Between Linux and Anime

(Postponing my KnK post in favor of this one, since it’s actually somewhat timely. A rare occurence in this blog!)

Kininarimasu!

You can’t really say that Hyouka isn’t essentially a mystery show, and that being the case having mysteries that are a little hit and miss (or more often than not peculiarly.. inconsequential..) is probably a valid complaint point. However, just as it is possible for an anti-fan of sorts of the mecha genre (me) to have an essentially mecha show (Eva) for an all time favorite, it is possible to watch and relish Hyouka for some of its more peripheral and meta aspects. Mystery stories and shows may be dime a dozen nowadays, but Hyouka does some pretty fun things with its storytelling that serves to differentiate and distinguish it, even if only subtly.

Read More

Just came back from watching this. With this being the latest work of the guy who did Summer Wars, I went with fairly lofty expectations – and found my expectations exceeded. I’m a little afraid of over-hyping it from just a single watch through (and just some hours ago), but Wolf Children was beautiful, and not so much in audio/visual terms (though the soundtrack was fantastic), but more so in the sheer strength of its storytelling. Like Summer Wars, the focus of the film is very familial, very human, and the breathless intimacy of the storytelling made every twist and turn throughout the film intensely heartfelt. It created a wonderful, heady perspective of the wide, breathing enormity of the world around and beyond us without missing a beat in portraying the hardships and triumphs and travails of our own meandering path through it. Like Summer wars it is a very human story, and it was just wonderful.

Also, and I cannot help but add, don’t listen to Kotaku’s review about the end. I think it’s missing a point or two about the kind of story Wolf Children is trying to tell. In my opinion the conventional structure of having a massive buildup into a palpable climax right before the end is a tired tradition that, while often effective, needs to be departed from every now and then, and Wolf Children I think handled its own method of curtain-down very gracefully. The film began at the beginning and ended at the end of a familial cycle, and was thus, in my opinion, as whole and complete as it can be – for the cycle never ends, and the exact point of entry and departure of this story I think alludes to that. The stories of the children’s future beyond the end will be the tale of another generation.

I think that’s all I’m going to say for now. A proper treatment of the show must necessarily wait for DVD/Blurays to get out so I can watch it a few more times, and take screenshots and such. Of course, seeing as how I never ended up writing about Summer Wars, I won’t guarantee I’ll make a post for this one too.

By the way, this is also a public service announcement for folks living in Singapore. This is showing RIGHT NOW. If you haven’t watched it, do yourself a favor, and go grab yourself a ticket now.

Natsuiro Kiseki was an enjoyable show, with a pretty great end. Great, and yet perhaps not great enough that I would, for example, remember this show off the top of my head three years down the road, or that I would quite arrive at this title while ticking off my favorite shows to a conversation partner. I liked it a lot, and I want to say that it is a memorable show, and yet I’m not sure that it is. And from that sentiment came an odd sort of resonance with the themes of the final arc of the show, a resonance that reverberated through the memories of all the earlier episodes, and rendered the collective, even if just for a while, special.

Most of NatsuKiseki, as slice of life storytelling tends to work, is spent on fairly directionless and distinct events, only loosely connected by some overarching setting-based parameters, like Yuka’s loosely-shared idol dream and Saki’s impending move. The directionlessness is in my opinion part of the charm of the slice of life genre, and the setting of a frolicking summer holiday supercharged by a stumbled-upon supernatural power is an effective one that suffuses each subarc with intrigue – and with emotional weight. And yet the distinctness of each event separates each subarc from each other and concentrates our attention on what’s currently going on. Life in NatsuKiseki is lived moment to moment. The characters laugh and sing and feel shock and then relief and then forget and start over with the new trip or the new sticky situation they inadvertently create. And yet behind all this was the recurring, quietly felt certainty that an end was coming. That they were frolicking and quarreling and reconciling and having fun and creating memories – because Saki will soon have to leave.

And in the final arc came the interesting twist – the end is removed, and summer holidays was set on an endless loop. As they enjoyed the magical extension they soon realized that it wasn’t an extension – it was forever. In a critical scene, where the four stood flanking the magical rock having decided to end their Summer-Colored Miracle, Saki said to a hesitating Natsumi:

I know how you feel
I feel sad too
But if it doesn’t end, it won’t be a memory

And I liked that. The simple idea that things needn’t and shouldn’t last forever, and that transience could add to the value and beauty of something. As they stood with their hands on the rock there came the cascade of images, the sights and sounds of all the previous subarcs as they remembered it, all the way to that first magical flight they took together. That was the moment the entire show was connected – when they said goodbye. Saying goodbye itself was an invaluable part of an experience. The moment felt like an ode to the countless forgotten moments in our lives, moments which were in their time beautiful, funny, moving – keenly felt, but that were inexorably washed aside as the present faded into the past.

The moment passed, Saki is leaving. Doubtlessly new things will arise towards which their attention will be drawn and held, and then yet new things will come after. However fervently they vowed to remain friends and to remember their summer together, singing in an abandoned building in the rain, dating a crush in another person’s body, splitting work with a clone of yourself – these will undoubtedly soon fade to the back of their minds, in the same way new shows and new endeavors will soon put NatsuKiseki in the back of my mind.

And yet perhaps things like these do in a sense live forever. Sometime ages and ages hence, something – an old episode discovered while foraging my old records, a mention or a picture read somewhere in the vast sea of the internet – would probably remind me of this show, and I might even seek it out and attempt a partial rewatch out of nostalgia, and all of it would probably come tumbling back. And I would remember, that I enjoyed Natsuiro Kiseki.

(…and probably that I wished the production values were less choppy)

Because I’m totally gonna look like a hopeless attic-bound hikkikomori when I fail to tag five people at the end of this post, my best efforts at excuses notwithstanding (Everyone I know were just already tagged I swear! I have friends, I do! I dooooo….. *echoes in the distance*)

Read More