The Yard Sale
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.
As mentioned earlier, at Sakura-Con there was a P Culture panel about IM@S. After said panel I thought about exactly what this really means. What makes a Producer? What is an idol? Should I do an Otakon panel?
I think there’s a lot going on here, rich enough to definitely do all of that. But before I run headlong into it, some definitions are in order.
As you might know, P-culture really did start with IM@S, even if people were doing similar things well before then. In that sense, in post-otaku boom Japan there really is nothing left meaningful to define by the term otaku besides by their sub-niches. You have people who like mecha anime, for example. Or people really into waifus and moe crap. Or the 2.5D sei-buta-idol types. Or the plain variety of idol otaku. Or military. Or trains. Or BL. Or Yuri. You get the idea. These are not representative but elements to that otaku database where people can subscribe to various different things, and they do mix, kind of like a RSS feed of a set of RSS feeds.
Which just reminds me that Google Reader Shared Item is the best representation of the otaku concept. Anyway, RIP.
In that sense I would define P culture as a specific group of “feeds” that are bundled together. That’s what’s novel about P culture. That, and within this overlap, in the sense that many of us subscribe to this set of not-that-well-defined ideas, we find a sense of identity/unity common to these kind of identity affiliations (like, I dunno, gothloli and kogals). Or in the US, “anime fans” and cosplayers.
So more specifically, I mean:
Which, if you know what being a P means, has nothing to do with what being a P means–basically you are a fan of the IM@S games. And you can be a fan of the game (and now, anime) and have nothing to do with P culture. It’s kind of like being fans of old(er) school gaming, crunching things out on a NDS or X360, than on a mobile device grinding up some Million Stars. There’s already a pretty big gulf in terms of what being an IM@S fan really means, how that fandom manifests, and if it even makes sense for all of us to hang out together.
Which is also different than what being a P means, in the vocaloid scene, even if that nomenclature is not so different. Like what a Nicom@sP has to go through versus just some dude who likes the anime. Maybe this is why we’re so hot on danketsu in IM@S.
Perhaps it’s a lot more interesting to see how diverse this fandom is, and how the 2.5D fan category really exploded in the post-AKB48 era.
To those ends, does it make more sense to look at Ps from a deductive way? Let’s profile a few people and see what they like, why they are Ps. Ethnography, or whatever. I wonder if there are some Japanese-language data out there…
Anyway. I think the approach to look at, present or even enjoy P culture is to do it on a more personal level. If you live like an otaku of some sort, it’s just “yet another vertical” of sorts. There are things you do, modern-day rituals, that facilitate the process. And then there are other things you do that’s just for the heck of it. Like buying flowers.
Why do we buy flowers, other than to make the concert venue smell good?
Why do we make business cards, besides that it’s useful to follow up with people online afterwards?
If invariably expression and identity are intertwined in these kind of instances, what does P culture say about us?
Is The World All One?
Procedural as a genre is a little less vague than slice-of-life as a genre, I concede, but I think Wizard Barrister is a pretty solid example of a procedural.
The one biggest issue about procedural as a general category is that it’s too “monster of the week.” I think this is actually one of the biggest problem that anime and manga narratives have overcome since the early ’00s. A good procedurals doesn’t mess with that stuff. In that sense Wizard Barristers go the other end–it doesn’t mess with that stuff (much), but at the same time it feels very much not-quite-a-procedural. Far majority of the episodic plot lines follow the “incident-investigation-trial” pattern to discount Wizard Barrister on a technical level, but you have people complaining that it doesn’t? Except it’s totally like that. Even the finale … is just like that.
So we have a procedural that is by the book, but it feels like a bunch of giggling school girls talking on a school trip. In this sense, Wizard Barristers play with another little often-seen complaint about anime characters not being adults. Except they act like not-adults?
I mean, yeah, what a great representation of adults in a professional environment! Or I should say, all the fun stuff people like about procedural shows, where is it in Wizard Barristers?
Speaking as someone who is interested in the actual procedures of criminal prosecution in this context, I have mixed feelings about the show, to say the least. But let me just say this: most, far most, people do not have any kind of a clue or interest in that, so maybe I come out ahead on Wizard Barristers because I actually do have some interests in the more arcane, and how different elements in the show try to evoke those details.
Today’s audience is pretty demanding, lacking of a better phrase, in terms of what they want out of a procedural. So in that sense there’s little you can do for a procedural as anime. I mean, what, Witch Hunter Robin and Conan are really the two shining examples of this genre, and neither are really all that great for what it’s worth in this context. It’s definitely a gap–the question is just that if this gap is too small to bother to fill.
Every now and then while watching NagiAsu, something in the show pops out to me as “hey, I think someone took this motif from The Little Mermaid.” It’s as if you boil down that fairy tale based on proto-tropes, or better put, plot ideas, and redeploy them differently. If you think of the stereotypical fairytale as the story of a mermaid who falls in love with a prince on land, and trades her voices to the witch in order to gain a chance to live on land and make him fall in love with her, lest melt into the sea as foam… I think NagiAsu is pretty much Onegai Little Mermaid in a fairly literal sense.
That being said, I’m really enjoying this series, and can’t wait for its finale in another 12 hours!
I’m just hoping the Okada-ness of all of this will not be overpowering. I’m ready to be surprised; it’s like after the nth plot twist of Samurai Flamenco, you kind of just give it up in a way that still makes you care, but you no longer try to head things off. Kind of like Dr. Strangelove and bombs. It’s quite the treat to have two shows like that in the same season.