Category Archives: Deca-dence

TV Anime Thoughts: 2020 Autumn

Just freestyling about in and on a particular Autumn afternoon. A lot of shows I won’t mention despite that I am still watching them, and some I don’t watch might get mentioned.

Is this season good? I think so–Corona has done a number to a bunch of shows this year, so even these low-budget-feeling programs like The Boy Who Loves Slimes and Standing on a Million Lives anime with Lantis OP/ED but actually Isekai are surprisingly good Entries. Actually The 1M anime is worth a deeper look. It’s probably the most overflowing-with-kindness take on a pretty deep introspective subject, not to mention it’s one of the weird isekai anime that has a non-isekai slant that isn’t someone logging into an online game. Except it kind of is someone logging into an online game. Anyways, it’s odd and unique. Ever think about the Great Filter? This is getting to that.

Boy Who Loves Slimes, or By The Grace of the Gods, is like a male-centric take on the healing isekai subgenre. Kamihiro is basically a lot messy and clumsy take compared Iguchi Yuka’s little Myne (Main?) from Ascendance of a Bookworm. Koroazu is serviceable here (I guess it is hard to play a child who used to be a worn-out salaryman) but way less spirited than Moroha from the Inuyasha full-blown sequel. I mean this is how you do a proper franchise reboot. I kind of didn’t bother with the original Inuyasha but I am enjoying the Yashahime anime quite a lot. Maybe it helps that there isn’t this Fushigi Yuugi template it tried to walk on. Thinking back it is really hard to like a series when you don’t really care for the two main characters.

The new formula is also breathing life on Major 2nd. Major is one of those popular baseball manga/anime that I would never like despite it being a popular (in Japan anyways) baseball story. Because it is the most hollow, pointless baseball story that manga-fying everything came to represent. Like, you can (and people have) create a manga about just about anything, including various sports and even more mundane or weird stuff. However Major 2nd is not like Major at all in my estimates. It actually respects the sport instead of bending it for the services of its characters.

The other interesting thing about Major 2nd is the whole male-female physical development thing and how puberty is a weird time for athletes trying to compete, to say the least. Like, talk about a topic that isn’t represented much in anime. But this is great. This is the wholesome afterschool TV program that I crave, not that I care particularly about this one item, but the way Major 2nd pivoted completely from its diehard post-reconstruction rhetoric to something people would actually care about in the 21st century is a good study at any rate. In that it actually cares about its authenticity. If you are going to be a story about something extremely real, ie., baseball that everyday kids can play in school, it really helps to also be extremely real in the portrayal. At least, as translated into the medium.

This is also a thematic issue that I’ve seen in recent years. A lot of original TV anime programs fail to capture viewers despite being very interesting. I think two great picks here are Deca-dence and Listeners. But on the flip side you look at (really dumb) serial works turning into anime, they tend to have more of a pull. Major 2nd is good, to something more bling-y like Jujitsun Kaisen, or genre-changing to the likes of Tower of God anime. I think that other Korean cartoon adaptation is the epitome of this–God of Highschool is basically everything nobody cares about but would gladly turn off the brain and watch. It’s like, maybe something to fill the gap between Kengan Ashura adaptations (now that is a fun fighting “anime”).

(For a point of contrast, compare God of Highschool with Akudama Drive (an anime original), man, the difference is clear.)

Is it just that, having the first editorial and publishing go-around culls the silly stories that you’ve seen from top creators? Tomino needed G-reco TV to make the G-reco films, I guess.

There may be some types of works in which we can be easier on. Wandering Witch provides that once-a-year kind of experience, where you can also shut off the brain to enjoy some thought-provoking fable chill-vibes. In this particular case the stories don’t cut as deep as, say, Kino’s, but it is also somewhat positive. It’s like social media is full of luls, but people end up being more glam and positive than they typically are, just because it’s good for engagement. In other words: We live in a society. Indeed those works engage us from that side of life.

The pure-pure fantasy side of life is good this year too. Media-mix projects (original anime works, let’s not forget) like Sigururi and Assault Lily are bringing the heat and excitement, or as much as you can get with a bunch of girls. Sigururi is particularly noteworthy because it reminds me of Garupan without all the problematic stuff you get from, say, another season of Strike Witches.

Well, Road to Berlin is fine. I enjoy it and every girl is great in that show. It’s just a bit tiresome after so many years? Maybe my tastes have evolved since then–between Kancolle, Azure Lane, and the barrage of similar bin of things in this very niche. It’s not like “isekai” where a whole world of themes can be explored…literally. Strike Witches first aired in 2007, that is a long run for a limited set of themes!

(As an aside, the gay formula in all these Bushifam works and others just reminds me of Golden Kamui which resumes this season but it gets even gayer than before. In some sense these shows all follow the same formula? I guess even Aachi & Shimamura.)

Other media-mix original anime works also seemed to hit their stride this season for me. A big, big one is D4DJ First Mix. I should write about this separately. The third Bushi-fam-linked-work in anime for this season is NijiGaku anime, and that one is also turning out way better than its predecessors. On that note, even Ochifuru is a lot of fun and I’m enjoying this collective of personas. Drop Out Idol Fruit Tart is a bit like a wonky 00s show but with updated and modern sensibilities. The cast is interesting too, with the cross section of interesting new seiyuu-idol talents.

If there was a miss among all the big gun media mix shows this season, I would say that is going to be HypMic. But even as it stands, it’s serviceable enough and fun to watch. I guess it helps to explain the characters to people who are not neck deep in that fandom, despite the songs were so hype 18-24 months ago. And yes, it can be really CRINGE. But that isn’t anything we didn’t know going in from the very start.

That and Dai no Daibouken are the two shows that I didn’t expect to enjoy this season, but ended up following them beyond 3. It feels like Cygames really should learn from Dai no Daibouken in terms of how to create a compelling RPG story that is between all the Rage of Bahamut things they made (see above regarding interesting original stories that failed) and The Grand Blues which I support as an anime series purely on the Teekyuu Principle but it is the most extravagant waste of time and resource I’ve seen lately. At least the Cingekis and whatever Bushiroad made can serve on its face. This is utterly worthless for non-players and except eccentrics like myself.

Actually, the problem is pretty clear once you’ve taken a moment to think about it–Granblue and Cygames in general spends way too much time grandstanding on their own junk. Maybe it’s kind of atmospheric, but this is kind of a shell game that isn’t selling to people who were not already buying.

I really enjoyed the One Rooms this season so far. I really miss this particular version of Rietion, and that Tomita Miyu act is quite enticing.

The dogeza anime is amusing enough, once you remember it used to be shittweets and now it’s an anime short. But I think the Joy of Sugita Tomokazu can be better found in Sigururi because they’re their own unit there. I mean, Sigururi E4…

It’s a funny coincidence that we got Iwakakeru anime this season, which just reminds me of this. That said, the rock climbing JK team is compelling because it’s something I don’t know about (competitive bouldering in Japan) and the main girl is interesting. That it is over the top is OK, keeps things fresh I guess, but the other characters seems really oddball and maybe the tone of story has to play into it, which makes it also oddish and over the top.

If thinking about adaptation gets this rant to this point, the one main counterpoint this season is Tonikawa. It is also kind of a cringe show but if the entire original story is a mental gymnastic trick, what does the anime have left to do? That said, I liked the OP a lot (possibly my pick this season while Jujitsu gets the ED) and, well, the source content is solid. If I had a nitpick it would be just Akarin’s version of Tsukasa is not a great fit in my opinion. She does a fine job here, that said.

A fitting way to end this post is thinking about the Maeda Jun anime this season–it isn’t that frequently we get a show of this heritage or caliber. It’s decidedly less grim than Charlotte, but way more compelling already. I think that might be due to the animation and direction being really spot on? The timing works. The characterization works (especially on the supporting cast), that the low-key skit nature of the dialog between characters work. The Day I Became a God is probably both in the running for a late-inning comeback homerun, or forgotten to the test of time like other interesting, well-made, original anime TV series. That in itself is kind of exciting.

If there is a thing about finesse in telling a story via animation, this year showed it to us what it means. It’s hard!


Deca-Dence’s Early Landing

The Deca-Dence twist was great, so why had I stopped caring by the end?

There is a simple answer to this question. It turned a movie-type plot into an anime series. In a way I applaud the Scamp summarizing the problem into a sentence, but it doesn’t quite unpack the full issue. Deca-Dence spoilers ahoy.

I too thought Dece-dence was a fun show that is quite compelling maybe up to the point where the plan was put together to blow up the monster farm. The narrative has already taken a split between POV of Heybot Kaburagi and POV of Natsume. In as much as the humans in the show are just there, or maybe better put, victims, Natsume gets relegated to that role which gave the beating heart of the story a bit too much emotional distance.

This means Kaburagi’s side of the story has to tag team, and frankly this Heybot-invoking story just doesn’t have the intrigue to carry the intensity the same way that Natsume-could-literally-just-die-any-time, while surf-spearing alien-looking bugs. In a way, the Heybot gimmick worked against it when you have this contrast and it isn’t consistently played for interest, as the second half of the story was mostly in Heybot-POV.

Which is to say, the final boss critter was a powerful monster but was way less fearsome than the doomed-to-fail-but-not mid-series mission where the game devs planned to kill off the over-accomplishing players and humans. Deca-dence was never a game in the first place, by playing up the game aspect, the story has emotionally cheapened its core asset.

Which is also another way to say, the story while had enough gas to go all the way, it was probably too introspective too quickly. The gimmick had to survive 12 episodes (roughly 240-250 minutes if you take out repeated parts), which is probably 120 minutes too long all said and done.


Economics of Lapis Re:Lights and Deca-Dence

I need to preface this with a plug of sorts. I blame this blog post on this Youtube channel, which recently I’ve been listening/watching because it occupies a weird mind space where while it regurgitates modern econ textbook content, it’s repackaged in a soundbyte form that is mostly the right spin, as long as you understand where it comes from. It also breaks down some current event topics, which is always helpful.

So there it was, me, watching Lapis Re:Lights on the weekends. Nevermind that the main character’s (center?) head piece has a vaguely biological diagram in the middle. Never mind her, even. Or the rest of the cast except maybe the few foreigners. It’s “just the facts, ma’am” when it comes to the characters that provide us clues to the setting. In Lapis Re:Lights, people perform “orchestras” to collect mana to power its society. Mana seems to be just some elusive notion that is generated by a crowd or a region of a city.

You can refer to other works out there that think about an economy where magic is a part of it. If our economy today is running on 100% clean, renewable energy, what would the economy be like? What if we can turn this energy into goods and products in a way that scales to flexible demand? Can this energy be easily stored and made available, any time and anywhere? Actually we have some ideas to answer these basic questions.

For one, it is a work of labor to do magic. A person can only cast so many spells, based on some notion of skill (I guess, the characters are at a school to study magic). It takes a person some time to cast a spell, and to deal with the result. It also seems like scale is limited (it isn’t the same effort to magically create 1 widget versus a million widgets). A lot of the spells in the show actually do not go into things that directly generate value. Putting on lights in the sky or being able to do fancy acrobatic moves or obtaining inhuman strength are all fine and well, but it’s hard to see how anyone would exchange those things for currency. Students in the show still participate in employment much like our real world.

Mass production is also an unknown in the world of Lapis Re:Lights. The visual depiction of the world seems to be a mid-industrial-revolution European setting. We see elaborate architecture, furniture and designs. Maybe the cobblestones makinig up the roads and sidewalks clue us in, but that could be a magic thing. But someone out there has to be making magic lanterns and other similar things at bulk, right? We see a city, and it seems to be not that small. In that Lapis Re:Lights is a world with craftsmen (Merrybery is a cute!), it might also be a world with distinct social classes, as implicit both by the structure of the students organizations inside the school, and that there are royalties and rich people, versus common folks.

If we put aside things like colonization that fueled the European powers during the industrial age, then it begs the question of how the basics needs of that society is met. Is there a large number of farmers in that world? If not, where do people get food from? How does such a country generate goods and services to trade for necessities? It does seem that the country the anime takes place have commercial relationships with other nations, such as the far east knockoffs countries that sent the 3 students that makes up Konohana wa Otome and the Asian princess in Supernova.

Of course, there are still a lot of outstanding questions about the fundamentals of the nations in the world, let alone the one the anime takes place in. Is Waleland modeled after a mature European economy like Holland or Norway that we know today? Or like Monaco, where rich people go there to live and tourism makes a big part of the economy, but doesn’t really generate wealth? Or is it more like Liechtenstein, where you have a huge tax haven-style banking and corporate finance system but also a high end manufacturing sector that makes expensive, low-volume, high-tech goods like medical equipment and manufacturing machinery? I mean I would buy their magic tents.

Definitely, if Waleland doesn’t need to import materials to run its energy economy, it can do well exploring expensive magic-infused goods, assuming the global market is mature enough. High-end manufacturing only works when there is enough demand for it, that there is a wealthy group of buyers who would be able to afford it. It could be organizations or individuals, but it’s not clear where the world sits in terms of that. But the vibe you get from this show is Waleland this is a country with a positive trade balance, where a major luxury of its people and a national resource is the magical power that fuels its infrastructure and give reasons for orchestras to exist.

On the flip side of this, in this summer season 2020, is Deca-dence. We know the creator of this series has said that the name is a wordplay on “decadence” and while thematically that is true, the setting is wild in a “reverse Wall-E” kind of way. In it, and spoilers ahead (as of ep7), there are two worlds in the story, one is the “robot” world which is inhibited by digital intelligence–from what we can tell, it is also a physical world even if the anime depicts it like cyberspace. Said digital intelligences can “jack in” to control other avatars in the Deca-dence world, which is another reality, also in the physical world, where these cyborgs and actual humans coexist. In the Deca-dence world, however, when people are killed, they are killed–unless you are a cyborg, in which you only lose your body and you get kicked out of the game (it’s kind of like Permadeath I guess)?

The economics of Deca-dence (the game?) is interesting, because clearly inside the system there is a real economy. I think this is no different than any other video game economy in which NPC (humans?) and players set the price based on supply and demand. There is a proper “sink” in which are the conflicts with Gadolls cost various resources, in terms of equipment needed to fight them, the human casualties, and other damage Gadolls inflict. Looting the Gadolls drive the economy in terms of supplying fuel, food, and other material. I don’t know, for example, where people inside Deca-dence get materials to create robotic parts (protagonist’s cybernetic arm, for instance), or even raw metal used to make those needle pipe things. It seems that there are repair kits people use to fix their homes, and armor plating used to repair the outer wall of the giant mobile rocket-arm-and-home-base. If a humvee gets blown up during the fight against the Gadolls, how do people replace it inside Deca-dence. These are important questions that don’t have clear answers.

That said it’s clear that Deca-dence, as far as a proverbial fish tank goes, is not self-sufficient. It’s clearly not a closed system since Gadolls are created outside of it and put into the game. It’s likely some manufacturing is not done by the facilities inside Deca-dence, although it does manufacture some stuff. I might have missed it, but it never implied all raw material that is needed to create stuff inside Deca-dence came from harvesting Gadolls. Although, as the setting goes, Deca-dence is actually on Earth, so there could still be resources that is harvested from the environment in general.

I mentioned that NPC and PCs set prices in the game, but this is partly true. It does have some kind of developer-set pricing for high end gear, which is really only accessible by external players (who are also called Gears), as it would mean they can purchase upgrades for their Deca-dence characters using currency outside Deca-dence. There is some reason to believe this is actually the case. Which leads us to think about what is actually interesting.

That is, the world outside Deca-dence, to be honest, is way more interesting, even if it is a much more slippery idea. The creation story that the audience is told in episode 2 paints a cyborg new-world in which humanity became nearly extinct, but only after we have uploaded ourselves into cyborgs and live in some kind of hybrid VR world. Deca-dence is really a zoo for humans, but also a “reality” game in which is basically a VR game for the cyborg denizens. So in narrative practice, it is the reverse SAO in which people in the VR is playing a game of reality.

While we were told a lot about the setting, I think much more isn’t really told to us and it’s up to us to find out. In as much the story bothered to tell us that there is an energy cycle in which Gadolls are the core transfer medium in which the cyborgs fuel Deca-dence, the Gadolls have to come from somewhere and there definitely needs be some kind of energy to power that new society of cyborgs. If anything, energy is even more important–it’s not like we can just farm and provide a way to survive anymore.

The idea behind market economics and creating sinks is very relevant to game design, however, so this is possibly the most natural take to our view of this kind of criticism of governing-by-theory, which tangentially is a blow on macroeconomics as well. I think it is kind of a dull blow though, even if it makes an apt analogy of thinking about the lives of main street folks affected by the high rollers on wall street, to use another analogy that gets to the point more succinctly.

To end this long rambling let’s just recap why this is interesting–settings are interesting in any work of fantasy, ultimately, because fantasies are fantasies are a reason. Underpinning any sufficiently robust depiction of any world is its economics. And you would at least think throwing key terms into the explanation of a core plot element would at least mean something.

In Deca-dence’s case, I think ultimately a post-scarcity, demand-based economy is its own criticism. But short of lecturing people on macroeconomics I don’t know what would really work as a compelling and entertaining story. Maybe this is why I watch those videos on Youtube.


Blogging About Anime, August 2020

It’s been a while since I wrote about my seasonal watches. Having MLB back on TV seems to provide me a kind of anchor, rhythm-wise. It is arguable that pro team sports is a good or bad idea in the US, in mid-2020, when/where the pandemic is still raging strong. But that seems like just par for the course in 2020, a year that the lowest of bars in politics, health, and communication are all up for argument.

The lowest of bars in anime is also up for arguments. I have some baseline opinions about Uzaki and how generally cutesy anime with sexual overtones have some link to pedophilia or grooming. But that also seems like an overtly obtuse argument used by tribalists who are not really interested in talking about anime. It’s like, just because you can use candies to lure kids into unmarked vans, they are bad? So let’s forget about the main use cases for candies and just say they are for pedophiles? I guess that is the low bar of media literacy up for grabs, in this era of our 2020. I mean, the candy industry does way more money than the anime industry (and tons of Aniplex titles, well), so maybe we can let that pass. Unmarked vans, though, tsk tsk tsk.

That being said, it is a strawman that I encountered–I have yet talk to any live human who would hold the opinion about Uzaki in such a way (in connection to pedophilia). The original complaint back last year about Red Cross Japan using Uzaki to promote a blood donation drive comes down to TPO, so it turns out, which is really nothing controversial. National, high profile charities should not perpetrate sexist stereotypes is a no-brainer. Need more blood, I guess.

The anime itself is surprisingly watchable. Uzaki is an irritating character that gets increasingly charming, and the cast also gets increasingly self-aware. Nothing to write home about, other than having a so-to-speak controversial urn where piss takes go into the huge drain in the internet sky. Maybe Uzaki’s …uzai-ness is part of the ethos behind those poopy takes.

Some anime on hiatus from last season have resumed. I think the best out of those I am enjoying is Major 2nd second season and Food Wars. It’s kind of odd that my tastes lately have shifted onto these arguably mainstream works. Major 2nd is especially praiseworthy with interesting characters and articulate, if a bit too convenient, baseball knowhow. The level of baseball IQ demonstrated by the show is beyond any middle schooler team, even if it’s one of those things coaches and parents who are hardcore baseball types would know. If you have kids this is not a bad watch to teach them about baseball. The way it plays up gender in teenage sports leagues gives me a Disney channel vibe.

Another last-season pickup is the historical fiction racing anime Appare-Ranman. Talk about weird character dynamics. A literal child is in this anime, a literal chinese woman is in this anime. A bunch of Americans, literally, are in this anime. And Japanese people, of course. It is extremely Japanese in a lot of ways, especially for an anime that takes place in a fictional world where America is a thing, that being the country they are in. But I guess these are not really relevant since everyone speaks Japanese or English in this anime, or whichever dub track you select. Is it post-racial or racist-but-who-cares? I don’t know if I care at this point. The premise is so whack that any appeal to historical underpinnings will be lost in all the noise. As an aside, BNW, Iron, and GM? One is not like the other two. Also that guy is French! LMAO.

Along the same line, something is remarkable about Deca-Dence, but the overall thing felt really slippery. I don’t quite have a grasp on the story or the characters–like I get what’s happening, but the post-humanity humanity of it is hard to sympathize. Like, robots are just robots. It’s the risk when you set up a setting that is quite smart but the level of discourse is not much more advanced than Spongebob Squarepants. The setting is visually grand and a bit all over the place at first. It features a sort of cyberspace kind of thing and a sort of meatspace kind of thing, but I wish they would just explain it to us in the way I just phrased it, as inverted.

Picking things up again is the new season of Oregairu and it is the most beautiful image of codependence ever. But it is a pretty neat non-binary depiction of relationships in which things are clear enough that words can describe, but you’re struggling to find them. It’s not so much a story with any emotional investment on my end, given how these really wordy stories play out over a long period (the first season started in 2013, if you forgot like me). It is simply a thing of beauty that came and will pass, again, like the autumn leaves or melting snow or whichever passing-of-four-seasons analogy you’d like.

As far as fanservice goes, Monster Girl Doctor and Kanokari are probably the top picks. Kanokari story is easily the most problematic thing by a country mile this season, it’s so bad that I really didn’t want to watch it at times. On the plus side, it has a fair amount of cultural cache and ultimately the episodes tend to turn out to be enjoyable overall. Once the story gets on its groove I think it will fall victim to general relationship polygonalism and dull its lame-brain, protagonist-takes-for-story-sakes kind of plot justifications.

Maybe the real reason why Kanokari has legs is that it is controversial, as opposed to Monster Girl Doctor which is just WYSIWYG. It is definitely a work where the element of surprise is not its forte, yet it can still occasionally deliver.

In a different programming track, the fantasy light-novel-anime adaptation flavor this season for me is Maoh Gakuin or Misfit of Demon Academy or whatever. It’s absurd in a fun way and plays on your preconceptions. The power fantasy is on the boring side of things but it does a good job withholding information to keep you interested. I also like how the anime tries to cram a lot of information in terms of last minute reveals.

I’m watching Gibiate. It’s sort of interesting if you look at it as an anime watcher’s anime. In premise, time-traveling samurai, ninja, and warrior monk kicks apocalyptic ass seems like a perfectly cromulent 1980s anime plot. You add the bit about self-recording, the virus, the show-in-a-show take, the zombie tropes, and in the end it’s a swamp of animation production issues bookended with unusual music choices. Also some interesting voice cast here. Trainwreck? Brilliantly bad? More like, just oddish.

There’s this anime about idols and magic school, which is tied to a KLab game franchise in the making (out soon?) called Lapis Re:lights. They had a fully-costumed seiyuu live thing last year (or several?). The idol units in the story all play a short live performance for us throughout the anime series, which gets a Youtube cut without the in-episode dialogue. It’s worth checking out if that’s your thing. Honestly, this is a bit too “love live” for me, but overall it’s worth mentioning. In some ways it’s the same formula as Love Live but more tailored to the prototypical otaku notion. Also, this song has a few sextillions in it.

Is this it? I think this is mostly it. I tried a few episodes here and there, like the fishing anime. The characters don’t do much for me but there’s a level of meta here where just like the protagonist, you end up liking the outdoor activity (or the depiction thereof) despite the annoying people? I don’t know. It’s more than what I can say about Peter Grill, although that show is interesting to think about, and kind of icky to think about, so it doesn’t occupy much thinking time. Umamusume shorts are cute and sweet. What else? I’m probably forgetting something as usual.