Disagreeing With Reviews: Except, Not Really…
The destruction of Tokyo Tower was one of the more rousing events in this anime.
It’s the busy review writing period, which is the excuse I’ll offer for the lack of updates on this blog. For those who follow the main site, you’ll probably have noticed a steady stream of reviews covering anime from the recently finished Fall season, which I wrote earlier was one of the better seasons on recent record. Yet, going from the reviews we’ve written so far, none of the titles from this season have been rated better than “good”. I discussed four of the more positive prospects in that post, Aoi Hana, Bakemonogatari, Spice and Wolf II and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, the last of which I’ll be going into more detail on in this post, but (excluding the ongoing Bakemonogatari) none of their respective reviewers thought any of these titles were “great”. I can’t say much for Aoi Hana, since I’m still a couple of episodes from completing it, while I’ve already said pretty much all that I want to on Spice and Wolf II. We’ve decided to wait for the release of the final three episodes of Bakemonogatari, but I strongly suspect we’ll have a review for that series very quickly after those three eps come out. And, just to give you a sneak peak of what to expect from the main site in the near future, zzeroparticle is already working on a review for Taishou Yakyuu Musume, while I’ll be sinking my teeth into Valkyria Chronicles. (This post has major spoilers for Tokyo Magnitude 8.0).
The main motivation for this post is that Ascaloth wanted some feedback on his Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 review, and I figured I might take the opportunity to air some “final thoughts” on the show myself. Generally when I talk about other people’s reviews on this blog, it’s to point out places where I disagree (generally the rating), but in this case it’s actually kinda hard to find points of contention. So I’ll take a couple of steps back and say why I agree with his “Above Average” rating.
There are a lot of people, myself included, who got pretty excited about the direction Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 started in. The first episode divided people, some saying it was boring, disinterested by Mirai’s petty childishness, while others saw it as an honest and open portrayal of real family dynamics. It, along with the apparent respect of realism, made for something that seemed worth getting excited about. At the early stages it felt like the series was saying “you won’t have to suspend your disbelief too far. Buy the premise of Tokyo being hit by a cataclysmic earthquake, buy the fact that this story is set in the near future where robot technology is pretty advanced… and you won’t have to buy anything else, because the rest of it will be instantly believable.” Anime is generally pretty out-there… a story which requires only a small amount of suspension of disbelief is a refreshing rarity.
Unfortunately this changes after about episode 7, which Ascaloth pointed out in his review. Ascaloth was very general with how he dealt with the second half of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, and it’s clear he was trying to tiptoe around spoilers, a consequence of the fact that our (unofficial) policy on spoilers in reviews is that they should be avoided where possible, since we’re writing for people who haven’t seen the title as much (maybe moreso) than for people who have. Fortunately, I don’t have this obligation, so I can be a bit more specific with what I thought went wrong. For me, the problem I had with Yuuki’s death wasn’t that he died. I was completely cool with that, and, from a storytelling point of view, it’s a really good thing to happen in a story about a disaster that’s striving for realism. It’s unexpected and it shows that no one is completely safe, so it keeps the audience on their toes. The major problem I had with Yuuki’s death was Mirai going delusional, and the number of contrivances required to then sustain that delusion. No one stopped Mirai to ask her about her brother, which is difficult to believe given all the doctors, nurses, volunteers and bureaucrats one generally encounters when their next of kin dies at a hospital during a disaster. Even more difficult to believe is that no one stopped her to ask her why she’s talking to an invisible person. This reached ridiculous proportions in the penultimate episode, where Mirai was playing an extended game of “hide the Yuuki” with his unwitting classmate. But the thing that really got to me was the fact that Mari stood by and did nothing. It seemed really out of character that she didn’t raise the point when Mirai took a dismissively upbeat attitude following Yuuki’s death.
Even without considering the fact that Mirai’s delusion runs counter to what the story seemed to be trying to do with her character and say about her on a thematic level, it’s really difficult to accept all of these contrivances. Yes, each one, individually, probably has a small but not-insignificant probability of occurring in a realistic setting. But all of them? It’s just simple probability: the chance of two independent events both happening is the multiple of their individual probabilities, and the multiple of two small numbers less than one is an even smaller number. One gets to a point where the probability of all of these events happening is so small that it beggars belief. And yet, Mirai’s delusion could only be sustained if they all happened. It smacks of the intervention of a writer. Even given Mirai’s delusion, one would expect in a realistic situation that someone would have come along well before the point it got to, picked up on the fact that something wasn’t right, and tried to get her some help. The most likely candidate for this was Mari, who showed previously to this point that she was willing to stall her journey back to her family (her first, long-term priority) to help Mirai and Yuuki in the short term. It just seemed to go counter to Mari’s character that she’d stay quiet when it should have been clear to her that Mirai wasn’t, at the very least, completely together.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t completely take away from the good things that Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 did in the first half. It’s relatively idyllic portrayal of people coping with disaster has copped a bit of flack, but I actually regard it as one of its most realistic aspects. ghostlightning, from We Remember Love, recently compared the fictional portrayal of people coping with disaster in Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 with the media portrayal of what happened in New Orleans, LA when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 and his own first-hand experience of the ultra-recent mega-floods of Manila in the Philippines (and obviously our thoughts are with him, his family, and all affected). Humanity has been struck with natural disasters constantly, and yet the fabric of society refuses to break down in the face of these disasters, no matter how tough they are, and people usually cope through them by working together. Maybe there’s something to say about the sensationalist portrayal of disasters, particularly in Western fiction.
The mention of Katrina in ghostlightning‘s post reminded me of a disaster film I saw recently called Blindness, which was about a contagious form of blindness and had elements that resembled the aftermath of Katrina. What made this film different was its morbid bleakness and its intense misanthropic streak. The attempts to halt the spread of blindness are both callous and futile, but the power struggles that eventuate between the quarantined people are incredibly disturbing, especially in one instance where a group that hijack the food supply use it to force women into prostitution. The fabric of society in this film breaks down very quickly, but, as sickened as I was, I wondered whether the people in real life would be so quick to give up their principles and dignity, and so quick to lay down their arms in the face of such overwhelming injustice. Maybe I’m too optimistic, but, as horrible as humanity can be at times, I just couldn’t believe that society would give way to hedonistic individualism with so little force. Society can be moved to do terrible things, but society rarely ever completely breaks down, and disasters can often bring out the best in people… one example being the outpouring of generosity from Australians after the Victorian bushfires earlier this year. There will probably always be bad apples, but the anecdotal evidence kinda suggests that the majority of people respond selflessly and sympathetically when disaster strikes. Society is a bit like insurance against disasters, and people aren’t going to simply abandon it when things get tough, given the potential benefits that could come by sticking with it in a time of need.
I was also planning on disagreeing with AC‘s RideBack review until he changed the rating at the last minute. RideBack was another anime that I thought started strongly, but didn’t sustain itself until the end. AC wrote that he thought it needed another episode… I thought it needed another twelve. The scope of its premise was huge, and it just didn’t fit comfortably into such a short run, leaving us rather short on detail or time to reflect. I also wasn’t big on the ending… Rin’s actions in the final episode seemed to forgo logic in favour of a very theatrical sequence. I mean, it was interesting in the way it mixed elegance and action, but I didn’t see the point (or logic) of it in the context of the plot. AC did, however, make a really good point about the fact that almost all of the side-characters were pretty much devices for the plot, which is something I probably would have passed over had I reviewed it myself. Ultimately I can’t say I disagree with this, or most of his other points, particularly regarding the glorious animation and the strangely hypnotic action sequences. Least of all, I won’t disagree with his rating.
Thanks for the message of concern. Much appreciated.
As for the question on how context or situation can break down one’s morals or principles, the research exists. Philip Zimbardo did much of the research and his book The Lucifer Effect is a good read on the subject.
The Milgram experiment is a good place to start, but you may want to check this out. One wonders how people stay ‘good’ in the face of adversity.
My theory, contexts for evil are powerful when humans are de-inviduated and stripped of their human-ness in the minds of people. It then becomes sort of ‘okay’ to be cruel to them. In the case of our recent Typhoon and flooding disaster, other people appear more human than they’ve ever appeared in the minds of everyone. This inspires mutual cooperation …among human beings.
It’s such a shame you didn’t finish Aoi Hana. It would have been interesting to see how/whether you dis/agree with Akira. I wish you talked more about the other aspects of TM 8.0 that made it good.
We need more blog entries with dissenting opinions.
I’ve written a review on Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 some time ago for another website, and it’s somewhat similar to Ascaloth’s in terms of the gripes I have on the series.
Based on how people perceive TM8.0, this may be a case of “like-it-or-hate-it” where you either feel that TM8.0 is underwhelming or problematic with its delivery, or you feel that TM8.0 is wonderful with its emotions. I don’t like the twist of Mirai’s delusion because, apart from how Sorrow-kun puts it, it feels as though the twist is there only as a last-minute attempt to make up for lost opportunities for emotional delivery (yes, I feel that this series is emotionally underwhelming) and just for the shock factor.
Like I mentioned above, I find the emotional delivery to be disappointing for some reason. As the disclaimer puts it, the writers strive to instill a sense of realism into this fictional story but it turns out to the opposite to me. Maybe Sorrow-kun has put it in a very clear way but to me, I generally don’t feel the credible sense of fear, desperation or despair that such an immense catastrophe should invoke. Another reason why I find it underwhelming, is because despite all the crap Mother Nature throws at the lead trio from every corner, there’s this constant sense of “close calls” that dilutes the tension that these moments should be full of. Furthermore, TM8.0 fails to adequately explore the ugly side of humanity in light of a disaster because let’s face it, there are always two sides to a coin. We do see why some people are cold to each other but why do they behave that way is not discussed, and this was something I was really looking forward to.
Many would agree that the motif of this series is the human spirit, and perhaps not the natural disaster itself. That’s pretty fine but I’ve been hearing from other viewers that they credit this series simply because it’s a series based on the human spirit. To be honest, I don’t see why I should praise this series simply because of that; a motif can only do so much and a great series should explore the motif from different angles. Now and Then, Here and There – though not a disaster drama – is a wonderful example of how a series makes full use of its motif “the human spirit” because we get to see how blurry the line that separates what’s good or evil based on the circumstances, is.
As for my RideBack review, I feel that Madhouse has this tendency to strive for anime that are creative in concept and stylish in delivery, but in the process, renders their characters shallow and under-explored. RideBack and Kurozuka are examples of this and I have to say that the length of the series is the main cause of this. I just chose to say it lacks just one more episode probably because I didn’t feel like the series is bad enough to have its length doubled.
And on a side note, I’m currently on episode 4 of Aoi Hana and I have to say that I’m really impressed by what I’ve watched.
I believe that society doesn’t break down because we have grown a deep belief that the rules and customs of society tends to work to our advantage in the long run. So even if there is a massive natural disaster, we’ll attempt to return to our old model/perception of society to the best of our abilities. However, if you convince people that there is no “long run” (Armageddon as an extreme, or just convince them that death is imminent), then you’ll probably see the real moral fiber of people.
Since we’re on the topic, I suppose I’ll put a plug in for Infinite Ryvius. It is one of the best anime I’ve seen that deals with the topic of how societies act under duress.
@ghostlightning
The Milgram experiment is basically about human response to authority, so, while it does nicely demonstrate the amount (and, more importantly, type) of force required to make an individual abandon their own morals, I’m not sure I’d say it’s relevant in a disaster situation or in the case in the case of Blindness’ plot, where the authority structure isn’t strongly established, or is working on the side of “good”. Then again, if we equate authority with leadership, I guess it might explain why there was so much dissonance in the aftermath of Katrina, since the immediate government response was just absolutely atrocious. Maybe there’s something to say about the ease with which people naturally respond to authority, and the need for good leadership (ie, good government) in the face of disaster. (But I still rather think that Blindness constantly skirted that line between commentary and shock value).
@Tamashii
I totally intend to finish Aoi Hana, I’m just waiting for a certain subber. My patience is almost ended, though, so I’ll probably switch over soon. And I’m aware it’s on CR, but I’m kinda a bit wary about relying on CR too much at the moment for reasons I’m not going to get into here.
@AC
You see, I’m not sure I completely agree with you, I thought there were a few times where TM8.0 could have packed a really good emotional punch. But it kinda got obscured by the Mirai delusion stuff. But yeah, I do agree that the delusion itself was played for a shock, which was pretty empty, since the few people who weren’t spoiled by the internet speculation on it probably figured it out for themselves after a couple of eps of dragging it out anyway. And, I certainly agree that the constant “close calls” diluted the impact of the subsequent “close calls”. They also had this “bait-and-switch” going on which was used excessively: they story would pretend one of the characters was dead and they’d let the other characters have a big cry about it, only for that character to turn out to be alive. They did it when Yuuki got hit on the head after Tokyo Tower fell, they did it when he went to the hospital (except it turned out he really was dead), they did it when Mari arrived at the shelter where her family was and they wanted her to identify some bodies. But, yeah, I’m not so annoyed with the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of people coping with disasters as you are… we get enough stories featuring people becoming monsters when disaster strikes, and they usually go to the other extreme.
@Shadowmage
And yet, when you tell an individual that his death is imminent, he’ll still tend to exist within the bounds of society. So I’m not so sure. The common idea about rampant anarchy in the moments just before the end of the world is an interesting one, but I can’t see any reason to call it a certainty. I’d call it a “possibility” at best (which, I guess is more than I’d say about the idea that a sudden end to mankind would come with a warning). As for Infinite Ryvius, I know you’re a big fan. I’ve always been a bit guilty I never got around to this one, it’s held in such esteem by the people who’ve seen it. I’ll watch it after I finally watch LotGH.
When people are deprived of any sense of a long run, they tend to indulge during the time they have left. A well functioning society gives individuals a means to sublimate their desires to socially acceptable ways (or uses its power to throw them into a psychiatric ward). Most people are either well socialized enough to not act out or have friends/family that allows them to ultimately cope. In short, a well functioning society convinces people that despite the fact they are dying, conforming to its rules (being moral) will maximize happiness.
I suppose from this logic, you pretty much need some sort of massive paradigm shift like an 8.0 earthquake to even begin to change well socialized people (essentially be destroying people’s illusions of society). I’d even argue you’d need a shift plus a genuine perception that no one outside can/will help, or else you’ll have something Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 where everyone just follows instructions.