[Categories: Editorials]
In defence of slice of life, dodgy endings and Japanese storytelling
The rumours of my death were greatly exaggerated. My laptop’s back. Broken motherboard apparently, but now normal transmission will resume.
I’ve often wondered at the ‘love it or hate it’ reactions to the Slice of Life genre in anime, which had me wondering about its place and relative merits. Ironically I got onto this train of thought by two examples that aren’t anime at all, although they both make use of Tokyo as a a backdrop: Haruki Murakami’s excellent new novel After Dark (go read it) and the Sophia Coppola movie Lost in Translation (which has a gorgeous soundtrack featuring Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine fame). These two stories exhibit some of the features of certain anime shows that I’ve noticed bring about extreme reactions from critics and fans. Some claim them to be masterpieces of real life, while others believe they are dull and lacking in storyline direction or a proper ending.
Ending? What ending?
Anime endings often have fans up in arms, possibly because they don’t resort to the endings that Western movies do: namely cliffhangers and ‘cut and dried’ conclusions. Anime endings, particularly Gain-axed ones, happen for a number of reasons but are strangely one of the things that attracted me to anime in the first place. After growing up with movie and TV shows concluding predictably, it was refreshing to have things open to allow me to interpret and guess for myself. We don’t know where Bob and Charlotte go after Lost in Translation finishes, or whether they see each other again; similarly we don’t know whether or not Taeko settles down when the credits for Only Yesterday finish rolling.
Take the stunning Haibane Renmei for instance: there are so many loose ends but the central theme, that of friendship and redemption surrounding Reki’s character, is adequately dealt with. The journey is as important as the eventual destination but since we are never told of the endpoint of a Haibane’s Flight we don’t know what the destination is. I can only guess at what lies beyond the walls, or when Nemu and Rakka take their Flight, or many other little details concerning the town of Glie; and yet, the messages of the show, intended or otherwise, speak loud and clear at a very profound level and have me in awe every time.
Since when was normal life boring?
Only Yesterday is a masterpiece of portraying the everyday and unremarkable. Taeko leads an ordinary life and nothing that happens to her could be considered outside the experience of a viewer from her generation. So, why does this make her story so compelling? It’s no coincidence that shows such as these also exhibit a very serene and wistful artistic style, which is at most an exaggeration of the beauty found in the natural world and more often than not very true-to-life indeed. Characters such as Taeko are quite simply easy to relate to.
The greatest strength of the Slice of Life genre, that of being true-to-life, is also its weakness. Most of the time I watch TV or go to the cinema as an escape from normality so returning to real life is not always what I’m in the mood for. Honey and Clover and Bokura Ga Ita are also superb portrayals of everyday life, the former starring a bunch of broke students who I could relate to instantly! And yet, I never finished either series even though I was aware of what made them special. To put it bluntly, I couldn’t be bothered. I wanted something that offered excitement and drama that went beyond the mere experiences of ordinary people: the light drama and short vignettes felt as satisfying as a light snack when you’re hungry for a square meal.
The ideal place for the open-ended storytelling structure really does fit best when the course of life and romance is being portrayed - big events and daring quests have definite beginnings and ends but life itself doesn’t. What the Slice of Life approach does bring us is a snapshot of a timeline, where we are dropped into the story to share the experiences of the characters (be they trivial and ordinary as in the case of Only Yesterday or downright silly like Azu Manga Daioh) and shown events and feelings that mirror our own: when done badly or when experienced at a time when you aren’t ‘in the mood’ it does seem boring and pointless. Equally it’s more natural and can offer a refreshing change from the ‘happily ever after’ cliche - in some ways it feels more sophisticated than the neatly wrapped up packages that film buffs and TV addicts are used to.
My final thought was pure conjecture on my part: perhaps Japanese writers simply look at stories differently from Westerners in terms of how significant a denoument is in the grand scheme of things. The old Buddhist saying of a thousand miles beginning with a single step points to the argument that the destination is not as important as getting there; in an industry where shows like Naruto can run for years (although some US and European shows also do this), perhaps the final resolution and the point it makes is not the central message. It’s how you get there that matters, as exemplified so beautifully in Kino’s Journey. Unless the sequel tells us otherwise, Kino and Hermes don’t finish up anywhere; they have no final destination in mind so the viewer follows endlessly with no end in sight. This sounds like a storytelling disaster until you realise that the profound messages the show has to offer stem from an innocent bystander or a traveller ‘just passing through’: Kino (and the viewer!) learns from her experiences, rather than finding a philosophical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Well, that wraps it up for now. Rest assured there’s a Texhnolyze article, Yoko Kanno OST review and more unlicenced reviews coming up - it’s nice to have my link to civilisation restored!
Posted on July 11th, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
Amen to that. And welcome back! Your posts have been missed, looking forward to the Yoko Kanno OST review. Although your mentioning of Honey & Clover together with Bokura ga Ita in the same sentence makes me sad.
Posted on July 12th, 2007 @ 12:47 am
I’m beginning to wonder if “slice of life” has any meaning as a genre. Perhaps it’s just a catch-all term for things that do not fall into categories such as mecha or magical girl or shounen adventure. Bokura ga Ita is nothing if not romance, and for me it had (still has, in the manga) a compelling storyline. Honey & Clover was not really a portrayal of students’ daily lives, but an interweaving of their stories, as they progressed (or regressed) through life. Sometimes I think “slice of life” means “for adults.”
I loved your confirmation that anime endings often have people up in arms. As a strong partisan of Simoun, I have been shocked by some people’s deep dissatisfaction with its wonderful ending.
Posted on July 12th, 2007 @ 2:06 am
The problem here is this: People have lousy tastes and would love to see shallow series than series with pure win.
Posted on July 12th, 2007 @ 6:02 am
The pleasures of a “slice of life” show are different from that of a more “fantastic” or (heading into elitist snob territory) “genre” type of work. I think deep down it really depends on how much realism is important to you as a criterion for artistic validity. A lot of literary-snob types reject any “genre fiction” (mystery, horror, SF, fantasy, etc) categorically, which I think is profoundly mistaken, but it is also true that the realistic fiction genre (I like that better than “slice-of-life”) can offer unique and relatable insights into ordinary existence. Its emotional power depends in large part on its realism.
Honey and Clover is one of the best examples. And “Looking up at the Half-Moon” is a bad example: a show that tries to be poignant but falls down because it wasn’t realistic enough.
Posted on July 12th, 2007 @ 6:50 pm
@ Owen S: Thanks! I’m quite tempted to revisit Honey and Clover actually - I guess I was waiting for it to get licened and have a DVD release but that doesn’t seem to have happened.
@Hashihime: I suppose Slice of Life is an umbrella term for other subclasses of entertainment such as romance, drama, fantasy and so on; it can also form part of ‘mature entertainment’ where it’s assumed that the audience is prepared to think about what they’re seeing and also have a concentration span of minutes rather than seconds! I could go on for ages about anime endings - so muchso it’ll have to wait for another day!
Drmchrso: Not all people, but a discouragingly large proportion, like shallow entertainment. So doI at times (Shinji Aramaki’s Appleseed movie rocks) but it’s good to have a balance of mentally taxing stuff and mindless entertainment.
@Mike: I like your definition ‘realistic fiction’, which reminds me of why I don’t recognise ‘horror’ as a genre. In the same way as you described, some viewers refuse to watch mecha shows because giant robots look ‘unrealistic’ (in which case they should check out Gasaraki!) - I do think that slice of life/realistic fiction is seen as more ‘grown up’ by some though. That’s going back to the ‘elitism’ debate, which is really fun and enlightening!