Gen X Otaku 1971: the OG blog

Recent screening: Hanayamata

I recently attended a screening of Hanayamata (ハナヤマタ, also stylized as HaNaYaMaTa); Sentai Filmworks was screening the first four episodes.  I had my doubts at first, reading the series description, but really, this series is all about the emotions of the girls involved, their friendships, their petty jealousies, their self-esteem, and the pains of discovering who you are that come with adolescence.  

It has a very soap opera quality to it, and the ornate traditional Japanese dance style that the girls decide to learn is really coincidental to the story itself.  In much the same fashion as boys' sports anime, this show is all about the characters and their emotional lives and emotional growth as people.  I really grew quickly attached to all of the girls and wanted to see what happened to them next.  Sentai Filmworks, in a stroke of brilliant marketing, set up a booth outside the theater and sold a limited number of Blu-Ray and DVD editions of the series.  Alas, they ran out of both by the time I reached the head of the line after the screening.  They were also selling t-shirts featuring Esdeth and Akame from Akame ga Kill! (Japanese: アカメが斬る! Hepburn: Akame ga Kiru!^?, literally meaning "Akame Slashes!").  I was interested in these as well, but they were only available up to size XL.  I joked with the Sentai Filmworks staff that they needed to study the average North American Otaku and realize that "Japan sizes" just won't cut it for us.  The were apologetic and advised me to come to the next screening and they will bring more diverse shirt sizes and more copies of HaNaYaMaTa.  I nodded, but really, they should've brought more copies to sell because even though they were full price I was so emotionally invested in the story by that point I would've thrown down for it so I could rush home and finish watching it while the passion still burned hotly within my breast.  By now the ardor has cooled somewhat.  I want HaNaYaMaTa, as much as I also want Beyond The Boundary, but I can wait for the prices to drop a little on Amazon first.    Beyond the Boundary uses a Dojikko (ドジっ子) lit. (adorably) "clumsy girl" as the main female protagonist.  Her tragic past and klutzy nature make her immediately a sympathetic figure and inspire feelings of wanting to protect her in the male viewing audience.  They're both visually gorgeous shows but also very deeply emotionally engaging for me personally, which is the most important part.

Finished Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I devoted Saturday night to watching in full the Blu-Ray edition (from Bandai Entertainment) of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.  I paid a hefty sum to acquire this Blu-Ray, and I'm happy to report it did NOT disappoint.  The visuals are simply stunning, with jaw-dropping detail, a carefully crafted blend of 2D animation and CGI 3D animation.  Definitely watch the "Special Features" included on this disc, they are well worth your time.

Of course I watched the English dub version, which utilizes the original television cast from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.  That said, this movie, according to Mamoru Oshii, is a direct sequel to the original Ghost in the Shell movie, which I own and have also seen.  Or more precisely I've seen Ghost in the Shell 2.0 which was a re-release by Oshii utilizing more CGI, with mixed results.  I saw this version on Hoopla Digital some time ago, but I also own a copy of the original Bandai release of the original Ghost in the Shell movie without the "2.o" edits.

Having just finished the movie Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, which is set 2 years after the events of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, 2nd Gig, in my own "head canon", although the actual movie of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence was released before Solid State Society, and even though the movies and the television series are supposedly separate fictional universes, to my mind, and given the chronology of all the fictional iterations of the Ghost in the Shell multiverse, the events depicted in Innocence, in particular The Major's ongoing evolution into ever higher states of being, are logically consistent with the directions indicated by the conclusion of Solid State Society, such that Innocence is a perfectly plausible future for Solid State Society as well, besides serving as a sequel for the original movie...at least to my mind it is.  The only plot wrinkle that would need to be hand waved away is that Tohgusa is in a greater position of authority in Solid State Society than he appears to be in Innocence.  But in any case, the real stars of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence are actually Batou, Tohgusa, and Ishkawa, and to a lesser degree Chief Aramaki as well.  The Major serves more in the background as a "guardian angel" type figure, her ghost fully merged with the future internet without corporeal form, guiding the protagonists along but avoiding direct intervention until the very end.  This is a film about a series of murders by malfunctioning gynoid sex robots (a callback to Season 1 of Stand Alone Complex, incidentally) that points to a wider conspiracy.  Batou, Ishkawa, and Tohgusa must join forces yet again to unravel the mystery and stop the conspiracy, which seems to involve foreign threats emerging from the nearby Chinese mainland.  There is plenty of philosophical musings that are on par with the original movie as well as other anime shows like Serial Experiments Lain, which Innocence triggered many memories of, for me at least.  My words can't do justice to just how breathtakingly beautiful and complicated the visuals are in this movie.  I easily see myself watching it again and again for the visuals alone.  There's just so much there to take in that I doubt one sitting is enough to do it justice.  This should be enjoyed at home on a widescreen HD television off the Bandai Blu-Ray.  The music used is a callback to the original movie, with the score partly reused but also expanded for this film.  The special features are well worth watching in their own right, with extended interviews with Mamoru Oshii and his animation staff and also his Japanese voice cast.  The English television cast does a great job with their performances as well.  It sent chills down my spine the first time I heard Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's voice as The Major in Innocence.  It's a very short line and you can miss it if you're not paying attention, but I was and noticed immediately.  I recently watched the next Arise film and enjoyed it, and I understand why Mary Elizabeth McGlynn was not cast to voice the younger version of The Major for those prequels, but it is nice she was recast as a rival character to The Major, as a way to symbolically pass the baton, so to speak, by playing a slightly older and wiser "noble adversary" type character.  The third Arise film's concluding shot is a hat tip to the original opening of the original Ghost in  the Shell movie.  Watching Innocence fills a gaping hole in my knowledge of the Ghost in the Shell fictional multiverse.  I feel I belong to a special class of anime fan now, to have seen all these different iterations.  I have yet to read any of Shirow Masamune's original manga, however.  I hope to remedy that someday.

Finished Antique Bakery

Antique Bakery (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I managed to finish the short 12 episode series Antique Bakery, which is the story of four men; the owner, the patissier, his apprentice, and the owner's lifelong bodyguard/butler.  The owner, Mr. Tachibana, is a scion of a wealthy Japanese family who grows bored of his life as a junior executive and decides to try his hand at managing a small business instead.  His first new hire is a former High School classmate, Mr. Ono, who is now a renowned patissier.  Ono doesn't recognize Tachibana at first, but Tachibana does remember Ono.  Ono is openly gay, but he came out in High School and declared his love for Tachibana, who did not take this very well at all, cursing Ono with hateful, homophobic slurs.  Tachibana reminds Ono of this incident, which Ono of course never forgot.  But Ono is desperate for work and is willing to forgive his former classmate, and even rationalizes that the harsh rejection forced him to dig deep within himself and reinvent himself and fully accept himself as a homosexual.

The next hire is a up and coming young boxing champ, Eiji, who is forced to leave the sport due to a deteriorating eye condition; if he continues boxing he could go blind.  Reluctantly he hangs up his gloves and as fate would have it he walks by the new bakery and applies to become an apprentice patissier.  He's immediately smitten by Ono's charisma and demands to become his apprentice.  Tachibana doesn't like the young man's freshness and disrespect, but he also implicitly trusts Ono's professional judgement and reluctantly agrees to hire Eiji.  

Lastly there is Kobayakawa, the strong silent type who was Tachibana's childhood companion and later became his butler and bodyguard.  Kobayakawa feels duty bound to stay by his young master's side and so begins hanging around outside the shop in one of the family vehicles.  Tachibana finds this ridiculous and decides to employ Kobayakawa as a waiter.

After the first 2 episodes, I assumed this was going to be a farcical BL romantic comedy, but it turns out this series is much more complex, with multiple stories intersecting.  It handles emotional topics sincerely and with great sensitivity.  Kobayakawa is a closeted homosexual and totally Ono's type.  In time and as their friendship deepens, Tachibana asks for Ono's forgiveness for his cruel words in High School.

The episodes cover the day to day running of the Antique Bakery, but also the lives and tribulations of the four men who work there.  Past loves, new customers, and the owner's dark past all interplay in this story.  It seems Tachibana was kidnapped as a child and forced by his captor to only eat cakes and sweets.  He managed to stab his captor in the leg and escape but was so traumatized by the events that much of his memory of it was blanked out.  One motivation for starting the bakery was as a tool to find his original kidnapper and confront him, even though the statute of limitations has long since expired and no prosecution today is possible.  Then suddenly young boys begin to be kidnapped again and worse, some are turning up dead.  Could these be related to Tachibana's cold case?  Tachibana is haunted by nightmares from his childhood kidnapping ordeal, even into his 30s.  He agrees to do his part to aid in the police investigation of the latest string of kidnappings when new evidence comes to light about the last meals of the deceased boys.

I was really impressed with Antique Bakery.  Even though I'm a dub fan typically and this show was sub-only, I was still thoroughly entertained by this series and it even provoked a few tears watching it.  Love is universal, whether straight or gay or anything in between.  I give it a thumbs up!

Black Bullet is da bomb

I really enjoyed the screening of the first 4 episodes of the anime series Black Bullet at Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park. Rather dark and grim, but with lots of action. Plus I'll always sit up and watch a show that has great veteran lead actors like Chris Patton and Luci Christian. Makes me harken back to my early anime fan days watching FMP: FUMOFFU and Second Raid (yes I did see the original FMP, too, but FUMOFFU & TSR are my faves of the franchise). At the very least I'll definitely stream the rest of this show on Anime Network and would consider adding it to my physical media collection on down the road.

This anime was good, but the character of Enju Aihara (藍原 延珠 Aihara Enju) was more than a little disturbing because of how sexually forward she is...despite being ostensibly only 10 years old.  I guess as a "Cursed Child" she understands she will not live long and certainly won't have anything like a "normal" life ever...and so feels a burning innate drive to experience all that life has to offer in as short a time as possible before it's too late for her, including her budding sexuality, and feels somewhat annoyed by her partner's "conventional" moral reservations and rebuffs.  It's a tension that definitely makes the viewer uncomfortable.  Though on another level, the anime does pull back on full realism, with the cursed children (all girls) being treated merely as pitiful Dickensian waifs...when the reality would be much darker (systemic prostitution and rape)....though getting summary executed by the police Brazil style is pretty damn dark already.

It makes me laugh a little because especially with the rise of all things "moe" in the 2000s, and especially in a post Madoka-Magica world, anime seems to have this need to shoehorn in cute little girl characters, no matter what the story line.  And for shows like this it can feel really...awkward.

Basically, a good way to think about the structure of Black Bullet is take the existing property Claymore but turn the female warriors into cute 10 year old girls with mysterious red eyes and change the setting from High Fantasy to dystopian future Sci-Fi and PRESTO you have the basic setup for Black Bullet.  Including the part where the girls are themselves half-monsters used to fight real monsters and feared by society around them.

The one twist being that the main character, Rentarō Satomi (里見 蓮太郎 Satomi Rentarō^?), voiced by Chris Patton, is something of a badass in his own right, whereas the Claymore protagonist was strictly a passive observer and Claire's effective "damsel".

Also, Black Bullet has a compelling villain & villainous sidekick that really make the show work.  The terrifying masked gentleman Kagetane Hiruko (蛭子 影胤 Hiruko Kagetane^?) and his psychopathic, dual-blade wielding "cursed" daughter Kohina Hiruko (蛭子 小比奈 Hiruko Kohina^?)...both are remorseless killers with a hidden agenda.

The first four episodes were very entertaining and emotionally engaging.  Hilary Haag voices one of the cursed girls and though her screen time is lamentably limited, Ms. Haag makes us care for this girl and her short, awful life.  The suffering endured by these children make the series especially gut wrenching at times.  It is definitely a product of a post-Madoka universe.

Coppelion Dub on Neon Alley

Coppelion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently finished the Dub of the 13-episode sci-fi anime series Coppelion, set in a near future Tokyo that has been decimated by a nuclear catastrophe.  The ostensible heroes of the series are 3 genetically engineered female clones who have been genetically engineered to resist radiation and other environmental pollution and contamination.  It sounds promising, potentially, as a series, but the show is so badly written that it leaves one nearly exasperated thinking about the plot holes and obviously improbable situations with respect to logistics, how science works, etc.  I can suspend disbelief but Coppelion also gives us screwy character motivations that don't make sense, melodrama stretched to absurdity, and extremely preachy tirades to stand in for more substantive dialogue.  It makes my brain hurt to listen to.  The animation style is very unconventional and the girls themselves are drained of color, as if to emphasize their "doll-like" nature, which does make thematic sense.  The title of the anime is borrowed from a French opera about a Pygmalion-like artist who created a life-like doll.  The anime features a lot of earth tones and is dull and white, with only sparing use of color.  The girls spend much of their time apparently rescuing reluctant, delusional middle aged Libertarians who seem to be willing to put up with living in a Nuclear wasteland because hey, at least they don't gotta pay taxes anymore, amiright?!

The show is kind of dull until this crazy one shows up and her equally crazy sister.  The Uzo sisters are legitimately terrifying.

Like our 3 protagonists, the Uzo sisters are also Coppelion, but unlike the 3 protagonists, they've decided to "go rogue" and cause as much mayhem and destruction as they can, joining ranks with the abandoned First Division of the JSDF who now rule wasteland Tokyo as its defacto Warlords, who are plotting to spread nuclear and chemical environmental pollution to the rest of the globe out of spite, mainly.

However, the Uzo sisters are inconsistently written...they start out as remorseless psychopaths and are legitimately terrifying but by series end, they're like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and their hearts just needed to grow a bit and learn empathy and care about each other, yada yada yada.  That's not how psychopathy works in reality, but hey.  Also, the First Division gives up on its nihilism after the 3 good Coppelion still acknowledge their basic humanity despite their physical deformities from radiation and other environmental effects...though apparently their commander does still want to shoot the main character with a tank shell first.  Their commander later sacrifices himself so their final evacuation mission can succeed. 

At least the 2nd half of the series is action packed, which helps to redeem the bad writing somewhat.  It's best just not to think about it to hard and just enjoy the visuals and the characters and the feels.  The overall execution could've been so much better, but it's still worth a watch I guess, at least while it's still available on Neon Alley in dub format in advance of the DVD release from VIZ Media.

Where I have to get a little SJW-y for a moment.

So I had an interesting exchange with a Facebook friend.  I have fair number of Facebook friends who are also fellow anime fans and I enjoy interacting with them about anime & manga and such, but some of the guys in particular are guilty of a kind of whiny, self-pitying tone and are passive-aggressively a little on the misogynistic side, though they'd hotly deny it of you called them on it to their face.  Some of them are to greater and lesser degrees susceptible to various flavors of MRA strains of thought that is sometimes worrisome.  I had to unfollow (but not wholly de-friend) once such fellow anime fan because reading his whiny MRA screeds on my Facebook feed was such a daily aggravation I could simply do without.

Anyway, this recent interaction sparked my intellect and imagination because I thought it might make a blog-worthy post and an object lesson in basic empathy. 

My Facebook friend posted this image jokingly, with the caption: "Girls are WEIRD"

I joked with him at first, saying something like well, definitely seems to be the case in anime-world, doesn't it?  He replied "and IRL?"

Well, sh*t, he would have to go there.  *Sigh*

So I thought about it then composed my thoughts thusly....

 

Walking around in a bikini in public is socially acceptable.

Walking around in frilly underwear in public not so much;

Hence it normally only happens in anime (and presumably IRL) when the boy accidentally walks in on the girl while she's changing outfits, getting ready for bed, etc, invading her privacy uninvited. It's about consent & respect, not objectively how much flesh is showing regardless of context. Context matters. Nobody likes their privacy invaded, whether intentionally or by accident. If it was a genuine accident and the boy is profusely apologetic, the girl might forgive him later, but you can't expect her to in the heat of the moment, when she's surprised and embarrassed and caught off guard. If he invaded her privacy *intentionally*, he's a creep and she'll never forget it (nor should she).

He made some offhand reply about life imitating art, yada yada and I said while it's an overused comedy trope in anime, I'll usually still laugh at it.   We left it at that.

Not a hostile exchange, but one in which I wonder if he really absorbed the point I was trying to make in challenging the simplistic views of the original artist who drew the image.  He seemed to want to deflect my comment with a joke rather than acknowledge it.

What I'm saying is that I "get" what the artist is *trying* to say with his juxtaposed images.  He is (and I'm sure it's a HE) trying to say something along the lines of  "haha, women are crazy, inconsistent hypocrites.  Look at this funny example."; Which would be compelling only if you're completely tone deaf and don't think of women as real people with real emotions and try to put yourself in their shoes for a hot second.  That's all I had to do to come up with my analysis above.  It doesn't require a graduate level education (though I have one) to figure this out, just an exercise in basic empathy.  It works, even if you have a penis and are usually a bit of a horn dog like me.  I dunno, maybe because I was married once, have had girlfriends before, have often had more close female friends than male friends, that I think about this more than the average dude who hasn't.

The girl in the bikini WANTS to show off her body.  She's putting herself out there as an act of her own free will.  She is an autonomous agent, in control of who sees her and in what context.  The same girl, in her frilly underwear, feels vulnerable and self-conscious if she were to encounter a male in her presence when she didn't invite him.  She's frightened, embarrassed, angry, and these are all valid emotions REGARDLESS if the male interloper spied her intentionally (creeper) or totally by accident (how many, many MRA's and nominally pro-MRA guys see themselves and how most anime protagonists are portrayed, for laughs).  They want to see themselves as misunderstood innocents and the girls as overreacting because they've already seen as much or more of the girl's body earlier in the day when she was in her bikini which so fantastically misses the point.

I hate to have to pedantically spell this out but with some guys I really do wonder, and I say that AS a guy.