Behind The Nihon Review

I’ve been thinking about the phrase “I like mystery” and what it exactly means. Mystery tends to be one of the more highly regarded genres, particularly in anime with the likes of Monster and Higurashi, and the vast majority of not just anime but stories in general have some element of mystery in them, usually in the form of an unanswered question posed early on in the narrative that the audience expects will be answered before the end. I do like mystery, I certainly won’t deny that, but when you really think about it, it’s a rather masochistic thing. When we watch a mystery, we’re basically allowing ourselves to be teased by the writers, wanting to find out what they know in regards to the questions that they themselves have posed within the narration. We’re strung along, at their mercy, knowing full well that it is the writers that decide the time and place that the all important answers will be revealed, when we’re finally put out of our misery, and our curiosity is finally sated. But having the answers spoon fed to us is never as exciting and riveting as the sometimes torturous and frustrating experience of having question after confusing question piled upon us, embedded in red herrings and subtle foreshadowing. That’s what stops people from reading the final chapter of a mystery novel first; ultimately, it’s a lesser experience. So the journey is clearly just as important as the destination. But that certainly doesn’t devalue the destination. No one wants to go through all that teasing for an anticlimactic set of solutions. And this pretty much describes my biggest problem with so many mystery anime.

We can only hope this won’t be the case with Chaos;Head, and it’s just about impossible to call at this stage, after six episodes. You can sort of guess when a mystery will have a disappointing answer when the questions become so elaborate and convoluted that only a genius could come up with a set of solutions that answers all questions in a neat, elegant fashion that makes sense and it’s clear that the writing up until that stage hasn’t been the work of a genius. Fate/Stay Night is a title that immediately comes to mind as an anime where it was pretty clear about half way through that the finale wasn’t going to do the premise and initially mysterious atmosphere justice (it jumping the shark and leaving about a million loose ends hardly helped either). Chaos;Head is line ball, and it probably wouldn’t surprise me either way, which is why I’m not going to set my expectations too high. But considering the massive number of questions, if they do somehow manage to tie all this up, it could potentially be one of anime’s best mystery series.

There’s really about four concurrent mysteries in Chaos;Head that are almost certainly related in some fashion. The first involves the New Gen murders and who is behind them (and the real nature of “Shogun”). This is complicated by the second mystery involving Takumi’s delusions; he’s a witness to one of the New Gen events but even he’s not sure if what he’s witnessed wasn’t a delusion. In fact, this blurring between reality and delusion is the primary tool that serves to keep everything unknown and heighten the sense of suspense. The nature of all the girls and what their ability to wield the invisible Di-Swords is the next mystery (although I’d probably say it’s the weakest one so far). Takumi distrusts pretty much all the girls at this stage (although Rimi is slowly winning his confidence), and while this is largely because of his paranoia fueled by his delusions, there’s probably some wisdom to this distrust. And then there’s the nature of Shibuya in general, which is only just being hinted at now, with the New-Gen murders tending to take place in high GE factor locations. I get the feeling that whatever the answer to this mystery is, it’ll be the thing that connects everything together. We’re starting to get hints that the solution might be electronic in nature, that the universe might be a Matrix-esque virtual world that Takumi can somehow control. Or maybe I’m way off. There’s all sorts of possibilities at this stage, which is what makes it so absorbing to watch (and so fun to speculate about, for those that are into that sort of thing).

But the anime does have its weaknesses. Inconsistent animation aside, my big problem with this anime is that the girls are all so boring. The large female cast seemed to be there at the beginning as a subtle subversion of the eroge phenomenon (the fact that Takumi couldn’t believe the sudden interest all these women began taking in him since it too closely resembled fiction, wish-fulfillment fiction at that, fueled a lot of his paranoia and self-doubt early on), but I’ve really no idea what role they’ll play in the plot now, and there’s this constant fluctuating of importance between each of the girls. Some will disappear for several episodes at a time only to come up later at the centre of a vital plot point. Nonetheless, there’s been very little character development to the girls themselves, which does add to their enigmatic nature, but does little to make them all that sympathetic or appear to be more than plot devices. But, on the issue of character development, I love what they’re doing with Takumi. They’ve made him such a pathetic, almost loathsome creature that somehow still commands one’s pity, I think in large part because it’s difficult not to sympathize with the both seriousness and uniqueness of his situation. That uniqueness of his situation, the fact that he’s inadvertently in the middle of a highly bizarre set of circumstances where not even he knows how exactly he’s come to be in, makes him isolated… well, except for Seira-tan, and the banter they share makes for some of the shows most entertaining moments and also makes for a delicious insight into this mind.

This is an anime I’m watching particularly closely (although I am trying to avoid discussions about it for fear of spoilers). And, I gotta tell you, I love the campy ED song (although this post’s title might have already given that away). It’s great! Next time you hear it, pay particularly close attention to the Engrish lyrics. Love it.