Category Archives: Franchises

April 22, 2008

CLANNAD the Movie or Incremental Upgrades Leaves the Heart Wondering

By omo

I enjoyed the CLANNAD movie. But I realize it became a very narrowly tailored exercise in, well, dramatic reenactment of something that’s probably more powerful.

The problem with CLANNAD, and to some extent the Key anime adaptations we’ve seen so far, is that there is no way to traverse through all the key “checkpoints” without making a mess of the story. The story either loses some of the impact because of that, or the story just gets too convoluted for a straight-faced narrative.

In a more general sense, multi-pathing visual novels are like arcade racing games. Specifically, it’s those games that takes a couple tokens to play where you have to not only beat your AI opponents, but make various checkpoints to get more time. When you run out of time, even if you are ahead of the pack, you basically lose.

In this modular way to look at drama, where trying to hit every gut wrenching twist and turn becomes the purpose of an unstoppable, artfully sly narrative, we should see quite a few of those checkpoints in the duration of the story. But when as applied to visual novels, the difficulty arises when your checkpoints are not dotted across one race track, but in a city of one-way roads that necessarily limits you to only a subset of all possible checkpoints available in the game out of the total.

The approach in a theatrical adaptation is necessarily much more single minded. We want to go in and get it done in an hour-and-half. TV series can pursuit forks in the road, but movies lack the luxury of time to backtrack (so much).

And in exchange, the CLANNAD movie took us deeper and all the way through with Nagisa’s story. But at what cost? Was it worth it?

I think how you answer those questions will be the litmus test to determine what you enjoy the most out of an exercise in drama.

Perhaps more relevantly, with each iteration, each Key adaptation, both Toei and Kyoto Animation do a better job. At least that was my impression.

1 comment | posted in Clannad, Modern Visual Culture

April 9, 2008

Kallen Eleven

By omo

I know why Kallen in episode one of Code Geass R2 was mad cool.

LOL WAH. And November 11 !=? Kallen Eleven

I was never much of a Kallen fan back in Code Geass season 1 days, probably because the show didn’t take her seriously until later on. Perhaps I didn’t take her seriously (as a result, or just because). She always seemed like a silly girl yet she is quite dead serious about her goals and her feelings. Hardly a paragon of competence, Kallen is the contrast to that “JUST AS PLANNED” hook some Code Geass viewers dig about the show, so her popularity is spotty as well.

But why the bunny girl outfit? Well for starters CLAMP can design very sensual, attractive characters. Priming their MID-AGER LAZERS to “lol shounen anime” the results are somewhat annoying if boobs are not your thing. But at the same time CLAMP excels at clothing design, so the combination of a bunny girl outfit, which is a fairly spartan uniform if you think about it, and a CLAMP character in a shounen anime, is just jarring.

All the more that’s why there’s already like, 5 pages of this crunk on danbooru?
Season 2 Design docs!

Well, if I was Kero-chan I would’ve definitely checked:

1. The neck piece. It looks fairly generic but even the shape of the neck cuff is fairly distinctive

2. The adornment on the waist. It helps that we’ve got two other bunny girl models to contrast poor Kallen’s costume, both with slight differences in terms of their … loadout. It adds a bit of character to something so generic, and anchors the various lines going on that you see on a bunny girl outfit. If her boobs aren’t doing that for you anyways.

3. The ears. The ears are one of the most important part of the outfit, and in Kallen’s case it doesn’t sit drooping as it would in most other instances of such an outfit. Of course, she was bouncing around quite a bit.

4. And yeah. Gainax Bounce anyone?

The first episode of Code Geass R2 is almost a tongue-in-cheek self-reference crossed with pop-anime-cultural reference. At least, it is if you look at it that way–with all things Kallen, and with the parallel in respect to the first episode of Code Geass season 1.

The real objection I have is that, ultimately, Kallen in the first episode is just a distraction. It’s a distraction so maybe the viewers forget where we are plot-wise. And maybe that’s a good suggestion, since we’re kind of missing all of that in the pilot episode. Let’s rejoice in the return of one of our favorites from last year, and its ensemble cast. Let’s rejoice in boobs and bunnies. Let’s rejoice in hot school teacher jumping on her student. Let’s rejoice, just as some have planned.

 

Leave a comment | posted in Code Geass, Modern Visual Culture

April 7, 2008

Never Running Out of Things to Say

By omo

Some people are very detail oriented, directed, motivated, focused and ultimately, verbose.

I can’t quite say that about Makoto Shinkai, but that is how he came across when I spent the good half hour reading the wall-of-text interview on the 5cm DVD (R1 release, thx ADV!). He doesn’t ramble–in fact it seemed like it was well-planned, almost as if he has had time to think up answers to the open-ended questions these interviews tend to make them answer.

What was impressive was seeing the same degree of attentiveness to detail to his works. And it’s not so much in the animation but in the degree of control he exercised over the work that made it seem like he knows what he is doing–what exactly he wanted to say to his viewers, and how he wanted it done.

I won’t parrot what he said in there, but I will say there was even a lolcat moment.

Even though it was well planned, it seemed that he did not have anything to read back from, so the speech was natural (and at parts, edited for brevity) when he hits the various points to answer a question. The question he gets asked all the time (such as “are you telling us a story from your own life?”) he answers rather concisely; but some of the more descriptive questions surrounding 5cm’s production gets much more fleshed out.

And how he transitioned from what lifts him up from his daily grind as an office guy to a way of life; a hobby turns into a full time job. It’s probably worthy of being told in a film all by itself.

In a nutshell, while some advertisers may jump quickly and claim Shinkai’s successorship as the next Miyazaki, I see him as someone who has simply mastered storytelling in this one particular style. Perhaps today’s media industry lacks people who knows how to tell stories, especially in this style, but it will be up to him to combine his talents, dedication, and finding the story that he wants to speak to us about. That’ll be the defining prereq of his true masterpiece.

Still, I have a hard time running out of things to say about 5cm. Sure, it really spoke to me, and many others, but much like Satoshi Kon’s works (and he’s another very detail-oriented person) there’s just a jam-packed amount of stuff in the film. Not only it takes a long time to unpack all that’s in the film, Shinkai has made it fun to do so. In light of the new Spring 2008 offerings, I am still mostly ambivalent about that in light of what has transpired in an year-old film that ran just a tad over an hour.

In one of those soul-searching moments, a stroll in the valley of introspection and self-reflection, things like 5cm is exactly what props me up and reaffirms that there’s something worth being a fan for in this business.

And 5cm says it so simply. Concisely.

5cmmoon

 

Leave a comment | posted in Byousoku 5CM, Modern Visual Culture

February 24, 2008

Misunderstood

By omo

Humans are social creatures. Those who are watching Shigofumi get a good examples of this in the school bully episode. But what’s just as important to the courage to confess or the strength to overcome rejection…is the ability to say what you want to say.

It’s saying what you want to say. One of the fundamental problem with Rahxephon is how it doesn’t do a great job saying what it wants to say. I think that particular problem is a result of lacking the talent necessary to do the job; but that’s not what I really want to talk about. It’s a good example how you can have a fairly polished thing but have it botch the more substantive aspect of a good TV series.

The flip side is also true. Sometimes it’s a pain to get your viewer to understand something because they’re stuck somewhere else. Simoun is a good example. Even some of the most prudent and wisest viewers will have trouble seeing through the lesbian fanservice and strangely Korean style of animation.

Still, when there’s something interesting to say, people run the gauntlet of misunderstanding and potential disappointment because it’s worth saying whatever it is. Some do it with a little bit of help, like Shigofumi riding on Jigoku Shoujo’s coattails. Tatsuo Sato is a trickster like that sometimes, and he does this with some regularity.

Speaking in the same language is one way to reduce misunderstanding; but at the same time speaking in the right language, too, can do the same. It’s like how ef a tale of memories played off like a teroge harem but it’s actually a Shinkai-ish, artisan orgy. Soul Taker gave life to Komugi but did anyone else cared about that piece of artwork?

But even so there’s something to say about the sort of misunderstanding of watching Ookiku Furikabutte and being mistaken for a BL fan. Not that has happened (or should, IMO). I mean, I guess I can do the same and insult people who likes Touch. But not Prince of Tennis. Or Ippo.

Anyways, in good, earnest fun, I thought Shigofumi so far is doing a decent job telling both sides of the story. It’s what anime has always been keen to do. Go go ambiguous villainy! Maybe that is why people are quick to mark the “anime” thing as gore and porn in the west, because the rest of it is speaking in a foreign language. Its fans are naturally good at handling being misunderstood, am I right?

8 comments | posted in Shigofumi

February 3, 2008

Chasing Zefiris; Please! Yuti

By omo

“Is that Suppi-kun or are you just glad to see me?”

About as epic as the Gurren Lagann version IMO

So this guy has been reading the TokyoPop novels. I’ve been reading some too recently and the 4th installment of the translated light novel series from Ichiro Sakaki (and Mugodan doing the drawings) needs to come out already. I read somewhere the release date is actually the 31st of January but I couldn’t find it anywhere online the day after.

At any rate, it is a totally different kind of read than what I’ve been reading. It’s like, lol. I mean it’s not even lol like crappy Magic: The Gathering novels or stories about Thrall and LORELOL. This is Ichiro Sakaki putting forward a really darn good fantasy setting with a fairly rich story about Driving Miss Pacifica. Albeit heavy-handed at times and sort of melodramatic to a point, I’m not sure I can sift through its popular brand of justice cleanly with what’s in the psyche of the Japanese fantasy reader. There’s a crossover between the two, I suppose.

Which is to say, it’s been a long, long time since I cracked open a fiction novel.

It was a Suddenly Raquel moment, to be sure. It’s a fluffy read. Nonetheless that did not stop the rather tranquil expression I carried while plowing through the short novels in a couple hours.

What would really be a Suddenly Raquel moment is they canceled book #4 like a ninja and we had to go find this out ourselves! Grr.

So. Onto the more serious topic: licensing limbo. The thing about ADV is not really worrysome, much like how I don’t worry about Geneon’s non-distribution of DVDs. The one fact remains: there’s money to be made. The question is how to make that money. As fans, we just want to be able to watch it, to own it, to enjoy it.

We want to avoid what has happened to the licensing quagmire that is Macross. It’s just cruel to show us how good something is and then to butcher it and yank it away. And it punishes no one except those who are actually paying the buck. I hope with all these corporate back-end maneuvering we don’t orphan anything.

Leave a comment | posted in Scrapped Princess