Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now, I see.

Begining with Episode 40, Eureka sevenN starts its final opening sequence for the series. The opening verse from the song is from a iconic 18 century song “Amazing Grace”. Amazing grace is a song with a “message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of the sins people commit.” In the homestretch of the show, redemption and love is found for three of our protagonists; Captain Jurgens, Lieutenant Dominic, and Anemone.

T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear The hour I first believed.

Jurgens captains the ship Izumo. In Episode 44, while visiting Warsaw, we find that Jurgens lost is wife and daughter in the war. These loses hardened Jurgens, and he typically follows orders without question. But while visiting Warsaw, his home town, he begins reading the last issue of Ray=Out. In this, he finds truth in the situation. His eyes are finally opened, and his belief in truth renewed, when he learns of Dewey’s, and his path to redemption begins. In the following episode, He makes the choice to join Gekkostate, and begins his fight against Dewey. His final act in Episode 49 is to take in the Ageha Squad, as reparations for his actions leading to the current state of the world.

 Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home

Warsaw is also a turning point for Lieutenant Dominic. Dominic finally makes his move with Anemone in Episode 43, only to be rejected. In his downtrodden state, Dewey terminates Dominic’s assignment to Anemone, and is ordered to find her replacement. In Warsaw, he visits the Novac Foundation, which experiments on girls with Desperation Disease. When he witnesses the sick experiment, and the death of all three subjects, he reaches his limit. He decides then to fight against Dewey, and confess his love to Anemoe. In Episode 48, He purposefully risks his life to chase after her, to confess his love. He rushes through an opening made by Dewey to reach her below the surface, wrecking his ship along the way.

  Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil, A life of joy and peace.

In this episode we see Anemone at her emotional bottom pit , a point of utter despair, her confidence wiped out. GhostLightning expresses how heartbreaking this is. Her dialogue revels it all:

Someone on my mind?
I had someone. Yeah, past tense.
I think about how I should have told him how I felt.
I want to live, to give so many feelings to people.
He isn’t with me any more!
It’s too much. It’s too much!

But Dominic’s selfless act, risking his life on a hope that his love will be returned, is enough to convince Anemone to stop her attack, and finally return his feelings of love for her. Both can now find rebirth in the new world order that is about to begin.

When we’ve been here ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun.

The groans!  The pain!  I suppose the end of this episode wasn’t bad, but for the most part I felt like the first 3 episodes of this series could have been rolled into two.  There was a lot of faffing about this episode, a lot of silliness.  And plenty of things that I know Ghostlightning would have cringed at in viewing.  The whole nonsense about Madoka hopping about the city trying to save it just irked me.  All she had to do was just leave the area.  Hell, she shouldn’t have charged in the first damn place!

Hearing her sing the that Jersey Club song just made me nauseous.  Seeing the horrible mecha on mecha combat made me wonder if the genre was being mocked, or just underestimated.  And having Lan in the background mentally pacing back and forth on piloting her machine or not wasn’t exactly the most compelling way to sidestep the action.  ”Action”?  Ugh.

I could say that there is some positive to this series in that the bad guys aren’t faceless, or pure evil entities.  They’re bishounen, but I won’t punish them for that.  They’re about the only things so far that have been given better than average development this early into a series.  Everything on the Earth side is what irritates me with its bland characters.  The snippy commander who clearly hates his job.  The snake-like butler/alien who.. actually I don’t think he’s a bad character so far.  He could be a good guy or bad guy in my eyes.  There’s Madoka who is just knucklehead in my mind.  And not the kind of knucklehead I like either.  Lan, the doll/Rei Ayanami sterotype who has succeeded for getting a lot of screen time for either looking vacant or frustrated.  I suppose I could comment on Madoka’s cousin, but there’s not much to say.  She’s just succeeded at being vague, nosy, bossy and annoying to her cousin.  She does have a nice game face though.

It’s rare that I put a series on life support this early into its run, unless I just hate the first episode.  I’m pretty steadfast in my “5 episode or bust” policy.  But Rinne no Lagrange has not shown me anything compelling.  It has no “wow factor” for me at all.  And I’m starting to feel that what I want to see as a mecha fan, and what the studios believe mecha fans want to see are no longer compatible.  Or maybe that’s the problem.

Maybe I’m not watching a mecha show at all, but instead another one of those cleverly disguised mahou shoujos.  The two genres aren’t really that far apart in their general story structure.  They often involve some sort of coming-of-age story/a journey to find one’s self.  There is plenty of fluffing and posing involved in both genres if we’re gonna be honest.  The enemy of the week theme seems to run pretty strong in both genres.  And you can bet there are going to be some convenient upgrades.

So maybe if I look at this in a different light, I may come to tolerate it better.  You think? No.  No.  This show clearly dresses itself up as a mecha.  So I will judge it as such.

[Mobile Suit Gundam AGE 14]

It was bright and colorful, and was dark as it felt like it needed to be. Mobile Suit Gundam AGE finished its first age of three on a very dark note. The enemies are defeated. Vengeance was served. The hero’s innocence was preserved, even if his love was killed. The girl who loved him was victorious, but we do not see her triumphant – her rival was killed unjustly and the hero will not love her the same way, not for some time. The captain was tried and convicted for treason. The big government reveals itself to be unjust and evil.

The enemies are revealed to be human, and are victims of human negligence and corruption. Everybody loses, as war must go on. As a viewer I claim victory. This is Gundam, and better than I expected.

Grodek carried the whole story. His was the motive and drive that caused action in the narrative. As Flit discovers love, X-Rounder powers, and the different ways of Gundam, it is Grodek that brings urgency to everyone he meets and brings the fight to the UE.  My favorite moment in relation to this was when we were spared from watching – Flit was spared from having to pull the trigger on Yark Dole.

Grodek shot him from behind, and once more when he didn’t quite die. No hesitation, just the clear and decisive action of a man who knows who he is and why he does things. It doesn’t make him right, but it makes him a powerful element of the narrative. It was quite touching as well, how he thanked everyone who participated in his vendetta. It was only fair that he took the fall for them.

For a moment I thought he was going to kill himself. But as Legend of the Galactic Heroes tells me, the leaders of any failed uprising must survive so that only they receive the reprisals of the movement’s failure (or success). The soldiers who followed them must be spared from these, and this is more honorable an act that a commanding officer must do. Take the disgrace in the place of his men.

Grodek saved Flit, who retained his moral high ground because he did not have to execute an unarmed prisoner in cold blood. This way he can still vow to be a savior. This is exactly what the narrative needs to proceed to the next AGE. For this all thanks must be laid upon Grodek’s prison cell.

As for the Veigans, they’re this story’s version of the oppressed colonists. Their grudge is legitimized in part by the extreme trials they’ve survived. We know that the Earth Federation is accountable because this is Gundam. What we can expect is that the Veigan everyman just wants to return to Earth, while the powers that lead them want to return to Earth as conquerors. They’ll have to get past the Gundam.

If there’s anything that bugs me about the past two episodes is that we saw the Ambat asteroid get NAILED by the big laser. There is nothing in it that tells us it was damaged in any way.

See you next AGE.

[Nisemonogatari 02]

Smut aside, the events in between the in medias res–like device the narrative uses to launch itself serve the following things:

• Remind us of, or re-present us with the characters of the narrative with some updates.
• Characterize the relationship between the two leads.

I find it striking how Senjougahara is portrayed with significantly less smut, to negligible levels (especially relative to everyone else). Ever since they got together, the fanservice coming from Senjougahara is circumstantial and verbal. She’s completely stopped being shown naked and such.

Senjougahara: serious business; everyone else: temptations for Araragi.

This is all played out during an interrogation scene between Senjougahara and Araragi. I’m no expert in BDSM but I’ve heard/read quite a few times that the locus of power is in the one being punished, especially because the “session” is something the punished asks for, or at the very least tolerates and has the power to terminate.

This is clear when something very important (Araragi’s sister needs him), he breaks free from his shackles using his Vampire powers. Suddenly, it’s Senjougahara who has to assert how she isn’t going to back down from a fight with a Vampire.

I find this all very interesting, because in this harem dynamic – reinforced by the previous episodes and the temptation thingy, re-establishes the locus of power: Araragi IS the main character and he is not quite just your weakling milquetoast generic harem lead – maybe he never was, but clearly not anymore if he ever was.

Senjougahara is now desired, clearly so, because of her tsundere service. That’s her charm point. And it’s something that doesn’t easily get brushed off as database crap because I do acknowledge the feeling underneath all this verbal calisthenics. She wants to protect him from himself because she loves him… but that thing she’s protecting him from, is precisely why she knows he’s worth it.

I love these guys.

Oh yeah, as my post title suggests – an antagonist appears: one of the confidence men who Senjougahara dealt with when she failed to get rid of her weight problem prior to meeting Araragi and Oshino. It would seem that this guy would target the haremettes, and eventually endanger Araragi’s sisters. So it begins.

It’s a nice thought, but it’s an inauthenticity. I can’t stay forever young, not even in “mind” nor in “spirit.” I’ve seen things. I remember so many things. Even more telling, I’ve forgotten things. But there are things I want to remind myself as I grow older, as I do so today – things that are appropriate to share here on this anime blog.

The first thing: someday this blog will end. It will be well-before I actually die. But since I will die someday, so must this blog as I know it, as you’ve known it. The very idea of this finiteness allows for sentimentality. The sentiment here is that, at the very end of my youth and at the onset of middle age, I rediscovered and remembered love for cartoons.

The internet is awesome. It is full of things that will aggravate me, disgust me, and piss me off. But it also allowed me to reach you, to get your attention for a few moments. I got some of you to read, and some of you to keep coming back, and still even some of you to talk to me, about cartoons and comics… all on my terms. I never got to be the great and influential writer of consequence that was the stuff of my adolescent imagination, but some of you acknowledged me the way my university professors told me I will be acknowledged someday. I will never forget this.

I dislike many good things, and it’s okay. I don’t think I will ever like FLCL. I don’t think I will ever enjoy anything Getter Robo. I can be wrong, but I’ve made peace with the fact that there are good things out there that I’ll never enjoy, and I congratulate myself in how I won’t tell people how because I don’t like these things, these things must therefore be  not good. I don’t care enough about these shows to have to be right about them.

I like many bad things, and it’s okay. I feel no guilt. I like Robotech without having to be a Macross purist. I don’t have to apologize for Robotech. Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory remains one of my favorite shows, and I like it more than War in the Pocket.

I like terrible things in some shows (regardless of their overall quality) and I do feel guilt for them… and that’s okay too. I rooted for Lelouch, I feel sympathy for Zeon, I like characters precisely because they are or do fail (hello Minmay, Char, Ranka). I love Cowboy Bebop precisely because it is a pointless piece of sadness.

Lastly,

I’ve grown a lawn. While I still am subscribed to so many anime blogs. I’ve increasingly found them difficult to read – because I think the writing is shit. Things I would’ve read and commented on in 2009, I can’t bother with anymore. I’ve become less invested in seeing these improve over time, because well, they quit before they ever get better at blogging anime… or they just linger on being half-assed, or are like myself – fully convinced of their own ability.

STILL, I am very glad that people care enough about cartoons and comics to blog about them in any capacity and with whatever intention… whether as jaded haters, hipster haters, elitist tryhards, and the whole fucking spectrum of n00bity (precisely, because it rhymes with nudity). It’s because if any of these people ever eventually get an atom of what awesome, vitalizing, pleasure I got out of this hobby, then I feel even better for having done all this.

Like GL, I’m a father with three young kids, in particular, two young girls. In the last couple of years, as a causal form I’ve entertainment, I’ve taken a stronger interest in watching anime. My only real exposure in the past were shows on Cartoon Network, during the Toonami time slot or Adult Swim. During this exploration of new and old shows, my kids started joining me in watching, wondering what strange cartoons I was watching.  Being ages 7, 4, and 2, they have differing amount of interest in types of shows. But the one that surprises me the most is my 4 year old daughter.

Now keep in mind, no one in my family speaks or reads Japanese. My wife, genetically Korean but raised by a WASP family here, does speak Spanish, but that’s as close as we get. My oldest daughter is just beginning to learn to read. So you would think watching a subtitled show in a foreign language would be a little hard for a four year old. But every week she wants to sit down with Dad and “watch a show”. But, what really got her hooked, was watching Bunny Drop (Usagi Drop) this last summer. It became our Sunday ritual to watch together.

And what a fun show to watch together. A soft, and loving premise written around a working man, and the young girl he adopts into his home. I’m not saying my family situation is the same. But I see the interactions between a father and daughter in our own life. Together, we match up to there ages pretty well. Me, a working Dad, and Rin, a pre-school aged girl.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take a lot of dialog to understand the generality of what’s going on. So, she watches intently, making cute comments as Rin does silly stuff, and giggling at the more comical situations. These moments make the experience of watching the show all that more enjoyable. I’ve found something in common with my daughter that is just for us, an activity that she solely comes to me for and not Mom.

And as the season closed, it has hard to tell her that their would be no more to watch. And of course, she doesn’t understand why. But as I make my way through shows new and old, she’s there enjoying them as well, my little anime watching sidekick.

And a question for you as you read his post. What would you recommend I watch next with her? What can we watch together that can continue this great experience so far?

[Gundam AGE 13]

Everything that has run its course has been predictable so far, except finer details with regards to Death Flags – She was less Four Murasame in the end and more Lalah Sune. But truly what I didn’t count on was the boarding maneuver that the Diva is executing.

Let us put aside how it fails to make sense (like the previous episode’s necessity to fire from visual range despite 1) the presence of an advanced targeting system and 2) the effective range is much greater than the distance fired from) – in that the size of the explosion should’ve gutted the whole Ambat asteroid. Well, unless Grodek is some kind of bloodthirsty, xenoocidal, vengeance-freak (yes!) and is fighting a battle of extermination.

He wants his UE massacre. He’s willing to risk sending his crew — who are not infantry soldiers into the Ambat fortress in a boarding maneuver and get them all killed. By all means GO FOR IT! (Don’t forget that kids are watching bro!)

The battle for AMBAT shouts out to both the battles of Solomon and A Baoa Qu near the end of the One Year War in the Universal Century. In both cases it was a siege of an Asteroid fortress, especially for A Baoa Qu. During Solomon it was the fight between the team of Char and Lalah in the Gelgoog and Elmeth respectively (and the debut of funnels/bits) and Amuro in his Gundam. It was the showcase of Newtype powers, and Gundam will never be the same again afterwards.

The awesome things in this episode have to do with the Gundam itself, and I WON’T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY.  First, when Yurin does the Lalah Sune thing, sure Flit got really, really pissed. But instead of drawing him with thick lines Nagai Go style (or Simon from Gurren Lagann style for you newfags)  they put the emotion in the Gundam itself. Wait what? Emotion, from the Gundam’s masked face?

Why yes, it’s from the Imagawa school of immovable, but emotive super robot faces:

It’s just a matter of dramatic angles that play with the light.

Second, is how the Gundam went through its different modes getting trashed. As I would imagine, going up against two X-Rounders and one of them with flowery funnel attacks will rip off the Gundam’s limbs. Then Flit goes Titus on the UE and holds the figurative drawbridge open for the Diva to breach. Then yes, it too breaks apart. Good thing the Gundam AGE Normal is still good to go.

Daddy buy me all them toys! ALL YOUR MONEY FOR BANDAI! Oh shit, I’m the dad. Oh well. Let’s spend our money on food.

Bring her home, Char. Bring her home.

[Nisemonogatari 01]

Since the first episode aired, I’ve rewatched all of Bakemonogatari. One of the things I noted about the structure is how Hitagi Crab is just two episodes… and Hanekawa Cat is 5. Hitagi Crab presented the whole premise, introduced the leads, and resolved a conflict/plot point. It was very efficient. Hanekawa Cat on the other hand, had almost completely tangential first two episodes. Episode 12, while important to the resolution (Araragi’s stand against the meddlesome cat) was really more about Araragi and Senjougahara’s story than it is about Hanekawa. Still, it was a story to tell.

In the first two episodes of Karen Bee, not only nothing was resolved, the conflict is still only being hinted at. Instead, we get a whole lot of smut. Sure, there’s a lot of clever dialogue, but the medium and the content is really smutty fanservice.

Sure in episode 01, Hachikuji discoursed about authenticity and courage and this is part of the domestic conflict that will eventually be the Karen Bee concern. Sure in episode 02 Koyomi got some information however flimsy on his sister’s in school from Nadeko. But this is thin as gauze stuff in terms of mystery or conflict building.

The content is the smut. The value proposition is the smut. It’s incredibly slick and expertly made smut. But it’s smutty smuttacular smut.

The best part, oh my god, is when Kanbaru for some reason molests Koyomi in her room to end their conversation and the episode, he makes a moral resolution to never start a conversation with Hachikuji with sexual harassment.

SEE THE COMEUPPANCE OF A PERVERT.

SEE THE REDEMPTION OF A HERO.

WITNESS ALL OF THIS PRESENTED IN EROTIC, COMICAL “WHY SO SERIOUS?” HALF-NUDE TO FULL NUDE IRONY IN 1080P.

Of course, next episode will reveal more of the moral core of Araragi; the one that counts when we’re pressed to discuss the quality of this show – the one that saved all the girls of Bakemonogatari; The story of monstrous perversion… WITH A HEART OF GOLD!

By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed the kata animation of Araragi Karen. I love Karate.

Why does this franchise exist? Why? I am asking a serious question. Let’s put away the obvious reasons: make money, sell merchandise, etc. But surely, there are more efficient and less expensive ways to make a buck and sell toys and music. Why assemble the kind of talent that went behind these shows just for those reasons?

In the process of making this post, I figured it out. It’s so simple: It’s fun as fuck.

Kawamori and his tribe grabbed each other’s genitalia and just had one orgiastic creative party. Does the product have any “artistic” merit? It does. I really think there are cherries here for the picking. Does the product have fucktons of “artistic” demerit? You bet. There is probably a lot more bad, than there is ever any good in the whole thing. But I also truly believe everybody had fun making this show. It’s the bad idea everyone was wary to do, but had the time of their lives making, and then well, now Aquarion exists.

Then years later they made some more… then even later, they did it again!

Thus, this post is a metaphor for the anime:

• A concept of dubious merit.
• Content of doubtful value.
• A talented (read: faggoty) creative team behind it going “what the hell.”
• Incredible effort going into the production.

You think you’ve gone far into this post? We haven’t even started.

I could write a whole post on how EVOL basically animated Aria’s Neo Venezia so awesomely beautiful beyond anything even Aria the Origination can hope to do, then have a whole super robot battle fuck the whole place up. For me, this alone was worth it. But this post isn’t about that. Maybe some other time.

Instead I will note the significant thing in Aquarion EVOL is the metamasturbation (read: Kawamori “remembering love” for his own shows); this work immediately does, in Kawamori’s special way: He inserts an in-universe film version of the 2007 film Gekijoban Aquarion, and have the first leads fall over the film and perhaps each other. This is halfway between Macross: Do You Remember Love? getting discussed in an episode of Macross 7, and Bird Human being made as an in-universe film adaptation of Macross Zero in an episode of Macross Frontier.

The best part is how the “useless couple” as they will refer to themselves, note how the film was not successful, but it had a great song. Yes. Exactly. That’s how I feel about the franchise as a whole. It was unsuccessful (as an anime), but it had Kanno Yoko goodness, particularly in this variation of the first OP:

I think this is one of Kanno’s best work, and I love a whole lot of what she does for anime. But enough of this. Time to really talk about the show. Here to do just that is Digibro’s BRO, our token girl mecha pilot Victor:

What to make of that rapid-fire recapping? We complete our GATTAI trio with JoeAnimated’s wary but optimistic take:

If you left reading this post with exactly how I left watching Aquarion, then I’ll take it.

I’ve recently started watching Tetsujin 28 Go (2004), an incredible TV anime done with the same spirit and gravitas as was the OVA Giant Robo: The Day The Earth Stood Still (1991), both by Yasuhiro Imagawa based on Yokohama Mitsuteru’s works. Based on the intro, and the first five episodes I’ve seen which featured its showdowns with the rival robot Black Ox, I find it fascinating how Tetsujin 28 fights.

It is simplistic to the extreme. It almost feels like a saloon brawl in some John Wayne western. Big punches that knock opponents down, stomping on the ground, and the occasional palm-t0-palm grappling. I’m fascinated by it, despite my deep love for advanced martial arts performed by giant robots, because how it really fits. Shotaro is a 10-year old. He controls Tetsujin with this big electronic box, and frankly, he doesn’t strike me as an advanced martial artist.

Punching, kicking, and stomping seems just about right for Tetsujin 28, and he looks damn good fighting that way.

What I’m trying to say is, there’s a way to make fights good without being complex, and Tetsujin 28 Go so far has a good grasp of this. I’d rank this stuff higher than say, Mobile Suit Gundam AGE with its set pieces, firefights, and duels.

You won’t see a whole lot in the clip, but the elements are there. Tetsujin blasts into the field with his jetpack, punches the crap out of the enemy robot. BOOM. The drama isn’t focused on the fight itself, though you may be pleased to find out that Tetsujin himself takes a pretty good beating in the first 5 episodes. Good stuff.

Then robots start focusing on weapons and special attacks. Each special attack then was decisive. Take Mazinger Z:

Wow. That was awesome. The special attacks sure showed those mechanical beasts! This was how this show escalated the excitement, as the highlight of each episode became the fight.

As super robot shows progressed, the fights became more like “pro wrestling” matches wherein the fights were prolonged. This meant that many special attacks were no longer decisive, but instead were used to soften up the opponent.

WARNING: TOO MUCH AWESOME IN THIS VIDEO

Well, that showed way too much but I’m too lazy to make my own videos. The pro-wrestling aesthetic was refined when Tossho Daimos brought in my favorite kind of robot fighting: motherfuckin’ karate!

HOOOOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME!

Goddamnit, that was just breathtaking. The badass levels just doesn’t show up in modern robot anime in the same heavy-handedly dramatic, and yet incredibly fulfilling action-packed way. However, by 1978, it had become increasingly harder to deliver the same quality of fights while remaining fresh.

This was the kind of environment that led to the innovation of militarized giant robot fighting: Mobile Suit Gundam. However, Gundam never really left its roots as a duelist kind of robot, taking the light saber battles from Star Wars and making it a standard weapon for many mobile suits in the shows to come.

Bet you didn’t expect me to use the fucking Gyan and M’Quve as an example! But since we’re now in the militarized mecha sphere, the fights now involve 1 vs. many scenarios using standard robot units. The best example of this is the super-soldier piloted Scopedogs from Armored Trooper VOTOMS:

Unfortunately, you get fights like this (albeit in different environments) ad nauseam. Chirico just picking off enemy ATs all day every day. It would take Macross’ approach – which is to involve a large number of combatants and create massive chaos in the battlefield to keep the action exciting and dynamic.

But it isn’t only in 1 vs. many scenarios that Macross excelled at. It took the dogfight style duel and turned into a grand animated spectacle:

FABULOUS MAX!

I picked this example precisely because it wasn’t a pure plane vs. plane battle. The Qaedluun-rau is not a transforming robot, and yet Macross was able to give the duel a very dogfight feel, but of course taking it into insane levels of close quarters battle, without resorting to Gundam-style melee engagement.

Interestingly, it would be Gundam who would make the next “innovation” when it comes to 1 vs. many battles. It would take giant beam weapons mounted on Gundams and just hose the battlefield and take out multiple enemies. This came to a head when Mobile Suit Gundam Wing’s  Wing Zero Custom did this:

Uhhh… yeah.

Well, the 90s weren’t entirely made of fail when it comes to robot battle innovation. If Gundam Wing really started doing cheap shit like this, Neon Genesis Evangelion brought things back to basics, in ways never really seen before in robot anime.

I just love the lack of sync and the tracking lines from the VHS rip LOL.

This pretty much owns, and shows how Evangelion brought something awesome as a contribution to the tradition of robot anime. The bones of it is still very Tetsujin 28 Go, but the lengths it reaches was far beyond anyone’s imagination.

This pretty much presents the general fighting traditions in robot anime. Different shows will give us variations of these methods: Gundam gives us funnels, Eureka SeveN gives us air jousting by virtue of the vehicular nature of ref flight. The King of Braves Gao Gai Gar gives us HUGE WEAPONS… But all these are in the context of duels, 1 vs. many, or many vs. many kinds of battles.

What I showed here are, more or less, my favorite examples (controlling for age of the shows) for these categories or traditions. How differently would you set up the taxonomy? If the structure is works for you, what examples would be your favorites then? Feel free to post videos!

[Gundam AGE 12]

It is to my great delight that while Flit had his big X-Rounder moment in this assault, the show belonged to the capital ship. It’s been discussed quite early on that the Diva ship would transform in some way, and it finally did. I’m not sure how much sense there is in distinguishing the two different modes, but hey, the Diva Albion looks a lot better, and packs a big punch.

There’s much negativity on my end regarding beam weapons in mecha anime, but I have no complaints when any particular derivative of Yamato’s Wave Motion Gun is fielded or fired by a fixed installation, or a capital ship. This is the kind of weapon that makes the ship more than just a mobile suit carrier. This is important because the Diva can’t just be the ship that fields all three mobile suits in every battle, even if one of them is the Gundam.

Now it fired, taking out its opposing battleship, and punching a hole through the very asteroid holding the UE fortress. Now this doesn’t quite decide the battle, I have every suspicion that the battle will eventually be decided on the level of a mobile suit duel. What’s interesting however, is the tactical action that led to the firing of the AGE-builder delivered gun.

The tactical objective in this case is to get the Diva into effective firing range. Nothing complicated about the battle itself: there is a straight line of fire that’ll get both the UE flagship and the fortress. What gets in the way is the swarm of mobile suits providing cover and anti-ship support.

This is sound defense, in that mobile suits clearly are the best weapons against bigger, slower capital ships. Thus it is the job of the supporting carriers with their mobile suit complements to clear a firing position for the Diva. What I find funny, however – and I fully fault the planners for this one:

The Diva never needed to get that close.

Yes, you read that right. Why? It’s because if the beam was powerful enough to punch through the damn asteroid, then its effective range must be far greater than from where they fired from. The Diva could’ve just destroyed the capital ship from a position of superior safety, and reduced the mobile suit resistance greatly. It could then recharge and destroy the asteroid fortress at will.

But of course, we need drama in our arc-ending, two-part battle. And much drama there was, giving Flit the opportunity to go all Setsuna F. Seiei on a swarm of UE suits and deploy his X-Rounder CQB skills. Decil and Yurin will combine next episode to fight you.

Still, pretty intense battle; I enjoyed how Ract was saved from his own suicide, thus preserving the most awesome hair in AU Gundam to date.

That Athrun is so pimp.

I really, really liked Bakemonogatari; it was one of the first shows that I blogged episodically, and it was one of the shows that got me thinking about the concept of otaku that I am now familiar with. For better or worse, I enjoyed the uh, allegory it does in the representation of the viewer – or more precisely, the fanboy, or at least the “target” audience. I won’t really know how accurate it is as such, but I enjoyed the complexity and cleverness it has in doing so.

I think the show is like Senjougahara itself, contemptuous of the kind – or in part of the person Araragi is, but is dependent on him, in love with him, in awe of him. It trolls the viewer as Hitagi teases Koyomi, reminding him of every perversion he has. The beauty of this is how she really can’t. Only Koyomi himself can reveal the extent of his depravity. The show titillates with layers of fanservice.

It spits on the viewer, then licks all of it off, by portraying the viewer as Araragi, the monster pervert who has the biggest of hearts, and rewards him with his harem. Nisemonogatari’s first episode validates all this for me. The cleverness pleases me very much.

This whole thing plays out in the semantic game Hachikuji Mayoi plays with Araragi. Her claim is how she can make any statement of a contemptuous act sound awesome if she prefixes it with the word “courage.” The sentences themselves are delightful:

• The courage to keep your secret to yourself.
• The courage to lie to your lover.
• The courage to betray your comrades.
• The courage to be a lazy bum.
• The courage to admit defeat.

I admit defeat, to this fanservice extravaganza – of the kind I look down on other people for liking. Sure I try not to judge or look down on others, but who really is successful in doing so? Watching and coexisting without shame nor prejudice? Without self-righteousness but with full of compassion – and yet without compromising their principles? Are there really bodhisattvas watching and blogging anime every week? Would you take me by the hand, can you show me the shine of your Japan? Show me.

Then the show takes it up a notch, by talking about misdirection without talking about misdirection: The arc is called “Karen Bee” though Karen herself never appears, and this is brought into high relief in the wager of revealing Mayoi’s panties. We’re never sure if Araragi did see them, but we’re sure we don’t. It is as invisible to us as Karen is, and it is a juxtaposition of the two value propositions this show makes:

• Otaku getting fanservice
• Otaku giving service to others (albeit members of the harem)

It is overt, without giving up subtlety, nuance, or cleverness. I am quite harsh on shows the likes of Fractale, Guilty Crown, and Rinne no Lagrange. I feel that those shows are dirtier and more shameful than Nisemonogatari. It’s because those shows lack courage. Yes, the hypocrisy that can be found in the semantic game Mayoi plays isn’t entirely all-encompassing. This show has the courage to be authentically perverted and pandering, and somehow offers far more value than those three I mentioned.

Mayoi goes forward and plainly says it: Araragi has a harem (this is a harem show), and he deserves it. This is why she keeps staying around, despite how Araragi aggressively molests her. Since she is a fanservice loli (or attempts to be more than such), she validates how she can be relied on – she and Shinobu, as the only characters that Araragi reaches out to for help – validating how he still has trouble dealing with girls who are more like women, who are self-determined. He accepts their assistance (tutoring, etc.), but does not reach out to them.

The first episode of Nisemonogatari allowed me to remember love for its predecessor. I feel good in how I marathoned the first three arcs of Bakemonogatari to hype myself up for this show. This first episode validates much of what I enjoyed about the uh, franchise. It has the courage to be authentic: making it sound like it’s more than some fanservice show, but really it panders to the hilt. But yeah, somehow, it’s just better.

Basara Nekki, the SPACE BARD OF PEACE, has been my favorite character in all anime for the past 3 years. This is unlikely to change, but Basara for all his annoying righteousness and callousness… is indeed righteous in the most righteous way: he sings for peace in the most awesome way possible. He wouldn’t countenance killing, and he’d disable lethal ordnance on his VF if he could.

The thing is, would I want another character like that? The way I would want say, more badass mecha pilots in anime? No. One Basara is enough, spare us all. I came into watching Senki Zesshou Symphogear knowing only that there is a concert scene. And I thought, “oh idols.” I had watched iDOLM@STER to my disappointment – there was nothing remotely awesome about it – just a bunch of moé idols perpetrating the marketing illusion that idols are adorable in front and away from the camera.

I grew up watching Macross so that nonsense will never really impress me. But I gave it all I could and I would do the same for Symphogear. And sure enough, it rewarded me with an idol concert far beyond anything in iDOLM@STER:

Not bad at all, and this is from me who’s watched the May’n & Mamegu Sheryl & Ranka schtick over and over and over at the Budokan (no I wasn’t really there). This is well done as idol concerts are concerned, especially for TV anime. But I’ll be goddamned if this was the only thing the episode gave me.

It gave me violence and death, and a big ‘ol  stand from an IDOL MAGIC GIRL ROBOT FIGHTER.

Now let me tell you what is cool about this shit. Yes the idol was singing to destroy the enemies. The song wasn’t just for powering up, it’s intrinsically linked to how the enemies… the “Noise” are destroyed. Melody destroys Noise. Get it? Got over it? Good. This wasn’t Minmay shocking the Zentraedi with idol cuteness. This wasn’t Ranka stupefying the Vajra with fold waves. This wasn’t Basara making Space Vampires cum with his Anima Spiritia and HOLY LONELY LIGHT.

This is an idol magic girl with power armor and weapons destroying CG monsters that kill people without fanfare. Concert-goers got massacred, now Kanade delivers her retribution. Even cooler, she sings in the low register, as befits her badass powers. It just wouldn’t do to have a shrill or chirpy moé idol voice getting this shit done. This was righteous.

The episode unfolds its origin story of a Madoka Magica-esque weak little girl turned hero. But unlike the long, clever tease of Magical Girl Madoka Magica, Tachibana Hibiki transforms by the end of the pilot episode, AND HOW! BRING FORTH THE BEATS OF BEASTS~ I’ve no idea how this show will progress from here, but I only ask for the following:

• Keep things violent and deadly.
• Make the action scenes fist-pump worthy.
• Make the music interesting.

Do this and I will sing your praises. Note how I didn’t mention “character development” or “DEEP PLOT” whatever anime fags demand from their moving illustrations. Titillation is okay, just keep it down a notch or seven from the trash Guilty Crown and Rinne no Lagrange have been begging to make us fap to. Code Geass, Macross Frontier, and Neon Genesis Evangelion are titles all up to their gills in fanservice, but I never felt the disgust that kimoi shit like Fractale serve up.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear has my attention, now LISTEN TO MY SONG!

ghostlightning: Allow me to introduce Joe Animated, who wrote this post. He has more kids than I do, but I have more blog posts than he has. We both have to start somewhere, so please welcome him and his first blog post here on WRL.

—

Mardock Scramble: The First Compression is the initial release in a three part movie series. Set in a futuristic world,  the protagonist, is given a second chance by an “ambulance chasing” scientist and his partner, and intelligent synthetic life-form. As like Blade Runner, a path of discovery into humanity and human nature is walked. It’s this that makes Mardock Scramble more than just a pretty science fiction story.

The main character is Rune Balot, a teenage prostitute. Balot is a troubled, frightened teenager. She has experienced some horrific events in her life, starting with her rape by her father while in her early teens, followed by the attempted murder of her father by her older brother. With these traumatizing events in hand, she is left to the streets, ending up as a prostitute at a brothel. As if her life has not reach rock bottom already, she meets her endgame in Shell, a deranged psychopath bent on killing her and turning her ashes into a diamond for a new ring on his finger. In this murder  attempt she is left for dead dead, and subsequently rescued, and her second chance at life begins.
It is with these rescuers that she begins her struggle to find meaning in her life. As a part of her body’s physical reconstruction, she is remade as a cyborg, with the ability to interface with the technology around her. This new body grants her a physical strength she has never known. But this alone is not enough to help her heal completely. It’s her conversations with the synthetic life-form Oeufcoque that her emotional healing begins.

Oeufcoque is a truly unique creature. Created by a space science program as a synthetic lifeform, he has the ability to transform into any item imaginable. He can quickly change with the users thoughts, becoming an indispensable tool. Oeufcoque’s character mirrors that of the Replicants in Blade Runner. The Replicants are not supposed to be free or equal to man. But their creators gave  them the ability to reason, and the beginnings of a conscienceness. Because of this, the Replicants grew beyond their programming, bringing them closer to being human. Given the intelligence and emotion of a sentient being, but only granted the rights of a machine, he tries to find his place in the world. In the commonality of their struggles, Balot and Oeufcoque find that they share a similarity in being used by the society they live in.

But unlike Blade Runner, Balot and Oeufocoque are looking for what makes them human, but what defines their value in society. For some time now Balot’s worth was defined by what actions would do for money. After encountering a hidden camera in bathroom stall, she’s forced to think in those terms again. She’s irritated, frustrated, embarrassed. In her not so past life, she would know exactly how much money to make to appear on camera. This reminder, and the self exploration, only helps to push her growth along.

But just as she confronts her past and makes strides to move beyond it, it comes back to take her away. A gang of assassins hired by Shell comes to kill her. The members of the assassination team represent the aspects of her that her client’s fantasized after. This attempt on her life serves as a test of her resolve to change, in a way in which there is no going back. She must either fight her demons, or succumb, and the process, lose her life.

With her new found resolve and Oeufcoque, she dismantles the assassins one by one. Oeufcoque lends his strength as she methodically eliminates each threat. But this strength leads her down the dark path of revenge and hate, and with consequences. As she defeats her last demon, she transition from justice to revenge, destroying the bond between her and Oeufcoque, mortally wounding him in the process.

For the designers of Oeufcoque built in safeguards to prevent the senseless murder of humans. With Oeufcoque injured and hardly functioning, the last assassin, hired by Shell, begins to attack. As much as this assassin is after Balot, he want to take control of Oeufcoque. But when the time comes for her to help Oeufcoque, she can’t. They try to struggle together, but to no avail. At this point, the movie ends inconclusively, leaving us without a conclusion.
Does she survive? What happens to Oeufcoque? Mardock Scramble: First Compression, brings us the first part of a compelling story, that when complete, will rival the best stories science fiction has to offer. I for one am anxious to see this story to it’s conclusion.

[Cowboy Bebop Episode 14 “Bohemian Rhapsody”]

While I’m sure many things have been said about the content of this session, being the back story of the show’s second most memorable character, there’s something more interesting to be said in how the back story is delivered, because it is testament to the craft that went into the show, and the delightful chemistry that resulted from it.

What is Ein for? Ein was the MacGuffin way back in “Stray Dog Strut.” Since then we’ve seen him do pretty much nothing (he got to be the first victim of the alien back in “Toys in the Attic”), except perhaps present himself as a device akin to a confession booth – not just in terms of having Faye Valentine in particular tell her story like here in this session, but also expose the extent of her “sinful” character – as she did rob Ein of his dog food back in “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Ein shows us how lonely Faye is, how she needs someone to talk to, but really can’t open up to either Jet nor Spike. Faye wouldn’t talk to Ed who can talk back and do something weird in the process. Faye has grown comfortable talking (down) to Ein and in this case she felt kind of generous and opened up her past. This is all for our sakes by the way, Ein’s existence allows the story to be told almost directly to the viewer yet preserves the fourth wall.

As it turns out, Faye is “victim” of a small-time scam run by a medical clinic and a lawyer. It’s unclear to me how this clinic got hold of Faye in the first place. I imagine it as some combination of chance and collection agency business practice. A collection agency is a firm that well, collects debt that is in default or is headed there. The original owner of the debt settles for a fraction of what the debt is originally worth, and the agency takes the rest.

The agency itself usually has a lawyer who is mentioned in the written collection notices that forms the backbone of the harassment these firms usually do to bully and scare debtors into paying. Having married an attorney, I am informed that the lawyers who take up this “practice” are the dregs of the legal profession. Having experienced their ‘work’ a few times in my life, they tend to not sign the notices of collection, they don’t post an address of official business on the notice and instead put a P.O. Box. Why? It’s because they knowingly commit acts of harassment. They call your mother and scare her that she’ll be subpoenad if she doesn’t pay for her son’s debt.

They are the lowest of the low. Whitney Hagas Matsumoto, is such a con artist, who poses as some kind of insurance representative who will help her out, taking nearly full advantage of her amnesia and vulnerability. At 20 years old, Faye isn’t exactly some bright college graduate, she’s just this kid who doesn’t know who she is. She woke up from 54 years of sleep after suffering injuries from a big accident.

People are more aware of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle story, but this is predated by at least a thousand years by the Chinese legend of Ranka¹. Wikipedia, provides the summary:

Wang Chih was a hardy young fellow who used to venture deep into the mountains to find suitable wood for his axe. One day he went farther than usual and became lost. He wandered about for a while and eventually came upon two strange old men who were playing Go, their board resting on a rock between them. Wang Chih was fascinated. He put down his axe and began to watch. One of the players gave him something like a date to chew on, so that he felt neither hunger nor thirst. As he continued to watch he fell into a trance for what seemed like an hour or two. When he awoke, however, the two old men were no longer there. He found that his axe handle had rotted to dust and he had grown a long beard. When he returned to his native village he discovered that his family had disappeared and that no one even remembered his name.

Unlike Wang Chih, Faye Valentine did not age. She woke up in a world where the technology has outpaced what she knew, but it’s not that different. It’s actually a dark, scummy, degenerating world much like how the ‘90s were: The post-bubble Japan, the Asian economic crisis, and major cities like New York were hotspots of crime elevated to mythological levels. Like much science fiction, Cowboy Bebop writes about its present, characterized in some distant or not-so-distant future. Such were the ‘90s, I remember it too.

We can tell Whitney is a fishy because he doesn’t reference either Rip or Ranka and instead goes straight to Sleeping Beauty. He says he’ll help her with the debt, that if she keeps on living, perhaps she’ll meet someone wonderful. In that moment when Faye seems to buy into the story, the session plays one of my favorite songs from the OST, Flying Teapot.

It’s one of the first songs I took pains to learn to sing. In those lonelier days of 2003-2004 I listened to the OST every day, and sang to myself while walking to and from many pointless destinations. Cowboy Bebop was the soundtrack to my “quarter-life crisis,” and having overcome that I only have love for the songs that kept me company back then.

This song scored the whole sequence wherein Whitney chased after an escaping Faye, took her out on a date, told her how the prince must protect his Sleeping Beauty when the insurance company started going after her, and supposedly died for her sake. Somehow he found the time to will her all his assets, but all of that amounted to just further debt.

Sure, Ed preserved the fourth wall, but it would be a complete waste if all this information didn’t mix up the chemical elements of the cast. Deliciously enough, Spike overheard everything and admitted as much just after we hear him flush the toilet. It’s that apparent contempt this show has for its characters, the indignity they’re constantly subjected to,  that make us love them more.

The closure and resolution is typical. Even when Jet is forced to hunt the smallest of the small fry just to get food on the table, the smallest of the small fry turns out to be Whitney, and as pathetic he’s become (and it is quite pathetic), Faye still shows feelings and gratitude for him, until his con is fully exposed, and then she puts him behind bars herself.

Side note: Chauvinism

Jet: Women as insistent as her tend to be the ones that get emotionally swayed by their exes. Women don’t work on reason.

She took the guy and not the money.

Spike: Jet captured him!

Faye: I have to repay my debt to him. So I have the right to do what I want with him, and the bounty on him! (at gunpoint)

Spike: Amazing. She clearly states a pointless argument.

Jet: That’s what I told you. Women don’t work on reason.

You know what, I’m not even going to defend this. The dogfight action we get in this session is Spike vs. Faye, Swordfish II vs. Redtail. We know Faye can’t win that one. But she finds out the extent of the con and puts Whitney away herself, so I guess she’s not too thoroughly trodden upon by the male chauvinist writing. Maybe.

Maybe not.

What I do know is this is all pointless, as Cowboy Bebop is madly in love with pointless things. It makes them beautiful, funny, musical. The flirtation between Faye and Spike at the end is such a thing, such a beautiful, funny, musically pointless thing.

¹Yes, Macross Frontier does reference this in Ranka Lee’s dissociative amnesia.