If you’ve been paying attention to my writing or tweeting as of late, you’ll know I’m really hyped about Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. I really do think it’s a special show, so I spent this week’s Aniwords column trying to spread the word about it and why I think it’s so special. Of course, I was really only able to focus on one specific aspect of many strengths, but my observations in this post detail the things I found most fascinating through two episodes.
I spent last week writing about the season’s best show, so this week I decided to keep up the pace and write about Winter 2016’s second best show—ERASED.
Among the anime’s many strengths and tricks, one that caught my attention was the use of the film motif to frame the entire show (as well as scenes within the show). In this post, I unpack the implications of that self-referential motif on three different levels: in terms of the show’s plot, Satoru’s character, and audience engagement. I’m pretty proud of this one, so I hope you guys will give it a look!
Yet another narrative adventure through my weekly watching schedule, courtesy of a revival of sorts in my drive to blog and write things. I do apologize for the lack of updates recently; I think I burned out more than I realized. But I’m feeling it again, so let’s go!
Swing low, sweet anime chariot.
When I last left you all with the Winter 2016 Anime Party post, I was feeling pretty good about this season. Turns out, two weeks later (aside from despairing in the intervening week between episodes of Konosuba), this season is still really rocking. Anime Power Rankings (APR) even returned from near death with a post for the first two weeks of the season, and as I was filling out my ballot (a sublimely easy task), I realized what an utter blast I was having with this season. Now, I know I’ve been hyped about seasons early on in the past (I’m thinking of last season, in particular) and then cooled off by the end, but Winter 2016 absolutely seems like a season where this isn’t going to happen. To show you guys why, I’ll start off with my APR ballot to show you how I’m stacking up the season’s shows in comparison to each other.
Episodes have come and gone since I filled out this ballot, but my rankings here haven’t changed at all. I’m (admittedly) an episode behind on Rakugo Shinju, but that’s because you can’t rush a show like this. Watching an episode of Rakugo Shinju before I’m read feels like trying to drink a nice wine on an empty stomach—wasting something that ought to be enjoyed to the fullest. That being said, I may be acting a bit dumb, as Rakugo Shinjua also seems like the kind of show that you can watch an any mood and still get swept away by. I just wish it didn’t come out on Fridays, at the end of the work week… (check out my essay on Rakugo Shinju that I wrote for Crunchyroll!).
Meanwhile, I’m also an episode behind on Akagami no Shirayuki-hime S2, but I count that as a more forgivable offense since the reason for it was that I spent all of Monday writing my Aniwords post on ERASED. So, while I don’t know what happens in episode 3 yet, I can still marvel at the elegance and dignity that Masahiro Ando and Michiru Oshima’s joint efforts (along with all the BONES animation directors) continue lend to this beautiful show. Shirayuki-hime is a soft show, but it’s by no means a weightless show. Sequences like the four shots I’ve posted above wordlessly emphasize the trust and intimacy that’s grown between Zen and Shirayuki. The long shots cuddle them together in small spaces with the close-ups allow us to be privy to the true closeness of their love. I love, love, love it. And now, with the two of them facing the first legitimate challenge to their relationship (long-distance, how appropriate for us viewers in the modern era!), we may even get some drama out of this sweet little show. It can do no wrong.
On basically the other side of the spectrum of comfy watching lies Konosuba, which (as I’ve already mentioned) has been absolutely torturing me in the weeks between episodes. I love the heck out of this show, its derpy sense of humor, and the benevolence with which it bestows jokes that would otherwise seem downright mean. Aqua is a champ, and an inspiration to me (more on that in a later post, probably), Megumin is a hoot, Kazuma continues to be one of the better straight men I’ve seen in a comedy, and Darkness…well, we’ll find out today how good she really is. I’ve have some suspicions as to why Konosuba is working as well for me, but that’s another post (likely next week’s Aniwords) coming, and I don’t want to spoil it before I’ve done my research and planned it all out.
I spilled a bunch of digital ink yesterday on ERASED, so I don’t have a lot to say about it right now, but I do want to make sure I note how grateful I was for the ending of the episode at the “Christmas tree.” It was a genuinely peaceful, comforting, kind moment out of a show that’s been fairly brutal to watch, and I really appreciated everything about it and the respite and hope it offered. The foxes running in circles, the lights of the tree, Kayo’s quiet “baka…” It was lovely.
Another note on the relative strength of this season comes from the variety of stuff that’s turned out to be good. Rakugo Shinju is one thing and Shirayuki-hime has a bit of the same blood running through it, but ERASED and Konosuba are good in completely different ways. Likewise for Dimension W, which gave us a relaxed sort of episode this week that really humanized (ironically) Mira and gave the show some room to just breath and show that it has a (good!) sense of humor. Mira firmly laid down her claim for being one of the pillars of cute anime girls this season (Guppy from Phantom World and Yume from Grimgar are there as well), but also got a lot of nice characterization as a somewhat naive, definitely kind-hearted, and genuinely pleasant character. A lot of times, characters like Mira are just pure moe and get a free pass as “nice” just because of their looks, but moments like Mira talking Kyouma’s ear off in the car and her patient interactions with the kids really set her apart from this mold. Thank you, Shoutarou Suga, you write anime good.
Also, Dimension W got Stereo Dive Foundation to produce their best anisong since they did the ED for Beyond the Boundary, which I’m glad of.
You wouldn’t guess this about a show whose screencaps got me over a hundred retweets on Twitter, but I’m literally only watching Phantom World for Guppy at this point—and by literally, I mean I’m just skipping through the episodes to get all the good screencaps of her. I feel it’s important to my online brand to continue to champion Guppy, even if I don’t have the patience to deal with Phantom World itself directly.
Speaking of shows I’ve run out patience for (or, at least, shows I thought I was out of patience for), GATE surprised me this week by, uh, not doing anything at all with its story—and thus having its best episode of the new season. When GATE‘s trying to seriously engage with its overarching story, it really falls flat on its face, ranging from outright offensive to laughably dumb (as I’ve chronicled before). However, this episode was mostly fluff, and GATE was better for it. We got some Rory, we got some Tuka (who’s still just window dressing, sorry Tuka), and even got a little bit of Lelei. Better yet, by sending Itami out to fight a fire dragon with a posse of girls, we’re basically guaranteed that this will be the main focus of the upcoming episodes. No more bad politics, yay!
Grimgar‘s more or less continuing to be itself at this point; unlike Phantom World, it has more than a single redeeming feature to elevate it above its (admittedly infuriating) banalities, such as the whole post-peeping debacle. Yet, even that incident ended up having some more significant effects than expected (awkwardness in the party), so somehow Grimgar manages to stay a step ahead. With what looks like an upcoming death next, I’m interested to see if the show shifts in focus next week. Also, the marbles in the OP! I love them!
We’ll end with the Saturday Sequel Hour this week, with Durarara!! trending up and Haikyuu!! S2 continuing to be something of a disappointment. I talked to a lot of people this week about Haikyuu!! and what’s happened in this second season to make it feel so much less engaging than the first, and we’ve come up with a wide variety of answers: the music’s not being used as well, more frequent cutaways from the court to spectators, fewer conversations between the players themselves, and the momentum-killing length of the training arc from the first half of the show. Whatever it is (and it may be a cumulative effect), it’s kind of sad to see—please Oikawa, come back soon.
And as for Durarara!! its push upwards may be nothing more than a temporary thing, but a combination of surprisingly good storyboarding that actually conveying the emotional realities of the characters on screen without overstating things and a return of focus to Mikado and Anri (along with Kida, I think they’re still the most compelling part of this franchise), Durarara!! felt engaging and, more importantly, focused this week in a way it’s not been for a long time. I’ll drop some screencaps below, where you can see visually the difference between the ways Mikado and Izaya interact with the world, as well as a few shots that just look nice. These kinds of visual excellences are not something I’m used to seeing from Durarara!! and I hope they continue.
I’m not going to follow Bubuki Buranki weekly, but I may check in with it every once and while. It’s definitely a show better taken a few episodes as a time.
Hyouka posts will resume this coming Sunday.
Love songs are a weird thing. By nature, they’re an expression of the most intimate of emotions, but the majority of the time they’re conveyed at a distance—sung from a radio, through headphones, or on a stage—and as a performance object to be heard by many, not one, thus stripping them of the personal emotion they ought to host.
But, for a little under two minutes in the middle of Macross Frontier, a love song connects.
Of the many love songs I heard and saw on television, the radio, and in movies during my childhood, two that have stayed with me to the present are “Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You” from The Music Man and “I Must Have Done Something Good” from The Sound of Music. In Morton DaCosta’s 1962 film adaptation, the former is delivered in a pointedly stage-like manner, as the Buffalo Bills and Marian sing their respective halves of the song in spotlighted circles on a mostly dark screen. It’s the modern love song, sung with a sort of passive-aggressive intent, but mostly thrown out into the void, waiting for a response from “that special someone”. By way of contrast, Maria and Captain von Trapp sing their love to each other in explicitly direct terms, bookended by spoken professions of love and a delicate kiss. [1]
Ranka Lee and Sheryl Nome’s episode 15 duet of “What ’bout my star?” is a love song in the tradition of Maria and the Captain’s, a no-holds-barred, unapologetically genuine expression of love through music. Alto has no choice but to submit.
As might be expected, all this makes Alto somewhat uncomfortable. But why? Of course, some of it is certainly the cognitive dissonance that arises from seeing one’s two love interests openly (and yet somewhat cordially) vying for your affections when you’re the indecisive member of the love triangle. And there’s also the base-level human embarrassment from being so blatantly called out in a public place. But, beyond that, there’s the unusual, powerful disruption of the normal arrangement of performance.
If “I Must Have Done Something Good” and “What ’bout my star?” are touchingly authentic (and, thus in my estimation, highly unusual among love songs), “Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You” represent the other end of the spectrum, a 50-year anticipation of the disconnected love songs of Top 40 radio and, more relevant, idol performances. “Lida Rose” visually represents the commonly agreed-upon structure of idol love songs: a solitary singer immeasurably far from the adoring chorus while still preserving an illusion of closeness.
The recorded or performed love song is disconnected; singer and audience are blocked apart by status, stage, and state. This holds doubly true for idols, created as they are to mimic intimacy while remaining distant. [2] An idol must belong to everyone generally, and no one in particular.
Thus, Ranka and Sheryl doubly (and jointly) burst through the falsity of the love song performed, through performance. These are no ordinary idols, and this is no ordinary idol song (nor an ordinary love song).
My favorite shot of the scene is the third in the above gallery, taken from Ranka’s POV and framing Alto through her fingers. The frame within a frame imitates the construct of performance [3], but that in itself is a fake because there no such convenient and comfortable distance for Alto in this moment—and Ranka has already made the decision, following Sheryl’s lead, to abandon the pretense of the idol’s solitary stage for a moment of sheer connectedness.
Love is not something that can be done at a distance.
And lest the all-important shift from the performed love song and the intimate love song of Sheryl and Ranka go unnoticed, Frontier contextualizes their non-performance within the diegetic use of Ranka’s episode five performance of “What ’bout my star?” @Formo on the screens of the hospital, a performance Sheryl characterizes as “fresh […] like a young, dreamy girl singing.” [4] But, just like Marian in “Will I Ever Tell You,” the Ranka on the screen (accompanied as she was by instrumentals that may as well have been non-diegetic, despite their pseudo-diegetic presentation) is singing a love song in isolation. Sheryl’s initiative appropriates the distant idol performance context and grounds it in the intimacy of physicality.
Ranka, ultimately, is still riding Sheryl’s coattails here, but that doesn’t reduce the authenticity of her own efforts to reach Alto through song. Even as an echo, her voice is no less real, no less potent than Sheryl’s.
And, together, even as their duet leans into the typical idol conventions of choreography and spotlights, it reaches out past the affectations and solitary nature of idoldom to pull Alto in. In fact, it’s really a violation of the very essence of idols, of the image, of the mask, of the performer. It’s true. It’s immediate. It’s powerful not because of the projection, but because of the reality. And nowhere else could this happen besides in a show that understands that we are alone, but come to love others in spite of the distances between us. That’s the true power of Ranka and Sheryl’s song.
So, to sum it up: this silly robot show understands love songs better than almost any other comparable thing. Sheryl is good. Ranka is good. Macross Frontier rocks.
[1] Robert Wise’s direction during this scene in the 1956 film further emphasizes the particularly intimate nature of the love song, as the backlighting turns the two lovers (wow, that is weird to type about a show from my childhood) into silhouettes and denies the audience entrance into the deepest parts of the relationship. These kinds of relationships are necessarily exclusive and personal, and Wise respects that—and creates something truly beautiful along the way.
[2] See, handshake events as (structurally) false displays of idol-fan relationship and idol dating bans.
[3] Also, yes, it’s a triangle. Like a love triangle.
[4] Formo being the Zentradi mall where Ranka performed. “@Formo” is the way the song is labeled by the official Macross Frontier Vocal Collection.
I’m going to keep this short.
Those of you who like to spend time poking around the blog may have noticed a couple of new things. I’ve changed primary fonts, have taken down a few old (read: not very good) blog posts, and have added a few other new things here and there.
Of these, the biggest addition is a new page nested under the “About the Blog” page, called “Donating to Mage in a Barrel.” This new page lays out a few details about why I’ve opted to open up this little fundraising campaign, so I’ll let you read those details there, but the long and short of it is that I’m asking you guys to support me just a little as I look to upgrade the backend of the blog (which will, in turn, result in better frontend content). For example, as I’ve started to increase my volume of writing related to cinematography in anime, it’s become increasingly clear to me that I need some sort of video capabilities on the blog to help illuminate more complex points. This upgrade would be a big step towards making that happen.
I’ve put up a donation button and tracker in the sidebar—once we’ve hit the goal, it’ll go away. Of course, donating is completely optional. I’m not going to implement paywalls or anything like that. But I would really appreciate your guys’ support so I can continue to create new and better stuff for you.
To donate, you can use the donate button or follow this link. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to ask in the comments!
In an episode where Hyouka switches up its normal format—instead of solving a mystery himself, Oreki has to create a mystery that someone else can solve—it’s appropriate that we also see a shift in terms of the stakes of the episode’s events. Where heretofore Hyouka‘s mysteries have been expressions of interior character realities, in episode 20 (which is really the precursor episode to the finale, in many ways) we see and feel the outside world starting to creep in on the comfy lives of the Classics Club.
After episodes 18 and 19, two of Hyouka‘s most intimate and most isolated episodes, episode 20 comes as fascinating reversal. While we see Oreki and Chitanda out together in the world in episode 18 (at the library), they’re partitioned off from the rest of the world by their single-minded focus on the mystery in front of them and the deeply personal motivations that are animating both of them. And in episode 19, we see them return to the quiet bubble of the Geography Prep room—alone, and comfortable. Episode 20 is nothing like that.
It kicks off with a pre-OP bait-and-switch (one carried over from the episode preview), as Chitanda and Oreki’s conversation falls into the same kind of familiar patterns as we’re used to hearing from them and the deliberate, delicate paralleled close-up shots lend a sense of intimacy and closeness to the scene despite their talk of being in a mess. From their chattiness, the cinematography, and everything that’s come before, it’s easy to assume Chitanda and Oreki have found themselves in a small pickle together, one with low stakes and with a lot of potential for them to again grow closer. And yet, despite the fact that the trap of the warehouse bears some similarities to the self-sustaining box of their club room, in reality it’s a threat due to being a single piece of the larger organism of the shine—as well as all the social realities suggested by this tradition-laden place.
In fact, it’s these social realities—the pressures of status and tradition—that are the invisible, constant presence in this episode. From the moment Chitanda appears for the first time, we understand by her traditional dress and her arrival via taxi that this is a different kind of Chitanda than we’ve seen (particularly in contrast to the playful, giddy Chitanda of the previous episode). And it seems Oreki understands this, too, as this new (or, perhaps, old) Chitanda walks towards him in soft pink light, her motions depicted through the ghosted animation that will recur in a few episodes—and he sees her not as a whole person, but as pieces of a slightly unreal being. Unfamiliar, but enchanting.
This version of Chitanda is not just Chitanda herself, but the Chitanda running errands, representing her father, and the Chitandawho will stand on the propriety of the day, even if she can’t help but show off a little bit at the same time. Chitanda is, appropriately, an embodiment of the real conflict of this episode. She is the tension of her social responsibilities pulling against her free, fun-loving, mischievous nature as represented by her special relationship with Oreki. People may pass out of their frame at one moment, leaving them alone in their own world for a moment, but in the very next cut we see them as they really are—surrounded by people once again, by the world they both live in.
Oreki’s participation in this world is unnatural for him. He doesn’t understand it, and verbalizes as much multiple times throughout the episode—and is, further, frequently visually distanced from Chitanda as she engages with this world. The formalities and ceremonies of the New Years’ shrine visit for the daughter of a family of status are all unfamiliar to him, even as he encounters them. The above gallery is on such example of this, as shrine maiden Kaho Juumonji’s entrance (and Chitanda’s subsequent interaction, puncuated by shots of Oreki looking in from the outside) is dominated by shots focusing on the physicality of the ritual, a very Hyouka-like way to express the slight exoticness of the tradition. And yet, when Oreki joins in (shot 6), he is momentarily swept into the ceremony’s focus on small, precise motions. But immediately after, as he’s isolated by the joke Kaho and Chitanda share, he’s back to being an outsider.
All this serves to recontextualize the pre-OP sequence within the confines of social world Oreki has unwittingly inhabited by his association with Chitanda. Thus Chitanda must help him understand the situation when he’s about to yell for help. Thus Oreki struggles not with just the challenge of their situation, but against the rules and etiquette of Chitanda’s world, as well. The intimate box of the shed, with all its echoes of the comfortable closeness of their Classics Club games, brings with it stakes because of its association with the world outside. This presence—symbolized silently in the episode’s first half by the ever-present crowds—has become real and important. They may be split off (just as in this shot that repeats the corner of the room shot so common in the classroom), but they are no longer alone together. Even trapped inside the shed, they are further ringed in by the outside.
In the end, they’re saved from scandal by a strange connection between Oreki and Satoshi (via Mayaka). Their (or, really, Oreki’s) showdown with the forces of traditional society is postponed—but only postponed. Oreki now understands Chitanda a little bit better than he did before (another turn from episode 18, wherein Chitanda came to understand Oreki more), and he’s caught a glimpse of the wider context that surrounds this girl. And so what will he do with that?
That remains to be seen.
[Final note, a word on outfits: Mayaka looked lovely in her shrine maiden clothes, Chitanda’s kimono really was stunning, Oreki’s coat is cute, Satoshi is apparently not bother by the cold at all.]
As you guys—probably more so than anyone—know, I really like peering into the deeper parts of shows that don’t seem to have much going on beneath the surface and picking out the cool and interesting things that go into making fun things fun. Well, I’m making another effort at it with this week’s Aniwords—and I’m talking about my pet show of the season, Konosuba, this week.
It’s kind of all in the title, but I don’t want to spoil the column, so I’ll not say anymore. Enjoy!
As I was writing out the title to this post, I had a horrible sensation that I’d accidentally typed “Winter 2015” for last week’s post—but I didn’t.
After a long day of anime watching last Friday and Saturday and some level of dedication to maintaining a solid work ethic through the days since them, I’m now completely caught up on the season’s show. I’m not really sure this is a trend that’ll continue—I kind of like just watching things when I feel like it. But what I did feel like watching Rakugo Shinju over the weekend and I’m sure glad I did. My suspicions that Rakugo Shinju is a show that you can basically watch in any mood or at any time and still be swept away by seems to be completely true, but I think I’ll continue to try and keep it set aside for when I’m really feeling. It’s just too good to waste—and the slow sense of building tragedy, conveyed primarily through the increasing sense that Kikuhiko is moving towards some kind of sad ending, or at least a sad event.
Of course (and this outside of the frenetic fujoshi tremors), the elephant in the room with Rakugo Shinju is Kikuhiko and Sukeroku’s relationship, and how Miyokichi’s appearance will affect that. A love rivalry? Kikuhiko’s been lonely for a long time before Sukeroku reappears from after the war, and even now that they’re reunited there’s still tension between them. Placing this kind of tension within the context of the tension of simply staying alive in adult life is clever—relationships straining alongside survival strains—and I’m a sucker for the feeling of the inevitable tragedy. It’s coming, but when?
I can’t wait to find out.
On the opposite side of this dynamic is ERASED, which fooled us (ha! I wasn’t actually fooled) into thinking Satoru had saved Kayo, only to reveal that, nope, things have gone back to being the same as they were before. It feels more like a lapse in concentration by Satoru by anything—if you’re trying to save a 1o year-old girl from being kidnapped and murdered, you don’t just quit after passing one success point!—and also winds up being an inevitable simply because ERASED needed something else to add tension back into the story. Unlike Rakugo Shinju‘s slow burn towards tragedy, ERASED‘s tragedy is constantly being held over our heads—because it’s already happened.
I wasn’t particularly enthralled with this week’s ERASED aside from cute Kayo faces, but it’s interesting to contrast these two excellent shows’ use of tragedy. We know what the ultimate tragedy is for both of them (ERASED: Kayo and, later, Satoru’s mother’s deaths; Rakugo Shinju: Sukeroku’s death), but the difference in awareness of the tragedy by the characters involved with it (although Rakugo Shinju‘s story has an meta element to it as well, being a story told by Yakumo…hmm…). Certainly, they’re two different ways of handling the same thing and both are using the dread to pin the audience in, but ERASED is almost about the tension, whereas in Rakugo Shinju it’s just one piece (albeit a critical one) of the overall puzzle.
Sorry I keep comparing these two shows—I think Rakugo Shinju is the better by far—but it’s fascinating to find ways the season’s two best new offerings continue to intersect in unexpected ways.
Speaking of impending drama, let’s switch over to Akagami no Shirayuki-hime, which appears to be setting course for some serious drama, the likes of which we haven’t really seen the show engage with before. I’m extremely curious to see how Masahiro Ando decides to handle this deviation from Shirayuki-hime‘s normal formula—pirate ladies dribbling wine down their faces while chugging their alcohol isn’t quite what I’d excepted of this season of Shirayuki-hime (and the direction in the scene almost felt overblown to me). Ando certainly can do big drama (see: Blast of Tempest), but I guess I’m just a tad bit worried that Shirayuki-hime‘s cast will adapt well to a more action-oriented mode.
And while I’m busy being a bit worried about a show I like, I might as well mention that this week’s Konosuba really didn’t do much for me—at least on my first watch. Darkness is simply not that funny (and the masochist bit is…ugh…not what I was hoping it would be), but I’m reminding myself that this was her intro episode. Unfortunately, Darkness really didn’t have anything to do with the extended panty robber joke, which was just as unfunny (although I’ll grudgingly admit the execution was pretty solid). On the happier side, Aqua and Megumin still seem capable of carrying the show even in small doses, so I’m expecting Konosuba to swing back towards being derpy and fun in episode four in better proportions than it was in episode three.
Also, I wrote a thing on Konosuba yesterday!
As for everything else, Dimension W was a step down from last week’s pleasantness—Mira was less of a personality and more of a fanservice/moe element, sadly—but still managed to be well-directed and have beautiful backgrounds. And despite Mira getting meta-shafted by the show, I’m maintaining my opinion that the show generally does a good job of striking a balance between having her be a cute, naive, pleasant actual character and just a blob. There are still parts and pieces (like the whole Kyouma wife thing, what) that don’t fit with her overall characterization, but in general I kind of like what they’re doing with Mira. Alongside the strong visual work, that’s enough to keep with on with Dimension W for now.
Haikyuu!! S2 may not have the same sort of fate, as I’m getting pretty wearied by its inability to recapture the magic of season one. If the upcoming episode can’t do it, I’m frankly going to despair of Haikyuu!! S2 ever returning to the heights of its predecessor and drop it. It’s a bummer, and I don’t have an explanation for why this is happening—all the staff is the same, but the show’s just not working the way it should. Whether that’s a fault in the source material (sort of where I’m leaning) or in the adaptation, I’m not sure, but it’s match point for Haikyuu!! right now.
Meanwhile, Durarara!! has stitched together a stunning two good episodes in a row. The direction’s great, the character focus and dialogue has been great, and even though this is distinctively not the same as the show’s very good original installment, it’s still pretty darn good—and that’s exciting. Kida and Anri are now more in the spotlight than they’ve been in long, long episodes, things around them are starting to move, and the show overall seems a bit like a bear finally shaking off its hibernation sleepiness.
Durarara!!-related story time from real life! The guy who sits in the cube next to mine at work has a pretty solid collection of nendoroids and other anime-type figures (Mako from Kill la Kill and Yotsuba are two I recognize—he’s a bit more old-school than I am, I think), and he recently added Celty to his collection after a recent trip to Japan. Earlier this week, our HR manager came by his cube and was asking him some questions about Celty—a tough roll since Celty’s a bit…complicated—and I ended up chiming in with a good-natured joke that showed I knew a bit about the show. After the HR manager headed off, my co-worker said he was glad someone else in the office was around to help him explain Durarara!! and I asked him if he’d been keeping up with the new series. He said he had, and together we lamented that it’s not been as good as the original. So, yeah! You can talk about anime at work and survive!
GATE is being dumb again. Here’s a tweet chain from me on the most infuriating part of the episode.
The only thing (I think) left on my schedule that I haven’t mentioned yet is Grimgar, which someone specifically asked me about last week. Here’s what I think about Grimgar, then. Its fanservice is crappy and bad, Ranta is terrible, but it’s doing interesting things elsewhere. Besides Yume being cute as heck, I mean. And with the most recent episode’s Event, I’m really curious to see where Grimgar goes from here. For me, the event itself is more about how it’s going to push the remaining party members (lol there’s the spoiler) in future episodes, and that’s not something I really want to look away from. In short, I don’t think Grimgar‘s a great show, but it is really interesting and I want to continue to watch where it goes.
Still just watching Phantom World for Guppy screenshots. This was a feature episode for her, but it wasn’t really that great—despite being the show’s best episode yet. Every time two characters have a conversation it just gets…dull…
But have a cute Kayo to finish off the post on a high note!
I don’t want to be “real.” I want to be “human.”
This is a coming home, of sorts.
One of the things I’ve been wanting to do more on this blog is personal writing. Of course, to a degree, all the writing I do here on Mage in a Barrel is personal—but much of it is personal only insofar as my more detached analyses subtextually present the ways I think and engage with shows. And even that contains a bit of artifice, as that kind of analysis naturally tends towards a more logical-rational way of presenting myself and the anime I love.
That’s something of a lie, because the truth is that I tend to engage with the anime I love on an emotional level first and an intellectual level second. I think this is seen more on Twitter—with my livetweeting outbursts and my tendencies to lean into casual language, inarticulate keyboard mashing, and capslock providing a more immediate and less-filtered look into what I’m experiencing as I’m watching a show. That doesn’t always make it here on the blog, though, because I try to add value to shows by adding a unique analytical take.
My recent rewatch of the Nekomonogatari: Shiro arc (also known as the Tsubasa Tiger arc) of Monogatari Series: Second Season has lead me to think that I’ve been shortchanging both myself and my readers by doing this. What you read here is “real,” certainly—but is it human? That’s the question I’ll be trying to answer in this post.
As I watched the final minutes of Tsubasa Tiger tick away on my television last night, I cried a little bit, moved by this familiar story, one I’d last seen in full nearly two years prior. I was more touched in the present moment than I remembered being during my initial watch, a difference I attribute to the cache Hanekawa as a character has gained with me in the intervening time (declaring her one of my all-time favorite anime characters, seeing her reappear in the Hitagi End arc and, most recently, in Owarimonogatari, etc).
Throughout the arc, I had seen Hanekawa slowly come to a fuller realization of herself and her own identity—of her virtues and her vices, and of the way she had been engaging with the world around her. And in those final minutes, though my teared-up eyes, I saw her experience heartbreak and the weight of being a broken person in full for the first time. Of trying and failing. Of risking, and losing. Of being vulnerable, and being hurt.
Hanekawa Tsubasa blossoms, a wounded flower.
As I said before, it was a moment that caused me to cry. To feel, maybe just a little bit, the pain Hanekawa was feeling. I was grateful for that. Grateful to be moved, grateful to feel, grateful to see the supreme generosity and love with which Hanekawa’s trials were enacted, and ended. It was a privilege, I felt—and still feel—to be able to witness this all play out before my eyes.
I was left wondering, “And so? What does this now mean for me?”
This is not a new question that I’ve asked myself. I asked it to myself last night, I’ve been asking it to myself all day today. And I’ve asked it of myself after finishing Hyouka, recently, and numerous other shows in the past. What now? Having experienced, having felt—what now?
This is, I think, a very important question, and not just because of the frequency with which it seems to crop up in my life. As I see it, personally, there are two options I have after finishing an experience with something that moves one in the way Nekomonogatari: Shrio moved me. 1) Let it simmer for a bit, and then move on to the next thing. 2) Let it simmer, but then take it in and give something back. The giving something back… I suppose I’d say I believe that to be critical. Art, like idols, is something that gives infinitely, bound only by our capacity to receive. Art is somewhat like God, at least God as I understand Him, in this way. But art cannot really receive anything back from me; it can only give and give.
So, if I cannot give back to art, not really, then how do we honor (in a sense) the thing that has given to us? To take only is sheer selfishness, and because Good Art, generally speaking (and I do mean generally, because it’s not a strict rule), calls me out of myself—or at the very least, out of my indifference and my personal status quo.
I’m hearing that call from Nekomonogatari: Shiro right now.
I suspect I’m more like Hanekawa Tsubasa before her actualization than I’d like to admit, or perhaps even “more like her than I’m aware of.” Hanekawa’s unconscious shearing off of pieces of her emotions… I sometimes wonder if I’m guilty of this same thing. Recently, a coworker of mine passed away due to a sudden heart attack. The general lack of emotional response from myself—despite the fact that I wasn’t, not really, close to this person—has been bothering me of late. And watching Hanekawa come to terms with the reality of her emotional severance made me wonder if I’ve been doing the same thing, both in this situation and in others. But to psychoanalyze myself through anime… that’s not really what this is all supposed to be about, although I hope it’s “human.”
If I’m giving something back, it’s not to Nekomonogatari: Shiro, and I’ve already received so therefore in theory I shouldn’t be giving back to myself either (although that may still be inevitable in this particular story). Where do I give then? Outside of myself seems to be the only answer, and I would note that the final push for Hanekawa to own up to her issues is that her issues are ultimately going to hurt people she cares about in a very real way if she doesn’t address them. If Hanekawa’s been looking away from the things that cause her pain all this time, she’s also been looking away from the fact that she’s looking away. Somewhere out there she finds someone besides herself; that someone becomes the mirror that reflects her.
What I’m attempting to do here on this blog—what the anibloggers I admire most consistently do—is to give away to others outside of myself. To make myself known in the hopes of adding something to the lives of others. It’s the incontestable impulse I feel to write about an arc of a show I’ve already written about, even though I feel I have nothing to add. It’s the undeniable drive to say something to alleviate the pressure to say something, not just absorb and keep to myself this thing that has given to me. I write because, in the face of knowing that I may very well be Hanekawa and thus know consciously that I may unconsciously be repeating her mistakes and thus feel handicapped in taking Nekomonogatari: Shiro and using it to improve myself, I still cannot simply take without giving.
So here is me giving. This is why I write. This is my selfish need to pretend to be selfless, having been selflessly given to. May I give more selflessly. May others do the same. May we all be richer for it.
The future is a terrifying thing.
Hyouka has been accused at times of being overly juvenile. Focused as it is on the lives, feelings, and concerns of high schoolers—jealousy, heartbreak, pettiness, bravery, thoughtlessness, fear—for some (and even some in the comments sections of this series of posts I’ve been writing!) it treads too deeply into the forest of adolescence and loses its relevance. While I understand people hold this sentiment, I must admit I find it to be, at least as far as my own experience goes, fundamentally incorrect. I’ll admit—I’m only twenty-three years old at the time of this writing and I have a lot of of the world yet to see. I’m not all that distant from the experiences of high school life. However, in my short time out there in the “real world,” it seems apparent to me that adults are really nothing more than children, forced by circumstances to pretend they’re not. We never come to place where we cannot grow anymore—to think otherwise is foolish.
I say this all not with the intent of berating those who doubt Hyouka‘s applicability to people beyond the grasp of high school youth. As I’ve said, I have much to learn. But to see this episode of Hyouka as anything other then unequivocal proof that it understands not just teenage life, but the experience of being human… I’m simply not capable of that right now.
And so begins Hyouka‘s twenty-first episode, with a flashback to a time even more mired in the trappings of childishness—and yet still no less real in its depiction of the pain we can cause each other. Middle school Mayaka is angry because she’s been hurt by middle school Satoshi’s sad joke of an excuse for rejecting her Valentine’s Day chocolate, and she carries this passion into the current iteration of herself. Oreki’s vivid imagination (and indeed, the explicit tie between the humorously overwrought scene of the femme fatale Mayaka capturing Satoshi and his outward reaction confirm for certain that all along these imagistic scenes have been drawn from Oreki’s mind) paints the picture of how driven Makaya really is.
Mayaka is a simple person. She’s forward in the expression of her emotions, unafraid of being herself, and knows exactly what she wants. It’s not the kind of “adult” confidence that might insulate her from outside pressures (we saw as much in the Kanya Festival arc); it’s simply her strength of character and personhood. Mayaka’s personal cinematographic language supports this: it’s straightforward, unsubtle, and clear. Why doesn’t Mayaka ever really get a full character focus episode? Because she simply doesn’t need one. Mayaka more or less lets everyone know what they need to know about her. It’s daring, and admirable. This isn’t really to say Mayaka isn’t a complex and full character—she is. Rather, it’s merely to say she shares her complexities with the people around her. It’s her being vulnerable—and that kind of vulnerability, sadly, can sometimes get you hurt.
By way of contrast, the boy who Mayaka loves is a true enigma. Even his truth-tellings are riddled with complexities and layers. And furthermore—as two parallel shots show—he’s no longer the same person he used to be. It’s not really stated whether or not Mayaka fell in love with Satoshi before or after his change, but I’d place my bets on the latter.
As Hyouka has so cleverly done before, it sets the stage for all of this to play out by turning its gaze elsewhere—to our other de facto couple. After Mayaka playfully (note the bunnies!) primes the Chitanda pump and Tomoe does likewise with Oreki, the budding romance between the two shifts into focus in yet another of one of Hyouka‘s trademark conversations between person and person, between shot and shot. In this sequence, the dominant visual theme (distance) is established and we see many returns of visual tells from throughout many of the prior episodes. Commentary is in the gallery captions:
The profile shot and its use of negative space (as seen in shots 13 and 14) will reappear throughout the episode, implying distance again and again. We see it as Mayaka delivers her chocolate to the club room, combining the complex composition of the background (a tangled up situation, for sure) with the other characteristics of the shot; and with Satoshi as Oreki wishes him good luck. Satoshi and Oreki’s conversation also introduces the main visual motif of the episode: windows.
While it’s somewhat difficult to pin down in definitively concrete terms the exact “meaning” of the windows in this episode, I think they can be generally understood as a couple of things: A) representations of distance, B) symbols of “inside versus outside” in emotional terms, and C) as things that let in light (that is, truth). Transparency. A critical symbol for an episode based around the central conceit of Satoshi coming clean—letting the light that has shone on him only in halves to finally illuminate fully his secrets.
Of course, these kinds of things don’t happen just at a distance, though glass. This is something that involves all four members of the Classics Club. Chitanda has involved herself with Mayaka at Mayaka’s request, Satoshi is involved whether he likes it or not, and Oreki ultimately makes the choice to involve himself because of Chitanda.
Why can’t Oreki just step aside—knowing as he does that this is really something between Satoshi and Mayaka? Because of Chitanda. Because of the immediacy and urgency and personal investment that she brings into the situation. Because he’s close to her, because she’s hurting, and because he is no longer the sort of person that can ignore that. As Chitanda steps in front of him to block his way—and, notice, there are not longer any sort of mystical-magical elements to her plea like there were early on in the show—the immediacy and force behind her request make obvious through the abruptness of the cut from close-up to long shot. This is not the same sort of insistent, charming, intimate pushiness we’re used to seeing from her. It’s something different.
Oreki notices, and moves—surprising even those who know him best.
The mystery then takes focus for a while—featuring the delightful reappearance of an irate Sawakiguchi and her incredibly powerful hair—but then Chitanda leaves the room and all that’s left is the detective and the culprit. As Oreki will later reveal, he solidified his initial suspicion of Satoshi long before the confrontation with the Astronomy Club. Everything after that, until Chitanda leaves, is just a performance for her benefit and her benefit alone. In other words, Chitanda—and Chitanda alone—is Oreki’s priority at this point. He doesn’t have the patience or the breadth of care to coddle Satoshi’s acting; his sole concern is Chitanda and her feelings. This will lead him to echo the same close-up/long shot sequence that Chitanda used to block him in the library. It was in that moment that his concern for Chitanda brought him into this mystery; and it is in this moment that this concern causes him to keep her from doing something she will regret.
And it is all this that will cause him to snap at Satoshi’s idle chatter. It’s a mere seven shots, but it’s harsh, unfriendly—and it shuts Satoshi up. (1) It begins with a fairly even-keel shot of Satoshi in the middle of the screen and an unremarkable medium close-up, trying to preserve a sense of normalcy. (2) But Oreki cuts through the casual noise with an unbalanced close-up that emphasizes his frustration. (3) And Satoshi is shocked, arrested, chastised. His easygoing act has been torn to shreds. The close-up parallels Oreki’s, but its as if Satoshi has been forced into it. (4) As Oreki speaks, we see the distance between them. (5) And the profile shot with the negative space reappears—cold, as Oreki effectively tells Satoshi to shut up. (6) And Satoshi can only acquiesce, shuttered into a corner of the screen. (7) We see Oreki, but Satoshi is all but blocked off. The abruptness of the cuts mirrors Oreki’s potent fury; and all falls silent.
So, as Mayaka shows up and departs, Oreki shows once again how much he’s grown. He stands before Chitanda, refuses to let her leave even as she feels the agony of what she thinks she’s done, represented by Mayaka’s empty chair. But if Oreki returning the blocking favor shows that he cares, it’s what he says to get Chitanda to really let go that demonstrates his growth.
“I can’t say I know how you feel. I don’t feel things as strongly as you.”
This is broad-faced honesty. A critical understanding of himself in relationship to someone he cares about. And so, as he concocts a lie to resolve the problem, he asks Chitanda to trust him. He cannot tell her everything, but he shows that he cares—and requests that she let him show her that it’s true. And she trusts him. So she goes.
With Chitanda now gone, the windows motif returns—after all, the truth is about to be revealed. And once again, we find ourselves on a bridge, on a path between one shore and another. It’s an apt metaphor for this encounter (and a bridge will play an important role in the show’s finale, as well), as Satoshi truly is dwelling in the in-between. As he says, “I think I’ll have an answer soon.” He cannot dwell in-between for much longer—the world, and other people, aren’t so convenient.
To make that move, Satoshi spills out everything. The emptiness he feels knowing he’ll never be the best at anything (the emptiness of the sky above him). The cold feeling of his past life (the snowball). The exuberance, yet uneasiness, of his current life (a joyful shot, but upside down). The attractiveness he sees in Mayaka (a romanticized close-up of his eye). The vastness of his fears (a giant empty sky in which he is small), and the closeness of them (the close-up of the bag with the chocolates). The sky becomes a metaphor for Satoshi’s uncertainness of the huge scope of an unknown future.
And that is not a worry exclusive to adolescents. The fear of the future, the fear of the unknown… show me a human who has mastered these and I will insist they are either a saint or insane. We flail against the terror of the thing we cannot control—the flow of time and what it brings—digging in our heels, worrying over the opportunity cost of our lives, seeking to manage every instant of our lives. Perhaps it is the youth who, by virtue of their age, instinctively understand they cannot control the future (and thus fear it) who are more real than the adults. The paralysis of this… it is natural.
That Oreki is the one to whom Satoshi spills this all out… it’s a humiliating experience for Satoshi for sure. But he knows he’s in the wrong, so he takes threats of punches and all in stride—until Oreki says something unfair, speaking out of his own emotion. Oreki, backed by the structure of the bridge as if supported by his talent, accuses Satoshi of the incidental hurt he caused Chitanda, while behind Satoshi stretches the empty blackness of the river (a substitute for the sky). There’s a lot that’s similar between these two, but Satoshi is always feeling the difference. What he says is a petty, catty dig, but it’s also fair. Oreki’s demanding things of Satoshi that Satoshi can’t give, holding Satoshi accountable to the same standard of talent he himself has ignored for almost all of the series.
And sure, Oreki is lashing out because of his own pain vis-a-vis Chitanda—but that really only grants Satoshi permission to respond in kind, just with more resignation. “I’d rather be punched,” Satoshi responds to the idea of Chitanda hearing all this from Oreki, as they two of them split the screen evenly, emphasizing their similarities once again.
But in the end, Satoshi does what Oreki hasn’t yet done—even if he does so under duress. He makes a choice. He does the hard thing. He does the right thing. It’s a lonely long shot, Satoshi barely visible amidst falling snow and darkness, but when you make these kinds of decisions, no one can help you. You’re out on your own, and you do what you have to do, even if you don’t like it. To put it into Oreki’s final words of the episode…
Final Notes: There is still much I could say about this episode. Meaningful shots and sequences, little bits of character work that I glossed over, and more. This episode is absurdly, unfairly packed with stuff. It’s likely among the single densest episodes I’ve ever tried to write about. I’m sincerely sorry I couldn’t tackle it all here, but to even attempt to do so would be a fool’s errand. I hope you’ve enjoyed what I’ve put together here about this wonderful, bittersweet show. It wasn’t easy. It was kind of painful to write about—but I think I’ve maybe, just a bit, done it justice.
Mamoru Hosoda’s (Summer Wars, Wolf Children) newest film is hitting US shores soon, and I had an opportunity to review a screening copy of the movie before release thanks to The Fandom Post.
I won’t spoil too much of the review here, but I will say that I wasn’t much impressed with Hosoda’s latest effort. It would be a stretch to say I disliked The Boy and the Beast, but the fact that it generally left me feeling apathetic and mildly disappointed perhaps says even more than a strong feeling of antipathy would have. The Boy and the Beast isn’t an awful film; but it’s not a very good one either.
It’s always exciting when a show that’s been long absent from its true identity finally makes a return, and that’s exactly what happened with this week’s Haikyuu!! At long last, I have no complaints about an episode of Haikyuu!!—I’m just pumped up and excited and ready for more!
So, to honor that success, I’ve taken this week’s Aniwords to break down how Haikyuu!! managed to return to form in such a wonderful fashion. I hope you guys enjoy it!
People say the three-episode rule is the best for deciding on shows to keep and drop, but I’m somewhat of the opinion that five episodes is better for feeling out which shows are going to end up great and which are just going to end up fine.
Week 5 of the season was the week where some shows soared (a few of them for the first time) and other crashed hard. I’d kind of like to start off this post with the fun stuff, so let’s take a look at the thing that soared, starting with Rakugo Shinju—duh.
Last Friday evening, I was sitting at my computer, wondering if I really wanted to start the latest episode of Rakugo Shinju. I wasn’t particularly feeling in the mood for it, but I gave myself a strong mental push and hit the play button. And man, I was sure glad I did. Just as it always does, Rakugo Shinju swept me up and swept me away into its enchanting world of quiet pain, delicate intimacy, and grandiose performance. Week after week, even though I know better, Rakugo Shinju casts an unexpected spell on me. It’s amazing. This week, with the somewhat awkward, somewhat touching relationship between Kikuhiko and Miyokichi. While it’s clear that Kikuhiko’s investment in Miyokichi is tenuous at best, it’s still a relationship littered with intensity and closeness. And the very awkwardness that makes it uncomfortable to watch at times also makes it fascinating to see. The tragedy keeps creeping up on us—it’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming.
Oh, and by the way, Rakugo Shinju continues to storm away from everything else on my watchlist for the position of my pick for “best” show of the season. The scary (and wonderful!) thing is that I don’t see it ever letting up. There are shows that are good, but still feel like they could fall apart. If Rakugo Shinju were to fall apart (I doubt it), it would be the most stunning thing I’ve seen in anime in a long time.
Among the other soaring shows this week was an unexpected (considering its recent track record) new entry—Haikyuu!!, which at long last managed to recapture the magic of its first season. I was so happy I even wrote an entire column for Crunchyroll on it! So if you want my full thoughts on this week’s Haikyuu!!, head on over that way.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash was the other surprise triumph of the week. This was the episode on grief that I wanted from Garo back when it killed off Lara in the middle of the second cour and never actually got. This was slow, agonizing, frustrating, and emotional. It was true. And to take the time to recognize that grief isn’t just something that affects people’s internal state, but also can damage their relationships with others because of the pain everyone is going through and the thoughtlessness that pain can cause to to act out of… that was entirely unexpected and entirely appreciated. I said at the end of last week’s Grimgar that it was going to have to nail this episode for me to consider Manato’s death a “success” for the show, and it rose to the challenge in a way I had never expected, leveraging all of its significant aesthetic and directorial muscle in the service of portraying the pain of its characters (Yume… ;-;) with sensitivity and honesty. Color me impressed and delighted.
Durarara!! had a strongish episode of its own, although the excellent visual direction of the last two episodes was absent. Fortunately, the direction wasn’t much missed thanks to the prominent action elements of the episode holding it together. The fact that we haven’t seen much from Mikado recently makes me a bit nervous, but it’s clear things are continuing to move and that the high school trio will still be prominent players. For now, that’s all I need.
Konosuba also had an up week, as my prediction that Darkness would work out better in smaller doses turned out to be spot on. With more of the focus returning to Aqua and Megumin (oh my gosh, the explosions on the castle gag was amazing), Konosuba seems to have found a more reliable balance. Where Konosuba goes in its fifth episode will probably set the tone for the rest of the show, though, so here’s hoping it continues on its merry, derpy way.
Also, Aqua’s still the best.
Elsewhere, Mahoutsukai Precure started up and got subbed, and I decided to make it the first Precure series I follow weekly. And what a good choice, because MahoPri was absolutely delightful from top to bottom. Heartcatch Precure is the only other show out of this massive franchise that I’ve seen, but that was enough for me to catch the familiar beats of the Precure formula and feel comfortable with them. The art design has the typical Precure feel and the character designs likewise, but it still also somehow feels fresh. Most importantly, though, is the presence of Yui Horie as Riko, one of the two leads. It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve heard Hocchan in leading role and I am hugely anticipating having an entire Precure series to listen to her lovely voice. Also, they have big and tiny witch hats. What’s not to love?
I’m kind of running out of steam by this point, but someone also specifically requested that I talk a little bit about why I’m still watching GATE—so I’ll start off with that. having been as vocal about my issues, frustrations, and outright anger at it as I’ve been. I think I’ve attempted to articulate my reasons before, but not fully succeeded. Let me try again here.
Although I realize it may seem like it, I’m really not hatewatching GATE. I tried hatewatching Heavy Object, and I’m sure you all remember how that turned out—I couldn’t take it. 5 episodes was all I could do. GATE‘s not the same as Heavy Object, though. It’s not a show I take apart or make fun of simply for the sake of doing so; rather, it’s a show I find genuinely fascinating as an emblem of a particular sort of hyper-masculine, sexually aggressive, thoughtful worldview. And it’s not even subtle about this; its metatext and subtext are always right there to see. It’s all so foreign and strange to me—like a sort of archaic, exotic dinosaur come back to life. Or something like that. I like Lelei, but if GATE wasn’t so fascinating academically (and I’ve started writing about all of this already), I think I would’ve dropped the show long ago.
Hopefully that all makes sense! See you all at next week’s rundown!
As I was watching this episode of Hyouka, a beautiful, ephemeral ending with all its implied beginnings, I couldn’t help but recall the lyrics to “Once Upon a Time” from the musical All American (my favorite version of the song, sung by Bobby Darin).
Once upon a time a girl with moonlight in her eyes // Put her hand in mine and said she loved me so // But that was once upon a time very long ago
Of course, there’s no explicit confession of love in Hyouka‘s finale. Instead, there are quiet moments of understanding, fascination, admiration, and affection that grow until they become sweeping and huge and romantic—but no less understated for it all. The mystical grows out of the mundane. But, to get there, one must take a step forward.
The Oreki Houtarou of Hyouka‘s premiere was such a person who would not such a step, so it’s striking to note how quickly he agrees to Chitanda’s request to hold an umbrella for her. On the surface, it’s a simple request, but it’s also notable in how “dramatically” (remember, this is also a mundanity, the mundanity of established relationship) it differs from the other things she’s asked Oreki to do for her. This is not a mystery. This is not something that only Oreki can do. But she asks him nonetheless, because she can and because they’re friends and because she wants to show him something more of herself. It’s a request from one friend to another, or maybe from one person to someone who’s a little more than a friend. [1]
And, again, Oreki agrees without hesitation. He doesn’t grumble, he doesn’t drag his feet, and he doesn’t snark. He just says, “Okay, I’ll do it.” Who is this Oreki? He’s not the boy we knew at the start of this story—he’s different. He’s changed. Later on in the episode Oreki panics over his energy conservation policy being shattered, but it’s too late—he is already doing something for someone else. He has already violated his principles Whether he knows it or not, a rose-colored life is waiting for him, right?
But the rose-colored life (what this actually means—and it does mean something different than it meant at the beginning of Hyouka—we’ll talk about later) isn’t just something you can wander into unaware. As I said before, one must take a step towards it. And the path (as we saw last week with Satoshi) isn’t always going to be simple, easy, or comfortable. The awkwardness of moving forward is present once again, although for Oreki in this case it’s less a matter of overcoming his own internal blocks and more that he’s simply, glaringly, an outsider in this world—and the cinematography shows it. Whether he’s show diminished riding into the countryside (1), pushed to the side of the screen by the more important sign (2), entering into a slightly canted shot (3), looking on from far away (4 & 5), or coming into the shot from off screen (6), it’s clear Oreki doesn’t belong. And yet, he’s still here for a reason. He’s still connected through Chitanda.
At least, he thinks he is. As I see it, Oreki never fully apprehends the distance that exists alongside this connection until he’s called in to see Chitanda to solve the bridge problem. He’s physically divided from her by a sheet (a separation that looms visually bigger and bigger as he talks), but more than that, he’s still distanced from his close friend by the ceremony and formality of the way she speaks to him. There’s a level of artifice and stiffness and propriety that’s never intruded into the way they relate to each other before. Unlike in episode 20, where the pressures of Chitanda’s status controlled their circumstances while still bringing them together, here those same pressures are pushing them apart.
And yet—appropriately for an episode full of these kinds of back and forths—those same pressures also bring Oreki to Chitanda. There’s a profound symbology to Oreki taking on a ceremonial costume to accompany Chitanda through the procession; he truly does enter her world at this point through the medium of traditional garb. [2] And yet (again!), as Koizumi’s son says, “It doesn’t really suit you.” Oreki is still an outsider. It’s not simply an issue of physical appearance, but a pointed comment on his fundamental incompatibility with this world. The realm of tradition and status isn’t one he can enter and leave on a whim—it demands commitment and stability. It requires making a bond with a specific place, with a specific people. ZeroReq011’s essay, “Hyouka: A Dying Land” elaborates beautifully on the nuances of what this really means vis-a-vis Chitanda’s character specifically.
And yet (once more), Oreki is given a chance to enter—not in a superficial, mundane way, but in a mystical way that exposes via Chitanda all the beauties that could be his. Oreki is dressed, prepared to walk with her, and then she exits the building and everything changes. The ghosted animation used in episode 20 returns, but things aren’t quite the same. In fact, the episode goes so far as to directly parallel Chitanda’s entrance this episode with her entrance in episode 20 by focusing on the same accessories (hands and hair), contrasting Chitanda “showing off” against Chitanda as the Empress. But this are different now, the soft tones of episode 20 replaced with the harsh, over-saturated colors of performance and the gentle shot framing substituting out for powerful, steady compositions. It’s no less mystical or enchanting, but it’s clear that this Chitanda displays an external power that episode 20’s Chitanda did not.
Where Chitanda is bathed in bright colors, Oreki stands awash in near-monochrome, awed. How pale and unsuited he seems in the presence of this girl. And when she casts her eyes upon him, they are controlled and commanding rather than large and engaging. He must not look away. He must follow.
Oreki is conscious of his helplessness before Chitanda, before this Other. His breathless thoughts tumble out, sounding like fear and like wonder and like love. It is not a rose-colored life that stands before him here, because reds dominate, breaking into frame after frame—the minions, the umbrella he carries, Chitanda’s costume.
It is as if the soft excitement of the rose-colored life has been swept away by the intensity and heat of this moment. Not pink, but red, but not but, instead and. And then they come upon the tree and red blends with cherry blossoms. Blues rush away like water, resistance melts into the river, and Oreki can’t see anything but her and it’s fear, it’s enchantment. It’s the Other. It’s liking and distraction and engagement. It’s everything all at once and it build, and builds, and builds, sweeping under the tree into a life of literal rose-color and curiosity and escaping is impossible, the calm blue of the sky hidden from view and what can you do what can you do but watch listen see experience be until it overwhelms you and takes you away from everything you once knew and why weren’t you here before now what have you been missing you have to know you have to see you have to have until forever and
You’re called back to the world of mundane brown. To reality, with the mystical colors fading into the background. I cannot say more than that. This is something that cannot be broken apart into single shots because it is all one and the same thing. The same long moment.
I do like that it’s Satoshi and Mayaka together that represent this calling back to reality. After all, the two of them have been dealing with the dull mundanities of life as best they can, neither of them being as inclined towards the mystical (whether by tradition or by mystery) as Oreki and Chitanda. They represent the real world, and it’s not so bad. In the real world you can speak candidly and offer sincere gratitude without ambiguity. And yet, the lines of definition between the mundane and the mystical aren’t really so clear. As Oreki runs into Irisu after the procession, she offers what’s effectively an apology for the film arc, chalking it up to “having a job to do”—that is, “responsibility”—a sentiment informing behavior that Chitanda later echoes.
But don’t forget that it’s Chitanda’s responsibility (her commitment that distances her from Oreki) that pulled Oreki in to the experience of the procession.
Here Oreki finds the answer to his question during the parade, and we’re reminded by familiar shots of Oreki and Chitanda together of the casual closeness that’s developed between them. This is their “real world” friendship, in one sense of the real world. But perhaps, one might reflect, this idyllic playfulness is just as mystical and unreal as the parade. And yet, as I said before, perhaps we ought not to make these divisions so eagerly.
Hyouka‘s final scene seems to support that.
It’s a beautiful scene, shot through with contradictions just as the entire episode has been. Mundane and mystical, past and future mingle together. Before Oreki and Chitanda lies the brightness of the future; behind them, the dimness of the past. Chitanda is an emblem of fantasy for Oreki (cascading and wonderful rose), but she’s also the close shot reality of stasis. She announces her intentions, and Oreki has a chance to choose. Just as with Mayaka and Satoshi, everything has been laid bare: Oreki plays out one answer in his mind, but ultimately suspends the decision. He takes neither the rose-colored life with Chitanda or the rose-colored life of the future.
But it’s alright. Before him, before Chitanda stretch the rest of their lives. Together or apart, they can walk forward on that path. The poignancy is the sense of loss that accompanies either decision, but you can only live one life—the life you choose. One possibility gives way to another, just as the petal sweeps by one version of Chitanda to reveal another. All futures are open until you make a decision and Oreki is peering out from the precise, experiencing it all at once (half dark, half light). He knows the fear of decision, can feel the sweetness, taste the bitterness, see the glow, live in the dark. The moment, which passes by so quickly, can be said to last forever.
So, what is a “rose-colored” life? Smile, for it is merely life itself.
[1] Also note that Chitanda asks the question in two different ways: 1) “…would you hold the umbrella for me?” and 2) “Would you be able to help us out?” One is a personal request, and one is a request on behalf of something larger than herself. All of this is tied up in who Chitanda is and what she wants to show to Oreki. Chitanda is not just Chitanda—she is also her family, the town, the land… and her responsibilities to each of those.
[2] Only dressed this way can Oreki transcend his normal reality and accompany Chitanda as she currently is. In religions throughout the world, the pattern donning of a certain costume for religious ceremonies repeats over and over again. Think of the robes of Catholic priests, the use of body paint in Aboriginal tribes, the garments of Buddhist monks, etc. Costume is a way humanity compartmentalizes itself away from normal life (the mundane) and into the realm of the divine (the mystical). It sets aside a time as “different.” And this is what Oreki experiences.
So, as you faithful blog readers know, I’m not adverse to enjoying a good old fashioned best girl war every now and then. Well, the time has come—in this week’s Aniwords I dive deep into my anime fan past to talk about the series that started all my best girling, Nisekoi. It was a fun piece to write, but more importantly to me, I finally got to articulate some thoughts about the idea of what a ‘best girl’ means to me that I’ve been stirring around in my head for a long time. Hope you guys enjoy!
I just want you all to know that, while I do really like the current season, I’d give it all away to have Macross Delta airing right now. Well, except maybe Konosuba.
As I noted in my APR ballot for the week, most of the best episodes of the past week involved suffering—explicit or implied or inbound—in some capacity, which again provides me with a chance to remind people that despite my love of cute and fluffy things, my all-time favorite anime’s premise is founded on a huge tragedy. Of course, while I won’t say this is all coincidental, I will note the reason all this suffering has been compelling to me is that it’s in the service of deeper human elements. Suffering on its own, for its own sake, is just gratuitous—but suffering that reveals something about the human condition or prompts us to care more about things beyond ourselves…that’s the kind of thing I was talking about in my Hanekawa piece from a week or so back. That’s something worthwhile.
The standouts in the suffering department with Rakugo Shinju and Konosuba, and as I usually open these posts talking about Rakugo, I’ll continue that trend. Episode six of this (still sublimely excellent) show may seem like a weird one to count in the suffering tally thanks to Kikuhiko’s triumph of self as performer, but Rakugo—like life—is never purely joys or sadness. Kikuhiko can find himself as a performer, but he’s still lost as a person to a great extent and the impending tragedy of his soon-to-dissolve relationships is certainly not going to do him any favors in that department. Or maybe they fill, since they seem to be the formative elements of the Yakumo we saw in the show’s opening episodes.
Life is equal parts tragic and triumphant—that Rakugo recognizes this would make it special on its own, but combine that with the show’s amazing execution (seriously, how is the cinematography so perfect each and every week?) and we’re halfway through a bona fide masterpiece, my friends.
Konosuba, on the other hand, is probably not a masterpiece—at least by my definition of the word—but I do love it a whole lot. This week’s focus on Aqua, who is hands down my favorite character of the season bar none, was simultaneously exciting and excruciating for me. I’ve probably got an entire post in me about why I resonate so much with Aqua, but I honestly think there was something in this post for every millennial out there who is dealing with the harsh realities of the world. Just think about the structure of this episode: Aqua finds what’s essentially a “dream job” for her, and then finds out that the real world experience of that dream isn’t as glorious as she expected. In fact, she finds out that the real world is actually quite scary, scary enough that she’d rather be locked up in a literal cage than go out and face it again.
Heck, that’s not even a millennial thing—that’s just what it’s like being out there in the real world. And throw in Kazuma’s musings about money and purpose in life…Konosuba is a scary show, guys.
Of course, I don’t think I’d enjoy any of this as much if it didn’t end with Aqua bouncing back from her trial like a champ. In that recovery is probably one of the fundamental elements of why I find Aqua so wondrous and relatable, but like I said, that could probably be an entire post on its own. While I still find Megumin very funny, Kazuma servicable (sakuga creepy fingers O.O), and Darkness less of a drag than expected, it’s still Aqua that makes the show tick for me. Konosuba without Aqua wouldn’t be a show I love the way I do.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash was also included in the suffering tally, although my vote for it was dedicated to episode 5—and episode 6 was somewhat different in nature, although still very excellent. Of utmost priority is the fact that the OP got upgraded and now the marbles look even prettier, but the show proper continues to be extremely good in many different ways. Guy over at Geekorner wrote an interesting piece this week on Grimgar‘s direction, which actually expresses some of the things I both like and dislike about Grimgar. There’s a gentleness to the show that’s often compromised by its otaku-pandering aspects, which is unfortunate. And, as Guy says, the direction does feel oddly placed (a sentiment I expressed back when I watched the first episode in my rant about being confused by the show). Yume still best, though, and she got some chances to show it this week in her efforts to reach out to Mary.
Akagami no Shirayuki-hime is not the show I’d expect to be on a list of shows with “suffering,” but the latest arc has shown that Ando has a few more tricks in his bag for this show than we may have expected originally. Again, that vote was for a week ago’s episode—and yesterday’s episode was something different: something more like the Shirayuki-hime we’re used to seeing. The show’s base strength has always been its depiction of relationships between people who trust each other, and we got to see a lot of that this week between Zen and his attendants, as well as (from a distance) Shirayuki and Zen. Also gratifying was seeing Shirayuki return periodically to her normal, confident, and compassionate self, even in the midst of her trying situation. To be honest, I am sort of feeling that her characterization hasn’t been entirely consistent as of late, but I’m not thinking about it too hard right yet.
Now we switch over to the “shows with characters I compulsively screencap” category to visit Mahoutsukai Precure‘s lovely second episode and Phantom World‘s surprisingly good sixth episode (the first episode since the premiere that I’ve watch in full). MahoPri isn’t really doing anything remarkable, but the Precure formula is a solid, well-polished one, and the show is running through the tracks extremely well right now. Yui Horie is a complete Angel as Riko and the overall mood of the show seems slightly more whimsical than I’ve been lead to expect from this franchise.
Phantom World also hit a bunch of whimsical notes this week courtesy of episode director Naoko Yamada (oft referred to as “the genius director behind Sound! Euphonium“), who I’m glad got a chance to work on Phantom World‘s best material yet. Guppy still beats out Kurumi in terms of overall screencapability, but Kurumi is, truthfully, very cute and not so bad so watch as I’d expected. However, I also feel we’ve just seen Phantom World peak, and with Riko and MahoPri here I’m not really feeling the need to keep up with Phantom World anymore, even for Guppy’s sake. So it goes.
And with that, I’ve pretty much covered everything that really stuck out to me. Haikyuu!! S2 was back to its lame, meandering, focusless ways this week; Durarara!! x2‘s likewise mired back in not really doing anything significant (Mikado got a gun, okay, will he use it, probably, I guess, unless Kida stops him); and Dimension W is something I’m really only watching because I like Mira both as a cute and as a character when the show’s not treating her like crap and because the art design continues to impress despite Kyouma and the story being nonsense. Oh, yeah, and ERASED isn’t out of my doghouse yet—I cannot tolerate the way the show treats Airi. I can’t. It makes me mad, perhaps specifically because it ought to be so much better than this.
GATE seems like it might be headed interesting places, by the way, if only because Lelei seems like she’ll be taking a bigger role. And holy moley, she looks so great in her academic robes!
And I’d like to finish up this week by giving a shoutout to RWBY, which I’ve been keeping up with and not talking about. But the show does deserve to be mentioned here, because Volume 3, which finished up on Sunday, has been a tremendous improvement in basically all facets from the first two seasons. The attempts at comedy are still terribly unfunny, but in terms of overall writing, scripting, tension building, and even cinematography, this season was an obvious and significant step up from anything RoosterTeeth have managed before. I’m kind of intrigued by how big the story is getting at this point, but I have a lot more faith that they’ll be able to actually capitalize on things in a meaningful way than I’ve ever had across the show’s run. Keep up the good work, guys—I want to see you succeed and make something really good.
Hello, dear friends and readers! Right now is an exciting and fun time for me to be writing here at Mage in a Barrel. As you all should know by now, the blog succeeded in reaching (and surpassing!) the goal of upgrading to WordPress premium and I recently closed out one of the biggest projects I’ve ever attempted on here with my final episodic post for Hyouka going up last Sunday. As always, I’m hugely grateful for your readership and support—you guys make it a lot of fun to keep this project running.
(If you want to get to the part of this where you tell me to do things, scroll to the bottom of the post.)
Mage in a Barrel hit two years old earlier this month (February 10th is the official date I consider the site in its current form to have come into existence, even though there are posts that date back to earlier than that), which means I’ve escaped the dreaded two-year anniversary death as observed by Scamp over at The Cart Driver (although I’d argue aniblogging culture is in a much different place now that it was when he made that post back in 2010). In that time, this project I first started to keep myself from dying of boredom while studying abroad with a mere two hours of class each day and no homework has catalogued 434 posts (at least 400 of them containing what I’d consider to be “proper content”), nearly hit 4000 cumulative comments, eclipsed 200,000 unique visitors, and (by the time this post has published) will have surpassed half a million individual page views.
I don’t bring up all these numbers to brag—I still consider myself a relatively small fish in the aniblogging (and overall online anime fandom) pond—only to note that Mage in a Barrel has turned into something I really didn’t expect it to turn into. Despite a handful of short breaks, I’ve been pretty consistent about posting—and this over some major life transitions like living alone for the first time, graduating from college, and learning how to be an adult. This site has been something of a stabilizing factor for me; I honestly cannot imagine how awful my transition from college to a full-time job would have been for me had I not had this site around to give me a never-ending cycle of short term goals for self-improvement and creativity.
All this is really to say that Mage in a Barrel has wound up being pretty important to me, and to say I’m not proud of the work I’ve done here would be a lie. I am proud. I think I’ve written some good things, and the feedback I get from people has let me know I’m appreciated and that my work has meaning for people beyond myself. That’s an incredibly precious thing for me to be able to have.
However! I’d also like to note that Mage in a Barrel would not exist as it is now without me continually trying to reinvent what I do here and to stretch my boundaries. That’s both so I don’t get bored and so I can continue to offer you, my readers, interesting stuff to read that isn’t just rehashes of the same things I’ve always said. My Hyouka project (which essentially ran for half a year) was really, at its core, a concentrated effort to do exactly that—and on that front I feel it succeeded marvelously (at least from my perspective). I’m also finding that my urges to rewatch things I love but haven’t seen in a while (see my recent Nekomonogatari: Shiro post) are helping me to pull out thoughts and feelings I had, but wasn’t able to articulate at the time. And discovering older and different kinds of show, like Macross, has continued to expand my personal taste and give me different things to write about.
To this point in Mage in a Barrel‘s existence, these kinds of reinventions have mostly come from my own direction, but I’ve recently come to believe that limiting myself solely to what I’m thinking is silly and unneeded. There are so many other perspectives and thoughts out there—and some of them show up in my comments on a weekly basis. In other words, I’m saying I’d like to hear back from you guys—you people who read this blog on a regular (or even infrequent!) basis—what kinds of writing would you like to see from me in the future?
To let you know what I’m thinking on my end, here’s kind of my vision for Mage in a Barrel right now. I want to start up a new episodic series (more on that below), but I’m going to switch its publishing schedule to Thursday/Friday instead of Saturday/Sunday. The reason: episodic write-ups are easier to focus on in the middle of my work week because they are so pointed towards a specific twenty-odd minutes of content. This will leave my weekends open for more conceptual, editorial kinds of writing—for the times when I’m less harried to finish writing stuff in the short time before bed and more able to let my ideas breathe (or just execute them!).
So, what do I want to hear from you guys? A couple of things:
Fair warning, of course—nothing’s guaranteed since I still have to be personally interested in writing about a particular thing, but as I’ve said: I’m looking for new and interesting stuff to do (I’ve been spending a lot of time on a handful of blogs I like for pulling out ideas and philosophies on blogging, too).
Wow…what I intended to have just be a simple request for suggestions really turned out to be a full-sized post thing. I think I have a problem…
Where do we see ourselves as we watch anime?
A little over halfway through Hanayamata it suddenly dawned on me that Sally Tokiwa (referred to as Sally-chan-sensei in the English dub), who we’re told is 24 years old, was actually only a single year older than me. I don’t mean it took me 8 episodes to figure out the math; I mean that for the first time I actually apprehended the fact as something true, particularly in relation to myself.
I suppose you could say I was taken a bit off guard.
Why the surprise? Well, I think the first-level answer is pretty easy—Hanayamata‘s basic viewpoint characters are the girls of the yosakoi club, a quintet of five middle-school girls (although differentiating them from high-school girls in other animation is basically impossible). Naru and her friends are the characters we follow throughout the story, the ones whose emotional arcs we’re lead over, and the characters to whom the ultimate triumph of the entire show belongs. Sally, as wonderful a character as she is (when she’s not being ridden down by obnoxious anime tropes), is a bit player, a sidekick, a facilitator of all these events. In short, she’s neither the character the show wants or expects the audience to see as a point of relation.
That part was not a surprise.
Anime, as well all know, has an heavy bias towards high-school aged and earlier characters as its main characters. The lack of about and featuring adults has been long lamented (and even more so recently). Some shows put adult characters in fairly important side character roles, as in Hanayamata, but others have more or less entirely dispensed with them altogether. I recently watched the Love Live movie, in which the main cast of nine high school girls take a trip from Japan to New York without apparent supervision and then put together a gigantic national festival sans any adult assistance whatsoever. It’s incredible to the point of being unbelievable, but it’s perhaps representative of this particular brand of anime’s feelings about adults generally—they’re only necessary, really, insofar as they add a necessary element of unavoidable realism, but can be done away with entirely if a show like Love Live (which exists in its own kind of superreality anyways) so chooses.
That’s all a bit of a detour away from the main point here, but I think the fact that adult characters can be made entirely auxiliary in these anime focusing on casts of teen girls loops back around towards informing why my sudden realization about Sally-chan-sensei was so surprising. Anime is very good (and very consistent) at framing adults as partitioned, even distant authority figures and teens as the relatable characters. There’s a narrative force that pegs adults into this particular role, forcing a kind of distance between the viewer and them. As I said before, Hanayamata neither wants or expects us to see Sally as a point of identification.
In my particular case, I think there’s another barrier in the way of me relating to Sally as another young adult in a first job (this is true! this is the commonality between me and her!)—and that’s the level of responsibility she carries as an authority figure and a semi-caretaker. At this point in my life, not being a parent or otherwise having responsiblity for anyone besides myself, the weights that Sally carries (at least that we’re allowed to see in Hanayamata) are very different from the ones I carry. While I can empathize with coming home from work and having a beer on the couch because I’m tired, bringing work home to help a kid learn is something entirely foreign to me.
But, even so, I really am much closer to being Sally than I am to being a middle school girl who wants to dance with her friends, and somehow the realization that Sally basically my age enforced a new sort of respect for her in my mind. And, perhaps more importantly, it reminded me that—as much as Hanayamata wants me to empathize with Hana and Naru and Yaya (who is the best, by the way) and Tami and Machi (and not that this is a bad thing!)—Sally is perhaps the character I should be looking to most, when she’s not be turned into a pervy “older” lady trope. The girls of the yosakoi club drive the story, but Sally’s still a valuable player simply because she’s there to provide the support they need. And that’s not such a bad thing, you know? Maybe it’s good for me to look at the character who is my age—a little older, a little more tired, and little busier without being cynical, mean, or grouchy. Maybe it’s good for me to remember that the Sallys of anime are the friends of my real world, not the Hanas.
After all, look! She gets to sleep on the bench with little sleep bubbles! That’s good.
Durarara!! x2 has…not been the best the franchise has ever been, that’s for sure. With a seemingly unending stream of new characters flooding into Ikebukuro over the last two and a half seasons and a plot that’s become tangled beyond anyone’s ability to follow, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking the show had gone entirely bonkers—and not in the good way. And so, believe me when I was it was somewhat to my surprise that I discovered that I had been noticing those elusive things called “themes” cropping up in the show.
What follows is the account of my discoveries. Here’s the link~
In which I am laid low before the forces of “real life…”
Let me just start off by letting you all know this week of work is kicking my butt, so today’s post is going to be a little shorter than you or I are accustomed to. As such, I’ll mainly just be focusing on the anime that are kind of the loves of my anime life right now (you’ll have to guess what I’m thinking about everything else, or update me on them yourself).
I’m a week behind on Rakugo Shinju yet again, so my top vote for this week’s Anime Power Rankings went to (surprise!) Konosuba‘s episode 6. Aqua and co. continue to be hilariously fun to watch, but more importantly to me were Aqua’s myriad successes (even if there were some consequences) against the Dullahan and his crew of undead. I mean, sure, she spent a lot of the episode running around for her life, but that just made her moments of glory all the greater. I’m now sort of at the point where Aqua’s successes feel like a personal triumph for me and her downs just make me empathize with her more, so am I too far gone? Yes, I probably am. Don’t bring me back.
Megumin’s still a blast, too (can’t believe it took me 7 weeks to think up that pun) and Darkness is growing on me more than I expected she would. There’s also Kazuma, who continues to be Not Bad—but when a superstar like Aqua is around, we don’t really need to think about the parts of the show that are good, but not great.
Speaking of things that have been good, but not great recently, Akagami no Shirayuki-hime returned with a vengeance Monday with a swashbuckling episode that climaxed in the triumphantly warm scene where Shirayuki and Zen hug at the top of the stairs. For me, that made everything I liked less about this arc worth it—and it also prompted some passionate thoughts on the show from me on Twitter, which I’ll share here:
If there’s one reason above all the others that I love Zen and Shirayuki’s relationship, it’s that their romance is fundamentally built on a close and trusting friendship. This is simply not a path we see relationships take in anime (Toradora!‘s another good example), and frankly I value that not solely because of its rarity, but also because of its importance for people to see. What Shirayuki-hime lays out is the way to build a relationship that will actually last. There’s passion to it, sure, but at its core it’s steady, warm, genuine, and trusting. And maybe it doesn’t make for a “compelling” or “interesting” story. Who cares?? Go elsewhere if you need your intense romantic kicks. And leave me to watch and love these friends-become-lovers who haven’t lost their friendship.
So, yeah, take that Obi x Shirayuki shippers—you’re all wrong!
MahoPri hasn’t been subbed yet (which is a shame and I miss it a lot), so I guess the next thing on the list is Grimgar, which had another impressive episode of meaningful conversations. Ranta has been the butt of most people’s annoyance, but I actually thought he made a number of really important points—and, perhaps even more impressively for Grimgar as a show—lined up to take a critical position in the show’s musings on empathy and understanding other people. Ranta’s an ass, but he’s still a member of the team and still a human being with thoughts, feelings, and needs. Just because he’s a brat doesn’t disqualify him from being treated with some level of dignity and respect, and I really appreciate that Grimgar extended that grace to him rather than just giving it to Mary and her tragic backstory. That’s an important, neat thing. Just another anime doing something anime don’t usually do.
Grimgar isn’t just an adventure story, and it’s likewise not just a MMO-inspired slice-of-life. It’s a contemplative take on a certain range of humanity, and I’ve started to think there’s something particularly compelling about the socio-economic class issues that underline the life and death struggle of just being alive. Maybe I’ll come back to that thought at a later point.
Everything else I’d feel compelled to talk about this week is really just highlighting small pieces out of otherwise decent, but non-notable episodes, which reminds me that I wanted to plug something not anime, but related to anime to you guys. I recently added the blog Wave Motion Cannon to my blogroll, and on Sunday tamerlane (one of the blog’s writing team) posted a really fascinating article on sakuga, anime fandom, and how we talk about anime called “At Least It’s an Ethos.” I highly encourage you guys to check it out, and there are a number of points in there that I find very salient to my own writing here. In the post, tamerlane talks a bit about the idea of excerpting small pieces of things from a larger whole an appreciating them for their own sake. I also left a large comment in the comment section, if you’d like to see some of my thoughts on the matter.
As for those other highlights for me, I’ll just bullet point them for convenience’s sake:
A full review of Hanayamata is coming soon, and apologies for my delayed responses to comments! But look! I made a real post in a half-hour! Cool! See you guys next week~
