Why not FLCL?

Wow, I don't post for a week and now I'm going to do my third post. Although my last couple were under the influence of a lack of sleep and caffiene. Oh who am I kidding, this one is too.

So, I recently exchanged a couple of emails with animesophist and he mentioned Fooly Cooly to take my number nine spot. (Go read his review, it's about as good of a review of the series that you're going to find.) But that said it raises an interesting point. Why not FLCL? I mean it has everything a discerning anime viewer like me could want: Robots, a fast moving and crazy plot, robots, a crazy interstellar traveller riding a Vespa, more robots, amazing visuals and well... stuff coming out of people's heads. Thought I was going to say robots, didn't you?

But it's really tough for me because FLCL is a good show, but...

Does anyone really understand what's going on? Because if anyone does could they explain it to me. The problem with shows like FLCL and Lain and Texnolyze is that they get stuck in their own merry-go-round of crazy themes that they really forget simple things like plots. Or rather the plot gets buried under so much other junk that it forgets what the point of a story is.

And that's to entertain. And to entertain, I have to at least have a basic grasp of the rules of the world. Even in a show like RahXephon (which I finished watching after being up for 24 hours) I understood what was happening at least on a basic level. All of the other connections and conspiracies were icing on the proverbial cake.

On top of that, while animesophist is right, it is a show that defies categorization. It's also a show that uses and twists all of those categories it touches on. Sometimes it takes it right up to the level of a farce, sometimes it stops just short of it. So it's hard to take it seriously as a drama. It's hard to take it as light as a comedy. In fact it just muddles up all of them into one gooey mess, so that when I finished it I knew I'd experienced something. I just wasn't sure what.

And that's what lies at the heart of my problem with this kind of show. I can't connect with it. It's a good show and an interesting experience, but walking away from it doesn't leave me wanting to watch it again.

It ends up leaving me looking for something to wash my mouth out with.

On The Media

So I'm halfway through watching Starship Operators, and I'll have a review for it up pretty soon, but as I was watching it, it raised an interesting point for me.

If anyone doesn't know the idea behind Starship Operators is that there's a starship that's being funded by a news organization to participate in a war after the home world of these cadets is taken over. (That in and of itself raises some interesting questions, which I'll probably touch on in the review, but not right now).

What it reminds me of is how the media gets the short shrift in fiction. Really.

There are two types of news media in fiction: the Crusaders and the Paparazzi. The Crusaders are the noble, against all odds, fighting the man, noble types who are trying to get the truth out to the people. They embody all the noble qualities of the news media. Generally these pop up when the reporter is the hero of the story.

The Paparazzi are the dark side of all of these qualities. They're the vultures, who want to make a buck off of the suffering of others. They deride and sling mud on good people. Generally they pop up when the media is the antagonist in the story.

All I have to say is bullshit. I mean where's the regular joe who has to cover the local 4-H fair, or the fire that burned down the local drug store. Where's the normal guy who's having to shuffle through reams of agendas, trying to decipher exactely what the change in zoning is going to mean to the people living on Main Street, USA. Where are these people in fiction?

They aren't there. Why? Because it would make the media too human. And assuming that the media is human breaks the comfortable wall we've built between ourselves and what appears in the newspapers, the television screen or the front page of Yahoo or MSN. In fact, it's become the last great frontier in fiction. Because once we accept that the media is giving the audience what they want, we have to ask ourselves, "Do we really want that?"

And the answer is an emphatic, "YES!" Yes, we want to know about Britney Spears drug addictions and self-destruction. Yes, we want to know about the hummer Bill Clinton got in the Oval Office. Yes, we want to know about the 20 car pile up on the local intersate. And hell if we can get a close-up on the left arm of that young mother dangling lifeless out of the car than more power to us. We want that.

Now most of you are probably saying, "Oh he's full of it." right about now. But ask yourselves, why is the National Enquirer have a larger circulation than any other newspaper in the country? Why are shows like Survivor and American Idol and Entertainment Tonight and E! so popular? Why do more people know about Lindsay Lohan's police record than know about George Bush's education bill?

Because people eat that up. But it's an uncomfortable fact. It sits in our guts like leftover fruitcake making us wish we'd done something else with it.

But until we're willing to accept that about ourselves, we'll keep shuffling the blame off onto the media. We'll keep either villifying or glorifying them until we can accept that maybe, just maybe they're giving us what we want.

Initial Impressions : Blood + ep. 1-5

Synopsis : Saya is a fairly normal high school girl except that she can't remember the last year of her life. Meanwhile, a serial killer has been going around draining the blood of various victims. When Saya has a run-in with this monster, her entire life gets turned upside down and she finds out that she's the only person who can kill these creatures.

Review - First, I have to say I went into this series not expecting much. How much more can the Japenese do with vampires that they haven't already. Especially when it involves people mutating into monsters. They've done it well (Elfen Lied) and they've done it poorly (Knight Hunters).

Boy was I surprised how good it was. Based on the movie Blood: The Last Vampire, the story continues where I presume the movie left off. There's so much that happens plotwise in these first five episodes that I can't even say without ruining it. Needless to say, there are enough creepy people and plots and counterplots and brooding angst to power a spy novel.

Even better than that, the story takes place in Okinawa. Any anime series that manages to not be based in Tokyo scores points with me, but Okinawa is probably my favorite hot spot for political tension. And this show uses it to good effect, showing the problems that exist between the base and the citizens of the city.

The animation and character designs are also interesting. The fight scenes are fluid and dynamic and don't have any really long pauses while the two characters size each other up. The Americans look like Americans, the Okinawans looks like Okinawans (yes there is a difference) and except for the super-pale creepy guy there isn't the same "stupid American gaijin" stuff that you see in shows like Ghost in Shell: Standalone Complex.

The soundtrack also is really amazing too. Adding creepiness to the scenes that need to be creepy and not killing the tension at all.

Initial verdict: If you can't tell by now, I'm really excited about this one. I just want Sony to bring it out now!

Initial Impressions: D. Gray Man ep. 1 and 2

So I managed to find some fansubs, and I figured I'd give my initial impressions on a few series. Well one at a time that is. None of these are meant to be endorsements or rejections of series. Just an initial opinion.

So here's my initial impressions of D. Gray Man, based on episodes one and two.

Synopsis - D. Gray Man is set in an alternate European history and follows the adventures of Allen Walker, an exorcist, as he hunts Akuma (demons). These demons are souls tied to machines and put into the bodies of people who've suffered some grief.

Review - If it sounds like you've seen this show it's because you have. D. Gray Man has the same initial set up of a dozen other shows (most notably: Chrono Crusade). The first couple episodes are the obligatory setting everything up episodes. So the jury is still out on whether this is going to rise above these humble roots and become something good, or whether it's going to just follow a pretty humdrum, one combat tournament after another type of formula. I'm still hoping for the former.

The characters are pretty standard so far. Allen is the plucky hero with the dark history trying to make right. The other members of the Dark Religious Order (that is how it was translated on the fansub) seem pretty normal - the crazy captain, the mysterious leaders, the soft-spoken sister - but none of them are offensive. My only nitpick is that this is set in England, so why the hell is there a Japanese member? And why does everyone have Japanese names, except for the one person who is actually from another country? I really hope that it gets explained because that's enough to wrankle me right there.

Really, the selling point of this show right now is the animation. It's really spectacular, and the character designs also are really interesting. That right there is enough to reccomend the series. It's such dazzling eye candy that I could forget anything having to do with lame characters.

So, initial verdict - Watchable, but I'm not expecting much from it.

Why not Record of Lodoss War OVA?

Up and to now most of these Why Not segments have focused on anime that I like, and that except for the flaws in them really aren't that bad of shows. But this time I'm going after a show I hate: Record of Lodoss War OVA.

Seriously, why does anyone like this show? It's horrible. It breaks almost every rule of good fantasy. First, it's based on a D&D campaign. Granted, I might be able to forgive it for that. I mean the Dragonlance Chronicles was based on a D&D campaign and that was actually pretty good. But it was based on the old, old D&D - the one where Elves were a character class, and there was almost no originality needed to create a character besides the ability to add die rolls. And to top it off all of the characters are the stereotypes for their character class. The wizard is an academic. The fighter is brash and impulsive. The Elf is attuned with nature. The Dwarf is a Dwarf. And so on and so forth.

That right there is enough to make me want to cry into my pillow, while screaming, "Please no more." But add to that the second sin of modern fantasy. It has Elves. Come on people. Elves went out of vogue with Terry Brooks. The only writer who is allowed to use Elves right now is Tad Williams and no one else. Even Margaret Wies and Tracey Hickman have their Elf priviledges revoked after the monstrosity that is The Death Gate Cycle.

That's it. Right here and now, I'm declaring war against anything with Elves. Nothing good ever came of them and they are filled with suck. Even if they're hot Elves wearing revealing outfits. Nope, they die too.

To top it off the OVA has the worst, hackneyed, uneven and generally incomprehenible plot ever. It starts off bad and only gets worse. It glides so quickly through anything with any kind of meat to it that I find myself searching for a rope to hang myself with.

This show causes genocidal urges and suicidal tendencies, that's how bad it is.

Please, if you like your friends and want to keep them don't show them Record of Lodoss War OVA. Show them anything else. Hell, show them La Blue Girl. At least then they would think you're just a pervert and not someone who enjoys horrible, horrible shows.

Seriously. It's that bad.

Review - Kaze no Yojimbo (TV)

So I'll admit that I don't like Kurosawa movies. They tend to be hideously over-acted, generally hard to follow and for the most part pretty lame.

But I love remakes of his movies. Odd, huh?

Kaze no Yojimbo isn't an exception to that rule. The story follows George Kodama as he journeys to Kimjuku to find out what happened to his brother fifteen years ago. But instead of an idyllic country town, George finds himself smack dab in the middle of a gang fight. The two sides are headed by the old money Tanokura, who pretty much controls the town power structure, and the Ginzame gang, who are pretty much young upstarts who just happened to roll into town.

There really isn't much to dislike about the characters. Kodama is probably one of the most interesting protagonists that I've seen in anime. He's a punk, dislikes authority, stands up for himself without being hot-headed, and in general is coolness personified. But more in the Steve McQueen tough guy way, than the tall, dark and silent way that most anime is so fond of. The other characters stand on their own, and with the exception of the teenage daughter of Tanokura, they're actually pretty interesting.

The plot unfortunately is uneven. The first part of the series moves pretty quickly, throwing out enough loose ends to keep the viewer involved. But the middle of the series is a bit sluggish, while it bides its time to work up to its really good conclusion. And the best thing about it - it doesn't leave any questions unanswered. I'm so excited about that, I could spit.

The entire thing looks like it had a budget that came out of the bottom of a washing machine. Generally the animation is chunky and uses way too many shortcuts to really be interesting. But the framing of the scenes does cover for a lot of it. There are a lot of points where the show will use a close-up on a character and make the background fuzzy. (I'm assuming this is to save on the cost of having to animate the entire scene.) It's a trick that gets old after a while. But honestly, if you're watching this show for the animation then you're watching it for the wrong reasons.

The soundtrack makes up for the lousy animation though. It's a combination of a single guitar, or a flute or sometimes an orchestra. But it really helps to build the mood of the series. And this series is all about mood. The dub on this is actually really good at capturing the combination of hidden secrets and conflicting agendas.

In the end, Kaze no Yojimbo isn't for everyone. If you're looking for boys crying out "I want to be stronger" or girls pining over milquetoast heroes or giant robots or anything else that's been done to death, then this show isn't for you. But if you're looking for something different, albeit a little slow, then Kaze no Yojimbo is a good buy.

Cleverness - 4 out of 5
Characters - 5 out of 5
Plot - 3 out of 5
Acting - 4 out of 5
Technical - 2 out of 5

Review: Parasite Dolls (OAV)

The entire time I've read reviews of Bubblegum Crisis, I've heard it refered to as cyberpunk. But honestly, I think it's a misnomer. For the most part series like BGC Tokyo 2040 or A.D. Police were cyberpunk-light. None of them had the gravitas, and combination of canny commercialism mixed with socio-political-techological-message that really makes cyberpunk good.

The OAV is divided into three episodes. All of them focus around a super-secret branch of the A.D. Police called Branch. Generally they're structured so there is a side-story and the detectives investigating the crimes. Buzz (Michael Vance) is the classic tough guy detective with a history. Michaelson (Monica Rial) is the somewhat naive pseudo-sidekick.

Each of the story's floats around one aspect of boomers (the series' name for andriods) and their place in society. While they may not be handled as we as say an Isaac Asimov story, they are each interesting and compelling enough to keep watching.

But what really sells this show is the atmosphere. It's dark. It's crowded. People are just trying to survive, using whatever means they can. The animation and the artwork are really the selling points here. Unlike the other BGC series, this does not devolve into campy transformation scenes or have any wierd sexual undertones. (Okay so it does, but more along the lines of what you'd expect.)

The voice acting (I only watched the dub) is pretty top-notch. Monica Rial really is at her best when she isn't doing cutesy girls with soft whispery voices. And Michael Vance manages the tough guy buzz to an at least adaquate level.

The soundtrack is actually pretty good. Especially when it gets creepy. Generally there's a lot of ambient sound and discordant notes.

But overall my main problem is that the series feels unfinished. There's still a lot of questions that the OAV leaves unanswered. But overall it's a good watch. Definitely worth the rental.

Cleverness: 3 out of 5

Characters: 4 out of 5

Story: 4 out of 5

Technical: 3 out of 5

Acting: 4 out of 5

Overall 3.5 out of 5

Originality vs. Cleverness

So what makes my top anime series of all time list? For the next few posts, I'm going to go over the categories that make me fall in love with a series and why certain series have it and certain ones don't.

Category One: Cleverness

I hate the word originality when people use it to describe anime, or it's evil cousins - unique and derivative. Why? Why do reviewers do this to me? It makes my brain hurt. Let me set the record straight: FICTION IS NOT ORIGINAL. Period.

If you want some proof of that take Romeo and Juliet. It's a fantastic play and Shakespeare (whether he wrote it or not) was a genius. No one ever says, "Oh wait but all he did was rip off Pyramus and Thisbe. He's such a hack." Why not? No one holds up a copy of Pulp Fiction and says, "But this is just a rip off of a bunch of other mobster movies." Inherit the Wind, Time to Kill, Goodfellas, 12 Angry Men, Vertigo... the list goes on of moves that were influenced by either books or other movies or other types of stories.

So why do anime reviewers (and yes Zac BertschyI'm looking at you) insist that anime needs to be original or unique or non-derivative? Is it because they have some grudge against the plebeian anime watcher?

Or is it that they can't find a better word?

Maybe both, but I'm not such a conspiracy nut that I think the major blogs are out to get me, so I lean toward the latter. Well here's a better word for you - cleverness.

I know it's not a pretty word and it does have some negative connotations, but it's the right word. So what do I mean about cleverness? Cleverness is the ability to combine already existing archetypes for themes, story lines, character types and worlds. Basically it's what people really mean when they say unique.

For this let me pull out Kenshin. On the face of it, Kenshin is just another shounen action series. Older swordsman swears off a life of killing, but must face off with other swordsmen who are better (and sometimes worse) in duels to protect friends and loved ones and occasionally his country. If you replace swordsmen with demons and you have Yu-yu Hakusho. If you replace it with alien type of things, you get Dragonball Z.

All and all, it's just like every other shounen action series out there.

Except that it has two fairly clever elements to the plot. First, unlike most shounen action heroes, Kenshin can't kill anyone. This adds a whole new level of tension to the series. Not only does he somehow have to manage to defeat the bad guys, he has to do it without killing them. Second, it has a solid historical basis. There really was a Bakamatsu. The Shinsengumi really are folk anti-heroes. In fact in the manga, Nobuhiro Watsuki details where all of his inspirations for these characters came from and which ones really were people.

This is clever.

Another example of this is Twelve Kingdoms, which isn't nearly as hopelessly mired in cliches. But it could have been another Escaflowne or Fushigi Yuugi. Instead it takes a the fantasy world and oh, makes it a world with it's own history, characters and rules. What I especially want to point out is something that seems pretty innocuous when you're watching it - babies are born on trees.

So what, right? That's not anything too exciting, it sounds like that normal claptrap that always pops up in some fairytale/YA/children's book. And if the story had just let it die there, then it wouldn't have been anything. But what happens in a society where women don't give birth? You know, that classic line about why women aren't supposed to be in combat, because we need them to produce young. They can fight, they are regarded as equals, prostitution doesn't have as many ugly side effects. All of those things happen in Twelve Kingdoms, which makes it clever. In fact more clever than it's counter parts which focus on the one strange thing in the world and then base the story around that.

Now on the other hand, there are series that are too clever. Take Lain for instance. That series has a whole bucket of clever. In fact, it has sooooo much clever that it drowns out things like story line and characters.

But on the whole, all of the series in my top eight have some form of clever to them. Some combination of characters and themes and plots that strike me as interesting. And maybe, yes, a little unique.

Why Not Trigun?

So recently, I started rewatching Trigun and it reminded me of something - this show is pretty good. Now it has been a good two years since the last time I sat down to watch the adventures of Vash the Stampede, so I’ve had some distance between the last time and this time.

Not to mention that I finally replaced my lousy bootleg copy of the series with the actual Pioneer release version, so the funny green dots I got about three quarters through the series went away.

There isn’t much to dislike about Trigun. Yashiro Nightow created an excellent character in Vash. He’s alternately funny, cowardly, heroic, modest and vain. Okay, so most people know this already, because this series has been out since Christ was a corporal.

Although I do want to mention the weapons designs in this are some of the most inventive I’ve seen in anime to date. I want Wolfwood’s cross. And I still get a bit of a chuckle out of the line, “That’s because it’s so full of mercy.” every time I hear it.

But seriously, I really want Wolfwood’s cross - badly. If anyone knows how I can combine a half dozen handguns, a machine gun and a rocket launcher into a metallic contraption, I will pay for it. Okay, so I might not pay for it. I would trade sexual favors. Okay, so I might not do that either. But I would show some serious appreciation for it.

But this blog isn’t titled, “Why Trigun is my Number Nine, so I can stop writing.” It’s titled, “Why not Trigun?”

The next part’s going to have some spoilers. If you’re one of the two anime fans who hasn’t watched this series, I suggest you find yourself a copy and watch it so that I won’t ruin your viewing experience. Okay, so is there anyone left? Good. Now onto business.

For the most part, Trigun is a good series, but the show is largely carried by two characters - Vash and Wolfwood. And as much as Vash is an interesting character, after a while he becomes tedious. How many times can a guy stare wistfully off into the horizon thinking, “Oh gee, I’ve got to kill my brother, but I don’t want to kill him. I want to save him. Oh poor pitiful me.”

This mopiness only gets worse when he takes a chunk out of the moon. Now I don’t have any problems with a series having a black moment, when everything seems lost and the odds are so insurmountable that there doesn’t seem to be any hope that the hero could possibly win. But Trigun has an black third of the series.

And let’s face it, it should. Knives is a badass, right down to his Darwinistic approach to survival on the desert planet. He kidnaps entire towns, he forces Vash to commit murder and he kills Wolfwood. I mean he’s more badass than Legato Bluesummer and that’s really something. It’s like Knives managed to find a well of badass and drink straight from the tap and when he was done, he gave his leftovers to a bunch of other badasses.

Which leads me to my real major problem with this series. So on one side, we have the whiny, mopey, how-can-I-do-the-right-thing Vash the Stampede. On the other, we have the devil-may-care, I-will-rule-the-world-no-matter-how-many-pawns-I-have-to-spend-doing-it Knives. They finally have their big confrontation, and how does it end.

Vash shoots Knives four times and the world is saved.

What…the…hell. Let me repeat that so it will sink in.

Vash shoots Knives four times and the world is saved.

It’s like the creators had painted themselves into a corner and needed some suitably vague way of making sure that the hero won. So they invented a completely Deus Ex Machina ending that answers absolutely no questions as to why Knives would ever change his ways. To top it off, they don’t conclude the series in any type of fulfilling way. They leave the watcher to assume that Vash and Meryl hook up, that Knives is rehabilitated and life continues on the planet as it should.

Frankly, I call bullshit. Shooting Knives four times is not going to wipe away a hundred some odd years of festering hatred. It just wouldn’t happen.

The ending would have been far more tragic and more satisfying if Vash had been forced to kill Knives. This is what made Gungrave such a great series and what could have made Trigun a great series.

But instead it just lands on top of a whole bunch of series’ in a heaping pile of anime mediocrity.

My Mission

In 2003, I started seriously collecting anime. And when I mean seriously, I mean buying one series every two weeks for about eight months. Since then I've had lean times and I've had times when I couldn't buy enough.

But about a year ago something horrible started to happen - I couldn't find anything I really liked. Up and to then there was about a series or two every year that I liked so much it made my top series of all time list. First it was Kenshin, with it's combination of completely outrageous melodramatic shounen goodness combined with an actual historical basis.

Then I watched RahXephon, which blew my mind and still suceeds in blowing my mind every time I watch it. I think I've figured out how everyone is connected, what all the secret little non-sequitor statements mean and what ACTUALLY happens at the end of the show. (Although I have to thank my friend Magnus for his interpretation of it.) The only thing that still haunts me about that show is that stupid bird painting. It shows up way too much to be a coincedence... I'm starting to think it's a conspiracy to drive me insane.

After I finished with that, I managed to watch Last Exile, Ghost in the Shell:Standalone Complex, Twelve Kingdoms and Wolf's Rain almost all around the same time. All of them have their own particular brand of awesomeness which I may or may not go into at a later date.

But when I watched Gungrave, I didn't realize it would take almost a year for another anime to really impress me (Planetes). And since then, nothing, zero, zilch - a big, fat, whopping pit of anime mediocrity.

So I've decided to start this blog, to hopefully reach out to other anime fans, and to detail my search for the infamous Number Nine.