NO FIRST PRIZE

A Letter To Hiroyuki Okiura: I Want My Two Hours Back

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 01:13:00 -0500

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is my favorite animated film of all time. Bleak-toned in both spirit and aesthetics, this morose 1999 tale about duty, revolution and human psychology converted me from an anime skeptic into a full-out fan of the medium. After the first two cinematic entries in Mamoru Oshii’s alternate-history Kerberos Saga tanked at the box office, Bandai only agreed to produce a third if someone other than Oshii directed it. Perhaps inspired by the success of his Ghost in a Shell movie, Oshii decided to follow up the live-action features with an animated movie, with veteran key animator Hiroyuki Okiura at the helm as a first-time director. Afterward, Okiura resumed a career of unlauded animation-shop duties, and it wasn’t until 2011 that his name resurfaced with the surprise announcement of a second directing effort titled A Letter to Momo. In light of Jin-Roh’s reputation as a veritable calling card of “serious” anime, the news that this would be a children’s film came off as incongruous to fans as the publication of J.K. Rowling’s decidedly non-magical Casual Vacancy did to Potterheads. Yet, while Rowling’s creative excursion had something to offer to pretty much everyone, A Letter To Momo ended up, by and large, excessively casual and mostly vacant.

Intriguingly, despite having taken a reported seven years to produce, no information about Momo was available until the official announcement, made the same year it hit film festivals and theaters. Information on the project is still quite meager, and even the much-bandied “seven years” figure only occurs as a casual mention in one of the initial press releases. As further details trickled out, the pattern of emerging expectations followed that of the typical Ghibli film, with people mostly wondering how much of the story in this family film would be interesting to adults.

No longer in Oshii-land, Okiura not only directed, but also scripted and storyboarded his own original concept. Despite this unity of vision and execution, the result was a chimeric piling of a simplistic script clearly aimed at younger audiences atop a relaxed structure tailor-made for introspective adult fare. This does not win points with viewers of any age: at the first moment where I paused the show to check email, the nine-year-old me would’ve scampered off to play with toy cars, or pilfer coffee beans from the kitchen, to never return. After an unbearably slow start, we finally get to learn more about the key players, but rather than take this opportunity to energize the onscreen proceedings, the movie treats us to some of the most autistic, personality-free characters to ever star in a full-length anime.

After her father’s death, preadolescent Momo Miyaura and her mother relocate to the latter’s childhood home on a remote island in the nethermost asscracks of rural Japan. The relationship between the Miyauras and the grandparents is inscrutable, to say the least; it’s not even clear at first that the old folks are actually their relatives. Momo’s malaise after suddenly departing a comfortable home for an unfamiliar place comes to the forefront, but absolutely no effort is put forth to make the viewer sympathize, rather than just witness her plight. With no emotional portrait of the girl available to the audience, and zero clues as to what 11-year old Momo was like back in Tokyo, it’s hard for viewers to understand exactly what she’s experiencing. Yes, we get that she’s in an unnatural state after the one-two punch of losing both father and hometown, but “this is a girl that sulks: the end” is simply not good enough a characterization for a protagonist.

When she isn’t sulking, Momo is bickering with her mother; other children live in the town, but it’s not clear who’s less interested in getting to know them, Momo or Okiura himself. The only injection of personality in this cavalcade of blandness comes from the three goblins whose interaction with Momo forms the bulk of the plotline. I never bothered to learn their names, being content to label them Legohead, Fishface and Eli. Their introduction begins a gentle escalation from an outright plodding pace into a sequence of action scenes that is as unengaging as it is frustratingly repetitive. What’s most surprising is that the vivid, off-kilter goblins are only effective at highlighting just how dull a person Momo is. Perhaps the fault lies as much with the character actress as with the script, but there are few times where Momo laughs, becomes agitated, or does anything aside from staring blankly that don’t feel stilted or forced.

With the stage set and all actors in place, the film is in position to tackle, as opposed to merely skirting, the various themes present: loss of family, starting over in a new environment, even the YKK-esque “old folks and empty buildings” nod to Japan’s population decline. Rather than do any of that, the movie fixates on keeping the goblins fed. Seriously: that’s what the bulk of this two-hour anime is about, with the action shifting from Momo running away from the goblins to various shenanigans dealing with obtaining food for them. The single-minded obsession with the topic reeks of slangy late-80s Eastern Bloc “experimental art” criticizing empty grocery store shelves in an era where intellectual humor gave way to feral, imbecilic absurdism. It isn’t until the movie’s very final stretch, where the goblins’ true purpose is revealed, that it picks up steam. The capstone is a superbly-animated motorcycle dash through the rain that is no-jive exciting, a belated sop to those few nine-year-olds that actually came back to the couch where their parent has already dozed off.

None of this is to say that A Letter to Momo gets nothing right. On the contrary: it is precisely because just enough scaffolding is built up, making one expect something deeper, that the film isn’t straight up dismissed as just a boring, overproduced children’s flick. The tension between Momo and her go-getter mother, who is inclined to sideline coming to terms with the changes by losing herself in work, is not just palatable but poignant. The way in which the titular letter to Momo, a sheet of notebook paper with nothing but three pencil-scrawled characters on it, becomes her frequent companion and something like a portable shrine, should be familiar to anyone who’s ever had to cope with the loss of a dear relative. And yet, none of these touches are ever sustained, instead dissolving in a jumble of warmed-over slapstick and character building so glib and insincere that it almost makes one forget just how much of Jin Roh’s impact on the viewer hinged on a mastery of the subtle. There’s a profound lesson here on saying so little that it results in not saying enough. After all, a key role of understatement is to serve as the backdrop for nuance.

There are (uncited) assertions that part of what took so long to make Momo was Okiura’s waiting on the industry’s top traditional animators to become available. Indeed, much of the hype for the film hinges on the production being mostly hand-drawn (where have we seen that before). However, while crisp, fluid and highly detailed (as expected of an A-team production of this scale), the graphics are utterly forgettable. Indeed, there isn’t a single scene that stands out, of the sort that even Ghibli’s lesser-known movies supply by the dozens. A fairer comparison may be 2008’s Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, which still crafts distinctive, memorable visuals from such generic settings as blue skies, baseball fields, and hilly thoroughfares in ways that Momo with its exotic locale never comes close to. Here, as revealed by a quick scroll through these artbook scans, we get a drab palette dominated by beiges and sandblasted yellows. The visual aspect is further marred by minor, but noticeable discontinuities where hand-drawn animation is merged with computer graphics. This is the sort of thing that Production IG generally excels at, but P.A. Works’ name also shows up in ending credits, and the visible shortcuts taken are typical of the latter studio’s tendency to use CG structures and vehicles with that cheapo plastic sheen.

Before Momo was announced, Okiura’s departure from the filmmaking scene was lamented by many, even earning him the top spot on this Lost Sons of Japanese Cinema list. Now that he has returned, I’d like to extend that status to the MIA Mitsuo Iso. There are many parallels between the careers of these two master animators, with both having earned major acclaim for work on the Ghost in the Shell movie, delivered masterpieces as their directing debuts, and gone completely off the radar in the following years. The key difference is that Iso vanished immediately after the 2007 release of his Dennou Coil: A Circle of Children series, while Okiura kept grinding for six years after his magnum opus, not disappearing until 2006’s Paprika dropped. Let us hope that Mr. Iso’s absence likewise means that he’s gone off to work on something grand and mysterious - and pray that it turns out way better than this movie.

Hindsight is 2040: The Bubblegum Crisis that Dare Not Speak its Name

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:53:00 -0400

A fascinating consequence of creators betraying audience expectations is what I call Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The moment a new work, usually a followup to an established favorite, is reputed to deviate from his notion of “doing justice”, the diehard fan erects a preemptive barrier against disappointment by declaring that it, quite simply, doesn’t exist. Notorious for a history of unscrupulous cash-ins on old successes, the anime industry is a well-known predicate for perpetrating this phenomenon.

For Kinoko Nasu zealots, it’s Shingetsutan Tsukihime. For the Ruff Readerz enamored with the hit Read or Die OVA, it’s the TV sequel. But all these folks are small fry when compared to that select caste of old school heads whose favorite pastime is to proudly boast of the extent to which they steadfastly avoid any and all contact with Bubblegum Crisis 2040. The original Bubblegum Crisis is their Bible, with the 1998 remix deemed an aberration more unspeakably heretical than The Gospel of Judas, The Satanic Verses and BLVCKLVND RVDIX 66.6 (1991) combined.

While I can sympathize with the sentiment, being a newjack fan who got into anime in 2005 prevents me from identifying with it. And besides, NO FIRST PRIZE is all about smashing old prejudices, finding new insights and… giving credit where it is due. That’s right, 2040 isn’t just an inferior sequel but a tremendous low point for anime in general. You heard it here first: the denialists are 100% on-point.

At first glance, the idea of a modern remake of the 1980s show doesn’t sound too unreasonable. For starters, Bubblegum Crisis never got an ending, as a nasty legal scuffle between the design and animation arms of the multi-studio production team brought the series to a standstill. A half-baked and half-hearted followup OVA followed shortly afterward, but was itself cut short by an ensuing lawsuit (though, given how bad a turd that one was, it sounds like a mercy killing). An abundance of unresolved plot points and viewer interest, as evidenced by the respective ubiquity of fanfiction and FAQ sites, certainly indicates that the fans want more BGC.

2040 is the result of an unholy alliance between Studio AIC (the last cocreator of BGC still in business) and the US-based ADV Films. The franchise had been much more popular Stateside than in Japan, which ADV saw a good reason to sponsor a remake. The task of directing fell to Hiroki Hayashi, responsible for my favorite episode of the first series: “Revenge Road”, which viewers might remember for its EVIL CAR. Hayashi explained his vision in an interview:

“I didn’t really care about how fans thought it should tie in with the original,” says Hayashi. “I didn’t particularly have a very different idea in mind with the new series either, because I also like the original videos, especially the first three episodes. So I wanted to make 2040 with the same themes and feeling. Not just rehash it, but also to give it a new life, to reach a new audience.”

In this pile of upbeat PR fluff, only the following words matter: I didn’t really care how the fans thought. This, more than anything, explains why the end product feels so much like the result of a fervid urge to defile everything people actually liked about BGC.

A scorched-earth desecration of a beloved cult favorite is no task for mere mortals. As Kevin J. Anderson was too busy writing Star Wars novels, Hayashi got an even more violent J. to fill in: the esteemed Chiaki J. Konaka, Esq. Whereas BGC is all about inspiring and entertaining people, Konaka is only good at fucking with their minds - having him handle this property is the equivalent of getting David Lynch to direct a Pixar movie. As a fan of Big O and Texhnolyze, I was never part of the anti-Konaka lynch mob; however, 2040 sent me reaching for a pitchfork of my own.

It could be argued that BGC’s calling card is the soundtrack, a collection as musically diverse as it is massive. The soundscape is integral to the Neo-Tokyo vision to the same extent as its vistas of urban sprawl and decay, transforming the kinetic action sequences into mini-music videos, a key source of nostalgia for the show. With eight OST releases and vocal albums, over four hours of music had been released, a feat that, along with the very existence of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, is one of those “only in the 80s” things. In a particularly cruel turn of poetic injustice, while that soundtrack brought out the best of the era’s sound, 2040’s applied a mad scientist’s manic devotion to concentrating the very worst of its own time.

The turn of the century was a dire time for Japanese music, as Beatmania-obsessed composers discovered trip-hop, unleashing an eldritch new brand of boom-tisk terrorism on unsuspecting listeners. Trying to guess what flavor of noisy cacophony will accompany a dramatic moment is a perverse 2040 minigame of sorts, as you never know what’s coming next: a riff from a Casio keyboard in demo mode, a skull-crushing blast of pulsating buzzing, or my favorite, a stupor-inducing cover of Portishead’s Mysterons. Tinny, rattling synth shreds designed to highlight the tension instead accomplish the exact opposite. The music is dissonant to the point of being distracting; times where the dramatic flair of a Kenji Kawai or a Yuki Kajiura would be welcome are instead invaded by swarms of budget synthesizers. In terms of being completely out of tune with both specific scenes and the general mood, 2040’s OST is quite a hallmark.

Not even the musical dimension of 2040 escaped the paws of Konaka, as illustrated by the following doozy of an quote:

[Konaka] threw in a plug for his own real-life band, and changed [Priss and the Replicants] to Sekiria. […] “Sekiri is Japanese for ‘dysentery’. A long time ago the band used to eat at a really filthy restaurant and they used to joke that the place looked so bad, they’d probably all get the squirts from the food. Ya means ‘store’ in Japanese, so they decided to name their band Sekiria [Sekiri-ya] after that experience.”

A dysentery store! How gracious of Mr. Konaka to pass “the squirts” on to the viewers - in so many ways.

Veteran artist Kenichi Sonoda, responsible for BGC’s visual design, must’ve sniffed out the hustle early on, refusing to participate in the project. As a result, 2040’s massacre of his lively, memorable characters also come with a bonus facelift, of the same bland variety seen in similar 1999 shows like Blue Gender and Infinite Ryvius (both of which also suffer from equally execrable music). The personalities are completely watered down: Priss, whose rebellious charm managed to shine past her rough edges in the original, is now just a plain-unlikable asshole. Nene’s balance of endearing ditziness and formidable brainpower is likewise completely gutted, leaving behind a childish mannequin ready to star in a dating sim. Leon becomes a TSUNDERE. Yet, as badly as the humans fared, it’s the robots in 2040 that get shafted the worst.

No jive: the bug-eyed fellow in the figure above is a mutant boomer, being eaten by, uhhhh… paging Matt Alt; matter of fact, paging Professor Oak. Boomers, which here have a propensity for morphing into tokusatsu monsters, represent the show’s absolute visual nadir. Even in the goofy low-budget AD Police OVA, the mad boomers still managed to terrify in a primitive, brutalist way of their own. Here, their transformations into Halloween mask-looking oddities are likelier to inspire laughter than fear.

Midway through the series, the Konaka dysentery store decides to hold a firesale on asinine script ideas. Pushing the script from needlessly overwrought to downright ludicrous, there’s a Midichlorians-grade predestination factor for Knight Saber hardsuit compatibility - and it’s not even the the show’s least-credible bullshit development by far. The listless exposition and marathon sessions of characters idiotically staring at each other are now interspersed with the stupidest plot twists this side of fanfiction.net: hardsuits going rogue, a murderous living wave of bio-organic metal, a gigantic evil clone of Sylia that eventually merges with every robot on the planet. The last two episodes, with shoegazing existentialist monologues inspired by Evangelion at its worst, are completely unwatchable fast-forward fare.

Two of BGC’s renowned contemporaries, Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell and GAINAX’s Gunbuster, sustained faithful reimaginings over a decade after their release. Setting out with the same “new life and new audience” charter as Hiroki Hayashi, the creators of those sequels nonetheless not only extended, but enriched their source universes. Why? Because unlike the 2040 staff, they were not only devoted fans themselves, but also proud craftsmen committed foremost to making a damn good cartoon. A quality-first ethic permitted both GAINAX and IG to make successful followups to their respective properties using modern techniques and stylistic vocabulary to express the things that were timeless in the originals. While Hiroki Hayashi and his team may’ve recognized the vast possibilities in Bubblegum Crisis, they simply didn’t care to isolate those timeless elements, or love the characters, the universe, or even the craft of storytelling enough to make something of substance.

As a child of the 80s economic boom, Bubblegum Crisis is, quite literally, an animated zeitgeist. The vibe of any era, from 70s Cold War paranoia to the neomillennial fascination with media manipulation of public opinion, is intricately intertwined in the aesthetic of the media in its time. Thus, the only healthy way to reinterpret a work is not to port but to to evolve the concepts. If there’s any lesson that the 2040 trainwreck can teach us, it’s that recapturing the magic of a revered classic by selectively grafting attributes onto a novel setting is as futile as trying to blow a bubble from a hardened disk of gum underneath a cafeteria table.

More Like FLATline: A Case Study in False Soteriology

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:45:00 -0400

There’s usually at least one every year. The anime establishment’s decline shows no sign of slowing down, and non-pedophile fans eagerly latch onto anything that promises redemption from a glut of moe fluff and light novel adaptations. “In a fishless river, a crawfish’ll do”, goes the Russian proverb, and if the people want a savior, they’ll invent one if need be. Hyped to a fever pitch not seen since the heyday of Haruhi Suzumiya, Redline produced a level of buzz that managed to leak even past my self-erected barriers against the Sea of Dipshit. The idea of a fun summer movie sounded both credible and alluring - after all, could that many rave reviews all be wrong? Gomennasai, Bloom-sensei — I was a hundred years too early.

From time to time, anime directors put out short experimental productions to challenge themselves while advertising their talents. Such works are often the seeds of more ambitious ideas, and seeing them grow to fruition can be very entertaining. In the past decade, we’ve seen Voices of a Distant Star blaze the path for Makoto Shinkai to adorn threadbare plots with jaw-dropping visuals, Mizu no Kotoba give rise to the delightfully refreshing Time of Eve, and the scatological inanity of Dead Leaves gain long-form treatment as Panty and Stocking. Not all such efforts get an opportunity to blossom (R.I.P. Studio 4C’s Amazing Nuts!!); in fact, it’s generally more likely for an unusual leftfield work to remain a one-off. That’s certainly what I assumed about Katsuhito Ishii and Takeshi Koike’s Trava: Fist Planet, a 4-episode series I bailed on after about 5 minutes of hideous graphics and annoying dialogue. Trava was something I charged to the game as another postmodern turd-on-the-canvas masterpiece, not expecting it to it to lead to anything, let alone so grandiose an effort as Redline.

Given the seven year long production process (punctuated by a cancellation scare) and completely hand-drawn animation, grandiose might be an understatement. Visually, the payoff is nothing short of spectacular, and, in light of the ubiquity of mediocre digital graphics even in high-budget shows, a poignant demonstration of just how good anime can look. The animation is breathtakingly fluid, especially in context of an unusual Shirow Miwa-esque shading style and the abundance of fancy-looking technology in the film. Rather than flinch from yet another half-baked special effect or hokey ReBoot-looking CG ScopeDog, the eye marvels at the glorious harmony of character movements, in-movie computer displays and pulsating laser explosions all gelling together seamlessly. If there’s any cause for which Redline is a credible redeemer, it’s the supremacy of traditional cartoon techniques, as helpless as it might be in an industry hell-bent on cutting every possible corner. In this regard, Redline is an undeniable triumph - if only it weren’t such a thorough failure in every other.

Redline is Koike and Ishii’s loosely related in-universe followup to Trava, featuring a cameo by the eponymous main character (a hairy humanoid Cheburashka). Here, they literally took the Tatooine podracing tournament from Star Wars: Episode I and made it into a full-length feature. The viewer is assaulted by a swarm of bizarre anthropomorphic aliens and funky vehicles, which Phantom Menace got away with by virtue of piggybacking on six hours’ worth of exposition from the previous episodes. Redline makes no effort to weave those elements into the setting and narrative organically, or offer a glimpse of compelling paths aside from the rail the viewer is carted along. The sprinklings of flavor are as shallow and artificial as Top Ramen seasoning — and aesthetically ugly to boot. Were I one of the few humans trapped among the hideous freakshows populating the Redline universe, I’d go sunbathing under one of those colony lasers in the orbit of… Roboworld. You know, as opposed to hearts’n’sparkles Cutie Honey world, or the Duke Nukem pig cop planet, or any of the other gimmicky props briefly trotted out to feign a semblance of world-building. Venus Wars this is not.

But really, who gives a shit. In this sort of movie, fast racing with a futuristic style, rather than plot, is the main course. Redline’s style, however, overwhelms without genuinely engaging. For a good example of pulling off a similar setting, but in a way that draws the viewer in rather than try smash his head in with an oversized Tex Avery mallet, check out Fifth Element (or better yet, Gurrenn-Lagann, which manages to achieve both). Past the veneer of the grotesque theatrics surrounding the race, the personality-free protagonists and cliched villains fall remarkably flat. The most thrilling thing that ever occurs in conversation is the lighting of a cigarette, with the flickering of the gorgeously rendered flame to distract us from the fact that there isn’t enough memorable dialogue to buoy a rapper cameo in 2Fast2Furious. Equally ineffective at pumping up the excitement is the soundtrack. Straight out of a “100 Eurobeat samples on one CD!” collection, the dull and repetitive thumping rarely matches the onscreen action, effectively cheapening the overall presentation.

Redline stays in-your-face not only stylistically, but cinematically as well. Panoramic or bird’s-eye shots are disturbingly sparse, which diminishes the value of the never-ending close-ups, leaving a sense of being zoomed in too far to really appreciate the full picture (or, for much of the time, anything but a driver’s warped-perspective face). The driver’s view angle, endlessly abused in racing features of all stripes for being so intuitive and effective at immersing the audience, is inexplicably near-absent. It’s ironic and depressing that the race, Redline’s key plot vehicle, is treated so sloppily. Like bottle rockets fired from time to time to prop up interest, other key developments are interspersed but they only further disrupt the narrative, feeling jolting and forced.

Let’s keep it a hundred: when a film puts all of its chips on high-octane action, it should grab the viewer by the balls and not let go all the way until the ending credits. There’s a consistent failure to build tension, and not even the final race succeeds in generating any palatable excitement, coming off muddled and unpleasantly confusing. After repeatedly drifting off to pay bills and fold laundry, I even wondered whether my TV and sound system were inadequate for capturing Redline’s intensity. Yet, this is the same very setup that had me floored watching Diebuster, Gundam Unicorn (the fandom’s previous Latter Day Saint, now inexplicably turned whipping boy), and, hell, the GITS:SAC 2nd Gig opening theme. For all of its traditionally animated glory, Redline isn’t so much a throwback to anime’s golden days as a mere tech demo, like the visually impressive, but frigid and soulless Cencoroll.

Oh, that’s right. Rather than feel underwhelmed by Redline as a movie, I’m supposed to hail it as a DARING EXPERIMENT - after all, experimentation is to be lauded regardless of whether it results in something of substance, simply by virtue of not being yet another by-the-numbers Kyoani/Shinbou prefab.

Sorry, but this is NO FIRST PRIZE, not the school nurse’s office. Simply turning the production values to 11 is just not good enough when other directors do it as well, only with story, impressive cinematic technique and scenes that stay with the viewer for reasons other than “holy shit, that must’ve cost a willennium dollars.” Next to Summer Wars, Unicorn, and even the Break Blade OVA, Redline hardly merits consideration as a film. It’s really an extended cut of Major Lazer’s “Pon de Floor” video except rather than wanting to dance when I watch it, I want to stare at the door and smoke.

This is the future of anime? Please. Shelve Redline next to its overpriced yet creatively bankrupt peers Brain Power’d and Steamboy in the messiahs-that-weren’t section. For now, I got one question, mayne: tell me who next?

All Scopedogs Go to Heaven: VOTOMS Shining Heresy

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:09:00 -0400

While mainly remembered as a “Rambo in space” cartoon, the venerable Armored Trooper VOTOMS series didn’t become the flagship in the repertoire of Real Robot anime stalwart Ryosuke Takahashi for being just another robot slugfest. Set in a sprawling, masterfully developed universe embroiled an interstellar war, VOTOMS gained acclaim as much for its nuanced geopolitics as for loving portrayals of military technology.

As the Scopedog Armored Trooper (AT) showcased the power of multi-role optics and programmable controls in a mobile battle platform, the blue-haired curmudegon Chirico Cuvie became the answer to Char Aznable for that thuggish ruggish boneyard of lowtech sci-fi fans with a fondness for mecha more inclined to mow down infantry in the jungle than shout attack names at nebulas. At the heart of the plot is an intergalactic conspiracy between warring nations, clandestine cults and organized criminal organizations, but as the story unfolds, Chirico and his destructive powers take center stage. VOTOMS: Shining Heresy turns this premise on its head: Chirico’s talents are now openly paraded as the key point of contention, but merely as the backdrop for a heavy dose of political scheming. Showing great promise, Shining Heresy is in many ways a product of the tumultuous nineties, ending up as both victim and symbol of its genre’s ultimate downfall.

Out of the handful of follow-ups to the original 1983 production, Shining Heresy is the only one that isn’t a spinoff or side story, picking up right where the 52-episode series left off. At the end, Chirico got fed up with the hubbub around him and bailed into space in a hibernation capsule - only to be recovered in the first episode of this OVA by a militarized religious order fittingly named the Church of Martial. Organized religion, particularly of a Catholic flavor, is a time-honored anime staple, though rarely invoked beyond adding a gothy flavor to disposable vampire stories. Catholic in style but Manichean in both spirit and behavior, this church is a nexus of wheels-within-wheels political machinations that influence the entire galaxy, highly reminiscent of the corrupt Vatican seen in Soviet spy serials and The Godfather III. The Politburo-esque council of elders, a stagnating gerontocracy of barely-living seat-fillers, calls the shots. Presiding over this crumbling viper’s nest is an even more decrepit Pope, whose unintelligible mumbling is just a couple self-awarded Hero stars short of a biting caricature of Leonid Brezhnev’s final days.

As the Holy Hospice dodders and rots, the heavy lifting is done by middle-aged cardinals, themselves locked in a bitter power struggle. The awakening of Chirico, who is the subject of a fatwah as a living “contradiction to the faith”, poses a concern for the order. The ensuing debate condemns the Perfect Soldier program and even ATs as blasphemy, and Cardinal Montwells introduces a kosher alternative of his own: a blessed cyborg called the Nextant, the result of cybernetically modifying his daughter Teitania. As she seeks to confront Chirico on behalf of the church, our hero is once again drawn into the heat of the conflict, resulting in the sort of automotive chases, aerial combat and all-hot robot-on-robot action that is so dear to VOTOMS aficionados.

In a curious twist, Teitania’s augmentation is actually an auxiliary cyberbrain functioning as a tactical awareness and combat coprocessor. This artificial interloper is as much a utility as a parasite challenging the organic brain’s decision-making processes. We get a few glimpses through Teitania’s eyes: a jittery visual stream corrupted with the grainy salt-and-pepper distortion of an untuned analog TV, as an unnerving electromechanical din jangles in the background. The idea of a cybernetic vision system that isn’t a seamless parade of crisp semi-transparent HUDs and icon-filled overlays is unexpected; with the exception of Texhnolyze, it’s not clear if any anime made since this one dared to imagine being a cyborg as such a miserable experience.

As the cardinals squabble over matters of papal succession, we discover the extent of Martial’s meddling in the affairs of the galactic superpowers. Familiar faces from the previous VOTOMS shows resurface, and old mysteries, like the origins of the Perfect Soldier program, are revealed. Meanwhile, Chirico, who is simultaneously pawn and prime catalyst in this tangle of events, is busy escaping from Church goons and blowing shit up. The potent blend of fast-paced action and lofty intrigue reaches a new high for the franchise, with the religious arguments over genetic modification and human cyber-enhancement hearkening to the later volumes of Frank Herbert’s Dune (you know, the ones nobody gets to after giving up at book 2 or 3). Right out the gate, it’s clear that there are ample seeds in the exposition for a complex, multi-layered plot.

As fate (and studio politics) had it, we never get to see them germinate. The details on what actually happened are sparse and confusing. Supposedly, Takahashi was pressured by Sunrise marketing into making a direct sequel to the first series, but not given the latitude to tell the story the way he wanted. Shining Heresy is the resultant compromise, which left neither party satisfied and burnt out Takahashi on VOTOMS to the extent that he began resenting its prominence as his best-known property.

Given the sorry way in which this OVA comes to an abrupt halt before really taking off, it’s not hard to see why he felt that way. The abortive final episodes wrap up the series with all the grace of a rectal prolapse. Key developments and points of resolution limply tumble to the table like a handful of trump cards after the game has been forfeited. Once again, Chirico is shown walking off into the sunset alone, now forsaken even by his own creator.

Just like the end of the Cold War triggered a tectonic shift in the way storytelling addressed geopolitics, Shining Heresy too marks a departure from the bipolar conflict structure of the parent series. As old-world structures fell apart, independent players emerged from the ruins to take the reins. When the field grows more dynamic and less predictable, the observers too must zoom in to keep up with the action, with a subtle but inevitable consequence: the abandonment of world-building on a sprawling scale. Another, even more profound effect is the loss of comfort that springs from the safety cushion of an established order. When the ground under your feet is shaking, there’s no time to dream, so one turns away from the stars and gazes inward. In this way, another casualty of the changing times was the vibe that not just empowered Real Robot as a genre, but defined an entire era (not to mention a generation of fans): anime’s deep, earnest infatuation with futuristic technology.

The upheaval reverberated throughout the other big-name mecha legacies as well. Abandoning its Real Robot roots, Gundam fully seized the Tomino within to embrace the way of flashy missile-spam fireworks, moody, androgynous teens and pathos so thick you could cut it with a beam saber. Genre granddaddy Patlabor wrapped up its monster run with the capstone Patlabor 2: The Movie (let’s be honest, WXIII is barely a film, let alone a Patlabor) which foretold the naked cynicism of the 2000s eight years before the 9/11 disaster, but left no successors to its hard-hitting flavor of realistic storytelling. As for Ryosuke Takahashi, he has pushed off VOTOMS into the hands of other directors at Sunrise, moving on to create Gasaraki. That series is known for a unique mecha concept and a jaded outlook on geopolitics of its own, and I’d love for someone who can watch it without falling asleep to review it.

The old models had shattered, and with them went the hallowed school of scientific speculation with a genuine sense of wonder and zeal for discovery. In the new world order, science fiction’s sole, unenviable role is to serve as a layer of abstraction for social commentary. In the 21st century, we see the scope widen again, but this time, through the homogenizing prism of globalism. The damage has already been done, and expanding one’s horizons no longer offer a greater diversity of actors and perspectives, but rather mere palette swap variations on a one-worlder jeans-Coke-and-Autotune template. Like a luxury cotton shirt under a punishing washer setting, the world has not only shrunk, but faded, warped and lost its former rich luster.

It’s worth mentioning that Shining Heresy is the last VOTOMS with hand-drawn mecha, with both the Pailsen Files OVA and the nu-metal Phantom Arc having shifted completely to CG. For all their shortcomings, these five episodes are still an entertaining watch, if only for the old-school battles and the unique nineties anime atmosphere. For any grizzled head chomping at the bit from the distinctive whirring sound of an AT revving up its engines, this show is a gem that, though flawed and fractured, is sure to shine.

UPDATE: In the year or so since this review was written, VOTOMS: Alone Again, the 2011 sequel to Shining Heresy, has been fansubbed. Despite Sunrise’s proclaimed determination to recapture the original VOTOMS spirit, the 50-minute OVA comes off as utterly perfunctory, failing to provide satisfying closure to the story, or, for that matter, evoke anything but boredom and a sense of unfulfilled nostalgia. After a bit of half-baked stage-setting, Chirico and Teitania return to fight a bunch of hideous computer-rendered ATs, with the whole thing feeling like a cutscene from some low-budget MechWarrior imitation. Do yourself a favor and skip this uninspired tax writeoff. Instead, watch Shining Heresy and pour out a bottle of Polymer Ringers Solution for the franchise that once was.

A Feast in Time of Plague: Michiko e Hatchin

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:55:00 -0400

This is where I put on my soulja ragz, ascend the tallest minaret in all the land, and shout until my throat goes hoarse,

“Novelty for its own sake is no virtue. Emulation in the pursuit of excellence is no vice.”

Is it really enough for a work to be “different”? Henry Darger’s art certainly fits that bill. Lauding a production only because it’s unusual is as near-sighted as dismissing it solely for relying on time-tested techniques. A show is ultimately only as good as the experience it provides to the viewer.

Recipes persist precisely because they work, providing a relatively safe path to success. However, a completely innovative approach brings a much greater risk of total failure, and it’s not often that a creator’s skill matches his ambition. Yet, the mere fact that a show isn’t like most others somehow earns an automatic pass from the critics. That is gay as hell. Any day, I’ll take a by-the-numbers story that’s fun and engrossing over pretentious Studio 4°C pap that has more hipsters whining about how underappreciated it is than watchers making it past the second episode.

Fortunately, Michiko e Hatchin isn’t one of those cartoons. It is certainly distinctive — but it’s also rich enough that simply fixating on that fact would be an utter disservice to the show.

The flashy and stylish opening, with a young woman and a little girl riding a motorcycle through various colorful locales as they escape the police, accurately establishes both the premise and the flow of this anime. The girl is Hana “Hatchin” Morenos, a pensive preteen with a worldweariness that belies her age. The leggy, provocatively dressed woman is her mother, escaped criminal Michiko Malandro, who snatches Hatchin from an abusive foster home so the two can begin their quest to find the samurai that smells like sunf— err, wrong Studio Manglobe property. Verily, this highly episodic tale of character interplay with a series-long journey as the backdrop echoes both Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop as direct spiritual predecessors (and inevitable measuring sticks).

All three shows are not only praised for but downright defined by their mood and atmosphere. In the jazz-tinged Bebop, the prevailing sense is one of melancholy; while the frenetically upbeat opening track is the most memorable, it’s the more wistful and downtempo melodies that set the tone. Champloo, which exudes hip-hop through every pore not only musically but visually, combines battle tunes, meandering instrumental themes, and noodly breakbeat ditties into a soundscape that is bittersweet yet optimistic. Here, however, the bombastic Latin jazz and samba rhythms often clash with the ominous vibes from the onscreen proceedings, feeling very discordant. The undertones of gloom in the show’s more roofless turns blend with the musical ambience of non-stop celebration into something positively sinister.

Indeed, as the blurb on the show’s official site puts it, the coexistence of hope and despair was a key thematic guideline. Michiko is set in present-day Brazil, loosely ciphered here as “Republica de Diamandra”, and Manglobe staff traveled across the country to capture the regional flavor. As the copious photos on the location hunting section indicate, this was done with a typically Japanese diligence, reminiscent of the work fellow Sunrise splinter BONES put into crafting shot-for-shot accurate scenes of the Russian Far East in Darker than Black 2. From risking their lives to visit the favela slums to minding the small details like authentic currency design, the producers sure did their homework.

None of this would’ve mattered, of course, if the production values weren’t up to snuff, but this is one gorgeous cartoon. Along with the lush sonic background, the animation is not only smooth but colorful, with the entire palette, from drab to garish, coming through with sharpness and clarity. Attention to detail is evident in each and every visual element, including vehicles, street scenery, and in-show television, but especially the people. Worthy of separate mention are the ever-changing outfits: just like real Brazilians, the characters love to dress up.

While he is onboard for music production duties, Michiko e Hatchin is not a Shinichiro Watanabe joint. Watanabe’s associate Sayo Yamamoto, whose prior work at Studio Madhouse includes episode direction and storyboarding, takes helm in a full-length directing debut. Commendable as a first-time effort, her directing nonetheless can’t touch the airtight feel of Watanabe’s works. This is most evident in the exposition’s nosedive toward the end, as major events are resolved in a mix of serendipitous coincidence and villain stupidity. The script is tight enough to keep the viewer scrambling to queue up the next episode, but, despite competently wrapping up the story, the ending feels unsatisfying in a way generally reserved for shows rushed to completion.

The show’s Achilles’ heel is an alarming scarcity of effective characterization, with next to no character growth apparent in anyone but Hatchin. In Bebop, Champloo, and even Manglobe’s lesser-known mess of an anime Ergo Proxy, many standalone episodes exploit the shift of focus away from the primary plotline as an opportunity to flesh out the characters, a strategy whose success contributed to their high rewatch value. This is, sadly, not the case for such diversions in Michiko, which come off as fruitless attempts to infuse flavor into a show already saturated with it. The worst of the standalones are basically retreads of Anime 101 tropes, with a plodding pace bogging down an already uneven tempo of exposition. Overall, with the side characters nearly forgettable and most dramatis personae little more developed than when we first saw them in the opening, one can’t help but feel that the real star of the show is its setting - specifically, the country of Brazil.

If the generally positive feedback across Lusophone anime blogs and fora is anything to go by, the painstaking background research paid off (hardly a given). Naturally, the utterly ridiculous farb, like bullfighting and a married Catholic priest receive the appropriate disdain and indignation, but most reviewers consider the show’s atmosphere as authentic, if heavily stereotype-driven. Since this is the internet, there are also the requisite laments that “there’s more to Brazil than favelas, bandits and juicy mulattas” (how dare a pulp action romp about a con woman on the run focus on such things!). Most revealing was one blogger’s praise of the anime for its matter-of-fact treatment of Brazil’s social ills, as contrasted with the unbounded sensationalism in native and other foreign media. It was this very aspect, and not the glut of anime-friendly Brazilian curios like mixed Latin-Japanese names and VW Beetle police cruisers, that made the biggest impact for me.

Curiously, the same parts claimed to be more soberly portrayed by this cartoon are the ones viewers might find the most shocking, like child gangsters gunning down a stripper in cold blood. Brazil’s standing as one of the most violent countries on Earth has resulted in a public image the locals resent; unfortunately, as per the US State Department’s harrowing travel advisory, it’s a legitimate one. With reports about full-scale urban warfare in the favelas routinely making headlines, there’s no surprise that The Elite Squad is one of the most popular Brazilian films of all time (but, alas, not a manga). The movie explains how, trapped between an impotent and corrupt administrative structure and the feral, drug-fueled hostility of the favelados, policemen are forced to become executioners in a deadly struggle with an enemy that grows not only better equipped but more numerous.

The population creep is not just an economic challenge, with the federal welfare programs struggling to keep up with a permanent underclass getting poorer and more dangerous as it grows, but also a direct logistical threat. The result of a haphazard urbanization spurred by a breakneck rush to industrialize, the favelas make the cityscapes of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro look more like an an ADHD child’s game of Sim City than the major hubs of a rapidly growing major world economy - a literal Damocles’ sword inching ever-closer above the metropolitan centers.

Thus, it’s the ubiquity of crime and poverty-driven Third World social dynamics channeled in the very fabric of the setting that casts such a chilling pale of hopelessness over the show. The final episode features an older Hatchin as a tall, gangly waif with a teenage body, an even more boyish haircut than before and… an infant child, working long, demanding hours in a restaurant kitchen. In a voiceover narration, the dismissively casual way in which she mentions breaking up with the baby’s father effectively undermines 21 preceding episodes’ worth of characterization of Hatchin as a zealously responsible individual.

Most dissonant with the Hatchin we knew as a kid is her nearly emotionless voice; she describes “fleeting moments of loneliness”, but the weary resignation in her deadpan tone seems to reveal a far deeper state of malaise. Reunited with Michiko in the show’s final minutes, she asks, “how far will we travel this time?” We started with one disaffected, futureless single mother and ended with two of them. The jaws of Ouroboros close around the scaly reptilian tail, and the viewer, denied any sort of closure, let alone catharsis, responds in turn, “what was the point?”

With no other recourse than taking the journey at face value, a singular theme emerges as the punchline: one of a permanent escape from the realities of life. This also applies to Brazil’s own recent policies, as the authorities thrash between throwing money at the poor and haphazard rushes to “pacify” favelas in time for dignitary visits and major sports events. Meanwhile, the police stay underpaid, the poor stay unemployed, and the working classes are fleeing en masse into Alphavilles - private enclaves with tolled highway exit spurs and dedicated security forces. “How far will we travel this time” indeed.

Goddamnit, and here I was trying to watch something upbeat and light-hearted. But hey, The Elite Squad 2 is supposed to hit American theaters this fall - that ought to cheer me up. MISSÃO DADA É MISSÃO CUMPRIDA. UMA VEZ CAVEIRA, SEMPRE CAVEIRA!

Не могу поступаться принципами: A Declaration of Independence

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:54:00 -0400

In the two years since the definitional article, The Confederacy of Dipshits has done nothing but grow without bounds, let alone a sense of shame - Panopticus Æternum even got his own university-sponsored print magazine. A scum-encrusted pond of a few dozen worthless blogs has bloated into a hundreds-strong Exxon Valdez-level stain, spilling over from the leprosarium of MyAnimeList into the speedy thoroughfares of Twitter to spar with “bros” over who’s most cynical and least employable. Though a shallow, substanceless entity, this blob has nonetheless managed to swallow anything resembling editing standards, originality, and quality control procedures, leaving behind only poorly disguised groupthink that hinges on appeals to shared insecurities. The CoD article was penned on the wings of an optimistic premise that internet authors could be led to excel by example, which in turn hoped for some kernel of good in their ranks worthy of cultivating. The perspective from a distance of two years is one of utter despair, a hopelessness so thorough and final, it would have Nobuyuki Fukumoto giving head to an Arisaka 99, for anime fandom is rotten at its core, with degenerate dynamics like the Geek Social Fallacies furnishing its founding and sustaining principles.

In this light, the naivete of the article positing the fandom’s domination by unsavory elements as a treatable condition is trivially apparent upon the realization that the community will never give rise to leaders and gatekeepers capable of taking it in a productive direction. As it stands, the petty bickering between its two most vocal schools, the “I don’t watch new anime, everything after 1998 sucks” nostalgiamongers and the “all shows should be K-ON in a different setting” pedophiles, will continue to deepen into a proper schism like a quarrel between a moldy antiques gallery and a neon-lit dildo shop. Since both camps are foremost social groups, any notion of striving for insight or effective communication is doomed to remain a veneer. After all, if bonding over single-volume manga critiques and season previews is an adequate surrogate for real human interaction, isn’t a genuine pursuit of quality writing and engaging content just needlessly alienating and exclusive?

I don’t think so.

To quote Greg Enemy, I didn’t come here to make friends. I ain’t tryna eat off this shit neither. I spit dope writtens solely for the love of the craft. There’s nothing for me to gain in the Sea of Dipshit’s poisoned waters, with its photography of mayo-smothered french fries by lonely diners, tolerance of obnoxious windbags on account of video game clique politics, asinine podcasts and NicoVideo linkspam. When half-assing is endemic and circlejerking the prime imperative, excellence is the first victim.

Thus, rather than try to pick sides in a tug-of-war between Tim Maughan and Baka-Raptor, I’m cutting the rope. This place is my house, where the real niggas get props and the fake ones get served. I’m gonna ride till the wheels fall off, even if it means rolling one deep.

Step your game up, mufuckas. Welcome to Erf.

Legionnaire Champloo: Japan, As Viewed By 17 Creators

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:28:00 -0400

When it comes to translated Japanese reading fare, I am especially wary of two categories: compilations and “alternative manga.” Too many of the former are downright shams, with a pretty cover and a couple selected works expected to buoy a preponderance of poor-to-mediocre works by members of the headlining’s author’s creative circlejerk. My disdain for the latter stems from a preference for works that are pleasing and competent from the standpoint of classical aesthetics over ones that eschew these standards in favor of social context and subculture in-jokes. Yet, even though Japan, As Viewed By 17 Creators is a poster boy for both types of media, its premise of ten French and seven Japanese cartoonists writing about their experiences in Japan was strong enough to overcome these prejudices — and its execution compelling enough to recommend here.

An established art and animation powerhouse, France is well-known for not only for a vigorous indigenous comics scene, but also a robust appetite for licensing foreign works. Japanese titles are particularly popular, as many envious Stateside manga fans can vouch; what few of them know, however, is that an entire artistic movement has arisen from a cross-pollination of manga and French comics. Known as Manga Nouvelle, an association of Japanese and French authors has emerged from mutual interest in creating and translating works aligned with Japan’s seinen/josei aesthetic. Serving as the introduction to this book is the letter in which the group’s founder, Tokyo-based expat Frédéric Boilet, invites his friend Étienne Davodeau to participate in an effort where French writers would travel to Japan and write about the place where they were invited, and native writers would write about their hometown and neighborhoods. A helpful map of Japan precedes each story, with a marker indicating where it takes place — I have merged them into a single composite, which you can see in the figure below.

The stories in Japan are arranged by ascending longitude of the corresponding city, beginning on an island in the Amakusa chain with Kan Takahama’s tale about the town where she grew up. A stylish (and ostensibly autobiographical) tale of a European journalist interviewing a girl about her youth in a tiny fishing village presents a perfect start to the voyage across Japan. The next entry, despite a humorous premise (a Frenchman’s shoes escape their owner to wander around Fukuoka), is a drab jumble of scenes and pictures that might have worked in the hands of a competent artist, but is reduced by David Prudhomme’s wriggly, dilapidated style to resembling a mentally challenged first-grader’s report of a trip to the beach. Afterward, Jiro Taniguchi offers his own story of a fishing-village childhood. With the setup all but tailor-made to his specialty of following the mundane activities of a contemplative traveler, he is totally in his element.

The slew of French pieces that follows runs a complete gamut in terms of visual competency and thematic conformance. Clocking in at an absolute zero with respect to both is Aurelia Aurita’s noxiously self-indulgent “Now I Can Die!” The goofy intro page blurb informing us that she is working on an “autobiographical comic book, which, it is whispered, is highly erotic” offers fair warning, and no one can be surprised when the author inverts the compilation’s theme to tell an exhibitionist story about herself that merely happens to take place in Japan. The narrative is sex- and anatomy-obsessed at a highly juvenile level somewhere between a dog discovering its balls and a kindergarten game of Doctor.

Another lackluster piece rife with “adult situations” comes from Emmanuel Guibert, a gifted and versatile artist — but you wouldn’t be able to tell it from the murky blobs that pass for illustrations to his “Shin.ichi.” This work is typical of the corny “auteur” writing that peppers magazines like GQ, letting readers feel worldly and well-traveled as they check out Gucci’s latest ocelot-skin briefcase collection and sniff foldout cologne ads in line at the barber shop. “[A]n evanescent drop of sperm… traversed his young member like a soya sprout in a bamboo blowpipe… they were compasses whose virile member was the needle.” My advice to Monsieur Guibert is, stick to drawing comics.

Here, I wondered whether the opportunity to write about familiar grounds would induce the native writers to turn out stronger pieces. In fact, it was the Japanese who ended up with the laziest submissions, the worst of them a wordless sequence (by someone named Little Fish) about a man who sticks a sunflower into his belly button. The unexpected runner-up is notable josei writer Moyoco Anno (the wife of GAINAX’s Hideaki Anno). A compact showcase of the author’s elegant style and precise line work, her beautiful Edo-period vignette is a completely generic Japan-flavored tale that, like the sunflower “story,” tells us nothing about Tokyo. If anything, the presence of kimono-clad courtesan leads one to believe that, when the deadline hit, Mrs. Anno had nothing to submit and ended up using an outtake from her oiran-themed Sakuran manga.

Tokyo didn’t fare much better in French hands, with boss man Frédéric Boilet himself pairing some direly insipid writing with equally uninspired photography (stylized to look like sketch work). “Love Alley” features a dialog between a photographer and a nude woman as he takes pictures of her, set to completely random pictures of urban scenery. Brimming with positively Faustian levels of snark, their exchange is topped off by the man’s enumeration of the city’s recycling rules, so self-aware in its dry repetitiveness that it would make Bret Easton Ellis wince. The only work to tell us something remotely interesting about the city is “Walteroo’s Tokyo” by Joann Sfar, where the author and his expat friend stroll the streets while the latter rants about how everyone in Japan is a phony. Much like Boilet’s illustrations seem to be the result of searching Flickr for “Tokyo,” Walteroo’s diatribes offer little that hasn’t been covered in countless Internet rants by people who didn’t like their stay in Japan. However, in the context of a pretty but non-sequitur piece and two straight-up turds, this treatment of the nation’s capital is at least passable.

Nearing the end of the book, I realized that the only French contribution I found myself enjoying was “Osaka 2034″, a superbly illustrated travel brochure from the future that, in only a handful of panels, channels the city’s spirit with an authentic nod to Japanese idiosyncrasies. Things were not looking good for the visiting team until Fabrice Neaud’s “The City of Trees” single-handledly upped the stakes. Once described to me by a resident friend as “the most generic large Japanese city,” Sendai isn’t a particularly exciting tourist destination — nonetheless, through the lens of Mr. Neaud’s talents as an artist and observer, it comes across as a more captivating locale than even Tokyo (which, admittedly, got outright shafted). From the panel enumerating the defects in the author’s borrowed bicycle to the arrow diagram explaining a street fashionista’s hip strut, it is clear that his eye for detail is matched by a flair for capturing it in crisp, eye-pleasing drawings. One may argue that there is too much detail here, as Neaud crams a fair bit more exposition into each page than any of his collaborators, augmenting most panels with entire paragraphs of small-font text. Overall, I found the complexity to be well-managed, with an information flow that feels rich without being overwhelming.

Don’t let the visual density fool you — “The City of Trees” is no mere Kunstkamera of Japanese curios; as he rides around town, the author weaves his tales of exploration into a very personal and emotional narrative. Postmodernist hacks and avantgarde scenesters take note: your pet topics, like disaffectedness, loneliness, romantic and cultural malaise, are all here, just presented with a skill that doesn’t require faux-sardonic self-wallowing to make an impact. These sentiments are all integral parts of Neaud’s journey as he escapes society to countryside castles and desolate beach fronts, pondering why he prefers stones and buildings to people. His feelings of being disconnected from humans in general are compounded by the frustration of being in Sendai without a knowledge of either Japanese or English. The author’s homosexuality adds yet another dimension to his isolation, as he searches clubbing districts and parks for any sign of gay activity in a country where it is suppressed (unless, as “Walteroo’s Tokyo” tells us, it is used for peddling fujoshi media). Sealing the story’s status as the crown jewel of the collection is a copiously annotated two-page spread with a panorama of the Sendai cityscape.

Hokkaido, the terminus of Japan’s northeastward trek, is covered by two stories about the prefectural capital of Sapporo. Kazuichi Hanawa (of Doing Time fame) delivers the book’s only wintertime experience with a fascinating walk through a snowed-in mountain forest, while Étienne Davodeau scores another point for Les Blues with a charming tale of an old man’s fraternal affection for a local landmark. Curiously, no one was dispatched to Hakodate or the picturesque northern areas of the island. As stated in the introduction, the city choices were up to the sponsoring Franco-Japanese institutions and, if the derelict bike they gave to Fabrice Neaud is any indication of their budget, they were quite limited financially (which would also explain why Okinawa and the Ryukyus were neglected).

Overall, despite epitomizing the term “mixed bag,” Japan is a great read. Offering plenty of delights even when it fails to achieve its designated mission, the collection also serves as a solid starting point for discovering both French and Japanese cartoonists. A followup effort, Korea As Viewed By 12 Creators, has ostensibly been released by Ponent Mon. Information online is inconclusive, with nothing on the publisher’s site and stores listing it as either sold-out or available for pre-order — I encourage anyone who knows more to leave a comment (here’s hoping the dude selling a copy on Amazon for over $400 is reading this). In the meantime, go grab one of the abundant used copies of Japan, it’s worth it for “The City of Trees” alone.

True Tears: A False Flag Triumph

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:26:00 -0500

Though billed as a tie-in to a dating sim, True Tears breaks such shows’ trademark tendency of using hideous character designs with distorted features indicative of developmental disorders. Nominal chromosome counts aren’t the only distinguishing characteristic of the cartoon, which, name aside, turns out to have absolutely nothing in common with the eponymous visual novel. Yet, even as it fails to serve as an exploration of the game (which Wikipedia describes as a generic moé property), True Tears the animation succeeds as an enjoyable show.

Serving as the backbone for the plot in True Tears is a classic love triangle, with high schooler Shinichiro torn between two classmates: basketball star Hiromi, and Noe, a spaced-out weirdo who talks to chickens. The unremarkable initial episodes introduce a premise that threatens to develop into a harem scheme — or, worse yet, a drawn-out spectacle of people taking a whole season to admit feelings obvious to all others from the start. Thus, I braced myself for the standard assortment of insipid cliches that tend to crop up in any anime tailored to a youth demographic. What I didn’t anticipate is the characters displaying any sort of depth, let alone development, in the 13-episode span.

Notably, there’s no array of single-trait females, each with a hair style conveniently indicating which otaku fetish she represents — even the quirky Noe, whom one might initially dismiss as an oh-so-endearing mental case, has compelling reasons for the way she acts. Shinichiro himself is not just a faceless proxy for the viewer; he is portrayed as a pretty convincing teenager, with the romantic anxieties typical to his age compounded by an insecurity about his skills as a painter. Shinichiro’s art provides glimpses into his emotional state; his frustration at Hiromi’s indifference is channeled into a sappy picture book filled with mopey emo tripe about fashioning a necklace out of her tears. Interacting with Noe, whose gleeful antics sometimes border on the idiotic, inspires Shinichiro to draw stories about livelier material. As the plot progresses, he ends up having to choose between his childhood love and his muse — and it makes for a pretty interesting story.

As a rule, becoming a seasoned anime watcher goes hand-in-hand with increased expectations, yet it takes a true veteran to appreciate a proper treatment of storytelling basics, having long since written off anime as largely incapable in that respect. In his Key the Metal Idol review, Dave marvels at the revolutionary concept of pulling off a satisfying ending. The characters in True Tears impressed me by addressing personal issues by means beyond the canonical anime triumvirate of blithe denial, complete meltdown, and GANBATTE! fightin’ attitude. As the introduction of other characters mutates the love triangle into more curious geometric structures, the cast nonetheless finds the strength to confront the issues at hand. We see them acknowledge and learn from mistakes; Noe thanking Hiromi for the first earnest squabble she’d experienced is one of the most mature things I’ve seen a young character do in a teen-oriented anime.

Another pleasant surprise is True Tears‘ atmosphere. The colors are crisp and vibrant. The background environments are lavishly drawn, with a particular attention to detail in scenes involving nature. The passing of seasons is especially vivid, from the colorful mosaics of light reflecting in the autumn leaves to the bleak winter sky that frames a townscape engulfed by thick blankets of snow. Aside from the slightly jarring use of CG in panoramic cuts, this is a stylish show with a well-constructed ambiance.

In the end, being completely unrelated to the original game, with its disturbing-sounding “tear points system”, doesn’t sound like a big loss for True Tears. After all, romance visual novels are written to furnish a surrogate reality to people who fritter away their youth playing them. Thus, while it remains unclear why this anime is named after a game it has nothing to do with, this disconnect is probably why it turned out to be a good one.

The Great Red Hype: A Post-Mortem of First Squad - The Moment of Truth

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:26:00 -0500

The very first trailer, which hit the Internet sometime in 2005, was a profoundly bizarre viewing experience. Set to a hokey Russian-language rap over a remixed Polish tango from the 1930s, an increasingly surreal medley of footage featuring classic Sovietica and medieval horror made it clear that First Squad would be a highly unorthodox production. After successfully building up intrigue with the promise of swordfights and battles between T-34s and bipedal mecha in the same package, Studio 4°C and Canadian outfit Molot Entertainment provided very little follow-up information for about two years. By that time, even those few that were aware that this “weird AMV” was actually promotional material for a full-length feature wrote it off as yet another ambitious anime that failed to secure funding, much like the incredible Amazing Nuts!!, a similarly experimental 4°C effort. The titular moment of truth did not arrive until 2008, when anime media started regularly reporting about a joint Russian and Japanese effort to create a World War II-themed cartoon.

For the Russian-bred artists behind First Squad, Brooklynite Mikhail Sprits and Munich-based Alexey Klimov, the initial inspiration came from purchasing a handful of storybooks about teenage war heroes at a flea market. Such works were the USSR’s closest equivalent to the superhero genre, summoning their childhood fascination with the notion of kids with guns fighting in a bloody war of survival. Long-time anime fans who listed Jin-Roh, Kemonozume and Blood: The Last Vampire as personal favorites, Sprits and Klimov wanted to infuse the traditions of famous Soviet cinematographers like Tarkovsky and Eisenstein into a genre of storytelling that is organically suited for portraying melodramatic hero stories to young audiences.

Getting through to anime production shops wasn’t easy - aside from the prospect of having to work with foreign creators, the proposal came off as too ideological, unusual and, ultimately, risky to ever be considered (an unspecified major studio’s maximally laconic reply was, “Mikhail and Alexey, we do not this project”). Some that didn’t outright reject the proposal sought to exploit the setting for a Grave of the Fireflies-type story, with the “kids with guns” concept presented as tragic rather than cool. In the end, it wasn’t producers, but artists who truly connected with the vision in the pitch, recognizing the “Soviet Imperial” architectural and artistic style as fertile, completely untapped (by anime) grounds for weaving a fantasy world that would be at the same time modern and exotic.

The young warriors at the focus of the anime and the pamphlets that inspired it come from the pantheon of Heroic Young Pioneers, a staple of teen-oriented propaganda in the USSR. As alluded in this article’s predecessor, Communist indoctrination permeated every stratum of Soviet society, with a particular focus on the young people. Following the Children of October in age range, the Pioneers were a mandatory scouts movement structured as part of the secondary school system, and a stepping stone to the 14-and-up Communist Youth Union, which in turn served as a feeder for the Communist Party proper. Accordingly, any presentation of a youth in media or literature as a positive role model would frame him foremost as a good Pioneer.

With the Russian Civil War and World War II as the primary backdrops, stories featuring pre-adolescent fighters served to foster patriotic sentiment in schoolchildren. Though some were embellished (or outright manufactured), these narratives mainly related real events, in a graphic style designed to arouse a disgusted indignation at the horrors of the German occupation. Seeking to instill a readiness to sacrifice oneself in the defense of the Red Fatherland, such publications successfully cultivated a martyr complex in several generations of schoolyard cosmonauts. It was completely typical for a little kid to dream of receiving a posthumous medal for blocking a machine gun embrasure with his body, while his parents cried, regretful that they ever made him eat broccoli and drink cod-liver oil. In an example of dissonance typical to didactic materials of its sort, these gritty tales of wartime hardship and suffering inevitably sported a fresh-faced Pioneer, with a bright red neckerchief adorning a crisp, pressed school uniform, on the cover - the very image that Sprits and Klimov seized upon as the model for their show’s characters.

The Pioneers that formed the (very loose) basis for First Squad’s protagonists were, in the words of Sprits, “the megastars”, each a Hero of The Soviet Union guerilla fighter. In addition to scores of “routine” diversionary actions like blowing up bridges, cutting radio cables and destroying train tracks, all of these kids had performed uncommonly courageous acts. In the movie, these individuals, who had never met in real life, were re-imagined as members of “First Squad”, a commando team maintained by KGB’s fictional Sixth Department, specializing in paranormal warfare. A leitmotif in the show is the intersection of the real and the otherwordly, and main character Nadya must bring her fallen comrades back from the dead to fight an army of Teutonic knights resurrected by Nazi occultists.

Thus, much like the painstaking reproductions of Stalin-era architecture, art and military technology, the reference to real pioneers ended up merely another decorative element - a complete turnabout from the impression established by the promotional materials and interviews. All the fanfare about wanting to break Soviet canon out of its iron-curtained ghetto had me hopeful for a powerful story engaging enough to spawn an interest in its progenitor culture, the same way that Romance of the Three Kingdoms games drew my friends into Chinese mythology. It was fascinating to watch high schoolers with no prior care for Oriental history carry heated discussions about battles and generals, with names I had trouble keeping apart - except Lu Bu, an invincible ancient Chinese Chuck Norris (“Emperor is son of Heaven… but Heaven is son of Lu Bu!”). Reading about the authors’ thorough background research and desire to present the insular Soviet mythos in a form palatable to modern audiences led to a hope that First Squad could do the idea justice - a hope thoroughly dashed when it was revealed that the movie would be only 50 minutes long.

Unsuprisingly, as commenter Dane Scaysbrook put it, the show ended up an “utterly incoherent, unmitigated disaster”, with a muddled mix of flashbacks and action scenes awkwardly connected by mind-bendingly boring expository sequences. Special credit is due to the soporific droning of the voice actors, whose attempts to convey a sense of urgency varied from sounding bored and irritated to anxious but falling asleep, like ninth-graders performing a Shakespearean skit in English class with minutes before the bell rings for lunch. The background music was equally disappointing - the appearance of the magnificient Isaac Dunayevsky piece from the 1936 film The Children of Captain Grant, a personal childhood favorite, in the second trailer turned out to be a notorious bait-and-switch. Aside from a recurrence of that very snippet, the sparse excuse for a soundtrack consisted of minimalist violin plink-plonk loops that might as well be rejected tracks from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works.

Neither the walking mecha nor the sword duel from the original trailer made it in, with none of the remaining fights worthy of mention. Worst of all, the lauded Pioneers themselves came off as stunt dummies spouting cliched dialog, with little more to amount as characterization than a handful of cringeworthy one-liners - the same way they appeared to Perestroika-era kids, who, after mass exposure to foreign action media, were too busy arguing about whether BRUSLI could defeat SHVARTZNEGER to dream of heroic self-sacrifice. As with the rest of their unrealistic aspirations, Sprits and Klimov’s aim to “write characters that could compete with James Bond and Jason Bourne” utterly failed, resulting in papier-mache creations with all the charisma of a store-brand cereal mascot.

I had once described Bonen no Xamdou as an animated Potemkin Village, but it took a Russian show to properly embody the concept. First Squad ended up blowing its entire creative load on the trailers, which contained the lion’s share of the fruits of a frenzied drive for historical accuracy (one interview boasted of recording the precise diameter of a birch tree), a process that evidently occurred at the expense of assembling a coherent narrative. An entire year was spent writing a scenario for a 26-episode show, later cut to 13 and finally scrapped and re-tooled into a four-part movie due to a conflict with the directing team. At this point, there was little to merit the plans for launching the anime as the pilot for a multimedia brand with spin-offs and tie-ins, as literally nothing in the movie might compel the viewer to find out what happens next, let alone play a thematic video game.

A Russian proverb warns against trying to sit on two chairs with one ass - this movie’s creators shot for four, completely missing all of them. Wanting to tell a genuinely Soviet story, that could expand into a franchise while also raising awareness of the USSR’s contribution to World War II and appealing to international audiences was simply too much to ask of a sub-hour feature anchored by a dismally weak script. On an especially ironic note, the show’s construction as anime massively backfired, as the medium’s extensive legacy of placing armed, uniformed schoolchildren into unfamiliar, yet recognizably European settings completely swallowed any of the meticulously-crafted stylistic flourishes, damning First Squad to being dismissed as not just bad, but generically bad anime.

I posit that the project’s spectacular failure is entirely the product of mismanagement, rather than flaws in the concept. Rather than wildly thrash between the demands of multiple overly lofty goals, the writers could’ve gradually laid down a foundation that could eventually sustain more ambitious designs. Instead of wasting a year on a fragile original script only to have it completely collapse, they should’ve opted to adapt an existing story. There are thousands of great works about World War II, in the dozens of languages spoken across the former Eastern Bloc, ready to serve as groundworks for an authentic tribute to the Soviet role in the conflict. The novelization and manga rolled out simultaneously with the movie’s release could’ve served as trial products for gauging public interest and gathering valuable feedback for making a stronger animated followup. Artist Enka Sugihara has done a great job of preserving the show’s realistic character designs, and his comic seems a much-better fit for the barebone plot than the movie.

Unless the investors have pulled the plug, the second First Squad feature should be entering production, and, if its creators stick to their old ways, they risk completely dooming the idea of a Soviet-themed anime. That would be unfortunate, because there are tons of incredible stories just dying to be brought to a larger audience. Hell, there’s even a ready-made Lu Bu character. Sadly, there’s no real-life Sixth Department, as they could’ve resurrected the $3 million blown on this dud and used it to produce a full-length Kung Fu Love…

Lifting the Iron Curtain from the East: Portrayal of the USSR in Japanese Cartoons

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:26:00 -0400

As we entered the Strait of Sangar, the galley television started getting a signal. The crew gathered around the tiny Šilelis, awed by the bright, vivid colors of the sort we had never seen on TV before. Furious samurai, frightened court ladies with bleached faces, frenetic talk show hosts, all talking in a completely alien language - during the four or so hours we had reception, we couldn’t tear ourselves away from these surreal programs

This tale of my uncle’s first international voyage as a Soviet Navy officer was prompted by the mention of Japanese TV at a recent family gathering. “If this is how we see them, ust imagine how they saw us,” someone quipped - and this is precisely the query this article aims to answer, with a focus on illustrated and animated media.

Despite its geographical proximity, the USSR remained as inscrutable to the Japanese as it did to the rest of the Western bloc. The average Russian was seen as an element of an oppressive totalitarian regime first and an individual second - not completely inaccurate, considering a populace governed like a single enormous military unit with a rigid command economy. Despite constant efforts to present itself as an emissary of peace, a nation where firefighters had army ranks, consumer goods were produced by war factories, and road maps contained deliberate errors to deter spy activity was simply incapable of projecting any other sort of image.

Internally, a well-oiled propaganda machine provided a thorough mental conditioning for young citizens, culminating with the mandatory two-year conscription for every 18-year old male. The Tajik carpenter, the Jewish chemist and the Yakut deer hunter - in the Army, all were, to quote the national anthem, “united for ages by glorious Rus’” into the fearsome Red Menace, a growling, unshaven berserker leading a bayonet charge with his outstretched AK-47. And for Japan, which was separated from Soviet territory merely by a handful of narrow straits, this menace was anything but abstract.

Pictures used with the gracious permission of Masato Kiuchi.

Nonetheless, there was a group of insiders capable of telling a story from within the system - the 600,000 or so Japanese soldiers who surrendered to the Red Army in 1945 and were interned in labor camps all across the USSR. One of them was IJAAF Air Corpsman Nobuo Kiuchi, who documented his experiences from internment through repatriation by means of lavishly illustrated vignettes (this work is maintained by his son on this website).

A prisoner in a foreign land, he described an existence that mirrored that of many regular Russian laborers at the height of Stalin’s power. With the post-war pockets of rampant crime liquidated, the country itself became a sprawling labor camp for the singular purpose of rebuilding its massive military-industrial complex. As such, Mr. Kiuchi’s accounts of grueling work in a quarry, louse infestations, and watching comrades succumb to hunger and extreme colds probably didn’t differ significantly from those of Soviet citizens who were engaged in building roads, canals and factories amidst harsh frozen climates.

In 1956, diplomatic relations were restored, with nearly all of the interned finally returning home (the reputation for diligent, defect-free work earned by these Japanese made local administrations reluctant to release them, especially on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, where such workers comprised the majority of the labor force). Despite a healthy economic relationship that made Japan USSR’s second largest capitalist trading partner, resentment over the loss of northern territories amplified the long-standing antipathy between old competitors over regional control. Fueled by a resurgence of revanchist nationalist sentiment, Japan rebuffed Soviet offers of rapprochement - an attitude that has persisted to this very day, with a formal peace treaty between the two nations yet to be signed. These factors ensured that Japan’s perception of the USSR was just as limited and propaganda-driven as that of its more distant Western allies. Accordingly, the Soviets most commonly seen in animated works are minions of the ultimate Red bogeyman: the KGB.

The formidable Soviet intelligence service maintained an involvement in geopolitical affairs virtually everywhere across the globe, with subdirectorates of the Foreign Espionage branch tailored specifically for various regions of the world. However, the reality of stealthy, incremental information gathering by complex networks of field operatives hardly makes for proper anime action. Instead, the KGB is shown relying on flamboyant villains to come in and blow shit up, like the mercenary Gauron in Full Metal Panic, or the equally ridiculous purple-robed, RPG-toting archaeologist in the bad anime classic Crystal Triangle. There is also the goofy, but not entirely unrealistic Patlabor on TV episode “Red Labor Rising”, where a KGB general defects to Japan along with a military mecha, which may’ve been been a nod to the 1976 escape of MiG pilot Victor Belenko to Hokkaido.

None of these Cold War-era scenarios go beyond slapping the KGB label on an otherwise completely generic character. The closest anime came to a compelling portrayal of an agent was an episode of the 2001 snoozefest Noir, where an ethnic diaspora hires the girl assassins to get revenge on an old man who had once abused his rank to repress their fellow nationals. Echoing real instances of Soviet ethnic groups exploiting political and law enforcement structures to wage centuries-old conflicts, this is a theme that deserves far better treatment than passing mention in a Bee Train property.

Curiously enough, anime’s most famous Soviet is actually an East German. Despite having to rebuild more or less from scratch, with the occupying forces having looted everything from factory equipment and scientific talent to train rails and motorcars, the country still emerged as the leading Eastern Bloc satellite. The DDR’s positioning as a showcase socialist state was a key element of the USSR’s export culture, and I’m pretty confident that Jung Freud, the foil-turned-ally of the protagonists in Gunbuster, was inspired by Sigmund Jähn, its first (and only) cosmonaut. Aside from her hammer-and-sickle mobile suit, Freud was a disappointingly by-the-book incarnation of the “brash foreign rival” template that eventually became dominated by stereotypical “American” personages with blond hair and sunglasses. In fact, palatable Soviet characters didn’t start emerging until the fall of the USSR, joining the ranks of militant ex-Nazis and spiteful Anarcho-Marxist revolutionaries as an archetype of a rebel fighting for a lost cause.

One such post-Soviet Soviet is Black Lagoon’s Balalaika, the head of a battle-hardened VDV platoon-turned-criminal gang called Hotel Moscow. Like the US Marine Corps, the VDV (airborne assault troops) are its country’s most iconic military elite, recognizable by the telnyashkas (standard striped Navy BDU undershirts, worn to signify the VDV’s capability for amphibious combat) under their regular Army camo. Balalaika’s transition from serving her country to organized crime was a career move depressingly typical for too many military professionals, out on the streets once the war machine that sustained them suddenly lost its supporting economy (and ideology). Nature abhors a vacuum, and the chaos of the “wild nineties” gave rise to what mathematicians would call a structure-preserving transformation.

Old party bosses became money-thirsty oligarchs, with ex-KGB men setting up information networks for trade and speculation, and military officers taking up posts in the private armies that protected these incipient financial empires during the cutthroat race to pilfer the fallen nation’s vast riches. Losing her rank of captain and the chance at an Olympic sharpshooting medal, Balalaika didn’t take the demise of her fatherland well. The formation of Hotel Moscow offered not only a salary, but an escape route back to a world where fighting ability and quick thinking ruled the day; she is openly disdainful of criminals who bought their way to the top. Balalaika treats every transaction as full-out military operation, with a readiness to establish strategic alliances and recognize valor in an adversary - mentally, she is still in Afghanistan.

Another mafioso operating under the auspices of the Russian embassy in Japan is the power-hungry ex-diplomat Ivan Sorokoff from the Buronson/Ikegami manga Sanctuary. More than just another former spook using his KGB connections for personal gain, Sorokoff is a driven lobbyist on a mission to restore Russia’s imperial might. Conspiring with Japanese lawmakers for a mutually profitable scheme to exploit the extensive natural resources of Siberia, he ends up clashing with the main characters over the control of Hokkaido politics. The young, ambitious reformers see him as their own opposite number; in 1995, when the story was published, many foreigners still held an optimistic view of Russia’s future.

The Russians themselves, however, knew better than to hope for a light at the end of the tunnel. The tanks that fired at the parliament unwilling bend to Yeltsin’s dictatorial edict during 1993’s constitutional crisis seemed to extinguish any hope of a political rescue for a citizenry hopelessly mired in hunger and internecine strife. Thus, when the author postulates (in the words of a wizened old Yakuza) that “the more elite the Russian, the more strongly he believes that Russia must always be a superpower”, the assertion is rendered laughable by the actual behavior of Russia’s thieving real-life elites. As the nation’s continuing decay into a volatile has-been of a failed state has demonstrated, if there were any politicians who subscribed to that notion during the nineties, there certainly aren’t any today.

And so, the “Red Threat” baton has officially been passed to China, now the official guardian of totalitarian propaganda, red-and-yellow color schemes, and boxy machinery with complex alphanumeric designations. Most recently, the impact of this handover was shown in Gundam 00, which placed them, and not Russia, at the head of the pan-Asian political bloc - the home of grizzled veteran pilot Sergei Smirnov, who twenty years ago would be sporting Soviet insignia. Instead, it appears in efforts like Hayami Rasenjin’s Operation Workhorse, a sketch compilation that features a dizzying smorgasbord of Soviet-inspired imagery, with saucer-eyed heroines as moé intelligence officers and elf-eared submarine commanders. It seemed almost inevitable that the Soviet legacy would remain merely a superficial presence in Japanese visual media, as a fertile source of legendary technology and exotic symbols to be plundered by history-obsessed mangaka – almost.

The result of an unprecedented partnership between New York-based creators and experimental animation shop Studio 4°C, the feature-length film First Squad is the manifesto of two Russian artists seeking to bring celebrated Soviet lore to international attention. In the works since at least 2005, First Squad is at the end of its film festival circuit both stateside and overseas, with a Russian DVD release slated for October 15th - and a review as soon as I get the opportunity to see it.

A Confederacy of Dipshits: Dissecting an Infestation

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:54:00 -0400

The year is 1989, and my grandpa’s electrical engineering expertise is called upon to fix a neighbor’s misbehaving radio. With the screws out, the clunky off-white box comes apart, revealing something much more sinister than a burnt-out wire or loose capacitor: to everyone’s disgusted surprise, the problem burst out in the form of a massive cockroach colony.

As the adults fumbled for a can of dichlorvos, I was struck by a curious feeling of dissonance. The radio, a versatile informer and entertainer, brought urgent news, classical concerts and chess matches to a populace spread far and wide. It was a tech enthusiast’s toy box and a traveler’s portable companion – but none of this mattered to the roaches, who just wanted a dark, enclosed environment to shit up. Left to their own devices, the insects did an impressive job of multiplying, at the cost of permanent damage to the radio’s original – intended – functionality. Likewise, the rank-and-file anime blogger set up shop in search of an isolated refuge from reality, until enough of them accreted to establish a warped structure of discourse that has very little to do with exchanging ideas or opinions.

It’s not like the preponderance of garbage is unique to the anime-devoted segment of blogs. Enough shitty sites about art, music, programming, etc. are out there to justify invoking the over-quoted Sturgeon’s Law. Nonetheless, all of these domains rely on a competent cadre of writers to uphold standards that foster effective communication, in turn enabling the detritus to be recognized as such. This has not been the case for anime bloggers, most of whom are out not to inform, but to indulge personal insecurities with displays of exhibitionist self-wallowing (and loads of huge screenshots to compensate for the lack of substance). The mediocre are so firmly entrenched that they call the shots, repelling anyone actually interested in genuine discussion or criticism of anime. As a result, not new ideas and understanding, but conformism and endless regurgitation of memes drive the community’s existence. Its degeneration has been so thorough and systematic that most of its participants neatly fall into three categories.

Archetype 1: Sukebe-Panda

Typical blog names: The Melancholy of Sukebe-Panda, Nekomimi Conundrums, 100% Pure Win, Drowning in Pantsu

Sukebe-Panda is the result of not getting his ass kicked enough as a kid, which allowed him to remain an obnoxious, in-your-face teenage loser all the way through his twenties. For him, the world of Japanese media is an accessible scene that is just insular enough to serve as a fertile source of inside jokes, weird fetishes and other social markers for asserting a sense of belonging. Once the campus anime club and the smelly kids’ cafeteria table in high school are no longer available, a blog becomes the next best way to participate. Yet, this is a constantly moving bandwagon, and staying on top of things requires continuously keeping abreast of the latest 4chan catchphrases, image macros and annual “Dai-kawaii Meido” polls on Japanese forums. On this dynamic playing field, leave it to a distinguished achiever like Sukebe-Panda to prove his mettle by showing just how EPIC his latest WAIFU is, how many pillowcases with pedophilic drawings adorn his wall, and how much sperm he can ejaculate onto a plastic schoolgirl figurine.

To his credit, Sukebe-Panda doesn’t pretend to be particularly insightful. He writes reviews and year-end roundups to keep up with peers, but is content to simply list his favorite panty shot scenes or disturbing fanart to jerk off (excuse me, FAP) to. This archetype is the likeliest to “graduate” from anime to just playing Asian video games and arguing with fellow alumni about who’s more jaded about Japanese cartoons. It would be nice if the ongoing specialization of otaku merchandise and shift of conventions from covering anime proper to general fandom lore provided a way to absorb these clowns directly. For now, anime remains the primary gateway to the scene and, as long as there are torrents and Wordpress, Sukebe-Pandas will be blogging about it.

Giant image abuse rating: high (especially if he just bought a figure or wacky new hat). Sukebe-Panda is also fond of embedded YouTube videos, but what he loves most is linking to similarly inane pages elsewhere in the blogosphere (pardon me, BLOGOHEDRON). However, as fun it is to suck dicks, the one S-P finds tasting the sweetest is his own, so fully expect half of these to be past Sukebe-Panda articles. This scholar has kicked science to the curb by standing on his own shoulders, and copious references to old audience favorites like “The Battle of TrafalGAR” and “Twintails vs. Hime Cut - A Lolilicious Dilemma” are guaranteed to both entertain and enlighten.

Archetype 2: ~SkyGazer~

Typical blog names: Kakeru-san’s Maboroshi! Blog, …an endless pause…, Melodic Afterthoughts, ★Atarashi☆Watashi★

Shaped by a lifetime tenure as a spineless punching bag, ~SkyGazer~ is a self-described “dreamer” (here, an unsubtle codeword for “milquetoast escapist ashamed of his past and scared of the future”). This doormat has acquired a thorough phobia of anything that could remotely be construed as judgment or criticism – which doesn’t deter him from positioning himself as a critic and reviewer of anime. ~SkyGazer~’s poorly organized, meandering excretions represent a brave new school of critique, as per the following axioms:

A critical mind merely isn’t open enough.
When something clearly aspires to fit some defined criterion, but fails to, the definition is too narrow and should be relaxed accordingly.
A person who dislikes something must dislike absolutely everything, and his opinions are to be dismissed as baseless negativity (or trolling).

A total rejection of standards and metrics provides ~SkyGazer~ with a vast playground for waxing philosophical about “the bliss of imperfection”, while chiding anyone who dares to admit failing to enjoy a show for not LETTING himself enjoy it. Writing like this is not easy – it is all-too tempting to lapse into discussing a show’s strengths and weaknesses like a normal person, but ~SkyGazer~ dutifully peppers anything that might resemble an opinion with expressions of doubt and uncertainty:

“I found Season Two of ‘NikuNiku Hazardous Chronicle’ to be weird, but a fun kind of weird. I think. The last episode features loli ninjas, and I couldn’t possibly dislike that – because I don’t. That would be crazy, but I am already crazy, so here’s a really win picture of Niku-sama: [GIANT SCREENSHOT]”

Count on ~SkyGazer~ to stay up to date on the internet jokes and macros, but unlike Sukebe-Panda, this dude takes it 100% seriously. He defines himself first and foremost as an otaku, more precisely, a warrior on the battleground of moe – the only genre featuring characters more helpless and one-dimensional than ~SkyGazer~ himself. His weapon of choice: holier-than-thou diatribes on the chaste purity of his beloved maidens, complete with extended psychological profiles and a “Soap Opera Digest”-level of scrutiny into the proceedings of key episodes. Lord help any soul brave enough to point out how moe is a money-milking machine carefully crafted to ensnare fetishists; ~SkyGazer~’s utter incapability for critical introspection ensures that he’ll foam at the mouth at as many comments as his blog engine can handle. Any complaint, whether about idiotic fansubber habits, uncompelling characters, or undisguised otaku pandering will be interpreted by ~SkyGazer~ as an assault on his beloved animes and answered with a furious barrage of self-righteous babbling.

Giant image abuse rating: severe. Putting too much text all at once might be too hard on some people, so why not provide an opportunity to pause and contemplate a helpful graphic? Of course, it pays to be mindful that interpretations of “too much” vary across individuals, so why not play it safe by spamming an image in every fucking paragraph?

Archetype 3:Panopticus Æternum

Typical blog names: A Meta-history of Zeitgeist, Anime Apotheosis, Inexorably Lugubrious: An Otaku Odyssey, Excursions Unto a Superior Culture

The esteemed Panopticus Æternum, Esq. considers himself an historian, theosophist and philosopher, and his singular mission in life is to bloviate without end, even if noone is paying attention. Being the kid who talks too much is a lot easier when you’re alone at the keyboard, a drive that Panopticus channels into taking anime blogging to the next level. He will set out to review a romantic comedy and end up with a multi-part persuasive essay about the extent to which a side character fits a popular fandom fetish. A retrospective on a long-running shounen series will warp into a protracted comparison with the themes of loyalty in some archaic incunabulum, complete with footnotes and a glossary. Ready and willing to add a literary flair to the most preposterous of assertions, Panopticus is a perennial favorite of ~SkyGazer~s everywhere as a primary source on the parallels between being a magical girl and the hardships experienced by a 15th Century Jesuit acolyte.

No matter the subject, Panopticus always reminds us how he single-handedly keeps the R1 industry in business by purchasing piles and piles of DVDs – a dubious accolade, considering his horrible taste. Occasionally, US distributors end up licensing the oddest stuff, causing fans to wonder who the fuck would ever buy it. Well, chances are that Panopticus not only bought it, but also shelled out extra dough for the limited edition, gaining the privilege of punctuating some endless wall of sleep-inducing text with a ultra-high resolution scan of the enclosed bonus PENCIL BOARD. He is also the likeliest candidate for engaging in that bizarre variety of necrophilia, whereby some mind-blowingly obscure OAV from 1981 is repeatedly cited as the unsurpassed apex of the animation industry as a whole. Yes, it’s a wonder that Lawnbattle Delight Ramencopter, where the robot freezes his enemies’ vocal chords so they can’t shout attack names, is so thoroughly underrated -– a case not unlike the Archduke of Schleswig-Holstein getting passed over for Kurfürst in the Papal Bull of 1356.

Giant image abuse rating: medium-low, and there’s at least one image (text-only posts violate the Shitty Anime Blogger Constitution, punishable by revocation of Twitter privileges). To Panopticus, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but the space it would occupy on a page could house ten times as many – and so it does.

Thus, the real topic of the average “anime blog” is not anime itself, but rather the ways it serves to provide meaning in the life of a worthless individual with the personality of a traffic cone. The exceptions to these anti-patterns of anime blogging are far and few between, and they are neither numerous nor cohesive enough to raise and maintain a high standard. In the meantime, the incestuous swarm of faggots is left to thrive like parasites in an ecosystem without a natural predator.

This is a serious problem, but it is also eminently solvable. Anyone with something interesting to say about anime and the desire to do it right should just go ahead and make a blog, without bothering to grapple with the retards or even paying them any attention. This especially goes out to the curmudgeonly past generations of fans. Instead of complaining about how shitty new stuff is, why not explain why the old stuff was so much better? Finally, if you recognized yourself in one of these descriptions, do everyone a favor: STOP. Switch gears. Put on your acid-orange Crocs (or whatever abortion of a shoe is now in vogue with lazy, friendless rejects) and step outside. The fresh air might just awaken whichever synapse is responsible for realizing that being an attention-deprived wretch is hardly grounds to make an embarrassing spectacle of oneself.

Sadly, there’s no fumigant strong enough to dislodge the current junta of socially stunted imbeciles from prominence, but if enough people do anime blogging right, they can create a new critical mass that displaces the old one to its rightful niche of resident kooks. It can happen. Let’s take back our radio.