threatening – a faceless older man as the company’s president, and vague shapeless people doing wota-gei with their glowsticks for audience members. These girls have very little contact with their fans, and don’t go off smoking, drinking and having casual sex. They’re perfect little angels with different personality quirks, and they only have eyes for the player. The anime can’t sustain this, so gives the producer a body – a nice inoffensive bespectacled design – but his name remains ‘Producer-san’. It actually works well, and he’s identifiable yet non-threatening as a proxy. And the girls are incredibly cute – they seem so obvious at first, from the athletic wildchild to the spoilt little madam, but through various episodes showing them interact or one at a time, they endeared themselves to me, and I found myself unable to stop myself loving them all. The writers know exactly what they’re doing, and each girl gets developed just enough for it to matter to the viewer if they’re happy.

It helps that the show is very visually appealing. It resembled the art style of aforementioned K-On, via the lovely fluid cuteness of A-1’s feature film Welcome to the Space Show, making this look somewhere between KyoAni and movie-Madhouse, no bad place to be and certainly better than Kuroshitsuji, the only other A-1 series I’ve seen thus far.

Predictably, it was the cute tomboy that I liked the most, especially as she only wanted to be a pretty girl who could pull off frilly dresses – Makoto was adorable. Then I loved stuck-up but sweet-natured Iori and the childish twins Ami and Mami. This was largely an episodic series, following the girls progressing from unknown to successful, occasionally coming into conflict with the evil president of 961 (‘Kuroi’) Pro who uses underhanded tactics to push his (also cute) boyband. Other plotlines involve things like a wedding shoot getting mixed up with a real wedding (and numerous other farcical things), the sad past of one of the more serious girls coming out and our main girl Haruka getting sad that the idols are drifting apart. There was also one particularly fun episode in which involves the girls putting on a variety show. This not only involved cute things like Makoto trying to put on girly dresses and being totally rejected, but an awesome little mecha pastiche for which they actually got Imaishi Hiroyuki (of Gurren Lagann) in to do the storyboards and do justice to the fandom favourite evil Haruka. Chuck in obscure references to silly things the voice actresses have done in their shows and you have an episode pandering to fans – yet still very funny, cute and still pretty witty.

After I finished the series I watched the little OVA that was included in the Live for You! game, animated by small studio Actas, responsible for Moetan. The art came over as pretty ugly, reminding me of a more frequently off-model Peto-Peto-san, but it was nice having the little extra vignette. It even made me realize that I’m now keen enough on these characters that I’ll enjoy watching Xenoglossia just imagining that they’re little actors. I’m so easily manipulated by cuteness…

There’s sure to be more – at the end we glimpsed new characters, including the only trap I ever took an instant dislike to.

結界師/ Kekkaishi (Manga)

I’ve already written about the anime and how sad I was that it didn’t reach greater heights of popularity, especially in the West, so there’s really no need to restate that. But today, I got around to finishing the manga, and thought the series deserves a few more words, because though the last arc was rather problematic, the big payoff at the end touched me.

I’d love to see a Kekkaishi series 2 in anime form. I know it had its turn and it didn’t make a huge impact, but it seems to me there’s just the perfect amount of manga now to animate another full season and finish off the full story. I think that’s a pipe dream, though – Kekkaishi aired and though during its run, the manga really hit its stride and the arc immediately after the end of the anime was a great one, especially where it concerned Mudou-san, after the anime came to an end seeming distinctly unfinished, the manga seemed to lose steam as well.

No tie-in with a second anime and a great long final chapter for Yellow Tanabe, unlike what happened with that other notable monthy shounen series written by a woman, Fullmetal Alchemist. In fact, I get the impression that while it obviously didn’t get abruptly cancelled, either Tanabe was told she had to wrap things up soon or she decided to bring the title to an end herself, because the final arc was a bit confused. The various new characters introduced in the circle around the founder of the Urukai (and the two brothers’ different bodies) were somewhat undefined, all the Ougis got a bit muddled, and ultimately the final battle threw in all the unresolved elements – the rest of the council, the full Sumimura family including Yoshimori’s mother, the original Kekkaishi thought long-dead, the battle with the founder and the establishment of a new home for the god of Karasumori, who turned out to be an adorable small boy who gets named Chuushinmaru. So it was a little too much to squeeze in, and ultimately the end was a bit clumsy, relying on a mysterious ‘watcher’ who was a literal deus ex machina (the deus part at least), but never seemed all that necessary anyway.

But it was all worth it for the wonderful chapter in which Yoshimaru creates a whole world for Chuushinmaru from nothingness, especially when he peoples it and we get one last glimpse of an old friend, and a version of Yoshi given a happiness he himself will never have. The last couple of chapters don’t really feel necessary after that, but tie things up neatly as a kind of epilogue similar to the stinger in a film that plays after the credits have run – or those final episodes of anime that play their credits mid-episode over a poignant scene so that the aftermath comes later.

I’m sad that Kekkaishi has ended. I’m sad it wasn’t bigger, especially having an anime whose Japanese viewing figures, lest we forget, dwarfed those of Naruto and Bleach and every other fashionable anime of the moment. But I’m very glad I was along for the ride, and saw it through to the end. And though the last story wasn’t the best, the very end was brilliant, and I’ll always be a fan.

The Snowman

I’ve written a few impressions of animated films aired over the Christmas period in the last few days, and it seems remiss to neglect this, perhaps the most iconic of animations centred on Christmas, The Snowman. While it lost out in the 1982 Oscars to a Rybczyński short, it cemented its theme song, ‘Walking in the Air’, in popular culture ever since, and gave animator Dianne Jackson a strong reputation that it’s tragic she never grew to truly fulfil before her death in 1992. That said, if she animated anything of note in the sixteen years between Yellow Submarine and this, it’s not known to me.

Based on a book by Raymond Briggs that is really more a comic than the storybook most seem to think it is, the 26-minute animation carefully replicates Brigg’s lovely soft style with pastels and chalk colouring for soft-edges and a noticeably hand-drawn look. In the simple storyline, an adorable little ginger boy called James (a name added by an animator, not in the original) makes a friendly-faced snowman. The snowman comes to life during the night and the two bond over the snowman’s wonder about the world. For whatever reason – all a bit magical realism – the snowman can not only drive a motorbike but has the ability to fly, so the two go walking in the air, over houses and oceans to visit Father Christmas. The ‘it’s all a dream’ angle is explored but rejected, meaning that when the story ends on a bittersweet note, James is very much left to grieve over the loss of a friend who literally melts away in the morning sunshine, which no doubt inspired existential maturity and a little angst in several generations of children.

Though it’s almost common knowledge that famous choirboy Aled Jones sang ‘We’re Walking in the Air’, in fact the version most hear was not him at all, but the uncredited Peter Auty. Jones’ version was the single released in 1985, though few would be able to tell the difference without hearing the two consecutively. Seems a little sad that what propelled Jones to fame left Auty a footnote, but such is the fickle nature of fame.

Only by looking the film up on Youtube, to double-check that there’s a barn owl in the opening credits (there is) did I find out that there are three versions of the opening – the one familiar to me, in which Briggs himself introduces the film while the background fades into the animation; one with David Bowie looking very, very 80s in an attic; and one with an extra bit of animation made for the 20^th anniversary, in which Father Christmas introduces the story. I’d say that the original is the one to opt for, but there’s certainly humour in the Bowie iteration.

This story is as ingrained in the children of the UK’s idea of Christmas as A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is for those festivities in the States. Sweet, simple and visually highly distinctive, it’s a lovely piece of animation history.

Shrek 2

Another animated movie screened during the Christmas period, I thought it worthwhile to put down a few thoughts, since I neglected to do so when I saw it back in 2004. This seems a bit of an oversight, as it was my favourite for the four main Shrek films, and indeed had a soundtrack I loved – I got Frou Frou and Butterfly Boucher’s albums as a direct result of it, and it contains one of my favourite Tom Waits tracks, ‘A Little Drop of Poison’ – a new arrangement of a song he’d written for a different film. And, of course, a fantastic belter delivered at the film’s climax by Jennifer Saunders.

After Shrek rescues Fiona at the end of the first film, it is revealed that ‘love’s true form’ turns her into an ogre too. The obvious question at the end of that story is what will happen when the couple have to go back to the wider world – and here, we find out. Fiona’s parents are the king and queen of Far, Far Away, and quite brilliantly cast, being played by the unlikely but inspired coupling of John Cleese and Julie Andrews. However, the Fairy Godmother, a powerful figure in the city, has a plan to get her own son Prince Charming into the picture in place of Shrek. So not only must the new couple deal with the insecurities that come from not looking like the expected beautiful fairytale prince and princess, but they must contend with potions that can force a person to fall in love or change their appearance altogether, and a conniving woman who knows how to use – and misuse – them.

I didn’t particularly like the first Shrek film. I felt its humour was forced, its aesthetic underwhelming and its world somewhat dull. This film brought with it more inventive and clever performances, fantastic music and a neat plot that left enough loose ends for a further sequel – even if that one was something of a disappointment. The Shrek films may be Dreamworks’ flagship, but they’re certainly not my favourites. Of them, though, and not counting the excellent Puss in Boots, this one was the most worthy of praise. Even the annoying side characters like Pinocchio are genuinely funny here – and of course, it was where Puss had his debut; much of the humour of his subsequent appearances was simply repetition or slight variation of the funny moments he has here, one of the best gags in Shrek the 3rd being when he tries to look cute while in Donkey’s body. Certainly one of the better animated sequels out there.

Even if in the wake of Game of Thrones I can’t look at Prince Charming for a moment without seeing Jaime Lannister.

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

I’ve been meaning to write my thoughts on The Sword in the Stone for a little while, as – being one of the few Disney films we had on VHS – it was one of the animated films I watched the most as a young child. Since I had the happy experience of waking up on a Christmas morning and turning on the television to see it there, bringing back waves of nostalgia, I thought now was as good a time as any.

There are many ways in which this film has influenced my psyche. My love for all things strigine surely derives in part from the loveably grumpy Archimedes the Owl. Wart’s voice actor(s) inured me to the idea that if you are young, attractive and sympathetic in a world full of people with English accents, it makes perfect sense for you to sound American – long before I had any idea about accents at all. And though the film’s art perhaps had the opposite effect on some, I think it may on some level have been the film’s firm assertion that human-animal romance is weird, comic and doomed that steered me well away from furry propensities, whatever effect Thundercats may have had on my young mind.

The Sword in the Stone is an adaptation of one of the Once and Future King books, and takes a stab at Arthur’s youth, a subject that Malory doesn’t cover. In this version, Uther is dead and his bastard child (it can be inferred, though all we know from the film is that he is an orphan) Arthur has been fostered by a noble household, working for them as a lackey and hoping to one day become a squire. He is clumsy, scrawny and accident-prone, though, and is referred to by his surly foster brother Kay as ‘Wart’. Everything changes when Wart meets Merlin, who decides he will tutor the boy, moving into the castle and teaching him various things by turning him into different animals – which gets him into various scrapes, one leading Merlin to take part in a Wizards’ Duel with the barmy Madam Mim. When it becomes apparent that the boy’s ambition falls far short of his potential, Merlin loses his temper and gets ‘blown to Bermuda’, but quite on his own, Wart manages to find the Sword in the Stone in London and pull it out, securing his future as King of England.

Like many Arthurian stories, this one is set when many of the stories were written down – in Medieval England – and not when they were set, making Arthur English rather than a Breton. I’ve never worried about anachronisms in Arthurian stories, though, as they’re all based on very fanciful myths and legends and it isn’t as though what’s in Geoffrey of Monmouth is by any means a universal tradition. Besides, the film (and book) embraces anachronisms and makes a point of it – indeed, Merlin’s return from Bermuda is so jarring the style of humour preempts that of Aladdin by decades.

The plot is very thin, and arguably nothing in the story really affects the final climax, but this is really a series of setpieces and works very well for an animation: it’s great seeing (some of) the Nine Old Men really having fun with animation, from underwater scenes to birds in flight to magical transformations, giving a real exuberance to the story. It’s all helped along by the slapstick humour, much of which is based on the Tom & Jerry idea of predators deserving to be painfully foiled.

Sword in the Stone isn’t the best-known Disney film. Its songs are too character-based and situational to get onto the various Disney compilations. It doesn’t have great revelations of characters or tragedy to give its story weight. But as a light comedy, it’s almost peerless, and the animation was fine enough Disney recycled it several times in their usual way that generation after generation find shocking and scandalous, as though it was a great deception and Disney (or at least, director Wolfgang Reitherman) were horribly cheap. As Floyd Norman pointed out, he did it because he wanted to, not because he had to, or because it cut costs. He actually liked reusing favourite sequences in different films.

Disney has revived its tradition of fairytail princesses. I’d like to see them revive stories centred on preteen (human) boys like The Jungle Book and Peter Pan. That tradition died with The Black Cauldron, and it’s a shame. The Sword in the Stone is remembered primarily for Merlin (he alone shows up in the Kingdom Hearts games), but there’s much more to it than just him. Funny, sweet, witty and exuberantly animated, it’s a very fine piece of Disney animation.

Rango

I’m not quite sure what I expected from Rango, but it wasn’t this.

The clues were there, really, in the posters and trailers. There was that Hawaiian shirt, and that crick in the neck recalling another famous poster. Then of course, there was Johnny Depp in a cartoon that sounded somewhat surreal. But I definitely didn’t expect another outing for his Hunter S. Thompson impression (ahead of The Rum Diary) and what can only be called Gonzo animation (not animation from Gonzo) – before it settles neatly into a straightforward tribute to Western films. It's one of those neat comedy films that starts out as a parody before settling into relying on the familiar tropes and clichés to evoke the sincere emotions that made the original genres work so well – Shaft do this well, as did Baka to Test.

Rango is a pet chameleon with only the toys and ornaments of his glass cage to serve as his connection to the world – he believes himself an actor and director, and while pondering what he ought to be, an accident in the car results in him losing his family and being left alone by the roadside. After a rather hallucinogenic meeting with an armadillo that couple with Rango’s eccentric, Thompson-derived personality at once makes the film look incredibly drug-addled and creeps out any small kids who’ve been brought to see this ‘cartoon’, he ends up in the Californian/Nevadan desert, notorious for containing Death Valley. After his death is prophesised by some cute, grumpy mariachi owls, he is chased by a huge hawk and meets Beans, who at first seems like a typical southern-belle/redneck caricature with the odd tick of freezing as a ‘survival instinct’. Rango stumbles into the Wild West town of Dirt, and manages to avoid being mocked and possibly murdered by ‘blending in’, acting the part of a rough-talking cowboy and, thanks to some dumb luck typical of the character type and the return of the hawk, not only being believed but becoming the town’s sheriff. But the town is running out of water, and someone’s tampering with the supply, and it’s up to Rango to sort things out. But with the hawk gone, a notorious outlaw might come back to town, one who might be able to see right through Rango’s camouflage.

As I said, the film starts out surreal, bewildering and influenced by Hunter S. Thompson’s freewheeling narrative style, a likeable, intelligent but very clumsy and physically inept character just managing to get out of scrapes through luck or saying the right thing at the right time. But then it bends at just the right angle – through action scenes and clever visual parodies of other well-known action films – to heartfelt cowboy story (nodding back towards the strange with a cameo from a very recognisable figure), ending up with a story arc that has comedic characters you actually come to like and a situation you genuinely want to end well. There wasn’t quite enough closure at the end – I wanted to know what was going to stop the humans simply coming and messing it up for the animals very quickly – but this was a deft move to make and it worked better than I had expected it to. It may not pluck at the heartstring and move you like a direct, sincere story, but it bridges comedy and drama much better than many other animated films that try the same – like most of Dreamworks’ output.

Industrial Light and Magic also lent their CG to this film, and it looks absolutely incredible. This is one of the best CG films I’ve ever seen – and it’s not the characters and their movements and the textures of their faces that is the most stunning, impressive though they are. It’s how perfect water looks, poured into a glass. It’s the way the lens that doesn’t exist is affected by the refraction of light that doesn’t exist when pointed towards a sun that doesn’t exist. It’s glass breaking and the machine gun in a rattlesnake’s tail winding down. It’s the small details. Look for them and you’ll be consistently impressed.

This could have been a near-miss. Happily, it’s a substantial success.

Naruto movie 3: 大興奮!みかづき島のアニマル騒動だってばよ! / Dai Kōfun! Mikazuki-jima no Animaru Panikku Dattebayo!/ Great Excitement!Animal Panic of Crescent Moon Island

English title: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom

Much like the previous two films in the Naruto series, this one sets up a promising premise, adds very nice animation and well-integrated CG to what is already one of Naruto’s greatest strengths - character design – and then soon grinds down into very formulaic, cheesy silliness. The spoilt-younger-kid-gets-taught-valuable-life-lessons-by-the-protagonist basis so popular in Naruto and One Piece is not a bad template, but it needs a strong overall plot to compliment it.

Team 7 (with Rock Lee replacing Sasuke) are on a mission to escort a fat prince reminiscent of Kurata from Hikaru no Go back to his hometown – though not before stopping to buy an entire circus. The prince’s son Hikaru is also in the retinue, his design (as well as that of a very senbon-zakura-like attack later) lifted more or less directly from Bleach – he could easily be a younger Quincy. Naruto clashes with the boy, of course, until our young protagonist finally loses his tempter, hits the boy and gives him a lecture – actually getting surprisingly abusive. Young Hikaru is stung enough that he is moved to prove his mettle during a storm – he goes to rescue his favourite animals. Of course, most people would consider an 8-year-old (or thereabouts) going out onto the deck of a boat is listing so badly that he could be thrown overboard at any moment and letting tigers out of cages incredibly stupid, but it wins the respect of Naruto and co. Far worse, it also makes Chamu the Siberian Tiger (in a world with no Siberia – or indeed Amur) and Kiki the monkey become friendly and seemingly fluent in human speech. The prince gets home to find there has been a coup, so of course lots of one-on-one ninja battles ensue, accompanied by long speeches and kids proving themselves both brave and capable in the usual manner.

Not as good as either of the last movies, thanks to the added cringe-factor of circuses and animals, but with some nice scenes early on and some great bits of animation, it was worth seeing, and certainly much better than the filler in the series. You didn’t really need any knowledge of the Naruto universe to understand what was going on, so it stood alone well. It just seems a shame that it’s been a while since I’ve expected anything Naruto-related to do anything but play it very safe, in terms of plot, obvious distinction between good guys and bad guys and acceptable modes of minor-character deaths.

There’s something interesting, though, about how compelling it is for young fans of the show to see their hero, though his self-cloning techniques, get killed again and again and again before he finally prevails…

(expanded from impressions, 3.5.07)