[Anime Reviews]

2007 in 12 day 3: Darker than Black

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC, Darker than Black, Twelve days of Christmas]

Hell’s Gate!

My viewing of Darker than Black was cut temporarily short at its licencing but from what I’ve seen it climbs right up to the top of my DVD wishlist. I can’t say I was surprised at how this, effectively a Wolf’s Rain staff reunion of sorts, grabbed my interest from the get-go; my only reservation being the frustratingly short nature of each story arc (some would have easily filled the alloted two-ep segments several times over with ease).

Tensai Okamura first came to my attention with his darkly comic Stink Bomb feature but I feel he came into his own with Wolf’s Rain; Darker than Black takes the more serious approach of the latter for the most part, although the The Gardenia Shoots the Fragrance in the May Rain… arc flips into screwball comedy at times. What I especially enjoyed was how Okamura’s sci-fi/fantasy themes blended with a Chandler-esque film noir aesthetic and mystery subplots, especially concerning the nature of the Contractors and Hell’s Gate…not to mention the delightful Kirihara…

[9 Comments]

[Anime Reviews]

2007 in 12 day 2: Bokurano

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC, Bokurano, Twelve days of Christmas]

Day 2: Uninstall, uninstall…

The series that launched a thousand flames…mainly in the direction of the hapless director, it has to be said. The choice of Hiroyuki Morita as director for Bokurano was an unexpected one considering the feelgood family-friendly nature of The Cat Returns, and as it turned out it was also a healthy source of controversy with his decision to deviate from a manga whose plotline he wasn’t too keen on. Cue fans of Mohiro Kitoh’s manga being up in arms and cries of sacrilege when he said he was going to change the ending. Wait a minute, guys…wasn’t the manga actually unfinished at the time of broadcast?

First impressions are misleading…

[7 Comments]

[Anime Reviews]

2007 in 12 day 1: 5cm per second

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC, Makoto Shinkai, Twelve days of Christmas]

Day 1: One More Time, One More Chance

As part of the ABC’s joint 2007 retrospective, we’re all taking on one post per day for the twelve days leading up to December 25th itself, each one centred around a special moment in the last twelve months…just as Epic Win did, except they started early, being the keen rebels they are. Don’t worry folks, this effort isn’t synchronised so your feedreader shouldn’t collapse under the weight of cross-linking and simultaneous posting. I’ll also be running through them in alphabetical order of title because I’m boring that way. First up is what is possibly my pick of the bunch, 5cm per second.

“Breathe in your own light/dream of your own life/I miss me/I miss everything I’ll never be…” *

[7 Comments]

[First Impressions and Retrospectives]

Autumn season 07: preconceptions and the element of surprise

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC]

With a forecast of chilly receptions, widespread mediocrity and a chance of a few scattered moments of greatness across all regions of the anime blogosphere the autumn season looked a little bleak, or so I thought. For sure, there’s been a lot of stuff that passed me by and provoked little more than a half-arsed ‘meh’ but now that some of the new shows are nearing their halfway points there has been a minority that’s significant enough for me to comment on at length…even though I’ve been preoccupied with other things and remembered the posting deadline at a shockingly late hour. Hopefully the likes of JRoxas, Mike, Raymond, Karura, CCYoshi, Hige, J.Valdez, Xerox and Owen prepared themselves a bit better than I did.

If Lucky Star taught me anything, it was how you should never be overly influenced by your preconceptions; this point was hammered firmly home by the likes of ef -a tale of memories. Thanks to the other joint blogging effort earlier on in the week, I’m now ‘all ef-ed out’ and can’t say any more until I’ve seen some more episodes. You’ve all read enough about that in recent days too, right? ^_^

[11 Comments]

[Anime Reviews]

ef -a Tale of Memories 4-6: memories are made of this

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC, ef -a Tale of Memories, Over-analysis]

ef -a tale of memories is already at its halfway point, which means that the premise is well and truly set in place so (I think) I have a pretty clear idea now as to where it’s heading. In my previous two appraisals of the show I never really paid much attention to the events and characters, instead trying to get a general overview of the concepts and ideas. This post is part of an informal mini joint-blogging exercise though, so if my views coincide with those of TheBigN, Demian, Moogy, J.Valdez, JRoxas, DS (in a roundabout way) and Owen S it’s merely a case of great minds thinking alike, ok? ^_^

The story is not taking the ‘intertwining arcs’ approach that I expected, at least not yet. Rather, the three situations are running parallel so while they’re connected in the sense that the characters are in a vaguely-defined social circle, they’re linked in more of an abstract and thematic kind of way. Maybe I’m just glad it didn’t turn out to be a harem show…at any rate, the respective ‘scenarios’ are all different angles on the same core themes.

Chihiro and Renji’s arc seemed a bit contrived to me at first but the tragic explanation as to why Chihiro is the way she is gives an interesting set-up to her relationship with him. It makes perfect sense, really, that he should suggest that she writes a novel to while away her free time; after all, she’s already doing the same thing in order to maintain a grasp of what’s going on in her own life. It’s the most obvious analogy to the idea of memories that permeates the whole show - whenever I’m a bit stuck with understanding a series, I turn to the title for inspiration; in this case I don’t really think it’s primarily a romance per se. Instead, I’m beginning to see it as an observation on, well, memories. Chihiro is trying to keep hold of pleasant memories of the time spent with Renji, as Kyousuke is trying to do in carrying his camera around everywhere in an effort to capture and hold onto a transient moment for posterity. As an aside, I thought naming Renji’s mother Sumire was a nice touch*.

[12 Comments]

[First Impressions and Retrospectives]

Gender and anime: the follow-up

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC]

Well, I guess you could call it a success. There have been some excellent posts in reaction to this from the likes of Stuff Happens and PinkuBentoBox among others but the quality of the original posts had me flabbergasted too. So much so that I’m still visiting and commenting on each in turn, and I’ve had trouble getting it all into a more coherant type of mess in my head. As an overview, this topic was…well, not so much a topic per se as a general theme that covers a number of issues. We wanted to do the opposite to the first attempt but I think we’re still seeking the elusive middle ground that provides both room to avoid overlap and a common thread to all the contributing posts - it was a bit vague in retrospect but worth doing for experience’s sake. We’re happy to have other bloggers on board too, so drop one of us an e-mail and you can join the Google group to have a say on what to do next. One particular area of improvement for example is to come up with a more intuitive and comprehensive means to link all the posts together.

[2 Comments]

[Editorials]

Gender and anime: the line begins to blur

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC]

Yep, it’s time for me to once again jump on the joint blogging bandwagon and attempt to keep up with people of superior intelligence and insight…this time we’re taking on the issue of gender in anime. It covers an even wider field than the last joint blogging exercise did so I’m going to narrow it down to my own experiences and thoughts on the validity of the division between anime that’s intended for male and female viewers. I’ll be using the traditional labels of ’shounen’ and ’shoujo’ for simplicity’s sake but I’ll try to address the problems with those definitions too.

[18 Comments]

[First Impressions and Retrospectives]

[Group discussion] The follow-up

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC]

Firstly, an apology. My article that dealt with the theme “Anime isn’t deep It’s just entertainment.” was timestamped with the wrong hour and I was out of town over the whole weekend (partly because I was here but mainly due to important and unforseen family commitments) so I didn’t get time to answer and read the discussion that followed. Just so you know why my promised articles on Macross Plus and Excessive Manliness in Anime aren’t online yet either.

[3 Comments]

[Editorials]

[Group discussion] ‘Anime isn’t deep. It’s just entertainment.’

Posted by Martin  [Tags: ABC]

It’s the typical retort to the old chestnut “Why are you watching those, um, cartoons?”. You take a bold stance, look *intelligent* and declare: “Because this stuff’s deep.” I mean, what better way to beat down those non-fans than to claim that they don’t ‘get’ it? The biggest hurdle (in my experience anyway) of getting people to actually sit down and appreciate an anime show is to prove that it’s mature, intelligent and fun to watch. Now, the ‘fun’ part isn’t the one that’s hard to prove…giant robots blowing stuff up, samurai and ninja fighting it out with breathtaking, poetic choreography…the likes of Appleseed and Ninja Scroll provide all the action and adventure of a Hollywood movie, they do it well and there’s no harm in that.

[16 Comments]