Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu

May 24, 2008 at 7:18 am | In anime, comedy, could be worse, harem, nothing happens (and that's ok), school syndrome, you kids get off my lawn | 2 Comments

Summary: not as great as advertised, but interesting once over the hump
Based on: 14 episodes (first season)
Series info: at Anime News Network

I probably don’t really need to review this one since you’ve likely already heard of it and seen some of it, but it would be silly to just ignore it since it was such a huge phenomenon and reviewers generally seem to be unable to articulate what makes this show stand out (besides the media oversaturation).

It suffers a bit from school syndrome and harem, but not awfully. The school setting gets less and less important, and there are only three main girls.  It’s also a show where nothing really happens yet contains more plot twists than most shows do in 26 episodes.  It’s fairly formulaic on the surface and overly marketed, but it does three things I found interesting that raise it above the genre:

First, it says that it’s okay not to like the main (female) character. The male lead is your normal unremarkable harem anime nebbish, but Haruhi herself is selfish, rude, and generally unlike normal anime girls who are there to cater to the audience (most ‘bad’ girls are appealingly so). And, calculatedly, this in itself is appealing. In contrast the other two girls are basically complaisant dolls there to receive your deflected affections: so you didn’t like a real girl – how about… this (Mikuru’s breasts here)?

Second, it dares you to not like the show.  The episodes are shown out of chronological order, and it starts with the most (purposely) awkward, stupid, and badly acted and voiced episode of the series. Are you lookin’ at me? Are you lookin’ at me? C’mon, I dare you, turn it off. Then the next eps set up your generic school romance/harem formula. You have to sit through quite a bit to get to any payoff at all. It’s playing hard to get where most anime is pathetically eager to please.

Third, it’s unafraid to lull you into complacency then sucker punch you. I can’t say too much without spoiling it, but it’s willing to take the most base of plot cliches, mix them into that totally vanilla school romance/harem formula, then embrace the outre consequences. This in itself isn’t quite so abnormal (most series are ‘generic setting plus something weird’), but the breadth is unusual.

So yes, this is overhyped and overmarketed, but it’s worth watching if only as an exercise in deconstruction and hating the viewer as a useful tool.  And you might even enjoy it once you get past the first few episodes.

Vampire Knight

May 14, 2008 at 12:51 am | In adventure, anime, could be worse, one episode rule, ridiculous premise, school syndrome, shoujo cliche, spring 2008, yaoibait | Leave a Comment

Summary: slightly better than average vampire bishounen
Based on: 4 eps
Series Info: at Anime News Network

(Image taken from FuanBLOG where you can see ep by ep summaries)

At this school there is the Day Class and the Night Class. The Night Class are all secretly(!) vampires, and all the girls of the Day Class are wildly enamored with them because they are of course all gorgeous and moody and aloof.  Two prefects from the Day Class are adopted children of the headmaster and are the only ones who know the secret, but of course they have mysterious secrets of their own.

Everything about this screams typical – it’s got all your bishounen vampire cliches, it’s at a fabulously stylish high school, and moody sullen pretty boys abound. But I think in this case it actually manages to transcend the cliches with some very nice art, some decent action sequences, passable plot and dialogue considering the setup, and a slowly growing sense of discomfort. The only place where it really falls down is where the headmaster is involved – when he’s in the scene it’s a painful reminder of everything wrong with shows like Trinity Blood and Saiyuki.

So this isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement, but if you need your shoujo fix this season this is probably your best choice.

Macross Frontier (spring 2008 anime)

April 30, 2008 at 7:00 am | In adventure, anime, macross, school syndrome, spring 2008 | 1 Comment

Summary: It’s Macross. Not bad if you want music and robots and dogfights.
Based on: 12 episodes
Series info: at Anime News Network

This is Macross, so you get all the Macross cliches in full force. Now with that said, it’s not too badly done.

On the plus side, the music is by Yoko Kanno with vocals by Maaya Sakamoto, the production values are fairly high, the premise isn’t nearly as ridiculous as Macross 7, and there’s a lot of action. On the minus side you’ll have to endure gratuitous music ‘videos’, high school fighter pilots, and so far a razor thin plot. This all culminates in episode 7 with a full-episode 24 minute orgy of non-stop space combat and music concert.

If you want to check out Macross for the first time, I recommend Macross Plus instead, but you could do worse. Though I have the sinking feeling that this is all going to end with Ranka singing the evil alien badguys (the vajira) into submission.

Update: Ugh, ugh, ugh, I guess it was to be expected after they blew the budget on ep 7, but ep 8 is an insanely bad ‘Ranka and Sheryl transfer to Alto’s school’ thing that gets even worse since the main plotline is a panty-chase. If ep 9 is this bad, I’m giving up on it.

Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni

April 28, 2008 at 4:26 am | In anime, comedy, harem, one episode rule, school syndrome | 3 Comments

Summary: alternately super-cute and hideously disturbing, deep plot
Based on: 51 episodes
Series info: at Anime News Network

This refers to Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni and Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kai (season 2). A third season is on the way. It consists of a series of arcs, all of which center on the same time period (June 1983) but act out differently.

Higurashi manages to violate the game anime sucks rule. It’s based on a series of games, manga, and light novels whose story is much deeper than any anime usually manages, so it doesn’t suffer because of it. It also violates the one episode rule and harem rules: based on the first episode you would think this was just a low budget school harem anime. But it slowly starts undermining your certainty, and by episode 8 this was the most intense and disturbing anime I’ve ever seen.

The first three arcs basically leave you hanging, asking questions about what’s going on. What’s with the Groundhog Day thing, and why are these cute school kids going violently insane? After that you start getting some answers. Higurashi Kai gets a significant animation upgrade but is significantly less disturbing and intense as (almost) all your questions are answered.

Be warned: there is intense gore and brutal slayings, and even torture of young children.  For this reason it’s often compared to Elfen Lied, another anime with excessive gore and killing, but they’re only the same if you’re a kid who can’t tell the difference in purpose – they are in service of different goals. Still, if you have a weak stomach you may not be able to get through this. Or maybe the bad animation in season one will turn you off.

There are three things that cause this series to exceed the usual anime tropes:

First, the characters and the series itself are unreliable narrators. This alone makes it a different animal. You have no idea how much confusion this causes on anime message boards, since kids used to being spoon-fed plot don’t even have the concept of not being able to trust the anime. The furthest anime usually goes is hiding secrets from you then suddenly revealing them, or the ’surprise’ revelation that The Church of Foobar which everyone reveres is really an evil organization. This series will outright lie to you. In particular, the ending of season one reveals a ’secret’ that is so stupid that some people give up watching. Rather you should think about it yourself. And the first arc… well I can’t say more without spoiling it to much. Draw your own conclusions.

Second, it will lull you into complacency with your own complicit knowledge of the anime tropes. These exist as a useful shorthand between the author and viewer but are also by definition cliche. This series knows that can be subverted – these cliches go right to your brain, bypassing your defenses. It will tug at your heartstrings and instill sympathy for a character, then slowly ramp up the heinous acts the character commits, all in a somewhat reasonable progression, and ask you if you still sympathize. After a while the impact is lessened because you know this is coming, so the second season is unfortunately much more direct.

Third, it lets you do a lot of the detective work yourself if you want to. There are hints planted from the beginning andyou can figure out yourself what’s going in in a lot of cases before it’s revealed in later arcs, but only if you want to do the work. If you can’t, then eventually it will tell you (which I actually found disappointing).

Yes, there are flaws: the first season animation is shoddy, there is a lot of fanservice and resort to cliches during the ‘cute’ phases, sometimes the ‘power of friendship’ thing is too pat, it eventually tells you too much that should have remained implied, and the penultimate episode of Higurashi Kai exceeds even my believability threshold for the ‘elite military squad’. But this still remains the most disturbing, intense anime I’ve ever seen.

Kure-nai (Spring 2008 anime)

April 28, 2008 at 3:46 am | In adventure, anime, nothing happens (and that's ok), one episode rule, school syndrome, spring 2008 | 1 Comment

Summary: modern adventure, deeper than it appears, recommended
Based on: 12 (all) episodes
Series info: at Anime News Network

This one is about a high schooler (Shinkurō Kurenai) who hires himself out for odd jobs. A young spoiled rich girl who’s never been outside the family home (Murasaki Kuhōin) is kidnapped (or liberated, your choice) and Kurenai is given the job of being her bodyguard.

There’s a lot going on here – the kid is cute, but annoying as you’d expect a very young sheltered rich girl to be, so you’re alternately annoyed with her and sorry for her since it’s obvious not really her fault, and she does feel bad when Kurenai finally gets a basic concept through her thick skull.

The series has school syndrome, but it’s nuanced. Generally what I object to is the tropes that ’school anime’ lets the authors fall back on, but Kure-nai mostly, though not totally, avoids them. In particular the relationships are far beyond the usual subtle as a nuclear bomb triangles you expect from anime aimed at teens (because they don’t know any better). There’s a brilliant theme going on in episode 3 where one of the ‘lecherous women’ who lives at Kurenai’s apartment complex is teaching Murasaki about how to get yourself a ‘reliable man’ (which she can’t seem to find herself). She notes how all you have to do to keep a man happy is compliment him now and then (which is sadly mostly true). Meanwhile Kurenai himeself has a reliable woman, a fellow classmate, Ginko. She obviously likes him, but it’s more nuanced than the usual high school romance: she knows it but hates herself for it, he knows it (and even acknowledges it to her face) but still uses her anyhow, carelessly.

There’s another scene in episode 3 with three rude high school boys bullying an old woman on a train that in almost any other anime would have ended with Kurenai going medieval on their asses (he’s a skilled martial artist), but it confounds that and then rubs it in your face.

Ep 6 is a regrettable bit of padding, but with Ep 7 the plot starts to pick up again. And as of Ep 10 the series starts heading into a climax that is satisfying and yet not quite too cliche.  This was a good series.

define: school syndrome

April 25, 2008 at 12:12 am | In definition, school syndrome | 2 Comments

Since anime and manga are primarily aimed at school children, there is a regrettable tendency to make any series ‘(something cool here)… but at school’ so the viewers can relate. Evangelion is a prime example of this. As another example, the first episode of Mushi Uta starts out somewhat interesting as someone being hunted down by a mysterious organization using gigantic insects. There’s action. There’s drama.  Then we come back from commercial and suddenly everyone’s attending high school. How can you take this seriously?

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.