Between Linux and Anime

I wasn’t too impressed by it while I was writing the season’s Brainmark post, but then Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojou dropped a bomb on me when I hit episode three.

I came here to do my research.
This is needed for me to draw.
That’s why I’m here.
What about you? Why are you here?
… You are the one who does not understand

Very nice. Suddenly, the whole dorm of whacky art students thing, the whole moe girl who cannot take care of herself thing, the entirety of Sakurasou’s setting that I had assumed was just another randomly thought up harem backdrop, started to make sense. In typical male lead fashion, Sorata had strutted around the show emphasizing himself as the poor normal person being thrust into a crazy situation and forced into picking up after his new companions. He self-importantly proclaims he wants out as soon as possible and complains loudly when faced with his companions’, especially Mashiro’s, apparent lack of common sense. This is all of that coming back to bite him. This is the heady moment of clarity where he suddenly realizes that Mashiro, in her own way and within her own realm of awareness and abilities, had always been true to herself and her wishes for the future, whereas he on his smug pedestal of normalhood had been running around in circles without ever giving anything much thought.

It was a moment that questioned the nature of ‘normalhood’. What value exactly is there to simply being able to be like everyone else, that it should confer you the privilege and right of being exasperated with people who are different? With that simple back and forth between Sorata and Mashiro at end of the whole stalking episode, Sakurasou briefly separated a human being into the outer facade and the inner self, showing on the one hand that being normal on the outside really doesn’t amount to anything, and on the other that being socially handicapped – while it might make one look useless or foolish on the surface – nonetheless does not preclude one from possessing or attaining clarity and even wisdom in the things that really matter.

We get another inkling of that clarity in Mashiro as the credits roll for episode three, where in a really cute scene she discovers Sorata asleep at the shoe racks, and piled on pieces of blanket/fabric she could find on his sleeping form until he is completely covered. Contrast this with Sorata, who seemed to be unable to do something for Mashiro without also somehow cooking up a complaint about it. He thrashed against his own sense of care for Mashiro, he didn’t want to be associated with her, or with Sakurasou, all in order to avoid being branded a freak. Well, says this episode, is not being a freak really that important? Important enough that you have to run away even from yourself? Maybe not.

With that out of the way and Sorata now seeking his own meaning and goal in life, episode four transitions smoothly into exploring the effects of genius and talent, on the one hand illustrating it’s alienating effect on people who are unable to keep up, and on the other showing how the talented and the ingenious also fight their own battles and seek their own success. It is weaving these ideas deftly into the character dynamics and into the stormy web of budding romance happening above all of this. Sakurasou has really gotten itself into a good place here – it had a great first arc that not only ended on a greatly satisfying note, but that also left the field pregnant with potential for lots of thoughtful storytelling moving forward. Its even got great production values – better, comically, than Little Busters by far. Probably the only thing I dislike about it now is its barbaric continuation of the childhood-friend-abuse tradition. Oh, why does anime hate the childhood friend?

(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)