D.M. Dutcher's Blog, page 9

Weird Anime Of The Day: Fumoon

This should be titled Dark Anime of the Day, because despite it’s cartoony Tezuka style, it’s one of the saddest and most sober anime I’ve seen.

In the future, a professor visits the barren Batetio Island. He discovers an odd creature there, and brings it home. He plans to show it off at an exposition, and asks his friend, the archetypical Tezuka detective Shunsaku Ban, to guard it. One night though it escapes its cage, and is swallowed up along with Ban himself by a UFO. This is the start of Fumoon, a story about war, destruction, and the potential end of the human race.

The Fumoon are an elfin race of beings that somehow was birthed on Batetio Island. They are smaller than us, but are possessed of intense psychic and technological power. It seems that they are stealing animals from across the globe for some unknown purpose, and it’s up to Ban’s nephew Keniji and his sister Peach to find out why. The reality is far darker than anyone expects.

In a distant galaxy, a supernova has caused a massive gas cloud to be sent rocketing towards the earth. This cloud will destroy all life on the planet in three weeks, and the Fumoon are saving as many animals as they can find to be placed on their “gondola” starships. Their goal is to leave the earth and the humans that have destroyed it behind, and start anew on another planet. Our only hope is a small group of people, and one renegade Fumoon, Rococo. But as the cloud nears, the cold war between the two greatest nations on the world turns hot, and we may end up destroying ourselves before the cloud finds earth…

This movie was nothing like I expected. I came to it after watching Undersea Super Train: The Marine Express. Both it and Fumoon were works originally designed to be shown at the Japanese equivalent of a Jerry Lewis Telethon, but while the first was silly-awesome, this one was pure darkness and seriousness. The Fumoon do not like us at all, and you can’t blame them; the greed and environmental rapacity of humanity is shown baldly. The scene where they flee the planet in a flotilla of starships is particularly haunting, and only Rococo is left to give us any help.

Help that we need. When the cold war between the two world powers finally erupts, it’s surprisingly harrowing for what is more or less a G-rated level of violence. It’s total war, with planes bombing civilian populations, and in one especially harrowing scene, attacking an entire highway full of stalled cars seeking to escape the destruction. The movie was made during a time when the Cold War between the USA and USSR was in full swing, and it pulls no punches with depicting war. Then the black cloud hits, and life on the surface on the earth begins to end. The last we see of the two leaders of the nations are them surrounded by their cocoons of video screens, screaming at a deaf monitor to launch the nukes.

We’re saved in the end, but at a great cost. The most damning cost was in our own human stupidity. If not for Rococo, we would have destroyed the only chance we had at salvation out of fear of being left behind. Rococo’s grace in realizing that not all humans are like this, and that some can protect, is the only reason why she helps us, and she also pays the ultimate price for that rebellion. This is all done straight; there are blessed few of the comic-book like tics you see in Marine Express, and the gravity of the danger facing the world is never lessened, not even for a moment.

This makes for an unusual film. It’s not particularly experimental, and has a basic seventies/early eighties vibe to it. The animation is functional at best, with Tezuka’s simple, stylized character designs combines with some decent, if not spectacular background work. It makes up for this though by playing it’s extremely serious and well-thought out plot absolutely straight, save for one silly montage which shows how the Fumoon plan to get all the animals onto their ships; they shrink and squash them. And there is very little “anime logic” to Fumoon; it could easily be recast as a live-action SF film with little loss. No overbearing tropes, no fan service; just a very serious tale about environmental devastation, the threat of war, and a dark catastrophe coming to wipe us out.

You can see it for free on Youtube or on Viki. In terms of real violence, it’s barely a PG, but it’s surprisingly intense for a cartoon. A scene where a plane strafes a mother trapped under a car and killing her as Rock looks on is shocking, as is a scene where one of the baddies puts out a cigar on the arm of one of the captive Fumoons, and then shoots them down after. Very little comic relief is to be found, even from the little onee-chan Peach. It’s also in a way much more intelligent than typical anime of the time; the film feels like it was inspired by things like This Island Earth and Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, but its story is surprisingly well done.

It’s a weird anime in that you simply don’t expect it to be so straightforwards and somber. The ending sequence, where the black cloud starts to descend on earth, is quite chilling, and despite Rococo’s odd appearance (she has a long proboscis like a butterfly) she’s a character you grow to care deeply about. A hidden little gem, indeed.

First Impressions: Akiba’s Trip

Best game about stripping vampires you’ll ever play.

In Akihabara, a young otaku gets suckered into a shady job by the promise of super-rare figures. Unfortunately it’s a front designed to transform people into Synthisters; a vampirish-like creature that is nothing more than a collection of obsessions. This otaku is saved by the mysterious Shizuka, and he, along with his friends at game lounge MOGRA, vow to stop the invasion by the only way they know how: beating them to a pulp and then stripping off their clothes so they melt in the sun.

No seriously, you do this.

The game’s a cross between Shenmue and a Grand Theft Auto game. It faithfully recreates Akihabara, a city known for selling electronics and being geek heaven, and uses story and side missions to advance the plot. It’s not exactly open world as opposed to being a collection of zones (like Shenmue again) but you’re free to take side missions or just roam around beating up on vampires or even locals. It’s very much like Shenmue in that it faithfully recreates a Japanese location in serious detail, but Akiba’s does it even better by including real world stores, flyers, and even video of games and things like idol singers. The detail is amazing; you can see video of several other video games on the screens in your hangout or on the street, and on the loading screens you even get advertisements for places that would be competitors, or anime like Genshiken 2. It’s really well done.

Combat isn’t done as well. You can attack low, mid, and high, and you need to damage the opponent’s clothes enough so that you can strip them off in one move. You have about five or six types of weapons you can use to do this, but there’s a stunning amount of different models these weapons can have. A sword-class can be an umbrella, a bat, a toy hammer, or more. You even get items that change your standard idle animation, or the way you strip people. Stripping people drunken kung-fu style evokes real-life laughter when I first saw it.

You have unblockable attacks, and you can guard and counter. The guard is the worst, though, because you have a fair amount of lag before you can do so. You need to guard in advance, and that generally makes it much less useful. Combat too is a bit wonky, as your AI partner can get in the way or you be out of range all too often. You suffer damage to your clothes in the same way the enemies do, but at any time you can adjust your clothing to go back to full health. The fighting part isn’t that bad once you get the hang of it, but it never feels as fluid as it could be.

The stripping part is hilarious, though. Not so much the basic stripping at first, but then the game starts to add advanced concepts. You can chain-strip enemies if enough are weakened, teleporting from one to the next and removing clothes like a dervish. If you can chain enough, you can finish them off by even taking their underwear, in which they run away in a censor-beam of light. Yes, you can equip underwear; the enemies can strip you too. Especially hilarious is the team-up stripping. Fill a gauge up enough and you can strip one enemy completely, and the scene in which you do so varies based on your AI partner. Shizuka beats enemies up until you throw them into the air for an aerial stripping, while The Imouto beats both them and you up before a panty-flash trip gives you the opening you need to de-clothe your assailant. It never gets old.

The characters are great, too. They are all anime types, but decent ones. Mysterious girl Shizuka, your childhood friend, The Imouto, the foreign maid cosplayer, and more. It feels like you’re recruiting the cast of Genshiken to beat up the undead, and it works pretty well. Nana, aka The Imouto, is especially good; she’s your hikkikomori younger sister, and she never lets you forget it, brotagonist. You have English and Japanese voices, but I turned the english ones off after hearing Nana, whose voice simply doesn’t fit. I can see what they tried to do, which is match the vocal tone of each of the Japanese voices, but The Imouto’s tone isn’t as cute in English.

The missions are okay, but with one serious flaw. Side missions can be taken at any time, but the expire if you do enough story missions. Sometimes this makes them unwinnable, as the story location you need to go to is the same as the side mission, but takes precedence. So it’s an automatic “out of time” if it happens, and the missions expire quickly. It’s best to do them ASAP, and checking for new ones whenever you get a notification. Most are simple fetch quests or beat em ups, and some are funny. You have to convince an otaku’s mom to stop cosplaying, beat up an otaku who keeps buying all the Dengeki Playstation issues, or deal with a rabid fujoshi who thinks you make a great bottom…or maybe a top.

The extras aren’t all that bad. You have a twitter clone that is very similar to the forums from .hack, and they nailed the way people forum-speak dead on. You can collect real-life Akihabara flyers to view in your encyclopedia later. You can fuse equipment for better stats, although there’s no real crafting elements in the game so far. They even have an optional minigame based on the in-universe magical girl trio, Striprism.

There are some issues with the Vita version, though. It can take some time for models of NPCs to load, and sometimes your AI partner freezes up. The beginning doesn’t really introduce you to the concepts well, so it’s a rough start. One example; to detect Synthisters with the app, you need to take out your camera and snap a pic in scanning mode. The game doesn’t really mention this. There’s some decent loading times, especially on boot. You get the sense that the game is a prettied up PSP port in some ways. None of these are game killers, but you’ll notice them.

For Christians, the stripping is probably the only issue you’d mind out of it. It’s not really as lurid as you think, and you can even equip an item that makes it done quickly. It comes across as silly most of the time, although it does get embarrassing when you’re team-up stripping, and you’ve got some innocent girl wearing a straw hat and a skirt in an armlock while your girl partner administers a beatdown. You strip guys as much as girl, too, and the men right down to the briefs or boxers they wear. There was one point when it was salacious, but it’s a minor plot point so no spoilers. It’s on the level of a standard harem anime. So far though, there hasn’t been too much offensive, compared to something like Conception II, aka space baby-making game.

Is it worth buying? Yeah, definitely for anime fans. For others, it really won’t convert you. Chances are if you own a Vita you are buying this anyways due to few good games on the system. I’m enjoying it.

Review: Tenchi Muyo The War On Geminar

Warning: anime OP is NSFW.

Two out of five stars.

Young Kenshi Masaki has found himself stuck on another world. In order to gain his freedom, he is thrown into an assassination plot against the Princess Lashara, but is foiled. Now his only hope is to join his former target and stop those that sent him before its too late. Along the way he forms a harem…

This has to be one of the most disappointing anime I have ever watched. From the original episodes, you’d think that you are about to watch a cool story set in an absolutely intriguing world that’s a blend of fantasy and high tech. The characters are intriguing and the stakes high, and then just as it starts to get good we shift to six hours of harem hijinks and the most Mary Sue protagonist I’ve seen in anime yet.

No, seriously, it all falls apart.

Once the story shifts to the Holy Land, you get a well-done, yet bog-standard magical high school story as Kenji quickly assembles a harem of stereotypes. There’s the dark elf princess, the shy silent girl, the student council president, the hot for you teacher, the big sister type, and more. This wouldn’t be so bad if the anime also didnt go out of its way to make Kenshi possible of doing almost anything as well as the subject of constant praise. He’s not even that strong of a character to begin with, as he’s a vanilla character whose only real personality trait is to imitate a wild fuzzy called a Koro when stressed. It gets old fast.

Because of this, the story loses steam and fizzles out. You actually wind up caring more for the villains, because apart from the big bad and villain fanservice girl, they all have strong motivations and aren’t one-sided. Dagmyer especially breaks the mold because he’s shown as persuading others to his view, and is clearly ruthless yet has a point which he won’t go beyond. And he pays pretty hard for what he does too. Ironically, the thief Lan too you care about, because she has decent motivation. Yet the true conflict is merely a rehash from Dual Parallel Trouble Adventures, done worse. The anime’s main stories are weaker than its original or side stories.

Then you have the fan service.

It’s all over the place. You have the topless main female characters in the OP, but that’s about as explicit as it gets save for a couple of back shots of some of the female protagonists. Lots of  wet t-shirt style service, as well as normal “anime nudity.” What’s unusual is that, like the story, there are hints of more to it. In this world, mecha pilots are bred like thoroughbreds, with male pilots rare. There were some hints of this being an issue that fomented rebellion, as well as women having a much more aggressive outlook on men than usual. But like the rest of the anime, it goes nowhere.

It’s really a shame. The world is very interesting, and the best part of the anime is the hint of intrigue. The villains are not monolithic, and the harem hijinks were saved slightly by the constant scheming of the bad guys to advance their plans. The harem stuff has a few good points in that some of the worst stuff was played for laughs. Essentially previous offworlders created fan service customs due to them being unopposed out of gratitude. Many of the harem actually don’t view him romantically; instead, Kenshi is like a nuclear bomb that they all want to control through marriage or whatever means necessary. And the best characters have their own personality; Lasharra before she gets flanderized into being greedy is a great female lead. So it’s not entirely bad, just disappointing.

This is a single season anime, but each episode is 45 minutes. Rating it is odd. It would qualify as R only due to the nudity in the opening and two brief scenes where we have back shots of some of the female cast. Otherwise it’s PG-13 but with a lot of nipples peeking out under clothing. Violence and mature situations aren’t as prevalent as you think. A weird running joke is Kenshi’s massage skills, which are of the “I’ll never get married now” type from their effects. Also a certain queen tends to evoke more disgust than sexiness with her obsession with the hero.

No Christian themes. Surprisingly this is one of the few anime with a church and a pope in it that’s almost entirely good. However there’s little dogma to the church, and it just serves as one of many organizations that know the truth about things. The plot doesn’t really get deep enough to draw themes out of it; whenever you find something interesting, it fizzles out. A lot of it seems influenced by Dual Parallel Trouble Adventures, like the protag being from another world and piloting an OP mech (of the same color, even.) One character is a blatant homage to D, serving as an enemy version of the same role (down to one eye being covered by hair,) and  more. That anime is far superior, though.

This isn’t to say the anime is bad. However its a tremendous missed opportunity. Especially with Lasharra; the ending has a very tasteful nude of her sitting next to a smiling Kenshi, and she’s such an excellent character that her exclusion from the harem and her plot going nowhere is ridiculous. We get tons of space wasted on the dark elf who has little personality, or Yukine, but the best girl out of the harem gets shuffled into the background. This is the anime in a nutshell; ignoring its potential for lesser situations, and suffering hard for it.

A Peculiar People Indeed: Barakamon And The Dream Of The Church

Barakamon has been covered by a few Christian bloggers before. I was reluctant to add anything, as they’ve each covered it quite well. But on reflection, I find it pointing to one of my favorite themes very well; the role the church has in healing believers.

Barakamon is a story about Seishu, a calligrapher who moves to a small island to try and gain some creativity and spark to his art. Now when you hear calligrapher, you assume some spiritual zen master who calmly composes his writing and brings balance to all those around him. This is not the case with Seishu.

Seishu really is a true creative. He’s neurotic, has little experience of the real world, prone to freaking out over the tiniest details, and near-obsessive over his art. The reason he exiled himself to the island was because he punched out some old man who accused his calligraphy of being lifeless and by the book, an accusation that wounded him heavily mostly because it’s true. And now he’s alone, in a creaky house on an island with some absolutely nutty neighbors.

But a little girl named Naru decides to take a chance on him, and ever so slowly he begins to change. Maybe he can find the true spirit in his art he has missed, as well as find real human connections?

In a way, this is what the church should be like.

We should be a far-away island, an oasis, a place where life is slower and full of joy. We should be a place where others heal and rediscover real human relations. Seishu starts out his life on the island with a funny scene where he literally can’t even understand their language, with him being unable to make sense of a farmer’s dialect. But as he slowly puts down roots on the island, you can see him become a fuller, richer person. A sweet scene in episode five has him, as usual, freak out over something Naru does, which is dive into the sea from a high pier. This time though, it’s different:

His armor has been pierced. It’s because he is now a member of a community instead of living normal, worldly life. That community becomes a means of grace to heal him; to take this neurotic, obsessive artist and through friendliness and unmerited love introduce him to a stable, healthy way of living.

Now how much of this do our churches accomplish?

Modern church is a service. Not just a religious service, but a consumer service. We show up, consume the product (a chance to sing in public, using the sacrament of communion, receiving knowledge we’ll often never use from a pastor,) and leave. Any relationships are often brief and perfunctory, or one-sided and overbearing. What modern church isn’t is an island filled with a peculiar people in the middle of the world, a place where we really, truly heal ourselves and discover what we lack through being part of something greater than ourselves.

We really are just a bunch of Seishus, locked in our little worlds.

 We all need a little Naru in our lives, an imp of grace, to take a chance on us and draw us back into real community.

Maybe one day we’ll discover this. The church as island and repository of a sane, healthy life instead of the church as consumer lifestyle product. Only time will tell.

Nine Disturbing Things I Learned From The Transformers Wiki

During a slow work day, I discovered the Transformers Wiki. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet of geekdom. However, it has some…disturbing things about our favorite toys that probably are better off not known about. Mostly due to Japanese continuity. Here’s a list of ten of them.

1. Teletran one has loli-girl sisters.

Aka Teletraan 10 and Teletraan 15.

Apparently Optimus Prime wanted some subprocessors to Teletran One, so he made ten and fifteen to help observe the world from the satellite Nana. Why he designed them to be middle school looking students I have no idea. Here’s a pic of fifteen.

Apparently Optimus Prime has a lolita complex. You think this is bad as it is, but it gets worse, because in this same series we find out that…

2. …Wheelie is a pervert.

I…I don’t even…

The comic’s name is Teletraan 15 Go! Go! by the way. I haven’t read all of it, but seeing this I’m not sure I want to risk my childhood memories. Especially when…

3. …Galvatron seems to have been taking lessons from Attack on Titan.

How on earth did he managed to bite her arm off? Why? Is lasers not good enough for him? Apparently she gets better, but yet another big WTF moment here. But this pales in comparison to…

4. Optimus Prime powering up by being kissed by young girls.

Oh, so THAT’s why he made Teletraan 15.

No, this really exists. It’s from a series called Transformers: Kiss Players, and it’s one of the most notorious things that ever happened to the franchise.

Apparently someone had the brilliant idea to combine Transformers with lolicon, and manage to horrify T-fans across the globe. Not surprisingly, this is the same idiot behind the Teletraan comics above, except apparently much worse. No really, much worse. I had dimly heard of it before, but just reading the synopsis is a big WTF in itself. Just…just no. No. The kissing is supposed to have something to do with unicron cells being triggered or something…

Yeah, just no. You know its bad when the wiki compares it to Shadow Star Narutaru and Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan.

5. All those energeon cubes? It’s not because they want to get to Cybertron…

…it’s because they want to make sweet, sweet energeon wine.

Um, yeah.

That is, when they aren’t drinking oilnog at Macadam’s Old Oil House.

Yes, Transformers can get drunk. The wiki has a whole category for drinks. Now don’t you feel a bit safer knowing that.

6. Oh, and when Optimus Prime isn’t being kissed by little girls, he’s prepping for his cameo in My Little Pony.



No seriously, according to no less than Buzz Dixon, he came this close to having a cameo in the original My Little Pony: the Movie.

Funny story about an early draft of the My Little Pony movie: I was asked to punch up the original treatment. Basically this consisted of indicating where various music scenes could go, adding more magic and gee-whiz to otherwise pedestrian talking head scenes, etc. At one point one of the Little Ponies had to go looking for…something or someone, I forget. I suggested she encounter some of the Transformers and Joes in her search, specifically, a scene where she flies up to Shipwreck who is drinking some amber fluid from a bottle.

Shipwreck would just stare at her in bug-eyed disbelief and she’d fly on, then Shipwreck would smash the bottle, take his cap off his head, put his left hand over his heart and raise his right hand in an oath, muttering frantically under his breath. Hasbro said, “Very funny. No.”

7. …or being a bitching speaker system for obsolete electronics.

You know that trailer Prime always drags around? Why not make it useful? The Music Label transformers combined the usual Prime figure with a real, working Ipod dock in his trailer. Seriously.

8. Oh, and meet Bob.

Apparently he is Sunstreaker’s kitty.

I guess Bob got lost from his massive swarm of Insecticon brothers, and Sunstreaker adopted him or something. Look at him. Isn’t he fuzzy? Isn’t IDW comic continuity absolutely insane?

9. THIS.

Apparently they did a manga based on on a lego-like Transformers toy set called Kre-O, and now we know Optimus Prime has to clear his tailpipe every now and then.

So, there you go. Nine reasons why I should now regret my childhood. And you thought Go-bots were bad.

 

 

 

Review: Love Live School Idol Project

Rating: five out of five stars. 

I shouldn’t have liked this.

I’m not a big fan of idol shows or musicals. Not that they are bad, but I usually don’t seek them out. I can’t stand Glee, for example. I look at the perfect people singing their polished, bland songs, and it makes me gag. There are some that I like, but generally I don’t care much for them. However, I tried the Love Live music game for iOS, liked the song “Snow Halation,” and thought to watch the anime.

I’m glad I did.

The story is very simple. Honoka’s school is in danger of closing, and she vows to do all she can to stop that. Along with her friends Umi and Kotori, they are inspired by a school idol band called A-Rise, and decide to make their very own idol team. It starts with the three of them, but soon grows quickly. The shy first year Hanayo, the tomboyish Rin, and the talented but aloof Maki join, and then a trio of third years finish off the band. Now their goal is to win the Love Live, the big idol competition, and to save their school on the way.

You wouldn’t think this would work. That it’d either be bland, or too cloyingly cute, or dull. But it manages against all odds to do almost everything right, and it not only makes it delightful to watch, it makes you care about each and every character in it.

It never descends into self-parody or camp. It plays the story completely strait, even when it’s being funny. It’s completely earnest in its tale-telling, and that manages to break down your defenses in a way that Glee never could. While each character is a type, they are well done and have great chemistry and interactions with each other. Even the bratty Nico wins your heart when you realize just how much her sisters love her, or when the team finally warms to her. The series spends a lot of time building relationships with each other through many small, heartwarming moments. One favorite was when the tomboyish Rin finally makes peace with her feminine side, and is pushed helpfully by Hanayo returning the favor she received from her. The small moments are great.

The big ones are too. There’s some focus on overcoming adversity and realizing not all things last forever, and they pack a surprising emotional punch. Again, by playing the series completely straight and building our feelings for the girls Love Live manages to involve us enough to feel the impact of what could be cliche or hamfisted attempts at feels. It’s not always something that you can break down and explain how it does it, but it just does. The ending of the second season especially has some wonderfully tender moments, and I have to admit some manly tears were shed when Honoka was wonderfully rewarded for her faith and her determination to bless others with her songs no matter if she had to do so alone or unnoticed.

The songs themselves are probably the weakest part. They range from sublime (snow halation and aishiteru banzai) to average pop. The performances are mildly jarring due to the use of cel-shaded CGI to animate the girls in their dance moves. They get better in the second season, but whenever the camera does a pan around the stage, you can see them resemble more of a Miku Miku Dance MAD than anything.

There’s not really any Christian themes to the anime, as opposed to general themes of faith in a dream, family, and friendship. However, there’s really not much in the way of things to be offended by. Nozomi uses tarot cards, and that’s about it. One thing that stood out in the series I see in other anime too. During the new year celebration, the girls go to a temple to pray, and Honoka prays so hard she holds up the line behind her. What makes me a little jealous as a Christian about things like this is how comfortable people in anime seem with prayer in public. In the USA, the idea of praying to God for help even in general seems to be a source of embarrassment at best, or imposing religious dogma at worst. There’s none of that easy comfort that you see in people going to a religious shrine, clapping their hands together, and praying for health or success.

Also for Christians, the anime would be rated PG. There’s the tarot use, but it’s more of a tool Nozomi uses to encourage her friends. Nozomi also likes to punish her fellow Muse members by boob grabbing, but it’s about the only fan service you’ll see, and it’s done fully clothed. Other than that, it’s refreshingly clean, optimistic, and morally sound. You could do a lot worse than watch this, even if you aren’t too keen on slice of life or idol shows.

5 Cool Things, August 2014

1. Gunslinger Stratos 2.

My reaction upon discovering this:

Two alternate dimensions are linked together and are fighting for survival. One is a ruined Tokyo, the other a fascist one. Opposing dimensional counterparts fight each other in fast-paced FPS action.

In an arcade game. With story and planning by Gen Urobuchi and Nitro Plus. The twin guns link together to change weapon modes, but goodnesss, that CG opening. It’s like Anime: The Game. And every character looks like they rock. One can hope SE will bring it over here, but these days I’m not sure.

2. The Great Muta is on Twitter.

Yes, he most certainly is.

Keiji Mutoh/The Great Muta is one of the world’s most influential wrestlers. And he has a twitter account. Which I can’t read of course, but it’s no less awesome for that. Really, Keiji Mutoh is iconic, with his facepaint, his signature green mist, his Shining Wizard moves, and a long history of some of the greatest matches there ever were. Even ten-story bunnies use his moves in homage.

3. Yuyoyuppe

Do you like vocaloid music? Do you also like to rock?

Or how about Touhou themes?

Or just great J-pop screamo music?

Yuyoyuppe is your man. The last song is his own voice, but he became known for some absolutely scorching Vocaloid songs featuring Luka and Miku. He does Touhou stuff as part of the circle Draw The Emotional, and he also sings his own vocals too. He only has a handful of songs for sale in the west, but he is one awesome singer/composer.

4. Waiting in the Summer.

I had seen this anime around for some time, but pegged it just as a usual slice-of-life. To my surprise, I found out something excellent about it. Its writer/character designer were the ones behind Please! Teacher and Please! Twins!

The anime looks very much like a spiritual successor to those series, with nods to it even in the first episode. I really enjoyed Please! Twins, and finding out the legacy goes on, even in a different form, made for a great surprise. If anything, the quality of art and story seem even better than the first series. I have this one on my queue and will devour it when time permits.

5. Sweet Fuse: By Your Side.

I never expected to like an Otome game.

Otome games are the reverse of gal games. Instead of a male protagonist, a female. Instead of a harem of women, men. I have watched Otome series before, but usually my interest tapers off after a few episodes. Surprisingly, Sweet Fuse is keeping me hooked.

It’s heavily influenced by Dangan Ronpa, with a “cute” critter causing havoc and forcing innocent people into twisted games. But the writing is superb and the characters are memorable, even if they are slightly stereotypical. The female protagonist isn’t the faceless, spineless one you fine in anime like Amnesia; instead she has a will of her own, and in some cases can blow her stack and in a hilarious scene force others to apologize when they do wrong. I ordered it for my PSP after hearing good things about it, and I’m loving it.

You can get it on PS Vita or PSP, and it’s not a bad visual novel at all. And one of the characters is Kenji Inafune, with the main character a relation of his! Fun times.

Please share any cool things you’ve found recently, too.

 

Weird Amerimanga Of The Day: Dynamo Joe

American comics done in manga style is an older concept than you’d think. The grandaddy of the idea was Ben Dunn’s Ninja High School, which parodied anime tropes before many people even knew they existed. Others came after, like Fred Perry’s Gold Digger, but one of my favorites of the time was First Comics’s Dynamo Joe, done by Doug Rice. I believe it’s the earliest Amerimanga based on an original concept out there, predating NHS by a year and debuting in 1986(!) as part of First’s Mars comic book series. What’s unusual about it is that both the art and the story are well done, being original even while acknowledging a heavy Gundam influence.

The story is the usual “mindless alien invaders against human-piloted mecha” tale, but again, this comic started almost twenty years ago. Elf-like Imperium pilot Elanian and cat-like Tavitan Pomru are the crew of one mecha under the human forces, called Dynamo Joe. They fight their own side as much as the invading Mellenareans, and it’s always a toss-up whether or not they’ll survive till their next mission. The art style is surprisingly well done, and is a nice blend of western and manga influences. Sadly Doug Rice seems to have faded into obscurity; apart from a stint on DC’s Manhunter comic book, I haven’t seen much of him.

It’s a pity, because DJ is really well done for its kind. First Comics as a publisher put out a lot of quality comics, like Mike Sable, Badger, American Flagg, and Grim Jack. Dynamo Joe had the same level of quality, and managed to be a successful Amerimanga before the concept even existed. Before most of us even heard about Gundam, we read Dynamo Joe. People like Doug Rice or Ben Dunn art part of the reason anime took off in the west; they introduced us to tropes and concepts we didn’t know existed, and primed the pump for the anime book in the 90′s.

Unfortunately DJ is long out of print. You can probably track down back issues over the net, and they shouldn’t cost much. But the series has quietly vanished from the public’s eye. Technically this isn’t a “weird” manga, because it’s well done and surprisingly up-to-date, but it’s a historical oddity given the time it debuted.  Back then you either had comic book companies adapting manga into the comic book format, or you had westerners drawing tales based on anime series, like Comico did with Robotech. This is one of the first comics to blend both, and if you’re into Amerimanga, this is a decent curiosity to own.

 

Not A Taste Test

TWWK at Beneath the Tangles pointed out this article at Christ and Pop Culture as something I might be interested in. I am, but I had to think about my reaction to it some. While I’m in sympathy, I can’t really agree with the article for several reasons.

The first area of disagreement would be in the title. Most of my beef with Christian culture is not that we have poor taste overall. I don’t like Left Behind, for sure, but I also didn’t like The Da Vinci Code, and How I Met Your Mother makes me physically ill. Yes, Christian pop culture is a lot of bonnet and grandmother books, but it’s not a matter of poor taste to like them, or good taste to reject them. It’s more that my dislike of them comes from them being omnipresent and all other genres being ignored. It’s not a matter of taste whatsoever as opposed to certain elements dominating the culture. If there were more science fiction and fantasy, chances are we’d see a spectrum of good and bad just as much as we see it in any other genre. Taste isn’t the issue.

The second disagreement is this. The author watches a movie with his friends. He is moved. His friends however, react like this:

One of my friends thought it was too long for a movie not starring transforming robots. Another thought it was a poor film because the characters made decisions that we as Christians disagree with. He asserted it was wrong to enjoy the movie or learn from it because of these differences.

You know, objections like this are not a sign of bad taste.

“Too long” is a valid criticism. You may like long, indepth movies or novels, but some people don’t. This is a matter of personal taste with no right or wrong answer. One of the most widely acclaimed science fiction films, Chris Marker’s La Jetee, is all of twenty-two minutes long. The second answer is an informed Christian perspective. He watched the movie, evaluated the decisions of the characters, and found them lacking in Christian ideas. He thought it wrong to enjoy it based on that. Again, this isn’t bad taste. This may not be fair, considering secular films can’t always be held up to Christian standards, but it’s not a defect in the person to not get the same sense of rapture from the work the author had.

Then the author immediately follows with these judgements:

We superimpose our fast-food culture on art.
We have bad taste.
We misunderstand the role secular art can play in our lives.

We can strike out number two right away. The author expects people to share his own reaction to a particular work of art, and calls that good taste. Disagreeing with it is bad taste. The thing is though there really isn’t a universally agreed upon reaction to any work where we can say this.

Usually, bad taste is more about class and morality than artistic merit. Low culture is considered bad taste to enjoy; ballet and opera are good taste, professional wrestling is bad. You see this in the original article when he mentions transforming robots, which is low culture. However, a lot of upper-class culture is just as turgid and unbearable in terms of artistic merit; impenetrable literary novels about college professors being cuckolded by their wives, thousand page omnibus works which are just as unrealistic as Twilight, except they court the sensibilities of the literarti instead of soccer moms, and more. So one reaction to point two is that too often class snobbery can drive reaction to or against works, rather than taste or sensibility itself.

I do think bad taste exists though, but the true marker is morality. Jerry Springer is in bad taste because what he does is immoral; he pushes dysfunction and mockery for personal gain. People who have bad taste often prefer works that are immoral over those that are moral, artistic craft be damned. You have bad taste if you like Brian DePalma’s films despite him being an excellent director. If you gravitate to the immorality in works, you have bad taste. This is because a lot of artistically sound works can be immoral or offensive despite their skill in execution.

Point one is back to class. You have a fast food culture because people do not have time to pursue leisure. You don’t have the time to cook savory food that takes hours to prepare and a stay at home mom to watch over it. Slow food is a conceit of the rich and another status marker to differentiate between classes. Paul Fussell mentioned that the defining activities of wealthy people’s hobbies is that they are expensive, take a lot of time, and need to be maintained at even more cost. So fast food culture is in many ways a disgust at those who don’t have advantages. They can’t sit down and slowly enjoy a three hour Tarkovsky film, because implicit in truly being into the experience involves a level of leisure and self-education many people don’t have.

Point three I agree with, in part.

This flows in with his point about “bad readers.” The point is that people use art only to confirm what they already believe in, and not to be challenged by. I can agree with this, although to be honest I think people can get wounded or fatigued by always being challenged or expanded. Information is like a river; too many perspectives can flood out a person’s inner self and cause ennui and dislocation. But the point is good. We can’t always expect art to act like this.

However, Lewis was being a snob in this. There’s nothing wrong in being palliated, refreshed, or what have you by art. Not every use of art has to add to your sum total of humanity; recreational use of it is perfectly fine. To use church as an example, you shouldn’t be expected that every time you go to a service, you develop a spiritual epiphany and grow as a person. Sometimes you need comfort and not challenging; belonging and not world-expanding. Both experiences have their place.

I think my final objection is that the writer tends to spiritualize his sense of good taste when it comes to secular works.

This is a dangerous thing. Yes, Paul quoted pagan thinkers and might have been current on philosophy, but Peter was an unlearned fisherman. Each believer must serve God in his own way, and some may not gain anything or even be hurt by serious secular exposure. You can’t make a rule out of something that each believer must grapple with in his own conscience, and it’s dangerous to assume a definition of good taste being any kind of a spiritual good or an aid to the Gospel. G.K. Chesterton illustrated why in this passage from Manalive:

“At Oxford, I fear, I had the artistic temperament rather badly; and artists love to be limited. I liked the church as a pretty pattern; discipline was mere decoration. I delighted in mere divisions of time; I liked eating fish on Friday. But then I like fish; and the fast was made for men who like meat. Then I came to Hoxton and found men who had fasted for five hundred years; men who had to gnaw fish because they could not get meat—and fish-bones when they could not get fish. As too many British officers treat the army as a review, so I had treated the Church Militant as if it were the Church Pageant. Hoxton cures that. Then I realized that for eighteen hundred years the Church Militant had not been a pageant, but a riot—and a suppressed riot. There, still living patiently in Hoxton, were the people to whom the tremendous promises had been made. In the face of that I had to become a revolutionary if I was to continue to be religious. In Hoxton one cannot be a conservative without being also an atheist— and a pessimist. Nobody but the devil could want to conserve Hoxton.

“On the top of all this comes Hawkins. If he had cursed all the Hoxton men, excommunicated them, and told them they were going to hell, I should have rather admired him. If he had ordered them all to be burned in the market-place, I should still have had that patience that all good Christians have with the wrongs inflicted on other people. But there is no priestcraft about Hawkins—nor any other kind of craft. He is as perfectly incapable of being a priest as he is of being a carpenter or a cabman or a gardener or a plasterer. He is a perfect gentleman; that is his complaint. He does not impose his creed, but simply his class. He never said a word of religion in the whole of his damnable address. He simply said all the things his brother, the major, would have said. A voice from heaven assures me that he has a brother, and that this brother is a major.

How much of the sensibilities he wants are just class markers? How much of having the right opinions about a certain film or being informed in it is part of being a member of a certain knowledge-using class? Is it really growth that comes from being familiar with the works of Woody Allen, or entrance into certain class and cultural circles? C.S. Lewis says:

All this is rather obvious. I wonder whether you will say the same of my next step, which is this. I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that “Society,” in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside.

People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life. An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie. Poor man—it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we—we four or five all huddled beside this stove—are the people who know.

Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for because they and So-and-so and the two others are the only people left in the place who really know how things are run. But it is not quite true. It is a terrible bore, of course, when old Fatty Smithson draws you aside and whispers, “Look here, we’ve got to get you in on this examination somehow” or “Charles and I saw at once that you’ve got to be on this committee.” A terrible bore… ah, but how much more terrible if you were left out! It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.

A person can be honest and say “I am trying to evangelize people, therefore I must understand them and relate to them.” That’s fine. But the writer isn’t doing this. He’s using “good taste” as a reason, and one of the biggest reasons to be considered as having good taste is to be approved by others. It’s a form of pride, and it’s really dangerous. For myself, I have to be careful not to view my weirdness as good taste and as a way to differentiate myself from others. “I like obscure anime X; doesn’t that show how in the know I am?” It’s a harder temptation than you think, especially if you are a loner, misanthrope, and contrarian.

These are some of the issues I had with the piece. I think my issues with Christian culture is less about taste, and more about at how it picks insiders and outsiders. I don’t want to rehash that old argument in an already long blog post. I don’t think the advice the writer gives is bad entirely, but trying to universalize it is worrisome and can lead to the issues I mentioned. I don’t think Christian maturity is a taste test.

 

Weird Anime Of The Day: Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Returns

What’s fun about doing WAOTD posts is when you find anime that are so much a product of their generation that they seem almost alien to watch. Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Returns is so 90′s its hurts, but for good and bad ways. It’s corny, melodramatic, has some horrible dubbed voices, but manages to slide into awesomeness despite the silliest premise you can think of.

Yuna is your typical genki middle school girl. However she is also the Savior of Light, chosen by the mechanical fairy Elner to wield a powered battlesuit and protect the earth. Her greatest strength and biggest weakness is how she tries to befriend her enemies and show them compassion. And surprisingly, she does; one by one, those that oppose her realize the error of their ways and become her supporters and defenders. The thirteen frauleins of darkness, the erika seven, and many others band together to watch over her. Yuna Returns happens after this, and before a new threat attacks earth in the form of the Machine empire.

This threat will test Yuna like nothing before.

At first, you’d think this is a really silly anime, and you’d not be wrong. Yuna Returns is packaged with the first Yuna OVA, with girls in funny battlesuits using giant mecha to win cooking competitons. And as the anime starts, it looks like Returns is no different. Yuna is giving a Christmas concert, and receives a present in being able to sing a duet with her idol, the Masked Maiden Polylina. Polylina is an obvious distaff version of Tuxedo Mask, and they play it up for serious humor in that its blatantly obvious she’s Yuna’s friend Lina. After some really bad dubbed singing, Yuna reveals a surprise; a giant holographic version of herself, projected high over the town. Then it starts getting serious.

Out of the blue, the giant Yuna is pierced by a red cross of light. As it fades, its a precursor of what happens next. The machine empire has landed on earth, and their target is Yuna and everything about her. First up, her friends.

This is where the series gets both odd and compelling. All of Yuna’s friends have powered armor too, and a lot of them are quite silly. You have bunny-eared golf-club wielders, a girl who uses a pair of laser-slicing stage lights, a cat-eared nurse who lets her armor do all the work, and more. But the battles aren’t all that silly; they are fast and brutal, if relatively bloodless. The first Machine Empire warrior is a little girl, and she trounces all of Yuna’s friends pretty hardcore. This is Ayako, and once she’s damaged, she throws a painful tantrum that threatens to destroy the entire city.

Of course, Yuna befriends her, but this is where the OVA gets even more compelling.

It’s still a very simple trope; the enemy who is befriended and made human by Yuna’s love and willingness to take a chance on her. But they play the effects of this brutally straight, with some serious drama to it. Just because Ayako is saved doesn’t mean she doesn’t suffer from having to fight against her own sisters, especially when its obvious that the only way to stop them might be killing them. And its obvious her sisters are just as evil as she was, if not more. You don’t expect the story to be as much about Ayako and her repentance as Yuna and her problems, but it is. And the battles still stay as intense, if not more.

Then they throw a huge gut punch.

I’m sure you can guess what happens. It’s not really an uncommon trope. But unusually, Yuna Returns plays it entirely straight. A lot of the uses of this particular trope cheapen it or use it in manipulative ways to have their cake and eat it too. They use it for a brief emotional spike, and then wave it away at the end. Yuna doesn’t do that. It takes the trope seriously, and despite how melodramatic the anime is, it packs some serious power to it.

I don’t want to die, Yuna.

It’s obvious Yuna Returns is heavily influenced by Sailor Moon, but where Sailor Moon waves away death and makes it cheap, Yuna doesn’t. It’s not a deconstruction, and its straight melodrama, but it still manages to hit you in the gut by not sugarcoating it. The power of friendship cannot always save people, and the greatest weapon against Yuna is her ability to love her enemies. And it’s not an offscreen death or a noble sacrifice either; the person is scared, sad, and full of regret at how her future is now cut short.

Yuna, please.

We’re used to easy death and resurrection with fictional characters. To break this, even in a melodramatic and hammy way, has surprising power to it. The ending too; Yuna is grieving over her lost friend, when all the others show up and console her in song. That expression…

 

This isn’t to say Yuna Returns is a masterpiece of anime. It’s not a little corny, with a dub that’s either hilarious or a mess of squeaky voices. (Best scene; Yuri, when seeing her school is under attack: “I had Girl Scout cookies in my desk. Thin mints! They were thin mints!”) There’s a lot of voice talent there that you’ll recognize in later anime too. There’s some absolutely horrible singing in the dub. You won’t understand what on earth is going on from the beginning: this awesome FAQ helps in telling us about the backstories of the Erika Seven and the other characters. It’s pretty bad at points.

But despite this, it works. The Yuna series never really caught on here, as most of the games were for Saturn or PSone, and visual novels to boot. It’s a forgotten anime, although you can find a reissue on DVD thankfully. But for a Weird Anime of the Day, it’s a surprisingly good one. Not Madoka levels of despair, nor Sailor Moon levels of optimism, but an unusual mixture of real grief and silly fluffiness.