Category Archives: Franchises

March 7, 2013

The Role of Harassment in TV Anime; Mori

By omo

I’m just going to talk about how lately when I watch GJ-bu, I think of Kotoura-san, and I laugh. And I’m not sure if it is appropriate.

It’s kind of the weird meta joke. You see, in Kotoura-san, the main character is a mind-reader. Her major love interest/friend would tease her by having some naughty thoughts in his head, in which she would play tsukkomi while nobody else is any wiser (until they figured this out). This joke plays out quite a few times.

There was one episode where a rival love interest turned friend, named Moritani (CV: Yurika Kubo), got her embarrassing childhood past exposed as a joke to the group of friends that makes up Kotoura-san’s reoccurring cast of characters. This joke involves Moritani’s family business, which is a local martial arts school. And you probably know how that is. Moritani is the decided heiress of the business, being the only child and the “most powerful” in her school of martial arts. However her parents were not so keen about marketing, so when Moritani was younger they took some now-embarrassing photos of the family and made them into advertisement flyers, some are now in the hands of Moritani’s friends/love interest today.

The joke involves a specific pose, and an enthusiastic yell at the same time: “Mori!” It’s not something you will find much of in GJ-bu–that show is all about chilling and being laid back–but the “Mori” call evokes that image. Instead, GJ-bu features a character named Mori. Mori (CV: Ayumi Tsunematsu) is this older (not sure how old actually) woman who serves as a live-in maid for the family of a few characters in the show. The funny thing is she would always do this one trick every time she shows up, and invariably it reminds me the exact same trick in Kotoura-san. And that trick is also funny too. So it’s very weird.

The greater point I want to make is that I am beginning to feel like a lot of these laid back, “let’s sit around and chit-chat” type anime are beginning to make their slapstick-harassment based jokes more obvious. It’s like watching a Japanese variety show minus the obnoxious on-screen text and picture-in-picture reaction face cameras. I guess it’s funny? But I’m not really a big fan of those kind of programming. It feels both enjoyable and laughter-inducing at times, but also kind of awkward.

Thankfully, at least we get the “Oh Japan you-so-weird” kind of harassment that is only possible in late-night anime. Like brushing hair. Or via extra-sensory perception.

Mori

PS. Mori > Gill > *

PPS. Why don’t people do that for Kotoura-san?

PPPS. So many great maids this season!

2 comments | posted in GJ-bu, Kotoura-san, Modern Visual Culture

March 2, 2013

Winter 2013 Week 7-8

By omo

The Civilization Blaster kids

Just want to do the TL;DR equivalent to reaction faces. I’ll try to keep it spoiler-free. Think of this post like “this week’s anime ‘turning points’ or ‘highlight’ or ‘peak episode’ or whatever.”

Shinsekai Yori Episode 21:

You know it is coming, it’s heavy and painful but yet full of drama potential, dripping with faint hopes, antagonism, despair, and a sense of loss. The watermill bit was brilliant. The writing in the sky is cool and I wonder why they don’t do it more often. The babies, well, are thankfully not as grotesque as it could have been.

The revealing of the key character in this episode was done well. It fooled me briefly but I guess it was kind of what I expected as the “worst case scenario.” The numbers all made sense chronologically. It’s the sort of conclusion you know it has to be. And it was. Yet you are powerless against it even if you knew what was coming.

Zetsuen no Tempest Episode 20:

Speaking of chronology, the biggest clue that wasn’t in this week’s episode was when… How do I talk about the 2nd half of Tempest without spoiling the first half? Let’s just say there is this character who got this power, and when he was introduced he briefly mentioned something about when the power began to manifest. That was a pretty big clue. It’s a clue that I kept in the back of my mind during the “This Week in the Being-Samon-Is-Suffering Logic Quiz Class” discussion as to what is the plot logic problem of the week. However I didn’t put two and two together. I knew whats-her-face is going to do whats-her-other-face in, but I didn’t know it was going to be like this. And let me just say that if you want to enjoy this show, you should do your best to not find out whats-her-face is going to be like this. Because it’s such a delightful surprise.

I ought to highlight Zetsuen no Tempest actually. It’s shaping up to be a very enjoyable watch. I think a big issue is that in order to praise it I have to spoil it, and without spoiling it all I can say is in a couple paragraphs. So here goes.

At heart Zetsuen no Tempest is a plot-logic-driven narrative. The story revolves around a defined boundary condition (or two or three) where the characters have to figure out what is the best thing to do, like a Clue game in terms of determining who is what is like how and when. The characters don’t really “develop” except for, strangely, the character who starts out dead.

The character that does develop is the second reason why Tempest is great. It’s like the one glimpse of romanticism, the Shakespeare quoting girlfriend that drives a revenge plot forward in which two best friends will end up at each other’s throats, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. This beautiful character is at odd with the story’s logic in the same way that too is the part of the puzzle that paints a rational image of irrationality. It’s enough to obfuscate even simple logical conditions; she is the ultimate lampshade, to borrow TVTropes (who just borrows from, aptly, Shakespeare). In a nutshell:

https://twitter.com/geassed/status/307335131557949440

And what’s more, it has some kind of significance in the story. It’s a theme.

Unfortunately, also, it is not an adventure anime, even if it poses as such. It’s a dumb show where the characters tries to figure out some weird mystery that is basically “magic” and unless you’re invested, it all seems kind of trite and you really empathize with Samon. Poor Samon.

gdgd season 2 Episode 8

Best episode of anime of the season. Prereq thing to watch. If didn’t see it before, try reading this. Or the TL;DR version. It also helps if you played Monster Hunter or played Mario Kart or something, but meh.

Da Capo III Episode 8

Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah? Maybe. Only if Senren Kagura was like this? Thankfully Senren Kagura isn’t like this. It’s been a very long time since I last saw an episode of Baywatch but this is kind of like it no?

Vividred Operation Episodes 7-8

The power of friendship is a very sweet set of jets. Akane gives you wings. Vividred Operation, naturally, gives you a lot more than that–all the fireworks, all the drama, the tearing bedside in the hospital. It was, truly, a … self-titled sign.

Vividred Operation... lol

Runner ups:

The Unlimited: Hyoubu Kyousuke Episode 8 wraps up the inevitable flashback arc. It’s kind of a let-down honestly but it got the job done.

Seitokai no Ichizon Lv.2 Episode 7: If you were following Seizon S2 (it’s on air, after all), this week is Ringo’s proper intro. You remember Ringo right?

 

Leave a comment | posted in Da Capo, Modern Visual Culture, Seitokai no Ichizon, Shin Sekai Yori, Vividred Operation, Zetsuen no Tempest, Zettai Karen Children

February 26, 2013

Sasami-san@Ganbaranai Episode 7, New Gods

By omo

I don’t know what passes for new gods. From my Judeo-Christian upbringing I can only say that, “Man, Japan, there’s way too many.” That said, Tama and Kagami are both fine specimens. I’m sure companies like GSC or SEGA will come out with something worthy for a household shrine. Oh, spoilers ahoy.

Tama

Continue reading

Leave a comment | posted in Modern Visual Culture, Sasami-san@ganbaranai

February 21, 2013

Inertia of Social Network Sharing; The Garden of Words

By omo

I, like many others, read Anime News Network’s news feeds. I, unlike many others, also read a lot of tweets. By a lot  I mean I probably go through 2000+ a day on average.

But let’s put that into perspective. Twitter is a massively popular social platform compared to ANN. In fact, it’s kind of incomparable because one is really just a news site–I’m guessing it’s the sort of thing some people check once a day to get their daily dose of news. Maybe some people do the same with twitter; it certainly allows for that sort of slow-paced, not-drinking-from-a-fire-hose sort of consumption.

What I’m trying to get at is I’m wondering why people share the ANN story to the Makoto Shinkai’s new movie trailer, rather than the Youtube page itself or Shinkai’s tweets. I am going to assume this is mostly because these people either didn’t click through ANN’s embedded Youtube video, in other words engaging the content without digging in; or because it’s more convenient to share that.

The reason why I’m wondering is largely because the ANN story basically copy word-for-word everything the Youtube page has. The Youtube page has English-translated credit and English-language film synopsis and everything. It’s Youtube, not some awkwardly-programmed 20th century Japanese website. Maybe if I was reading about this news the first time, getting it from ANN makes sense. But as someone who read it from Makoto Shinkai’s twitter account, it feels really cheap? I don’t know how to put it in the right way.

kotonohanoniwa

I’m sure there are plenty of reasons to do it either way, but why does it feel oddly off in this specific case? Is it because Shinkai tweeted it in English and some of us were fortunate enough to see it? It’s no different than say if FUNi or Sentai did something and ANN reported it, although typically you don’t get the kind of layering we get here in those cases. Actually, maybe another factor here is that watching that movie trailer as an embedded video feels wrong. You really should watch it in high definition, and that’s something no news source reporting it mentioned.

Instead of me making something out of probably nothing, consider it a PSA: If you haven’t seen the latest trailer for Koto no Ha no Niwa, and you think Shinkai’s animated movies are possibly something interesting, do yourself a favor and go to Youtube, select it for the language you would like for the annotations, and change the resolution to 1080 and let it cache before you watch it. I promise you it’s 10 times more gorgeous looking than most embedded resolution you’ll find.

Bonus: A lot of us were initially surprised at casting Kana Hanazawa as the female lead. Shinkai actually tweeted about it shortly after the initial wave of tweets, saying he had trouble deciding who to select for the role, especially since Hanazawa is younger than the lead character, but her acting won him over. If you want to read between the lines, it probably means someone older got passed over for the role!

Bonus 2: Some people were disappointed about TENMON not partnering with Shinkai again on Garden of Words. While I’m definitely looking forward to more TENMON, I’m okay with the new guy. In this case the new name is Daisuke KASHIWA–seems like a post kind of guy who turned to soundtrack/neoclassical music, according to his last.fm profile. Seems like right up my alley.

5 comments | posted in English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Koto no Ha no Niwa

February 19, 2013

Problem with Mutants Is the Problem with Anime

By omo

So I was watching The Unlimited — Hyoubu Kyousuke as it slowly turns into this psychological study of the backstory of Hyoubu Kyousuke, the namesake character at the center of the story. We see how there’s all this ZKC trapping to the show and for the most part that is the fun and game part of ZKC and Hyoubu Kyousuke. It also turns from this internationally-wanted terrorist group slash Psi-user humanitarian effort into this made-and-born-in-Japan episode about where a human experiment project (in the form more like the X-Men) come about.

What I’m trying to say is that as the show progresses, it gets increasingly Japan-centric both in terms of the setting but also in terms of the characters. I guess it can’t be helped that ZKC is mostly a Japan-based thing so the characters and their organizations and the underlying government ploys are tied to that geography. It cannot be helped that Kyousuke is this foreign-born (from Manchuria in the 1930s) Japanese in the first place. Just as it cannot be helped that anime is really a made-for-Japan sort of thing.

I don’t really think it is particularly problematic, but it’s interesting to point out how over the course of the series, the age of the characters appearing and having lines slowly decreases on average. At first it’s basically Kyousuke, Andy, and the guys and girls who are in the tough business of whatever international-spy-intrigue things. Then it gets the Japanese kids involved, like the ZKC themselves. Then the little girl character Yugiri gets a lot of screen time. Then now we go back to the past when Kyousuke is just a wee lad.

I’m not sure what to make of it, I just want to know how did my bro-tastic, superpower-intrigue genre anime turn into this.

Episode 7, Hyoubu Kyousuke

You know, if the War on Pants came AFTER this show, I might be more receptive to it. At this point, however, I’m just hoping the ending to this doesn’t suck. Which is probably a futile thing to wish for, given how it is sort of a prequel-slash-spinoff. Just like how Hyoubu Kyousuke is probably struggling with some deadly condition, in which every time he goes “Unlimited” it robs some of his life, maybe this anime is also the slow decaying mess that slowly loses part of what it’s good for with every passing episode. I don’t know.

3 comments | posted in Modern Visual Culture, Zettai Karen Children