[Anime Reviews]

The Daughter of Twenty Faces 12-16: Twenty Faces is sooo Twentieth Century!

Posted by Martin  [Tags: Daughter of Twenty Faces]

After a shaky start and a brave act of forging ahead as an old-school adventure that They Just Don’t Make Any More, I was as disappointed as Coburn was when The Daughter of Twenty Faces began to stumble under the burden of its own concepts. I’m sure there’s something I was missing about suspension of disbelief here - not unlike fantastical elements of Clannad trying to pass themselves off as realistic and becoming out-of-place in the process - but I couldn’t put my finger on it until now.

The scientist and his misspent youth

I think many of the more implausible aspects, such as machine men and giant planes (how I LOVED the concept of a giant plane that looks like a brainstorming session between Miyazaki and Howard Hughes!) would be the stuff of science fiction rather than fantasy a couple of generations ago - like a Jules Verne novel, the technology on show here is quaint and fun but can’t be viewed in the same serious light as, say, the cyberpunk of Shirow or P K Dick. Maybe today’s science fiction will be looked upon in the same nostalgic way as Verne and Wells in fifty years time, but I digress.

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[Anime Reviews]

The Daughter of Twenty Faces halfway thoughts: going solo

Posted by Martin  [Tags: Daughter of Twenty Faces]

Whut? Another Nijuu Mensou no Musume post when I’ve yet to even finish Library Wars? Yep, The Daughter of Twenty Faces takes priority over even that and the new summer season for me right now. For a show that slipped onto the aggregators with barely a murmur, it’s strange to see it right next to Frontier at the top of my watchlist. Well, something had to replace Kurenai I suppose.

What can you possibly say at a time like this?

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[Anime Reviews]

Make time for The Daughter of Twenty Faces…seriously

Posted by Martin  [Tags: Daughter of Twenty Faces, First Impressions and Retrospectives]

I can understand part of the reason why Nijuu Mensou no Musume, a.k.a. The Daughter of Twenty Faces, has been a sleeper title this season. I know anime show writers have a knack of coming up with weird titles (untranslated or otherwise) but it’s a bit of a mouthful and sounds odd as opposed to exciting. Furtheremore, the first couple of episodes have a decidedly un-Japanese 1900s-1940s European setting and lack the sci-fi or high school themes of most other shows at the moment. I’m always one to accept the occasional recommendation of something A Little Bit Different however, so this made me all the more curious to start my belated introduction to the show. It really is a sleeper title, but a fascinating one into the bargain.

The story seems to be set in a post-war period, but whether this is post-WWI, post-WWII, or even something completely unique to the NMNM universe, I’m still unsure. It is almost steampunk in some ways because of this alternate historical timeline (in a similar way to Allison to Lillia actually, only without that clumsy narrative and those annoying plot holes) and has some great old-school technology like vintage submarines, double-envelope airships, and ruins of giant tanks and planes; the latter reminded me of those hulking aircraft from Nausicäa actually. Can you tell I’m liking it already?

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