So admittedly, these series are pretty old news, but I just finished Kiddy Grade and having just rewatched Project A-Ko for the first time in ten years, I can’t help but want to compare the two. Well, I say compare, but really, I’d like to oil them up and make them fight it out in a big pool of mud. Everybody wins in that scenario.

Starting with the elder series (from ‘87-’90), Project A-Ko is a spoof anime of epic proportions. Featuring a “platonic” love triangle between three high school girls (aptly named A-Ko, B-Ko, and C-Ko; plot devices also include aliens (sometimes perverted), giant robots, powered armor that looks like swimwear, princesses, business tycoons, and a disturbing number of manly looking women. On a fun side note this series is what actually introduced me to homosexuality as a child. It’s a slice of life series with a bizarre backdrop and one absurdly strong girl.

Kiddy Grade (from ’02-ish) is remarkably straightforward series featuring two special forces cyborg girls caught up in a class struggle spanning the galaxy. With sophisticated plots and political intrigue, Kiddy Grade also rocked out the PG-13 area for fan service and generally high levels of innuendo. It’s a sci-fi action adventure that’s modern and sleek.

The main things I want to contrast with these series are all thematic, so we’ll get the really obvious stuff like music and animation out of the way: (from here on I’ll refer to Project A-Ko as Pako and Kiddy Grade and KG for the sake of not having to type things eight million times.)

Project A-Ko is old school, things are hand drawn and sometimes a little rough and have some errors. The character designs are really really typical, and the action is a mix of flashing lines or well-animated movement. The talking is a lot of flapping mouth shapes. As an interesting cultural note: the things that are sexy in Pako are considerably different than what are in modern series: For example, the sexy expressions and attitude for the teacher are totally different from what we see in recent works. Back on topic, the mechanical designs in Pako are really intricate and detailed, though, which is something I think we’ve lost with all of the computer graphic flash and lens flare. Speaking of flash and lens flare, Kiddy Grade is chock full of computer graphics and it doesn’t mesh well with the show at all. Oddly enough, all of the parts with heavy dialogue are not remedied with interesting camera angles or anything like they were in Pako, a flaw I find rather amusing. On the ecchi side, KG has considerably more jiggle and girls with bigger breasts than Pako, but the sexy stuff is so overdone and so ridiculously deliberate it comes across as really corny.

I usually have a lot to say about music in anime, but for once there isn’t a lot to say about either Pako or KG. Pako’s music is pretty standard for late 80’s stuff with some synth and just a generic ambience. It does its job, though, and facilitates the scenes. As a series of movies rather than TV episodes, Pako doesn’t really have opening or closing sequences. KG has really corny music, and while the music still does what it’s supposed to, it’s hard to take some of the scenes seriously with the music insisting on the emotions so damn much. Also, I’m really not fond of the opening and closing music/animation for KG. The music for both series is pretty cheesy, but the fact that KG is trying to be serious about it can ruin some of the atmosphere.

Now for the fun part of the review: see, you may have been wondering why I’m comparing a twenty year-old spoof series to a modern sci-fi one, but the reason is that they have so much in common and yet the different ideologies behind the shows make for wildly different viewing experiences. Well, that and the fact that Kiddy Grade jumps the shark about five episodes before the ending. Structurally speaking, KG and Pako are very different: KG is a 24 episode series while Pako was six movies with the last two taking place in an alternate universe. What that means is that the way each series can tell stories is very different. KG has a strict time limit for individual events, but can run a much longer plot overall. The brevity of the episodes, however, can be used to pack a lot more emotional punch. “Pako’s movies, on the other hand, can carry a more involved scenario, but can’t place as much emphasis on a prolonged multi-part plot” is what I would be saying if the movies didn’t fly in the face of convention and have continuous themes that build to a climax at the end. Well, the first four and the alternate universe pair each have a sort of separate climax. Anyway, the point I’m driving at here is that for some aspects, I’m comparing apples and opera; but for others I’ll be comparing twin siblings where one of them was dropped on its head a few times.

Ultimately, Pako and KG are about two girls, one young and proper and one older and rough, that are in a very close and rather suggestive relationship. In Pako, it’s rather blatant platonic love between A-Ko and C-Ko mixed with this creepily obsessive love B-Ko has for C-Ko (in this case B-Ko wants to supplant the older girl role). When I was little I admit I didn’t understand it much then, but as an adult I can understand it a bit better. C-Ko is the younger girl, A-Ko is the almost normal girl with super strength, and B-Ko is a super genius that builds robots to fight A-Ko. All of the alien attacks and giant robots are merely background things, the real plot stems from B-Ko trying to get between A-Ko and C-Ko. In the alternate universe movies, the series actually takes a twist and has A-Ko and B-Ko as friends with C-Ko coming into the picture later and screwing everything up. Regardless of which of the movies you are watching, the relationship between the three girls takes center stage at all times.

KG, on the other hand, has only the two girls and tries to show their relationship through their reactions to the different situations they encounter. Eclaire is our rough and tumble super strong chick with big boobs and very little self-restraint; Lumiere is the super lolita girl with a modified swimsuit and superior hacking skills. While Eclaire’s boldness is what gives the pair direction, Lumi’s technical skill is usually what pulls things through in the end. The girls are often forced to lay everything on the line as they work through the societal problems they face. Unfortunately, the delicate balance between the girls’ relationship and the class war tilts inexorable towards the class war with the aforementioned laying everything on the line being the only way to pull the show back towards the girls.

Man, this review is totally not going well; I feel like I’m back in college writing one of those papers I only read half the book for and accidentally stayed up too late playing video games. Oh well, maybe I can pull some sense out of this yet.

I guess what I really want to drive at here is how even the standard relationship between two girls, one junior to the other, have changed in a way that says more about the culture behind it and the evolution of the industry.

See, Pako has a certain tongue-in-cheek approach while still bringing a lot of original ideas to the table without worrying about any of the technical details. How do the robots work? Why are all of the aliens in the original universe female? There aren’t questions that matter: that’s just how things are. The thing to focus on is the hilarious and wild adventures two relatively normal girls have amidst all of the chaos around them. The fan service is there, but it doesn’t take the focus away from the core story. The human drama is simply that: human drama; Hundreds if not thousands of people die throughout the course of the first four movies, but the real emotion is placed on the issues that arise between A-Ko and C-Ko. For instance, when A-Ko goes after a boy, it causes a serious rift between the two and it’s genuinely interesting and not contrived at all. As a parody anime, Pako still brings a lot of originality to the table and makes for a refreshing thing to watch. The two alternate universe movies are considerably more serious, but the feeling of fun is still there and while all of reality gets put in jeopardy, it’s still totally related and actually dependent upon the relational development of A-Ko, B-Ko, and C-Ko. Pako never loses sight of what’s actually going on. Even with all of reality getting put in danger, it’s there as an interesting way to draw out and really refine the pinnacle moments of the character relationships rather than being the driving focus of the story.

KG, by a rather severe contrast, is a wonderful example of all the things that are wrong with anime in the modern industry. KG can’t decide between serious world-ending drama and light panty flashing humor: the gray area in-between fails on both accounts and ends up disjointed and sickeningly unbalanced. All attempts to flush out the characters are undone by insistence on little jokes like Lumiere’s obsession with Claire’s lack of elegance or the stupid amounts of fan service. Look, I’ve got nothing against fan service (I am really enjoying Queen’s Blade in all its boobtastic glory), but there’s a time and a place for it. Having a serious discussion with the enemy mastermind while the camera happens to be low enough to give us a wonderful view of one of the girl’s panties (complete with lines suggesting they are waaaay too tight) really takes the importance out of whatever is being said. Also, if you’re going to have that much jiggle and detail in the clothing lines, why not have more nudity? I had the same problem with Burst Angel, too: the service was so graphic with the clothes on it was like having a four course dinner including dessert but there’s no entrée. In more crass terms: why can we see a fourteen year-old’s private lines in her panties but not the twenty-something’s nipples? Not that I want to see more of the former, but I would like to see the latter. This sort of paradox service is present in many recent series and I simply don’t understand it; I can’t even chalk it up to the culture divide from being an American because it simply doesn’t make sense to me. Actually, there was one scene of nudity and it was really disturbing because it was akin to cyber rape, so I guess I should count myself lucky that we didn’t get more nudity if that was going to be the only to get it. Anyway, I’ve gotten off topic here. The story in KG was sweeping and there were episodes where I was genuinely moved by attempts of the lower classes to break free of the rich, but it cheapened both the relationship of the girls and the drama of the story. The relationship between the girls, though heartwarming and sweet, seems little like a chauvinist’s daydream about how women interact and the way the characters are pulled back into that ideal to try and bring humor or sexiness to a scene was a little much for my taste. Now try shoving a quip relating to that relationship into a scene where the police are about to fire on what are essentially contract slaves and everything sort of turns sideways: the seriousness seems weak while the humor is forced. KG seems like an original series, but it’s actually just mixing a lot of clichés in new ways (with which there is nothing wrong and is pretty much the best we can expect given that there’s a series about everything nowadays, even the life of bread in a bakery), but the mix just isn’t balanced. The main problem is that the relationship between Eclaire and Lumiere never changes or develops in any way. Given that there’s supposed to be some major character development and even the social fabric of the galaxy changes, it’s really weird to see that the main interactions between the two main characters never really changes throughout the show. Okay, that’s enough being mean to KG, I need to move along to the point.

When looking at what I’ve said so far, it’s pretty obvious that I recommend Project A-Ko over Kiddy Grade. It’s true, I really do. I only find Kiddy Grade worthwhile for the sheer hotness of Eclaire after she gets an upgrade to purple hair and bigger boobs; she’s really smoking hot then. Ahem. See, Project A-Ko was made at a time when there was a little more emphasis on fun and silliness; there were no demographics to really pander to and a series didn’t have to put the fate of humanity on the line to try and make something seem important. KG is a series with many of the same elements as Pako, but it tries to take an approach with more gritty realism and panty shots that poisons the whole thing. KG loses sight of its character development and tries to make up for it by putting the whole of human society on the line. See, going for the big picture approach without giving us a more concrete relationship to use as a measuring stick simply can’t impart the same amount of urgency as watching a group of characters we’ve seen mature in their interactions with one another put those relationships to the test. With the exception of the series that are really good and usually break the standards of the genres in which they belong, most modern series can be described with some or all of the following guidelines: fan-pandering (be it boobs or catering to fans of a previous incarnation of the series), plug-and-play plots (most romances, slice of life school days, and world-crisis dramas fit into this category), juvenile male power fantasy (any show where a fourteen year-old boy suddenly holds the fate of the world in his hands via machine, magic, combat skills, or ungodly ability to bake bread will generally fall into this category), and go-nowhere fluff (while Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star fit into this category, it’s more the shows that try to imitate them that will go here in the negative). There’s this silly, driving idea that a series has to fill a set of requirements to be accepted by otaku, and it has lead to a terrible flood of same-y shows with shallow plots and generic characters. While I was going to take this review as an opportunity to crucify KG, I thought having something like Pako around would be a handy way to show that a series with many of the same pieces could be considerably better if the now standard approaches were all thrown in the garbage. See, Project A-Ko and Kiddy Grade have a lot in common, but Kiddy Grade makes for such a wonderful example of a mainstream successful anime (that isn’t about fourteen year-old boys) that is actually terrible while Project A-Ko (once dusted off) is really terrific because it was made before anime started getting itself caught up with what was expected of it.

Finally, the point: the industry has gotten too caught up in making shows that fit what’s expected of them that they let those expectations ruin what chances there are for innovation. I wasn’t expecting Kiddy Grade to completely rock my world, but its endless fan-pandering and stupid insistence on the fetish point of boobs, lolis, and implied lesbianism really killed what could have been an amazing statement about class-based social structures and the sacrifices called for in any revolution. Project A-Ko starts at the other end of the spectrum as campy humor where an amazing plot suddenly reveals itself towards the end while keeping a good handle on the applications of fan-service and silliness. Kiddy Grade simply has too much: too much CG, too much sexiness, too much realism, and far too many contrived scenarios to make the sexiness, plot, and CG actually fit on the screen at one time. I’m probably going to sound like an old man, here, but a lot of modern series simply have too much of too many things to actually be successful. If you look at modern successful series, they focus on an individual theme or related set of themes and then put a twist on it: Haruhi is a schoolgirl who happens to be god (if that spoils things for you then where have you been for the last two years?!), Queen’s Blade is a nudity driven series with a decent plot, and Emma is a romance set in Victorian England. See, something normal with a twist. While a complex series can make it as a great show, it usually takes a lot more creativity and consequently elevates itself above the level of mainstream pick-a-plot. Anime is ultimately supposed to be just entertainment. While I maintain that some of it reaches the level of high art, that isn’t what sells DVDs. However, that doesn’t mean I think the average anime fan is a rabid Naruto headband wearing idiot. I think we’ve all been brainwashed into being content with season after season of remakes and shows that have been simplified to the brain-is-jello-but-there’s-lot-of-tits point. Fact of the matter is that there’s always going to be a lot of crappy series made for every one worthwhile show that gets produced and we are obligated to buy those crappy series so the industry can stay alive. Well, I say we, but really I mean all of those stupid Naruto headband fad chasers.

~Whim

PS1 – Yes, I know this review is long and rambly. I care, really, but I figured if I spent any longer trying to trim it down and whatnot it’d never get done.
PS2 – One really good thing about modern anime is that it can be really sexy compared to some of the older stuff. One of my all time favorite sexy moments is still during Elfen Lied when the main character and his cousin are sitting together at a shrine to take shelter from the rain; if you’ve seen it you should probably know what scene that is.
PS3 – I only briefly mentioned the fact that Kiddy Grade jumped the shark about five episodes before the end as it really didn’t relate that much to the rest of the review, but it does merit a word: by jump the shark I mean all reason went out the window and the plot took a left turn at stupid and contrived avenue; also the pacing went to hell. I was tolerating the series up to that point (especially since we just got Eclaire’s hot new body), but it sucked too much for me to let it go.

For the life of me, I just can’t figure out how to start this silly review. Also, I’m still batting around the short vs. long thing for these, so just bear with me. Anyway, this week comes a series I was a little hesitant about, but I’m glad I took the time to watch it. See, there are three categories that a series will ultimately be sorted into: 1) great and artistically worthwhile, 2) entertaining, and 3) craptastic waste of time. Michiko e Hatchin, though awesome, fits neatly into the second category. Michiko e Hatchin is another nice reminder of why I’ve been journeying out into the world of fansubs and alternative titles. Though not spectacular, I was thoroughly entertained.

Michiko e Hatchin, or MeH from here on, is the story of a wild convict named Michiko and the abused foster child Hatchin. Hatchin (aka Hana) has just turned ten and life for her couldn’t really get any worse: her parents abandoned her as a baby, her foster family abuses her, and she’s stuck in the middle of nowhere. All Hana wants is for someone to take her away. That someone just happens to be Michiko, fresh out of prison. Crashing through the dining room window on the most powerful scooter ever known to man, Michiko takes Hatchin out on a journey for one man: Hana’s father and Michiko’s true love. (Hana is not Michiko’s daughter; Michiko was in prison when Hana was born.) Fugitives, the pair is pursued by cops, gangsters, circus slave traders, and one really pissed off chick with an afro across a place surprisingly like the Mediterranean somewhere in the 70’s. Well, I say Mediterranean in the 70’s, but I get the impression that it’s about as accurate as a Disney movie about the holocaust.

To start with, MeH is probably the closest we’ll get to a spiritual sequel to Cowboy Bebop. Or rather, it’s a girly version of Cowboy Bebop: not that that’s a bad thing and there’s still enough Michiko cleavage to choke a horse. The music, the style, the action, it’s all the hallmarks of a show trying to follow in the footsteps of a genre defining work. The music is funky and awesome. The art, animation, and designs are all fluid with an emphasis on the 70’s look. The gunfights and action are totally off the wall fun. The show is heavily character driven with lots of interesting characters that complement one another pretty well in relation to the story. In fact, I think I’ll give the characters their own paragraph.

The characters in MeH are well written with a surprising amount of depth. Our titular characters actually do develop throughout their journey, and even most of the supporting cast undergo some sort of growth. Shoot, even the villains learn things about themselves. Hatchin, though, deserves special mention: really, the entire show is about her. I really enjoyed watching Hatchin learn how to stand on her own, how to fight back, and even a little bit about love. It was also really satisfying to see Michiko’s straightforwardness get her into more situations than she could get out of. These characters are amazingly direct and sincere; no matter how insane the situation, everyone is so honest in their approach everything seems simple. The sheer guts some of the characters have is astounding, especially in episode 17. There are moments where the characters were so hardcore I couldn’t help but cheer. Also, I have to admire how much the emphasis on family really put all the other crap going on in perspective; while I wouldn’t call this a traditional family values show, it is definitely a show about family. Those of you who know me personally will find that statement very ironic.

Before I bring this to an end, I thought I’d mention child abuse, as it is a driving factor in this series. See, Hatchin gets abused a lot by her foster family; we are privy to a breaking point shortly before Michiko liberates her where Hatchin is about to have her face ironed by her ‘sister.’ While it was satisfying to watch Hatchin punch the girl in the face (probably the most satisfying moment in the series for me), the foster parents’ tacit approval really pissed me off. Unfortunately, Michiko, being a rather rough and tumble woman herself, is pretty hard on Hatchin and will sometimes hit her for almost no reason. There’s also a circus that sells runaway children. On the whole, I had a really hard time tolerating any of it since there was no counterpoint to it save for one hug. While not necessarily a show breaker, it did bring the series down quite a bit on the “let’s watch that again” meter. Child abuse is an ugly thing, animated or not.

MeH comes out swinging with powerful episodes and wonderful characters, but unfortunately it couldn’t keep it up for the entire series. Careful readers will notice that I did not say that MeH is the successor to Cowboy Bebop, but that it was the closest we are likely to get: after the first few episodes it’s like the series got scared of what it could be and wandered around the European waterfront until it got closer to the end and all of the characters needed to be wrapped up. It got really slow for a while there and I’m sad to see it couldn’t capitalize on all of that potential. Still, though, the characters are badass and the way they turn the concept of family on its head is welcome. On the whole, Michiko e Hatchin is a fun ride across a foreign land with some great company and only a few bleeding children.

~Whim

PS – I watched this series as a fansub from BSS.
PS2 – Sorry I got a little behind; had a big project at work.
PS3 – Only once during this entire review did I type ‘Hatching’ instead of ‘Hatchin’; and yes, there probably is some link there with the growing up part of the plot for Hatchin.

After my world got rocked by Kaiba, I did something I never ever do: I looked up the director and tried to track down other series he made. Two rules I try to follow for anime are going into a series blind and never trying to look for more of the same; I figured anything else by the guy would be sufficiently different that I wouldn’t be breaking either of those rules too much. I consider it more following the spirit of the law rather than the letter of it. Anyway, Kemonozume was made two years prior to Kaiba, and much to my surprise, was actually rated adults only by Anime Encyclopedia. Make no mistake: Kemonozume is no hentai. There’s lots of violence, nudity, and R-rated sex, but there’s nothing pornographic about it. Supposing that Gantz has an immature fascination with blood and tits, Kemonozume is actually an adult contemplation of those topics with some (good) social commentary thrown in for good measure. I suppose I should just come out with it now: Kemonozume is one of the most hardcore displays of badassery I’ve ever seen.

I could start breaking the series down following my usual pattern of music-animation-story-deathblow, but I did that once and it was over six pages. So I’ll try to keep it simple this time around.

Thousands of years ago, the gods cursed a pair of lovers such that they turned into monsters and ate other humans. However, being a pair of lovers they naturally had little cannibal children of their own and to this day a secret race of monsters has lived alongside humanity, well, more like lived on humanity. Not long after the demon children started to propagate, a secret order of martial artists was formed to fight the human eating menace. Fast forward to modern day Japan, where the soon to be leader of the martial artists falls in love with a woman who is more than she seems and we get a thrill ride covered in blood and sex with the fate of the world resting on one man in a suit and tie…and a sword.

What I love about Kemonozume is that it takes so many established conventions and turns them completely on their heads. What starts as a Romeo and Juliet styled romantic tragedy slowly turns to trip across the abandoned remnants of the country with a van ride across the sky before ending with a super stylized showdown atop a giant bowling ball rolling towards Tokyo. Nothing in this show is predictable and most things aren’t what they seem. The series doesn’t pussyfoot around, either: for an entire episode the main character is stripped naked and tied to chair after having his mind toyed with by someone much stronger and cleverer than he is. Kemonozume is hardcore for the fact that it is raw: the animation is rough (and eerily reminiscent of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons), the characters are straightforward, and nothing is watered down. There are so many fun things to talk about from this series, but the most amazing thing is that if you don’t want to pay attention to any of the subtle symbolism and social commentary, it’s still a great show and lots of fun.

The most notable thing about this series, for me at least, is not the animation style that will induce migraines in some of you, but the characters. For a series to be as badass as Kemonozume, the characters have to be equally awesome. Just to rattle off a few of the more awesome moments: a guy slices his own arms off by sticking his sword into the ground and ramming against it; a villain gets mutated and screams “now I’m even more awesome!”; the main characters try to have sex, but since one of them mutates into a ravenous beast when aroused she has to be handcuffed to bed, but she breaks free and the next morning finds the guy outside a blast chamber with her locked inside, both of them smiling; and the topper is probably the rogue samurai facing down the world in a suit and tie. These are characters I love for their flaws: they screw up, they panic, etc. Amidst all of the death and violence, the main character can’t kill anything; he always gets stomach cramps just as he’s about to deliver the killing blow. I was expecting him to overcome this flaw at some point, but then I realized just how nasty it is to want the main character to become a murderous bastard. His weakness turns out to be a really endearing driving factor right to the fantastically absurd ending.

Kemonozume comes out swinging with its rocking soundtrack and style; it’s a show with a direction to go and it doesn’t care who it has to kick to the curb along the way. If Kemonozume were a person, it’d be that badass biker that will discuss the misleading aspects of the current class structure as he rearranges your face simply because you wandered down the wrong alley. While Kaiba was philosophical and took the time to be thoughtful, Kemonozume only pauses while it reaches for another weapon. Oddly enough, my favorite part of the entire show is the lead in shorts used for some of the episodes (inconsistently used so that they are never predictable, I might add), where they take combine standard animation, a common place situation, and then twist it with the shape-shifting human-eating demons: the old monster trying to gum someone to death, the high school student’s first kiss gone horribly horribly wrong, and so on. These brief moments of reality bending insanity really crystallize the overall feeling of the show. The only criticism I have for the series is a sharp drop in animation quality for most of episode eight, but that quickly pales next to the fact that the series is so mind-bogglingly awesome that it reaches the point where if you have to nitpick the thing you have totally missed the point. A mistake the series will gladly correct with large claws. Much like Kaiba, Kemonozume is a series you simply have to experience; once you do you’ll find the idea of reviewing it a little redundant.

~Whim

PS – I watched this series as a fansub from Shinsen-subs; I am so glad they actually subbed this because it was hard enough to even track down the fact that this series even existed. If you are having trouble finding it try looking for Kemonodzume; the d is weird.
PS2 – Yeah, no review last week because of the holiday. Well, that’s the official excuse: I actually wrote a Kemonozume review but it was six pages long and clung to the notion that you needed something other than a firm command to go watch this series.
PS3 – Kemonozume is not a beginners’ series; do not try to introduce someone to the world of anime with this show.
PS4 – Hooray for the first review originally posted on flyingwhimsy.com!

Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Chaos: Head comes to us from a myriad of companies, one of which I think is worth mentioning for their eroge production Chaos: Gate, which is totally unrelated to this series but has some really great character designs; those of you into the figure scene have probably seen the awesome figures of Ignis. Anyway, I seem to have stumbled my way into a bunch of heady, philosophical and psychological anime lately and while I’ve been trying to get some variety in there for all of you reading these reviews, I really like thinking anime; I guess it comes from so many years studying philosophy at college. Just out of reviewer integrity I will make a point to watch some other things (Queen’s Blade is coming along nicely, by the way) so you guys don’t keep getting buried with all of the emphasis on character revelations and such. Anyway, you won’t have to worry about too much depth here as Chaos: Head is another thinky anime that tries the mainstream approach.

Chaos: Head is about a second year high school student named Taku. Taku lives in Shibuya and is a NEET of rather unique determination. The NEET is a term used almost exclusively with Japanese fans that are obsessed with anime to the point where they prefer the 2D world over the 3D in pretty much every aspect; experiences out in the ‘real’ world for NEETs are generally painful and awkward. From my understanding, NEETs are generally hikkomoris (shut-ins) and are seen as a bit of a drain on Japanese society, from both filial and federal perspectives. There are lots of other things to say about the NEET, but for our purposes Taku is a super Otaku shut-in that is shunned by a society he disdains. Taku’s main companion is a delusional anime character that shows up when he’s at home; Taku’s sister and a couple friends at school add some touch of the outside world to his life. One thing I like about Taku’s characterization is that he has a carefully made chart so that he can be absent as much as possible while still meeting minimum graduation requirements. As you probably guessed, Taku’s world gets interrupted when strange events start to happen in Shibuya. Turns out there’s some sort of group trying to destabilize society with a related string of suicides and murders. Much to Taku’s dismay, he gets pulled in kicking and screaming as the line between perception and reality get blurred with as much subtlety as a neon colored sword to the face.

Speaking of subtle, the production values in Chaos: Head are pretty good; well, above average. The music is fitting with a kick ass opening and a really sappy ending (more on that later), and while I wouldn’t bother with the incidental music, I would gladly have that opening on my iPod. The animation is pretty top notch with a lot of polish; everything moves fairly well and the swords are really cool looking. The character design is good, though a bit stereotypical, but this is coming from people that make erotic computer games, so I’m just happy they weren’t cut-and-paste generic characters; but they were awfully close. Things get a little clunky at times, but I’m willing to chalk it up to the generic look and feel the rest of the series has. The music and animation never do anything to take away from the series, and end up contributing with a bit a style and flair. Now that that’s out of the way, I can address this series for what it is.

The story in Chaos: Head goes through several stages. It starts out as a romantic comedy harem thing with all of these cute girls throwing themselves at Taku while he makes a rather sad attempt to ignore them all for his beloved anime character Seira. Weird dreams and vivid hallucinations aside, things go fairly straightforward until Taku stumbles onto a guy crucified with a bunch of little cross-shaped spikes. With the sinister turn the series then takes on the format of a terribly written console RPG (role playing game like final fantasy); bad dialogue with our super-powered yet totally helpless guy surrounded and aided by a number of beautiful, mysterious women in a fight against an evil authority figure. Once Taku “levels up” enough he reaches a point where he no longer needs the women to fight for him and the series turns into Noein with its soft-science psychological and perceptual weirdness. I would not have been surprised if one of the characters said “there is no spoon” and was totally serious about it. The overall affect of these transformations is to give us the weird feeling that we’ve seen it all before, like the series has gotten itself all lost and confused in a closet full of popular things from Japan.

On the whole, Chaos: Head plays like a NEET fantasy: the reserved male star having power beyond imagination, the loads of pretty girls, a secret plot that has the whole world out to get him, etc. Maybe I should rephrase that as otaku fantasy, but either way you get my point. The characters (by which I mean the girls surrounding Taku), though interesting at first glance, quickly devolve into one dimensional support figures that are ultimately powerless on their own. The only exception is Rimi, the pink-haired love-interest, who actually has some depth and character development, but again it’s all shelved for the sake of Taku. Well, it’s not exactly shelved, just pushed off to the side. Even the ending titles play like some fantasy, with the opening lines talking about how “You are always super special.” Naturally, for the end of the series we get what I can only guess is an attempt to make a more accessible (understandable) Evangelion type of ending; some business about perceiving others and so on. It actually comes out more awkward and leaves more questions. Chaos: Head leaves me with a lot of questions, and not just about the ending. While I could go on about all the things that don’t make sense, I’m afraid it would just spoil most of the series for you, so I’ll just say some things about the dialogue. (Although I still need to ask 2 question: what is so magical about Shibuya and what on earth do characters like these do after the series the ends?)

The dialogue in Chaos: Head is so clichéd, so horrendously bad, that it really deserves its own paragraph. See, a really good series and really bad series actually get similar reactions from me while I am watching them: I talk back, I shout, I laugh, I taunt. Every episode ended with me telling Taku that he needed to get killed in a sufficiently brutal fashion (too much Higurashi, I suppose), but he was just so whiny and self-centered. He never said “I mustn’t run away,” but I really wish he had; I think Shinji may have more backbone than this punk. At one point one of the girls says she loves him because he is so weak and pathetic. Another girl is a perfect cross between Rei Ayanami from Eva and Yuki Nagato from Haruhi (particularly the rock concert), I couldn’t help but feel some affection for her even though I kept getting a Frankenstein’s Monster vibe; also she spouts gothic poetry and fiction. If you’ve ever played a poorly voice-acted rpg, it’s exactly the same feeling. The series is totally sincere in how terrible the writing is, too; there is never any sense of parody or an indications that the series doesn’t take itself seriously; it made me laugh all the more at how terrible it is. It’s like a little kid pretending to do something adult; you want to criticize but all you can do is smile and laugh. Consequently, I think the series itself comes off as a huge joke, but more of the kind you groan at. The writing doesn’t just stop at the bad dialogue: the plot is every bit as bad.

Chaos: Gate is, as I’ve said, so terribly bad that it makes the full loop back to being wholly enjoyable. While I hated Chaos: Gate, especially Taku, I couldn’t help but enjoy it. It makes the perfect example of what’s bad about the generic philosophical “I am the me that exists in your mind” style of psychological anime that we’ve been seeing more of; vague, indeterminate, and pretentious with no real substance. Clichéd and hokey as it is, the story was entertaining enough to keep me interested, I got psyched up by the opening every time, and some of the supporting cast was actually pretty charming. I think what I’m getting to here is a recommendation: it’s great if you’re looking for something a little shallower than the mental black holes I would typically recommend; it’s also got some cute characters, humor, and a little fan service; and it’s really terrible while making every attempt to be a serious show. I hope you’ll enjoy it, but if you can’t make it past the second episode I won’t blame you. Actually, I will blame you because you made the mistake of taking the series as seriously as it takes itself, making both of you the joke.

~Whim

PS – I watched this as a fansub from m.3.3.w; just pretend the 3’s are e’s and say it out loud.
PS2 – See, shorter again for both of them this week. Now that you’ve had a taste of my shorter reviews, which do you prefer?
PS3 – I cannot emphasize how much I hated this show, but I couldn’t stop watching and laughing and enjoying myself.
PS4 – What is with all of the shows either starting with their last scene or having a narrative from the main character from after the series ends? I guess they don’t want us to be too surprised by an original ending. Higurashi is a special exception due to good writing and sheer mind-screwy awesomeness.

Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

My second review this week, (the first being Yonna in the Solitary Fortress), Hoshizora Kiseki is listed as an ONA on Anime Encyclopedia. For those not familiar with these things, ONA stands for Original Net Animation. Admittedly, I’m not very familiar with these releases other than the fact that they are originally released on the internet and distributed that way. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog is probably the best and most successful example of a net release. I think I can actually pull off a spoiler-free review for this one.

Hoshizora Kiseki (hereafter referred to as HK) is a story about a girl and her quest for summer romance. The main character, Kozue, is a high school girl with a fixation on astronomy. Hearing a voice telling her where a meteor will fall, she decides to go on a camping trip on the neighboring mountain so she can be there when it happens. Once there, she meets a boy in a spacesuit with some sort of stellar ability that will vanish once he’s left in the normal atmosphere. Kozue attempts to get the boy to choose for himself whether he will be a tool for the government or if he will leave his bubble.

HK strikes me as a work someone did after watching all of Makoto Shinkai’s works (Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and 3cm Per Second). The backgrounds are all focused on the sky with wide, panoramic angles. The characters are internalized eccentrics with special mental ties to one another. The music aims for profound stirrings of the heart. Unfortunately, it’s not a Makoto Shinkai work and without his hand to tie it all together it turned into a flat imitation. That’s not to say it’s all bad, the animation is still really nice and pretty and the backgrounds are stunning (though not as artistically powerful as Makoto’s), and the characters are top notch. Kozue is an obsessive eccentric with loner tendencies, though she still has the same desires as normal high school girls. The boy in the bubble is dynamic and strange, making for an interesting pair romantically and thematically. I’m reminded of Nodame Cantabile, actually, only with the roles reversed where Chiaki was the obsessive eccentric and Nodame was dynamic and strange. I wonder if this is the beginning of a new set of stereotypes. The story is fairly straightforward and well-paced for twenty minutes; hardly any time goes to waste with things that aren’t related to the love story and the setting for the characters. The music is a little flat, but the rest of it is pretty solid.

I do have one major gripe with HK, though: it’s too damned misogynistic. All of the female characters have roles subservient to the males. The military girls operate the computers and handle communications while the men do all the big important things like roughing up high school girls and keeping boys trapped in bubbles. There are moments of straight-up objectification of the main character and one of her friends, and while I like fan-service (I did review the first episode of Queen’s Blade which I would avoid like the plague if I wasn’t into fan-service), I only like fan-service when it doesn’t distract from the story: a long shot of Kozue’s ass may be sexy, but it’s a terrible flow breaker when it’s shoe horned into the show. The big climax of the story sees Kozue on the sidelines while the males do all the decision making. It’s probably pretty obvious at this point, but I am not a fan of patriarchic societal trends as the only way to pursue equality is not through political correctness, but through vigilance against subtle and overt social programming.

Hoshizora Kiseki is fairly competent, though uninspired. Sexist trends aside, the story, music, and animation are all above average with the animation standing a cut above. However, the eerie similarities to Makoto Shinkai’s works bring this one down quite a bit on my “I liked it a lot and want you to watch it scale,” as HK is the generic store brand soda compared to Coke or Pepsi: flat and desperately trying to be something original and inspired by copying something original and inspired. For a piece to be moving it needs to have a journey from at least one emotion to the other. However, HK is still interesting and if it had been a bit longer it could have really made a name for itself. Since it’s not longer, I can only recommend it for Makoto fans or folks looking for some good characters and quick romance. Hey, it’ll fill a little bit of time before the next Makoto pictures comes out.

~Whim

PS – I watched this as a fansub from Ureshi.
PS2 – See, shorter.

Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

I have to admit, I needed a little break from anime after Higurashi; too much, as my friend Kevin would say, “gruesome fetishized violence.” So this week I’ve only got a couple reviews of some shorter things for you. First up we have a CG movie called Yonna in the Solitary Fortress. Movie might be a little generous, though, as it’s only 33 minutes including the end credits. Given that it’s so short, I’ll try to go easy on the spoilers but there is absolutely nothing to spoil for this.

Yonna in the Solitary Fortress is about a girl named Yonna who lives isolated in a fortress. It’s always nice when there’s a fitting title. Anyway, Yonna happens to have magical powers and, given how people are often portrayed was driven out of her home town along with her older brother while they were both still children. The Federal Government, being of a slightly saner disposition, has heard of Yonna’s powers and wants to join the government forces for an unstated-but-since-it’s-a-government-you-can-assume-it-will-be-sinister purpose. After years and years of talking with Yonna’s fiercely defensive brother, the Federal Government loses patience and sends one of its elite agents, a young man named something forgettable, to “liberate” Yonna from the big stone fortress with his futuristic hand-held computer and grappling hook gun. As it turns out, there’s also another agent who’s been trying to talk his way into the fortress for some time. Yonna ends up torn between her oppressive brother and the dashing young secret agent.

Overall, I get the impression that Yonna in the Solitary Fortress (referred to as FFPY from here on out because it’ll take too long to type Final Fantasy Pretender Yonna) began life as a side project or possibly someone’s lunchtime experiments with a 3D rendering program. Many of the sounds, action, animation, and story feel like they were rushed into place between other projects. I bet FFPY was still being designed, animated, and voiced as the pieces were being put together. The music is, oddly enough, the only thing that doesn’t suffer from this problem. Seeing as the music was probably one of the last things done for FFPY, the folks doing the music could see what they had to work with overall and could work towards putting in something fitting. Though generic and predictable right to the ending j-pop song, I couldn’t help but be impressed because the music seemed to be the only thing done with any skill. I guess the voice-acting was okay, but the voices never quite matched the character actions or expressions. Actually, this brings me to what is probably the weakest part of the show, the animation.

Now I know I’ve said some bad things about three-dimensional computer graphic animation being forced into two-dimensional anime before, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like things in the third dimension. Any Pixar picture and most of the Dreamworks movies rank pretty high in my movie pantheon of sheer awesome, I think the Japanese companies have a way to go to catch up (see my review of Vexille for more details). I did love the Final Fantasy movie, btw; the Spirits Within not that bit of fan-wankery everyone else thinks of. But that’s only one movie. Anyway, FFPY does not do much to help push anime into the format. I will list things off in no particular order: bad shadows, generic designs and horrible faces, the level of detail in the models was beyond that of the textures so things looked really bad for close-ups, the character movement was unnatural (though not the worst I’ve seen, so they get a C+ for that), awkward camera placement, everything was the same damn color, and the voicing never matched any of the mouth movements. In other words, it was like the folks making FFPY didn’t actually have that much experience with 3D animation and they fumbled through as best they could. My standards may be high because of the stuff I usually watch, but the general awkward feeling of the whole thing really killed any attempts the show made to draw me in. The awkward animation would be bearable (shoot, we still enjoy the End of Evangelion despite certain budget issues and trips to the land of stock footage) if it were the only thing that was wrong, but the story even more uncoordinated.

The story in FFPY is this weird blend of Science-Fiction and Fantasy that is as uninspired as it sounds; I call it Final Fantasy Pretender Yonna for a reason. The story doesn’t even make any sense, I mean why would Yonna be the target of persecution when her brother clearly has magical powers, too; though admittedly I guess there’s a difference between shooting little balls of lightning and being able to summon demons and making giant golden lions out of fire and rose petals. I guess in their world people draw the same distinction between summoners and spell-casters that they drew in Final Fantasy IX; it still doesn’t make that much sense since they make it out to be such a bad thing. Really, it’s all just so bloody vague and I have so many questions. I mean, why don’t they have indoor plumbing when they have interplanetary travel? Why would magic seem so bad when they are bound to have found some strange life or even have the different planetary cultures be so foreign they’re alien? We have to assume the Federal Government is evil (admittedly not that hard since they want to abduct Yonna for their own purposes), but are they really that evil or are they just a little more on the ends justifying the means side of things? Why didn’t the secret agent just go flying in on his damn spaceship? FFPY relied on my understanding of Final Fantasy far too much, as if I hadn’t played any of those games (or similar Japanese RPGs) I’d never had understood the setting or the stereotypes for the characters. Actually, everything in the story is borrowed and the writing doesn’t flush out the characters well enough to make up for it. Yonna is forced to make a big decision between potentially killing her brother and saving the elite agent, but it happens so fast and the dramatic pause she takes wasn’t nearly dramatic enough. If the voice acting been better applied and the facial animation done better (so obviously done by someone who’s used to working with 2D anime faces with less detail and range) then maybe the character development would have been there. The story could have been paced better, too, as we only get a picture of what the story is about during the end dialogue; turns out it’s a tale about Yonna’s inner strength and not about the agent’s quest to “save” her. Had the writing been going in that direction sooner I might have known that and been more in tune with it during the key scenes.

While it sounds like I didn’t like FFPY, (it’s true, I didn’t) I might recommend it for one rather amazing scene that was put in more as a bit of fluff but really defined the character Yonna for me. Yonna captures the agent (as opposed to letting her brother kill him), but in a moment of self-doubt and depression in response to his efforts to persuade her to leave Yonna summons a little flying demon (although instead of fire or smoke, Yonna’s magic happens in a flurry of rose petals and makes quite the sight with the little demon) to try and cheer her up. She summons ugly butt-naked little creature and then curls up in a ball on her bed. I then watched as the little creature flew around and made cute noises and poses to try and get her to loosen up; in the face of failing efforts, the little demon then summons/turns into a big bright green naked horned demon. The big demon then makes some poses before sitting on the bed next to Yonna in resignation. However, given the demon’s size he bounces her pretty high when he sits, so he scoots closer to Yonna and bounces her a lot as he does so. She cracks a smile and looks away to see the little demon just waiting and smiling. Yonna smiles and cheers up, but the interaction is interrupted as someone comes into her room. A shining moment of brilliant storytelling and execution, this scene actually made me glad I watched FFPY. I’m detailing it here because I don’t think any of you will actually watch this series, but I just wanted you to try and get a feel for what characterization is. See, we saw Yonna react and we saw that she was a deep and complex character just for the sheer fact that she summoned something to cheer her up and then completely ignored it so it would work even harder. The way the rest of the characters were characterized was the simple way of someone saying they were a certain way or by having the character say it themselves. I can’t be told by a character that they are sad and have it have the same effect as seeing them be made sad and reacting to it. There’s a wonderful line in the last episode of Futurama (the series and not the made for DVD movies) where the robot devil shouts at Fry: “You can’t just have your characters tell us how they feel, that makes me angry!” (Note: quote may not be exact.) Anyway, that one scene, good as it was, left me wondering what happened with the rest of FFPY.

I’ll be honest, here, I can’t recommend Yonna in the Solitary Fortress after all. The way everything just seemed slapped together like it was being stuck together before it was even done really killed this show for me. Excuse me, killed this half-hour movie for me. I jokingly said that this may have been put together on someone’s lunch break, but the more I think about it the more that’s probably true. Given how unoriginal the thing was all around and how unfamiliar everyone seemed with the animation tools and direction, I can’t help but think this is something someone started making on their own and then their boss saw it and said “hey, let’s finish it properly.” Unfortunately, the story just can’t stand on it’s own and the characters just aren’t strong enough to pull it off (if they had just focused solely on Yonna it may have worked, but the focus kept shifting back to that elite agent). I don’t feel like I completely wasted the half-hour I spent watching it or even the time spent writing this review, mainly because of the scene I detailed earlier, but also because it so clearly demonstrates how a lack of harmony with the three parts of music-animation-story can ruin something great. FFPY was bad enough to remind me that there is plenty of crap and I’m glad I’m searching for new things so I can find it all and make fun of it. If it ever gets a release stateside I will send a letter asking them to call it Final Pretender Yonna (drop the Fantasy to avoid copyright issues, naturally); that would be the only way I’d buy it.

~Whim

PS – I watched this as a fansub from Ureshi.
PS2 – I recently saw Battle for Terra, and I have to say for an indie flick it had a lot of polish and a good story, so there are examples of lower budget CG productions out there.
PS3 – Turns out since there aren’t really any legal barriers at this point, some of the fansub groups are going ahead with Queen’s Blade for those of you with a need for the massive boobage. I’m actually working on tracking down some more stuff like Kaiba, though.

Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Before I get into this review I want to say a word about fan-subs, that is to say anime that is subtitled and distributed by a non-profit group. I’ve been rocking out the fan-subs quite a bit lately, due partly to the economic crunch but also because I’ve been looking for something different. It’s easier to get more obscure and new releases faster than waiting for a company to translate, dub, and print a series. That said, I do not encourage fan-subs as a form of piracy. However, I’ve found that a lot of fan-sub groups put in enough time and effort that their releases are often the same or (usually) better quality than the official DVDs. There’s also the additional issues of translation problems and censorship, but I’ll ignore those for now as they aren’t relevant and they really piss me off. I bring fan-subbing up now because I just finished watching the official DVDs for Higurashi and there were typos; not just one or two across all twenty-six episodes, but there were several per DVD. While it may seem like nitpicking, it really pisses me off because these people make a living subtitling these things. Proofread your damn stuff. I know this may sound hypocritical if you’ve read my reviews and kept an eye out for typos and such, but I write these in a tense, foaming-at-the-mouth state and only have a small amount of time to proofread them. I also don’t get paid. It pulls me right out of a show when I mentally need to add words in or fix grammatical errors. On top of that, most DVDs still use the basic yellow text for subtitles, and while that’s a nice neutral mostly visible most of the time method of doing, I always get the impression of a series being stamped out for us to view. If I’m paying thirty bucks a DVD, I expect more care to be taken than that. Fan-subs, depending on the group, can have custom fonts or at least unique and fitting font and color choices that really add to the experience instead of just sit next to it. I’m not saying we should stop buying anime or start paying the fan-subbers (they do so well because they care, once money gets involved suddenly it becomes work), I’m just saying that we can and should expect better quality product. Although the point for this series is a little moot as the late, great Geneon was responsible for bringing Higurashi stateside. Seriously, though, just ask me about Elfen Lied some time and I’ll give you such an earful. Maybe I should send an email to some of the publishers. *coughfunimationcough* Anyway, onto the review.

This week we’ll be looking at the violent loli parade that is Higurashi, or When They Cry, or Higurashi no Naku Koroni, or whatever the hell you want to call it. Higurashi is a story set in 1983 in a little mountain village by the name of Hinamizawa and follows the games club of the local all-ages schoolhouse. Keiichi, recently transferred in from the city, has been happily adjusting to life in the country with his new all female super cute loli for every taste friends when he learns of a murder five years prior. When Keiichi asks his friends about the event in jest he ends up with more questions than he can handle. Suffice it to say there is more to Hinamizawa than meets the eye.

A word or two about the structure of the series: Higurashi is a horror series, plain and simple. It’s violent, mysterious, and twisted to a degree I’ve not encountered since I first saw Elfen Lied years ago. While I am all gung-ho for walking into a show without any idea what’s coming, I got blindsided by Elfen Lied at a very fragile point in my life and even a word before hand would have probably saved me some trauma. I only mention this on the off chance that some person somewhere is saved some hardship even if it is at the cost of some of the element of surprise. That said, I will try and keep the spoilers to a minimum as this series totally needs it. Although considering the opening scene involves somebody getting beaten to death with a baseball bat I feel there are a few liberties to be taken.

I think I’ll mix it up a bit and start with the animation this week. I may have mentioned about Keiichi being surrounded by cute girls, and I can’t emphasize that enough. The characters in this show are so damn cute you’ll be squealing right up until the blood starts splattering. Rena is particularly cute and the creators of the show used that to its full advantage, giving her cute mannerisms and even the occasional little floating rainclouds and whatnot. The characters are all a little more deformed in the cutesy fashion (skinny with big heads) than in your usual anime and the drawing style is occasionally a bit, but that’s just the show’s style. I actually can’t think of anything I’d change about the style, especially since the art director countered the cuteness with an amazing sense of applied lighting, deep shadows, and a keen awareness of warm and cool colors. There are moments when the series turns eerie and you won’t even realize why (it’s actually a combination of the art and music for some of those moments but you won’t catch it unless you are looking for it). Overall, the animation is really fluid and they didn’t take the cheap route for anything. The violence is graphic and bloody without Gantz’s over-the-top levels of detail and excessive everything. I’d also like to say that they use the perfect shades of red for blood. As I mentioned in a previous review, a great anime occurs when animation, music and story all blend seamlessly to create a memorable and profound experience for the viewer: I’ve not mentioned that in a while but Higurashi definitely makes a play at the trifecta.

The music in Higurashi is exactly what you’d expect from a horror series: eerie and quiet. Yet another series where silence is used wonderfully well, the music actually flits between happy lounge muzak, scary pulse-pounding horror, and quiet incidental music that really builds a lot of tension. Fortunately, proper care was taken so that the transitions in the music are well timed. Most of the sounds used in the show are taken from the anime sounds greatest hits, but the squishy violent parts have a thud behind them that is very satisfying. Actually, a lot of the music and sounds are very generic, but there’s this underlying sense of parody for the lighter parts that keeps it from being clichéd and the unsettling parts are still unsettling. The opening, though, is fan-fricking-tastic; the song is great and the visuals are both stunning and creepy enough to set up the series perfectly; admittedly, though, it got a little old by the last episode but it’s been a while since I watched a show this long with intent to review. The ending is mid-range, doing it’s job by giving us something to listen to if we want to watch the credits but not good enough to make us want to watch them. Just the same, it’s not a soundtrack I would buy or would want to seeing as it’s all cheesy lounge-music and generic scary bits. While the music itself isn’t groundbreaking, the implementation of it is done so well it makes up for the lack of originality. Some of my favorite parts of the series are still the quietest moments when the story speaks for itself and even the animation sits on the side.

I have to admit, I was pretty engrossed in the story from the start of Higurashi. The opening scene where we see Keiichi with the baseball bat, blood splattering, and two dead girls in the middle of the night was probably one of the most sudden and interesting ways to pull me into a series. The fact that the rest of the first episode is normal save for an eerie last couple of minutes really adds to that, too. As far as content goes, it reminds me a lot of Sky Crawlers thematically, but is far more accessible and the added horror element really brings out a lot of intentionally unsaid theme. When I say horror, Higurashi is not one of those scary monster or ghost series. Well, not directly, anyways. See, we’re actually told the roughly the same story a few different times from different perspectives or with different characters and events; each telling bringing a new, fresh look to the tale while somehow being related either directly or indirectly. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a series where the main characters died so many times. Anyway, the real horror comes from the a combination of characters turning to violence and sometimes insanity paired with the inherent creepy factor of cute young girls: all of which the story drives towards with a sense of foreboding so strong when you go back to your life away from watching anime you’ll expect something really bad to happen just from dropping a pencil. It’s dark outside right now and there’s a quiet little voice telling me if I leave a curse will catch up with me and I’ll claw my own throat out. One of my favorite creative points about this series is how they characterize the characters in all of the stories: they use a blend of common stereotypes and music to tell us who these characters are, with the music subtly changing as the shit hits the fan; even better, though, is that the characters act differently from story to story, which keeps it both fresh and really makes the characters more interesting to see how they act differently or the same in certain scenarios. Since all of the main characters range from early elementary to high school, none of them act with a terrible amount of wisdom so watching them try and cope is like watching the crash of the Hindenburg. There is an overarching plot, but it’s kind of throwaway as it only makes an appearance in the last episode and is gone over so briefly that it didn’t do a lot to give me any sense of closure to the whole thing beyond what the end of the last story arc would have had anyways. Overall, the story is really compelling and the characters are genuinely interesting (especially Shion, holy crap that Shion is something else in one of the stories). The basic elements of horror are there and the pacing is spot on throughout. The different tellings of the story of Hinamizawa build on each other really well to give the entire series a sense of depth and saves us some of the silly repetition that would have otherwise bogged everything down. The story is strong, but there are a few points where things are a little flat and the sheer crescendo building horror wouldn’t be apparent without the music and art proudly putting it on display.

Higurashi is definitely an example of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole: the art style is rich but occasionally a little schizophrenic, the music is generic, and the story, though interesting, falls a little flat in the end; however, when the three are combined we get a series that I can’t help but describe with the phrase ‘fucking awesome.’ The characters really drive the series, especially as the occasional descent into madness is both compelling and believable when it’s a rational occurrence. Actually, one of the things I like about this series is that it makes sense in its own twisted way throughout; even the supernatural elements follow a certain logical progression. The violence is so jarring and terrible that it’s both disturbing and satisfying in ways I should probably seek therapy over. This series also has a high re-watching value because it builds a lot and the ending has ramifications for the series as a whole that make it substantially different the second time through. If I were the type to give awards, this series would win ‘harem done right’ and ‘acceptable use of loli characters.’ The underage factor of all the characters does so much to add to the horror and the underlying attraction between some of the girls and Keiichi really does a lot to turn the concepts of their heads. Now that I think about it, Higurashi is pretty much the definition of turning something on its head: from the way the series starts to its blending of light humor and disturbing horror, I can’t help but feel this series was progressive in several ways. Not radically genre-defining progressive like Kaiba, but definitely enough to make you think about harem and loli anime series a little differently. I suppose any series that has what would be the traditional love interest coming at you with a meat cleaver after four episodes into a story arc would have to be pretty different.

EDIT: You know, I finally put my finger on what added so much to this series: tragedy. All of the horror branches out from the tragedy of things going so terribly wrong. This series is right up there with Air on tragic level, especially during the second run through when you know more about what’s going on. See, it’s one thing for characters to go insane and start hacking bits off of other characters, it’s entirely different when they totally aren’t supposed to do so. How did I miss that when I was writing this review? I guess that’s the price I pay for just hammering these out all willy-nilly. Anyway, I guess any series that starts off with a scene where the protagonist is beating the now dead bodies of the two most prominent romantic interests with a baseball bat is playing the tragically wrong trump card from the go.

~Whim (with a big thanks to Jacob for loaning me this series)

PS – I actually avoid dubs at all costs these days because of what they did to the music track for Castle in the Sky; way to piss all over the original director’s intent guys.
PS2 – Yes, only one review again this week. Sorry, but I’m making a website for these and my other artistic endeavors so I’ve been a bit preoccupied. I’ve got a good number of new things ready to be watched, so once I get the site up we’ll be back to a high volume. Also, I will be putting in a little more oomph and planning for these reviews as believe it or not, I can actually do better than these rushed run-throughs. (see the edit about tragedy at the end of the review proper.)
PS3 – Having started a second run through the series there are a lot of things that build towards the ending that weren’t obvious the first time, which is good and all for the second viewing, but that still doesn’t help the fact that it came off so damn flat the first time through. Actually, the series is a totally different beast the second time through; how interesting…
PS4 – Turns out there are two sequels and a live action special of Higurashi. I think I know what torrents I might be firing up next.

Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Sorry this one is a day late, I wanted some time to think about it since I usually come up with all sorts of fun things to say after these are posted. Of course, four hours wrestling with a roto-tiller into some sod has completely drained my creative faculties.

At this point I’m not entirely sure how to approach some of these reviews anymore. While it’s fun to fly wildly into intro-summary-music-animation-story-conclusion with nothing more than my experience of the show, I’m beginning to think I should do a little more research on these things so I’m not surprised by the details for the announcement that Sky Crawlers is coming to the states and that its creator was none other than the mind behind some other really great anime properties. The issue I have with that, though, is that I don’t want to research before hand as that will probably jade my expectations and the less I know going into a series/OVA/movie/videogame/dark alley the more I can enjoy it honestly. Although I doubt I’d have been any kinder to This Ugly Yet Beautiful World even if I hadn’t known Gainax made it. Anyway, the direction I’m going here is I’ve stumbled onto this show Kaiba, and I feel like I need to know more about who made it to do it justice and so you can know more about it. See my conflict here? Well, I can’t get the network cable to reach where I’m sitting (currently typing this during one of club showings, thank you killing two birds with one stone), so you guys are just going to have to live with not knowing. From a purely objectivist point-of-view, though, I strongly suggest that not know much about a series/whatever beforehand is the better way to approach it. Then again, I write these reviews on the assumption you haven’t seen it. Heh.

Kaiba is our titular blond-haired, blue-eyed protagonist who wakes up with plot-powered memory loss and a hole in his chest over which a locket hangs with a blurry picture of a girl. Yay symbolism. The world Kaiba awakens to is set far in the future where humanity has spread to the stars, met alien races, and none of it matters since nearly everyone has had their memories converted to chips the size of an average thumb and bodies get swapped like clothes. Naturally, there’s a wicked class system in place ruled over by a heavy-handed king. Within moments of waking up, Kaiba is nearly taken by body harvesters and is sent away by his new friend Popo. Across multiple worlds, bodies, and minds, Kaiba inadvertently follows his love, his memories, and the truth at the heart of the world.

Before I get going into the rest of the review, I just want to say a couple things. First, everything in Kaiba is well done. Second, Kaiba is deep. Seriously, when you stop watching it you could get the intellectual bends if you aren’t careful. Like Sky Crawlers, it would actually be best for you to just go out and watch it right now. Don’t read anything else about it, don’t listen to anything else about it, just watch it. That said, I will do my best not to spoil anything and I strongly hope you will be encouraged enough to watch this show as I could write twenty pages and it still wouldn’t cover everything. Speaking of twenty pages, let’s get started. (Note: this actually won’t be that long as I have listened to some of your comments.)

The music in Kaiba is pretty stunning, if a little repetitive. The melodies are well-structured and full of emotion. I don’t know who the composer is, but they did their job well. The director used the music perfectly, with the score often making the scene. In several instances, the music starts up before the conclusion of a scene, leading me into the emotion rather than enforcing it after the fact. Though a small difference, it did a lot to affect the impact of the series for me. As I mentioned, they use a lot of the same music throughout the show, but I can’t really fault them for it as it helps unite the series and given its length, a broader soundtrack would go to waste. The opening and closing are very similar, both being slow, thoughtful melodies about love filled with images that I only understood as I watched the show. I relished the time the opening gave me to think about the characters it displayed and where they are at the start of the episode. The ending was a wonderful period during which the full ramifications of the events could really sink in. I would buy this soundtrack if it were available domestically, but I don’t know if I’d be willing to shell out the extra money to import it. That said, you would definitely catch me listening to this stuff on my ipod.

I just realized I haven’t said a word about the animation in Kaiba, which is amazing given that the animation is superb. The style is fluid and reminiscent of old cartoons with an emphasis on shapes and motion over fine detail. If you’ve ever seen the Felix the Cat movie, there’s this part after Felix travels to the other dimension and he’s surrounded by strange cartoony characters that are all sorts of weird. Well, Kaiba is filled top to bottom with creatures and people like that. Realism is not the name of the game. My favorite part is that all of the visual elements are thematic and symbolism is everywhere. The heady nature of the series combined with the vivid visuals makes for an engrossing and unique experience. Kaiba is so visually rich it could easily overwhelm you if you aren’t ready for it. I was going to be insulting here about if you were the type to be scared off by something so wildly artistic, but admittedly this show simply can’t appeal to everyone when it is so very stylized. There’s a ton of action in this series and the style reflects that perfectly. Everything moves and flows so well that it’s actually easier to understand what’s happening in Kaiba than it is with some series that are more realistic. Like Windy Tales, Kaiba definitely has a unique look and it really went somewhere with it. The amount of work and thought put into how everything looks should be something everyone can appreciate, even if you can’t quite swallow the visuals.

When I came across Kaiba while searching for something to watch, the first tag for it was ‘psychological.’ Out of all the series I’ve looked up over the years on that site, not one of them had psychological within the first five tags, let alone as the first. Without reading anything else I found the HD torrent and mashed download as fast as my little router could go. Here we are twelve episodes later and while the music and animation were each enough in their own right to sell me on the series, the story in Kaiba is quite possibly the best I’ve ever come across. I was going to say that the story was basically boy meets girl, but even then there is nothing basic about the way they go about it. The way the story is executed is innovative and I never knew what was coming next; it was like a roller coaster for the thinking part of my brain. Every piece of plot in Kaiba has depth surpassing much of what I’ve seen in other series. While there is an ultimate plot to the show, it’s only vaguely hinted at until around the eighth episode; at only twelve episodes that’s a long time to play around and there’s more than enough plots, characters, and story to fill a series twice as long. I tell you, though, those first seven episodes were amazing. Within the first two episodes we see body swaps, drugs, a person literally fucking herself to death by another body with a duplicate of her mind in it, weird creatures doing weirder things, memory theft, memory smuggling, characters walking into the memory of other characters, and so on. I guess I forgot to mention that this series can be pretty dark and violent with its brightly colored pictures. I was actually speechless after episode three; I just sat there for ten minutes thinking. When the story finally made an appearance at episode eight, I was sad that our tour of the world with Kaiba was coming to an end and we had to get down to business. It was the only time when I was really made aware of the fact that I was watching a show, but the feeling was quickly erased by how awesome the story actually was. Remember in Cowboy Bebop how of the twenty-six episodes only probably five or seven stand out as the most dramatic and emotionally hard-hitting? Well, every episode in Kaiba is like that: every episode builds to a strong climax with some really powerful emotional, intellectual, and philosophical depth. While looking for that level of depth may seem silly in a cartoon, I assure you that Kaiba practically demands it with the pacing and writing. Suffice it to say the characters in Kaiba, though not always wildly unique, are still individuals and products of the dazzling world in which they live. The characters are consistent and well-written with the dialogue, interaction, and character development all standing at the forefront. (Actually, everything is at the forefront, period; there is no part of the composition of the series that gets overlooked.) Characterization, the ways in which a character is defined throughout the story, is immensely well done as we get to the know the characters far more through their actions and interactions than anything said directly about them; Kaiba neatly avoids the problem many other philosophically deep anime wherein the only way to show characters are thinking is to let us hear their thoughts. While subtle, Kaiba is still understandable and surprisingly intuitive. Due to Kaiba (the character) being on the run, he ends up in the body of a large stuffed animal at one point, unable to talk or show any expression on his face. It was an amazing turn in the story to force us to look at the world through Kaiba’s eyes as all he could do was watch, listen, and run when necessary. Personally, I think the world itself in which Kaiba lives is well characterized through the first seven episodes and that’s where the series gets so much of its depth from; through all of Kaiba’s encounters and the events he’s a part of, the world becomes a living thing of its own. The animation helps quite a bit towards that end, too. Speaking of the end, without spoiling it for you Kaiba avoids that vague “all is one” voice-over philosophical and psychological ending we’ve seen in Evangelion, Gantz, Kare Kano, and pretty much every other series that’s tried for depth and always come off a little wanting. Kaiba is immensely satisfying, period. As you can see, I could talk about the story in Kaiba all day, but we have other things to do and it’s best if you experience it for yourself.

Ultimately, Kaiba is probably the most powerful artistic experience I’ve found in an anime. I remember raving about Sky Crawlers, but truth be told Kaiba is considerably more accessible and the sheer mind-blowing depth blasts Sky Crawlers out of the sky. I was trying for some witty wordplay there but I got nothing. Anyway, by now you can tell I recommend Kaiba. I recommend Kaiba so hard I’d pull out an episode for you to watch if you even asked what I reviewed this week. That said, I can’t expect everyone to like Kaiba, though I’d ask them to give it a chance. It’s violent, though the gore consists of neon colored goo instead of blood and organs. It’s sexual, though you’ll find that just the imagery in the back is more graphic than any character action or what little nudity there is to be had. It’s highly stylized, though I think it’s worth enduring for the story if you don’t groove with the art design. It’s intensely psychological, though if you aren’t looking for irrevocable depth I think you may be looking in the wrong place for your reviews. Kaiba is not a series if you’re looking for something fun, fluffy, or pants-tighteningly sexy. While someone could theoretically watch it and enjoy it at a straightforward, action-packed level, I think they’d be missing out big time if that’s all they took it as. Kaiba is an entirely unique experience that has steamrolled its way into my top five series to watch and stands at the top of the mountain for execution and direction. This series totally blindsided me and I hope it does the same for you.

~Whim

PS – That’s right, I have top five lists based on series to watch, execution, and artistic merit. Kaiba is on each list and top of the latter two. No, you can’t see the lists.
PS2 – Sorry, but only one review this week. Kaiba totally took center stage and I actually didn’t bother watching anything else. If I had time I would have preferred to watch it twice for this review. Just like Sky Crawlers, I still feel like I haven’t done it justice.

Boob-tastic. That’s the word. For those of you not in the know, Queen’s Blade is a card game turned cultural phenomenon known for lots of scantily clad ladies fighting each other for control of a kingdom. There’s art books, figures, and now, an anime series. It just started airing in Japan, so I can’t give a full series review, but I figured I should say a few words as this is the next Ikki Tousen, only better because it’s not based on what is to most of us westerners obscure Chinese history. I have seen the first episode and some of the second, and odds are if you were even slightly intrigued by my opening word, you are going to want to watch this series. You may have to wait until it hits stateside, as some distribution companies are already sending out cease and desist letters to fansubbers for this series. I suppose they’re trying to keep a lid on it until it can reach the US.

Anyway, about the actual show: Queen’s Blade, as I mentioned, is a medieval style tournament show where the prize is leading the kingdom. From what I’ve seen, most of or the entirety of the cast is female and either scantily clad or um, beaten naked. Unlike Ikki Tousen, the clothing doesn’t just magically shatter or anything, it just gets damaged. Or melted by that pink blobby girl with the acid shooting boobs. Yes, you read that right, acid shooting boobs. See, what I thoroughly enjoyed while watching this show was not the copious amounts of nudity (your first boob is like three minutes in) but the writer’s ability to not take it too seriously. Blobby girl (who is made of pink and sometimes transparent jello but is really skinny and buxom) is defeated when our heroine Reina gives her a bear hug so her armor prevents Blobby girl from squirting her acid until she explodes. It is both hilarious and ecchi. I have to say I appreciate the fact that they don’t tease us with the nudity, instead just putting it all out there and letting the inherent sexiness of the series speak for itself.

Queen’s Blade isn’t all fluff and boobs, though, there’s a real story behind it. Since I’ve only seen 1.5 episodes, I can’t say too much, but it’s interesting enough that I’ll actually keep watching it. It’s shaping up to be a fun romp with enough character development and plot to keep it from suffering the fate of other terrible fan service series. There’s angels, demons, and humans all in the fight for power. The approach the creators have to this series really pleases me because it sounds like they are in it for the same reason I am, to have some fun while telling a story. I have a couple worries, though.

Queen’s Blade has a couple obstacles to overcome, but I think they can manage. The animation in the first episode was a bit rough at points, but from what I’ve seen of the second episode they cleaned it up. I just hope they can keep it up during the series. Speaking of keeping it up during the series, I hope they don’t lose sight of the story or the fanservice; they are aiming to walk a fine line here but it’s like hanging a pair of shoes from a wire by the laces. Lastly, while this isn’t a concern per se, this series is going to be pretty dirty. As I say that remember this is Japan, home of the tentacle monster. By the end of the first episode our main character wets herself in fear, blobby girl’s boobs explode, and in an earlier fight our main character is stripped naked in battle and left helpless. In other words, this series is probably just on the other side of good taste. I suppose I should say that this series has something for everyone in the 17+ crowd, either that or try not to let your parents catch you watching it.

~Whim

PS - To try and show that I’m not horrendously outdated, and possibly as a cynical attempt at getting more readers, I have written this review of one episode. One measly little episode. This series is going to be big, though, just you wait and see.
PS2 - I still can’t figure out if I actually want to watch this series…

Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Now that Frostii finally released the fansub for the last episode I can review this series like I’ve been wanting to for two weeks now. The title for this series is what got me to start watching it. There are all sorts of things a series called Ride Back could be about. A motorcycle riding ballerina is not the first thing to spring to mind. Oh, there might be a spoiler there. Well, there’s always spoilers, sorry. I’ll keep it mild, which is rather fitting given what I have to say about the show.

Ride Back is a series about Rin Ogata’s first year in college and global revolution. Mostly it’s about Rin, with the politics more or less happening as an aside. Some years prior to the start of the series, a cunning political organization called the GGP (Global Government Project) came to power through a few shocking military victories with the aid of ride backs, or “glorified motorcycles with arms” as one character puts it. Ride backs are pretty much as the guy puts it, only the wheels can swing under them to become legs; in fact, their name comes from the way a person rides on the back of it while it is standing (similar to the way a parent carries a young child). Meanwhile, little Rin was working hard to become a ballerina as great as her mother, neither of them paying any attention to the politics. Rin’s mother dies from illness, and at one of Rin’s landmark performances she tears a ligament and has to retire from dancing, haunted by the fact that she could never be as good as her mother due to the injury. That brings us to the start of the series, where Rin starts college. Through one of those marvelous coincidences, Rin finds herself stuck on an out of control ride back named Fuego. Years of ballet training and natural skill lead Rin down a path of action and daring as she inadvertently gets caught in the crossfire between the GGP and a terrorist organization that opposes it.

The music for Ride Back is dramatic and well-used, a rarity for an action political thriller. The first episode starts with Rin’s injury in the minutes before the opening rolls, and it’s pretty potent for it, mostly because of the music and the fairly stunning internal monologue by Rin. I don’t know the name of the piece off hand, but it’s a rather famous musical piece that accompanies Rin’s final moments on stage. Then we get the opening; that awesomely awesome opening. It’s a rock techno thing with some fantastic imagery and sets up the series pretty well. I was fond enough of it to watch it for every single episode and each time I ever repeated an episode. The series has a lot of dramatic music that complements the events on screen pretty well. The action moments are pulse poundingly scored and the quiet tones for the more reflective scenes add a nice breath of fresh air. The ending is also quiet and uses a lot of imagery of Rin and her mother to give us a chance to reflect on the images displayed. Well, you can reflect on it, I only watched the ending a few times as it’s a little slow. Sound effects and dramatic pauses earn a special mention for being both well- and over-used. While I wouldn’t buy the soundtrack, you will probably catch me with the opening and possibly the classical piece Rin dances to on my Ipod.

Ride Back is a very pretty anime with lots of CG shine. The ride backs and nearly all of the other vehicles are actually 3D computer models blended pretty well with the traditionally animated characters and backgrounds. There was one moment where if I had been watching it with the animator, I’d have patted him on the back and said “nice.” See, Rin was riding Fuego around and bend with the camera panning in and they drew Rin actually moving with everything else instead of looking like she was cut and pasted the whole way through. Unfortunately, as happens with a lot of CG bits, it totally pulled me right out of the scene. Thankfully, I got used to it later on and the CG distraction wasn’t as strong. Anyway, the traditional animation is styled a bit like Nodame Cantabile, but with more detail and sharper lines so it meshes with the vehicles more. Everything moves really smooth and there is a lot of attention to little details like bits of debris, tire marks, and clothing movement that all really tickles my fancy. I really enjoyed the act of watching this series as it was pretty and flowed really well. Watching Rin dance using Fuego was pretty awesome. While the visuals are enough to make the series pretty stand out, the story is the real driver for Ride Back. And no, I did not intend any pun there.

Ride Back’s story is great, though a bit hollow feeling. It’s a real shame, too, as the series came so close to perfection I was left a bit disappointed. Rin is the star of the show by and far, with Fuego playing second fiddle and everyone else just blending into the ensemble. Well, save for that terrorist with the Sephiroth complex. It’s a good thing that the other characters aren’t that crucial, because for as every bit unique as Rin is, everyone else is all the more stereotypical to make up for it. Rin is one of the few more recent characters I’ve seen that is truly unique and yet completely relatable. I can identify with Rin a lot, particularly that whole recovering from epic failure thing. I find it ironic, too, that Rin came so close to greatness as a ballerina only to fall short permanently just like the show as a whole did. See, most of the politics happen off-screen, with important events being related to us through media clips or bits of story directly relating to Rin and to a lesser extent the ancillary characters. The big political events are mostly related through news clips. This series gets big bonus points for having a realistic depiction of political terrorism mixed with a grim look at a world governing body. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite deep enough with it to be satisfying, I think due mainly to the fact that it got a little too involved with our wonderfully stereotyped characters and letting us see the world as they do, which is almost identical to how we view our world. What I mean here is that some larger perspective might have been useful. I may be spoiled from other robot anime, but it’s hard for me to see revolution or change when it’s implied. As a mild spoiler, the series presents us with terrorists we can relate to and can even empathize with to a limited extent. I mean, they are terrorists and they do bomb a news building at one point, so it’s hard to be like “yay, for freedom” when you see innocent people die. Anyway, Ride Back is surprisingly realistic with wonderful character development for Rin and not much else.

I think Ride Back was trying to be revolutionary. While it’s different, I don’t think they got the depth needed in the series for it to turn the robot pilot genre on its head. They came so close, though. I mean, they saw all of the normal story pathing and clichés and completely ignored convention for genius pilots and such. The robot is also not a Deus Ex Machina and Rin cannot solve all of the world’s problems with it. As I mentioned before, I think pulling back once in a while for a larger perspective of what was going on would have really helped give this series the last little push it needed for greatness. I also would have liked to see more of Rin riding Fuego and getting that sheer joy she got as the pair gracefully weaved about (I think it might have been a budget issue as CG is expensive); I feel like there was a lot more to be flushed out for Rin and her reborn ability to dance. Also, one of the images from the closing credits shows Rin riding on her mother’s back, and while it would have been less realistic, I think that theme could have really pushed this series over the edge into perfection. No, I don’t mean like that Evangelion mother is robot thing, but just using that caring and nurturing position for better characterization and dramatic effect. This series does everything right and it was a really fun show to watch, but it just wasn’t quite there. I wholeheartedly recommend it, but it may leave you a little wanting. Of course, I adore Rin and am probably a little biased; there’s just something about her…maybe that whole fallen ballerina turned robot pilot.

~Whim

PS – Yes, this review is a little shorter and it’s intentional.
PS2 – Yes, this series is a little less venomous, but that’s because I really enjoyed it, so bugger off if you wanted me to crucify it just because.
PS3 – I write fiction and poetry, ask me about it sometime.