The Yard Sale
Just going through the thousands of things in my various feeds and ran across this on Pikasha’s blog post:
At the guest reception at Sakuracon, we saw this adoring Nagahama’s table. He said it’s a hand-made gift from a fan. I hope you realize this, fan person!
Chocolates makes a great treat and souvenir in Seattle. I should’ve brought home some.
Let’s talk about Rin and Nico.
I really enjoyed episode 5. It struck me as the first episode this season that actually took a moment and gave a character some time to think about and make a change. Let’s just say that after episode 5 some people thought Hanayo might start wearing girlier clothes.
I want to bring in episode 4 as a point to compare. Episode is the Nico episode where we learn about her family situation and the various circumstances she has to struggle with. We got some nice back story going there too, along with her adorable younger sisters and brother (all voiced by Nico’s seiyuu too). But in the end, was Nico a reformed woman? Nope.jpg. She might be just too tsun to quit, so her μ’s friends gave her an out and helped her out.
I think the comparison only make sense because how the story play out so similarly between the two episodes. Both focuses on a girl in such a way that puts the spotlight/pressure on her in order to reveal some newly discovered issue, in which the team helps to resolve. And it’s done so in this weird surprise to the audience, kind of like a surprise happy birthday party minus the awkward secret sharing that the girl-of-the-week get suspicious on.
But the key here is just to highlight that Nico smoothed out her issues in terms of lying to both her group mates and her siblings by making this fairy tale transition that’s kind of an allegory of the idol identity versus the personal identity. Versus Rin having actual character development.
Com’on man.
Not that is particularly problematic; I am no Love Liver but I do like Nico more than most out of the cast (favorite is by far Alisa, partly because she has more of a concentrated dose of Nishida Asako’s flairs), and it isn’t the first time I’ve called upon Yukarin as “sekai iichi kawaii” so Nico’s tropes are all too welcomed. I’m just not sure how possibly this shallow shell of modern amusement can compare to what simple coming-of-age maiden problem that Rin has overcome, along with her dozens of other anime heroines, no less than every magical girl since…ever. The fact that Nico’s episode is composed so similarly to Rin’s just cracks me up every time thinking about it.
I thought the way the camera framed Hanayo at the end was brilliant; it’s like those “maidenly” shots of Haruka Amami where you see her slender but subtly remarkable body in motion, her head above her chin out of frame, for less than a second. Great way to cap off an heartful Love Live episode.
And I don’t know where to go with this post–I can conclude a half dozen different ways. Let’s just say that for those of you who think anime is primarily entertainment, just be aware that when you posit this philosophically, it is, to say the least, shallow? We can do better than that.
To make up my inability to understand Japanese, hopefully, watching the same film five times (well, more like four and change, because I kind of walked out of the fifth one because I had to be somewhere) hopefully will mitigate some of it. In reality there are a lot of theme and plot hooks that a better understanding of the language will shed light more immediately, but I guess there’s something to be said of a film that generally lines up with modern understanding of complexities in TV anime.
This is the spoiler-free version of the movie overview. It’s also one diluted with sufficient amount of distance–it was really hard to write this back when the memory was fresh. I was way, way too emotionally affected by the material to make any useful observation other than to describe what was happening to me. But that’s the trade-off. Someone just asked me recently about the order of certain scenes during a part of the movie and I can only confirm what corresponded to what I remembered, but not tell him what happened in the gap he forgot. Such is how it goes.
Then again, I still see the IM@S in everything even today so maybe this distance or somewhat more objective perspective means nothing anyways in those terms. It just helps me to write it in a way that isn’t 10000+ words because I can start with a perspective that’s easier to handle, and later on go on from there. [Don’t be surprised there’s a second post on this, that said.]
Anyway, the Idolm@ster feature film celebrates the series in the most meaningful way in that for those people who would honestly go “IM@S LIFE” it will upgrade from zero to one single hankie. The familiar message about overcoming self-doubt and finding encouragement in fellowship, and overcoming life obstacles together is always going to be moving when translated well. It’s stories like these that move us, the otaku. How much access we have to that source of never-ending FEELS simply depends on how deep you are in the IM@S fan pit, in this case.
I’ll save that stuff later, although that seems to be the things people always want to talk about…
Visually, the IM@S movie is all over the place. I mean that in a very basic way–it simply gives you a lot of different looks, and at times it’s enough to jar some people out of their suspension of belief. Depends on how you take your regular dose of cartoon, that might be a thing you like or a thing you dislike, but from a “looks per paid/obtained content” ratio perspective there’s a lot to it. It’s good value.
There’s also these 2 cuts where Haruka and Kana are animated like… different. Like Bahi JD different. I’m not sure who and how that came about, but that might be the biggest case where things look nicely but in a jarring way. It’s not like how I can nitpick endlessly on the way 3D animated backgrounds are composed beneath 2D character animation that makes the final concert scene a little janky too, but that’s a little farther along into the nitpickery than a legitimate concern. It’s just another perspective.
Other visual things…I really like a lot of the design elements in the movie, from the promo poster for the in-show live (which is sold as a separate thing at the theaters) to the way various Sony products are placed in the movie. It’s like everything I like about the TV anime, but better. I can go on here some more but it’s no fun without visual references.
My main criticism to the IM@S movie, perhaps slightly biased here, is that there’s too much of it. The movie can easily be shortened to about a buck and forty-five if they were a little more merciless in the editing room. The middle section drags a little, but that isn’t the problem–it’s the beginning of the middle and the post-resolution bits (before the main climax).
Actually, that’s the thing about this movie that is tough to talk about. In a way the movie feels “all over the place” because it’s kind of two things bounded together. On one end you have the “sparkling” side of things, with the film kicking off with that Nemurihime trailer that you will hear me talk about all the freaking time if you are in an earshot of me speaking about the movie. On the other side of the wire is the concert scene. There are some pretty exciting parts of the film that I would sit up for every time, too.
On the other end, you have this thoughtful, contemplative story about Haruka and Kana. Since I want to avoid spoilers as much as possible, I’m just going to say that when I was watching it the third time, I started to think about the Bible and how the true turning point of the Crucifixion story actually happened in the Garden of Gethsemane. The IM@S movie made it kind of obvious what was happening but it wouldn’t be obvious until you started to watch it with everything you know about Anim@s on the line. Admittedly that is more a handicap on my end because of the language processing issues I had to struggle with, but once I put it all together, the result was that now I have a definite favorite scene from the film.
To that end, let me share this piece of meta with you. Many of the popular Second Vision songs get some playtime in the movie. If you haven’t seen the film yet, play this game–look for the song Jibun Res@art in the movie. That song is pretty much the number one favorite (or second, depends on how you count The IDOLM@STER) among fans. One somewhat remarkable point on IM@S music is that a lot of the songs in the game is vaguely about the game, so this one kind of finds itself in a precious part of the film while others just… Well, I hope we can watch the film and talk more about it, when it gets that home video release.
In other words, it’s about the front-end and the back-end of the idol concept, where in IM@S it comes in terms of the video game concept. (Why are so many IM@S songs about idoling? That’s just way meta.) In episode one of Anim@s we were asked this question. Now we have just the Million Live version of the same answer, from the other side of the shininess.
[And that’s about 5-10% of the thoughts I have on the movie! You see how bad this is…]
I watched this film on Feb. 22nd, 2014. I was going to just say try reading Elliot’s review, because it’s surprisingly similar to what I have to say, but I figured I can add my 2c. No real spoilers below, but some events described in the post are natural spoilers as it is a surprise to see them. Well, Mouretsu Pirates is not the sort of anime/story that relies on surprises, so whatever.
I keep on calling Ping Pong hipster. I’m not sure why, but it’s got something to it that rubs me that way. The animation is as “Yuasa” as it gets, it’s very emotive and really gripping. Even when it’s kind of this nonchalant, laid back walking down the shores of Kamakura and up Enoshima like kids up to no good.
That octopus cracker thing is delicious, make sure you try some when you visit.
I guess I would pit Ping Pong against something, like, say, Flower of Evil, in that they both feature these scenes where the kids wander through suburban decay, except in the case of tourist-town Kamakura it’s a little bit just decay for show rather than plain old variety of decay. The population is old and sparse, at any rate, and with the quaint landscape, the sea-side view but largely framed by either the local landscape or human/traffic, gives it still a sense of mundane occupancy.
At any rate, Ping Pong is an anime that is about motion, about animation in the sense of the term that it moves. In fact, Ping Pong books. That makes the delightful highlight in episode 3 when we get these sliding panels that breaks up the screen. Thinking back to what kind of “slideshows” late-night TV anime can be, Ping Pong is almost a form of satire when viewed in that way. And in that sense, the motion really elevates the tension of the story drastically differently than a lot of Yuasa’s other works. It’s much smaller, but it keeps moving. Tight but constantly changing focus. It makes the wide-angle shots a lot more effective, such as the cut at end of episode one when Wenge was on the roof, or better yet, the scene in episode 3 when Dragon and Smile were talking.
When I watch it, it’s a rush. When I’m done watching it, it leaves me with a smile and in awe. But half an hour later I’m ready to, I don’t know, scratch my butt or something. There’s not much to it. Yet. And that’s probably why I find it really hipster-y. It’s great but so far the substance is just a lot of clever writing. Not that I’m complaining about it or anything, but I wish it wasn’t so much about the “then and there” and something a little more universal. It’s kind of like what Wenge said about Smile’s ego.