劇場版 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ永遠の物語 / Gekijouban Mahou Shoujo Madoka Majika Eien no Monogatari / Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Eternity

It seems a little illogical, but actually it makes sense. What perhaps ought to be expected is that if I very much enjoyed the first Madoka film, based on the part of the series that I wasn’t passionate about, surely I should really love the part based on the episodes where I really started to admire the series’ writing. Right? But no – being repackaged as a movie did quite a lot for the first part of the series, especially as the result was a much-increased pace and more of a sense of steady progression. Sadly, the second movie doesn’t enhance its source in the same way here, and because there are far fewer episodes included, the pace is too slow for a standalone film.

Of course, this film covers the remaining episodes of the series after Miki succumbs to despair. She must be dealt with, and sacrifices must be made – so having grown close to Miki, Kyouko takes the fall. So as a result, the only one left to deal with the coming Walpurgis Nacht, the coming of a hugely powerful witch no magical girl can defeat solo, is Homura.

And we learn Homura’s story, which I didn’t see coming in the series and found quite genius – Homura has mastery over time, and has lived this story over and over again, trying to find a way to save Madoka by preventing her becoming a magical girl. Rather than, y’know, talking it through with her – and ‘as you will become the most powerful magical girl ever (thanks to my actions), you will then become an unstoppable witch’ probably would have helped – and rather than perhaps trying to go back and act much more supportive to Miki to ensure she and Kyouko are there to help with Walpurgis Nacht, Homura decides the end of the world is inevitable. Either she stops Madoka becoming a magical girl and the world ends because it seems she can never keep everyone together to fight Walpurgis Nacht, or she lets Madoka deal with Walpurgis, in which case Madoka becomes a far worse witch and the world ends.

Of course, Madoka also has a wish associated with becoming a magical girl, and because Homura has made her fate such a significant event, it can be an incredible one. Perhaps she could have thought of a better one – like, y’know, dealing with the root cause of entropy rather than the effect of Kyubey’s race having to harvest energy from human emotions – but nonetheless, Madoka’s wish makes her essentially a god. She removes herself from the timeline and changes the past and future so that every point a magical girl turns into a witch, she stops them. The girl will lose her power and return to her normal life – it is implied – but will not turn into a witch and need to be killed by her former peers. The result of this needs to be all but omnipresent is that she essentially becomes wiped from the real timeline, creating a whole lot of paradoxes because after all, if witches hadn’t been there before, she wouldn’t have been inspired to become this godlike existence. Nonetheless, the sheer magical power of her potential prevails – and there is a satisfying ending where the girls instead battle wraiths to battle entropy, in partnership with the Kyubey race, but only Homura remembers what truly happened.

It’s neat and it’s clever. It was a great ending to a series that cleverly challenged the conventions of its genre. It took childish concepts and later iterations that sexualised them and subverted them all – with a presentation that despite my initial misgivings because of Hidamari Sketch I think really work. Those potato-headed girls have a classic, winsome look that adds to the subversion.

I do sometimes feel Madoka is a little over-rated. While very good, it is not genius and isn’t nearly as thought-provoking as, say, Kaiba nor as clever a subversion as Princess Tutu. It is only the sheer silliness of magical girl shows that make it seem so intelligent by contrast. This is of course not to say that it isn’t smart. It emphatically is. It’s also compelling viewing and definitely well worth seeing, and there’s more to explore in its universe.

Which is why a third film makes sense – a chance to build on what has been established, and perhaps even subvert that. And that, as we will see, is precisely what the next film does. 

ソウルイーターノット! / Soul Eater Not!

Though I started to read Soul Eater Not! as soon as it began back in 2011, I didn’t really stick with it. It was probably because I was – yes, despite the title – expecting more Soul Eater, but what I got was a spin-off about three new characters who I never really got to know, plus occasional cameos from the major cast of the original series. Especially since at the time, the original manga series hadn’t even finished.

Somehow, I found myself liking the anime adaptation of Soul Eater Not! much more. I was even sad that it ended, wanting more than just twelve episodes. It may have had much to do with the fact I wasn’t expecting anything else. While it’s never been a problem in any other series I’ve watched, perhaps in anime form the girls’ colourings and their seiyuu’s assured voice performances contributed. Either way, I found myself far more engaged and eager to watch every episode.

In the original Soul Eater series, we see the adventures of the elite students of Shibusen – some incredible fighters are partnered with living weapons able to transform perfectly. But what of the other students? What of the ones who aren’t very good at it yet? Perhaps the living weapons can’t fully transform – or found out about their abilities late in life?

This is the NOT class – who are expected to Normally Overcome Target. Hey, English isn’t Oukubo’s first language! New student Tsugumi, cute and impressionable, has just started learning to use her powers. In the NOT class, she finds herself getting close to two other girls her age – the bizarrely forgetful and well-endowed Meme and the privileged, standoffish Anya, who is one of the better recent examples of a tsundere who’s actually likeable. It becomes apparent that both of these masters want to form a partnership with Tsugumi-chan, but how can she decide?

The kids learn to deal with their weird loli dorm mistress, with the totally reformable bully extortionist Kim (probably the character with the biggest role in both series), with part-time jobs in the local cafe and the brash sisters Liz and Patti they meet there, and in the end with a witch causing mayhem. The mystery of Sid’s death is made clear, there are cameos from characters as major as Maka, who is a kind of mentor figure to Tsugumi, and as minor as Ox Ford, who is treated with rather more reverence and respect in this series. We get more of the sweet chalk-and-cheese relationship between Kim and her rival/admirer, the ‘straight-laced chick’ with the incredible name of Jacqueline O. Lantern Dupré. She does not play the cello, at least as far as we were shown.

But while I never really grew to like Meme, whose entire personality seems to revolve around being forgetful, I really liked Tsugumi and Anya by the end of this. Tsugumi’s determined, innocent personality and Anya’s snootiness along with her fixation on things ‘commoners’ like were marvellous. There were other very funny parts of this season, like the guy who can transform into a dagger – except for his head, which stays there – and the poor bookish girl who Kim decides should be called ‘Eternal Feather’, a name that sticks.

The scale is small here, and the ultimate ‘Why not have both?’ moment is a bit unconvincing, but the journey was very satisfying and the characters very likeable. The occasionally clunky pacing of the manga was fixed, and the simple but effective animation was cute. A fun series – even if I’d much rather just have more Soul Eater. 

ハンター×ハンター / HunterxHunter: Chimera Ant Arc

Though I normally only review full series and this arc will actually have a few aftermath episodes, I feel that after the latest episode, the time is right for a second post about the 2011 HunterxHunter. The arcs are so long that it doesn’t feel so different from a post about one of the other big shounen series up to a timeskip. That said, I probably won’t do the next post until both the election and the new world exploration arcs are over...unless the anime stops again.

I had problems with this arc as a manga devotee. Not just because Togashi had his breakdown during it and we had to deal with chapters that were embarrassing scribbles. Not just because HiatusxHiatus meant that the arc stretched out over, what? Four years? Let me check. Hmm. It was more like nine. Nine years to finish an arc. Mostly, I simply had problems with the fact that in aiming for his usual starting-with-something-silly-and-then-transcending-it way of working, Togashi ended up making the arc look pretty goddamn goofy.

Yet seeing it all together as the arc finally, finally had its last chapters, I realised Togashi had planned it brilliantly all along, and did a lot of things no other shounen writer does. He broke the conventions and defied the cliches, and he made the dubious-looking characters the ones we truly cared for. If the York Shin arc is a masterclass in clever shounen writing with remarkably sympathetic antagonists and enemies that the good guys genuinely couldn’t hope to overcome through lame random power-ups, the Chimera Ant arc is a tortured, uneven yet brilliant experiment.

The anime had none of the big superficial problems of the manga. It did not have scribbled first-draft artwork, and it did not have enormous and frustrating breaks. It had Madhouse’s above-par animation, some superb voice work and some very clever stylistic decisions, and true to its source, it did things that no other series in its position does. What other big shounen has a whole episode based a single scene in which on a minor antagonist is confronted by his vastly superior leader and has to contemplate his mortality, divided loyalty and subservience? What other anime has the young protagonist set out with a clear goal, only to find that goal was never possible and that the one he wanted to save is beyond help already, only to sacrifice everything he has for a power-up...in order to kill a second-in-command figure? 

And what anime leads its antagonist not to a big showdown, but beyond that, to contemplation of the nature of humanity, mortality and inner peace not in using his ultimate power but sharing a game with the only person he ever cared for, a weak, blind, feeble-minded and yet hugely gifted player of a board game? Giving the ostensible bad guy a dignified, peaceful, bittersweet exit while a previously unseen character in exile muses on the unpleasantness of human nature in creating weapons of mass destruction is not what one expects from a Jump show. My only disappointment was that the brutality of Pokkle’s death was sanitised.

But defying expectations is what I keep coming back for. Superficially this arc is a hard sell: it’s about scary bugs who absorb the characteristics of any creature they consume. When they eat humans, they become a truly formidable threat to the rest of mankind and must be dealt with. The newborn bugs start looking like various animals – bulls, bugs, cheetahs, penguins – and it’s all very much like furry fanart. Then the three royal guards are born, a big meathead, a ridiculous fey poet type prone to histrionics, and a cheeky androgynous catgirl. The king himself, once born, is a clear tribute to Cell from Dragonball Z. None of these elements seem very mature, and a cutesy octopus joining the rebels doesn’t help. Once a big fight scene became about fish men throwing teleporting fish-darts, I thought the series was in big trouble.

And then somehow, Togashi brings it all together and exceeds all expectations. His human characters make big sacrifices and have to face the possibility of their own deaths and the deaths of their friends. The little octopus becomes heroic and bizarrely manly. Old favourites reappear – and the side-story with the Ryodan remains one of my favourite parts of the series, planet summonings and silly clothing removal scenes included. But the real winner of the idea is the anticlimax, the ultimate warrior who transcends the desire to fight and subjugate, and becomes wise as humans seek to kill him.

This arc is what HunterxHunter is all about: surprising even its core audience. Togashi seems to make mistake after mistake...yet unlike Naruto or Bleach, it turns out that’s all building up to something deep and challenging. What more can you ask for in a shounen? Bring on the election arc – and Beyond! 

劇場版 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ始まりの物語 / Gekijouban Mahou Shoujo Madoka Majika Hajimari no Monogatari / Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Beginnings

Given that I ended up rather liking the Madoka anime, I left it quite a while before getting around to watching the movies – and even now have only seen the first one. Rather disappointingly, the first two movies are mere recaps of the series, which I could understand with Evangelion, because after all many years had elapsed since the series and animation standards had risen considerably, so it made sense. Here, though, there was only about a year between the series airing in 2011 and the film coming out in 2012, so it all feels a little redundant to truncate the series for the big screen. Most of it doesn’t even appear to have been re-animated, with the main changes being better backgrounds and a new opening. So in that sense, I’m pleased I left it a couple of years before watching, because I’d forgotten enough of the plot details to enjoy this again without the feeling of rewatching something I’d just seen.

Madoka was a series that I didn’t feel got really good until right at the very end, starting with the tenth episode of the twelve-episode series. Thus a film version covering the first seven or eight episodes didn’t hold that much appeal for me.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the flow of this adaptation. It works as a single film, pulling off its typical magical girl setup at just the right pace, Mami losing her head in a stressful situation making for a very good climactic moment in a feature-length film (albeit rather a long one), and then the gradual realisation that Kyubey is not what he seems – or at least, operates with an entirely different moral compass – and the ultimate fate of magical girls works well for a reveal-style ending. But what really makes this work is that it becomes Sayaka’s movie: her centre-stage moments are all there in the series, of course, but because of the way the other characters rise to prominence, she becomes rather peripheral in the overall view of the series. Being the centre of attention here, the film essentially following her story from being introduced to the world of magical girls, grasping somewhat the meaning of it, debating the importance of wishes with Kyouko and becoming ever more powerful and ever more lost until the end of the film, she gets a chance to shine more clearly.

I think this works well even if, ultimately, it’s to the expense of Mami, who gets even less of a chance to make an impression as a complete person than in the series, not even getting to talk about her wish.

There’s also a strange dynamic in taking a markedly short series and turning it into a film trilogy. It’s rather strange how there’s the same amount of material, yet the impression left is different because the series was shorter than the usual, whereas a film trilogy is longer than usual. It’s odd how less material seems to be longer and given more time to breathe because of this context, but it is palpable how simply being a feature film expands the sense of scope. It turns out that Madoka suited being a film all along!

Ultimately, I was on board from the beginning. I love how Madoka subverts the genre, not just by being dark and edgy – that’s no real innovation these days, and I talked about Nanoha a lot in my review of the series – but by subverting it early on and then going on to add in more interesting twists and changes of focus. I’m actually looking forward to seeing the second film, but looking forward the most to seeing what new developments the final, original film will bring.

But talking about subversive Magical Girl series that are more sophisticated than they seem at first, go to dark places and would make great movies, how about a Princess Tutu movie version, huh? Now there’s a series that would benefit greatly from reinvention. 

How to Train Your Dragon 2

There were several things I wanted to do before watching How to Train Your Dragon 2. Rewatch the original. Watch the Riders of Berk spin-off, and the series that followed it. Perhaps even read the books, even though it’s clear that the films are going to take little or no further inspiration from them. I didn’t actually get around to doing any of that – but I have no regrets about going to tonight’s preview screening of the film, because How to Train Your Dragon 2 is probably my favourite animated film of the decade, above its predecessor, and certainly my favourite animated sequel of all, including such fare as Toy Story 3 and Puss in Boots. I regard those highly, but this film captivated and delighted me. If the first film was a pleasant surprise based on low expectations, this one was a pleasant surprise based on high expectations, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

I was a little worried when it was announced that Chris Sanders wasn’t directing this film, working instead on The Croods, which managed to also be better than expected yet doesn’t resonate all that deeply. But his Lilo & Stitch co-director Dean DeBlois stayed on from the first film, and showed that perhaps he was the real rock of their successes. DeBlois has said that, along with the human-animal bond of Totoro, one of his main inspirations here was The Empire Strikes Back, something which many major reviews have picked up on – just as that film took the Star Wars premise and made everything bigger and more serious, so does How to Train Your Dragon 2. Usually this is the territory of anime, to start from the rather silly and charming premise and turn it into something big, dark and epic, but DeBlois has pulled it off spectacularly.

Five years after the original film, the kids have grown up and Viking society has changed. Everyone is a dragon-rider now, more or less, and the kids are now teens and hone their skills through competitive games. Hiccup, now 20, has lost the goofy, cute look and become quite handsome – if painfully skinny – and loves to explore the wider world with Toothless. His father wants him to become the chief of Berk, however, which would curtail his freedom, so he is looking for an escape.

Of course, the exploration leads to some conveniently-timed meetings. First Hiccup meets some dragon-trappers, led by Eret, voiced by the ubiquitous Kit Harington. His character is initially an antagonist, but by first being cut down a peg or two and made the butt of some pretty funny jokes, and then redeeming himself with some rescues, actually becomes not only sympathetic but likeable, which I was quite surprised by. After them, Hiccup meets – slight spoiler for anyone who hasn’t seen the trailer – his mother, who is living amongst the dragons, including a vast old ‘Alpha’ with impressive ice powers. Together, they have to face Drago Bludvist, the enslaver of dragons, who has caught wind of others riding dragons, as well as the alpha, and moves against them. Drago, voiced by Djimon Hounsou, is a little problematic for being an evil foreigner character, but pretty awesome in battle and in his boasts. Gerard Butler as Hiccup’s dad Stoick and Cate Blanchett as his mother Valka do a wonderful job, especially in a little naturalistic musical moment with lyrics, bizarrely, by Shane Macgowan of the Pogues, who presumably can be relied upon for something that sounds authentically Celtic-y.

The film does a lot, but it does it well. It has the classic story of the hero resisting responsibility but ultimately having to take it. It has the best depiction of enduring love I’ve ever seen in animation. It has a subtle depiction of the mixed feelings of a son whose mother wasn’t there when he was growing up. It has genuinely funny humour, be it the amusing over-enthusiastic flirting of several of the teens, poor long-suffering Gobber or the dragons getting up to Pets do the Funniest Things antics in the backgrounds. It has an incredibly sad scene, just skirting looking insincerely inserted for some easy emotion-jerking, with some lovely eulogies. It has triumph with fireworks and a lovely ‘standing together’ moment. And it has goddamn huge dragons 

fighting like two Final Fantasy VII Weapons going at it. Marvellous!

Also, this is the first time I’ve seen a film in a DBox seat and felt it added something. Well, my only other experience has been with The Hobbit where it largely just tilted annoyingly to follow a sweeping camera, which didn’t work. An animation that frequently centres on flight, however? Ideal. By no means essential, but a nice little enhancement.

I’m very pleased there’s another sequel coming. This is a great world that’s being built, and How to Train Your Dragon has after all transformed Dreamworks into  studio that isn’t afraid of being serious and epic with its animations – even if Rise of the Guardians is really the only other film in this mode just yet. I’ll definitely be going to see how the story continues, and very probably will be buying the trilogy on Blu-Ray. 

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.

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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