Until I’ve caught up with some of the other spring anime, I’m stalling on watching more of Kaiba, but for the sake of curiosity, I can’t stop myself from streaming an occasional clip on YouTube. The above excerpt (from episode 3) is wonderful. You don’t need to understand the dialogue to feel what’s happening, just listen to the music and check the facial expressions. A nostalgic, tired-looking grandma sits to play her piano, and with each sad note, another long-forgotten memory rings back into recollection. Her sister, her child, her husband, she suddenly realises all of what she’s lost, and now, life having passed her by, tears roll down her wrinkled cheeks. Full of regret, she remembers everything, she’s all alone. The music stops. You know, this is what great animation is capable of, sweeping, moving, sad, wonderful human feeling.
If manliness were a disease, it couldn’t get much worse than Golgo 13. The aptly named Duke Togo doesn’t do emotion, he does big guns, and his legendary aim is as precise with the hearts’ of fine ladies as when trained on the “meat-filled football” (Golgo’s words, not mine) of a terrorist. Being billed as Japan’s answer to James Bond, you should know what to expect. It’s low-budget, gratuitous entertainment, but where the James Bond character is charismatic, the forever grimacing Duke is just a big rock of nothing. I have some doubts as to how this formula can stretch for 50 episodes, but regardless, I’m quite determined to see whether that moody rock of manliness dares crack a smile. For now, it’s a novelty.
I expected Himitsu - The Revelation to be one of the better series of the spring season, but, on this evidence, it’s just another mediocre helping of bishonen homoeroticism destined to be contorted in the day-dreams of yaoi fan-girls. In some near future, a special unit of the Japanese police can remove the brains of murder victims to view their memories just prior to death; in truth, it’s a really interesting premise, but the abject animation quality and lack of personality is fatal.
Much like The Daughter of Twenty Faces, I went into Amatsuki with low expectations. It looks mediocre, in the sense that it’s overflowing with cliche bishonen character designs and therefore, blatant (almost Get Backers-esque) homo eroticism. The animation isn’t especially good, but again, the overall feeling wasn’t bad at all. Story is basically that modern, apathetic boy gets thrown back in time to Edo-era Japan. You know, that same period depicted in Rurouni Kenshin, Peacemaker and every other samurai anime. Yes, Amatsuki is set in a familiar place, but there are supernatural elements too. Next few episodes will be crucial in determining whether it’s merely pretending to be interesting.
The more anime I see, the more I find myself making comparisons between series. If you’ve seen Last Exile, it’s worth noting that new anime Allison and Lillia could be renamed (the adventures of) Lavie and Claus. It is kind of fun, albeit very sanitized, good honest fun. Flowing blond Allison is the spunky girl-pilot ready to take on the world, while her friend Will is the clever, yet timid male lead willing to be dragged along for the adventure. Their bright optimism and slow home lives, surrounded by colourful, open countryside, will be at odds with the (so far unforeseen) horrors of war. Again, this wasn’t an amazing episode of anime, but it was competent enough to be worth another look. Better than Amatsuki, at least.
Earlier this evening, after battling to a hard-fought 2-1 win over Burton Albion, mine beloved Cambridge United qualified for the Blue Square Premier play-off final, to be played in glorious surroundings at the new Wembley Stadium. Considering three years of strife in football purgatory and flirting with financial ruin, the hopes and dreams of the battered United faithful rested on 45 minutes of good old fashioned ’soccer’. Ironic then that with the match poised on a knife edge, sweet Lady Luck (so often our worst enemy) finally smiled on the team in amber. Enigmatic central midfielder Rob Wolleaston, whose obvious quality is often debated by blinkered fans, attempted an innocuous-looking pass into the Burton area; but rather than find an attacker’s bonce, his swerving ball floated over the stranded opposition’s keeper and nestled perfectly, beautifully in the bottom-left corner of the net. Dear Lady Luck, marry me.
What better way to celebrate then than to take in the dulcet tones of chatmonchy, another Japanese rock band recently discovered on my apparently never-ending journey into the Nipon soundscape. This particular 3-piece group captured my attention because, aside from sounding rather catchy, all their members are female, which, in itself, offers a unique dynamic. Like a lot of Eastern pop-punk, they are melodic and happy-go-lucky, more garage-band than artificially composed. Each song is guitar-driven and the vocals are high-pitched, attractive and natural. It would be fair to say that chatmonchy aren’t especially original, but regardless, their music is fast, happy and rocking.
Aside from being a rather perverted little bastard, there is something quite alluring about the works of Go Nagai. Though he’s infamous for creating stories as morally abhorrent as Violence Jack, I’ve always loved his Devilman. It might be vulgar, violent and edge towards illogic, but it’s fun too. Up until yesterday, I’d only seen the excellent yet all too short 1987/1990 OVA series, but now, finally, all 5 volumes of his original Devilman manga have been scanslated. 2 volumes in and I’m sitting here buzzing with excitement, it’s wonderfully weird, crazy stuff. Indeed, there is something innately fascinating about Nagai’s depiction of demons; not that they’re monsters per se, but they seem to have built up this whole culture and have their own ideas about beauty and morality. Whenever I watch (and now, read) Devilman, that aspect always catches me off guard; it’s all the more remarkable for suddenly transforming into this bitter-sweet, demonic love story.
I’m going through one of these phases at the moment where, no matter how much I want to write something (anything) productive, I’m just feeling low on inspiration. ‘Jaded and in need of a rest’ is a cliche I’m used to reading in Football Manager, but it’s a spot-on description of my current state. In particular, I’m really struggling with anime blogging. Almost every new post consumes an entire day, and even then, I’m rarely happy with the published article. It feels like a constant struggle with the English language as I’m tweaking every paragraph to (in)perfection, trying to live up to (imagined) expectations. Granted, it’s a great relief in the immediate aftermath of publishing, but often, I wish writing wasn’t so draining.
Another point is that, for someone whose seemingly forever pondering the stuff, I haven’t been watching nearly enough anime lately. Other than Code Geass R2 and Kaiba, I’ve not taken-in much of the spring season’s offerings yet, and of the 13 other series on that list, only The Daughter of Twenty Faces (Nijū-Mensō no Musume) has made it’s way into rotation. Thankfully, it was better than expected; a pulpy crime-caper that, for all it’s wise-crackin’ tomfoolery and harmless villainy, was emotionally stirring. The director has worked on a lot of Lupin anime, and it clearly shows. The episode revolved around a young girl who, living in a broken (albeit privileged) home, wants to slip into a life of fun, car-crashing thievery and tight, globe-trotting friendship. I really felt her desire to escape, so it’s definitely something I’ll be following.
Earlier this evening, I caught the second episode of BBC4’s ‘Worlds Of Fantasy‘. I have to say, it’s a fascinating, almost moving, documentary series charting the past and present of fantasy fiction from a sober, critical point of view. In a way, I’m just a relieved to have found a programme willing to seriously analyse the careers of, say, Philip Pullman and Tolkien, without feeling the need to treat their most popular works as un-adult or kids-fare. I guess it’s an honest approach I find almost irresistible.
One of the major themes of this second episode was looking at how reality, and real-life experience, often so tightly under-pins the unreal landscape of the genre. A regularly stated, serious criticism of fantasy literature (or, indeed, any kind of fantasy media) is that it’s merely a vehicle for the reader’s own desire for escapism. Taken at face value, that may be the case, but so much of what I’ve read is multi-layered, at once foreign and enticing, yet echoing deeply-seeded, utterly human feeling.
A great example explained in the documentary is how Frodo’s journey across the corpse-infested, stinking swamps on his way to evil Mordor reflects horribly on Tolkien’s own sad experiences in World War I, during which he served on the front-line through out the infamous Battle of the Somme, where more than one million people were killed or wounded in just four months of bloody, muddy combat. Some people might have documented those memories in the form of an autobiography, but, as one critic explains it, fantasy writers tend to explore their own lives in an indirect, side-ways fashion. I think capturing these feelings in such a way, removing them from a specific time, context or place, creates a resonance or feeling that echoes forever, in a way that we’re no longer viewing the situation as something in the past, but instead, as a relevant, timeless human emotion.
Listening to Björk’s Vespertine album, I’m flooded with feeling. It’s not like memory, as that implies the memories are mine. The feelings (or maybe, emotions?) I’m writing about are inextricably linked to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. While reading the books, Northern Lights in particular, her fragile Vespertine was my soundtrack. Usually, I’m not one to listen to music whilst reading, yet the landscape of both is so full of icy wonder, I’m frozen in those feelings; like the snow-flake that reflects in your palm for those fleeting few seconds before melting away, it’s a wonder of the moment, a passionate affair, here today and gone tomorrow.
