It’s the busy review writing period, so most of the activity in the next couple of weeks will be on the front page. Just today we’ve published reviews of the recently finished Nodame Cantabile ~Paris Chapter~ and Detroit Metal City, which ended in October, and we’ve got reviews of Kannagi, Akane-Iro ni Somaru Saka, Rosario + Vampire Capu2 and Macross Plus, among others, coming very soon, as well as our traditional annual Year in Review article, where we look at the biggest and/or best anime of the year. After that, we’re likely to have reviews of Chaos;Head and Ga-rei-Zero further down the road. In the meantime, as an apology for lack of activity, here’s a high-res scan of a very sexy looking Kyou from the 2009 Kyoto Animation Clannad calender. You can get the rest of the series from here. Happy New Year, all.

This post is basically a reply to a response to a comment I made on a blog post on When Anime Past Meets Present. Kaoishin Sama (whose reputation precedes him) basically made a troll post that I fell for (as he put it) “hook, line and sinker”. We, I guess, share a lengthy history and my own response towards his writings seems to fluctuate, at times resembling a sense of indifferent bemusement to, more recently, a vexing disdain, which, ironically, is pretty much how it started out. Kaoishin Sama has a reputation as Sunrise’s rottweiler, and has always been a major player in the petty genre/studio wars that have plagued fandom, and seemingly reached their height during the airing of Code Geass R2, which is coincidentally about when his discourse was at its most intolerable. Everyone, according to Kaoishin Sama, seemed to be against him, and he continually maintained that the show had no major flaws, damn what anyone else has to say. Fine. I know what I’ve seen, and he knows what he’s seen. It’s one’s own right to hold onto their opinion. There were extremes on either side of the spectrum of reactions to Code Geass R2, he sat towards the pro- side, while I was more towards the middle. But when he began second guessing the opinions of those who disagreed with him, culminating in a post which strongly suggested that people who thought Code Geass R2 wasn’t well written were trolls (ironically, this post has now been password protected, so I can’t hotlink it), that’s pretty much the point where I decided he lost his credibility as an anime writer.

A case of “serious business”? Of course it is, everything on the internet is serious business. I’ve worked so hard to build a reputation as a serious anime commentator, someone who’s reasoned, credible, highly critical but, most importantly, fair. But, this is the internet, all we have to go on is our reputations and our opinions. Which is why I get particularly annoyed at the suggestion that my own opinions aren’t honest, that they’re somehow contrived in some fashion. It’s a dismissive attitude, an easy way to avoid acknowledging that people could possibly hold a different point of view on anime.

The genre/studio war nonsense has lingered in Kaoishin Sama’s discourse, even after Code Geass R2 has ended, although it has been a mainstay of his opinion since forever. His uninformed remarks about Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou is just one of many examples of one of his passive aggressive jibes against a perceived critical popularity of the slice-of-life genre and the supposed internet driven contempt for the genre(s) and studio to which he loyalty subscribes, as if they’re two sides of the same coin. But they’re not two sides of the same coin, and the idea just contributes to the divisions within anime fandom that are constantly growing (moe vs. gar, mecha vs. slice-of-life, your favourite anime vs. my favourite anime, etc, etc). Why do people need to continually need to judge an anime on superficial qualities without actually taking the time to bother watching it? Why can’t people actually take the time to watch something and form their opinions on what they see, not what they surmise from a summary on ANN?

It’s incongruous to me that Kaoishin Sama could possibly be thought of as a credible anime commentator when he, as he puts it himself, doesn’t

feel the need to watch or care about Slice of Life anime to feel informed or to develop a sense of “taste”.

It basically flies in the face of my philosophy towards credible critiquing of anime, (ie, you must at least watch it before you can claim to be informed about it), which makes me think there’s a distinct possibility that our respective approaches to watching and discussing anime are irreconcilable. I’ve spent hours watching anime, eyes on screen, mind on job, so I can put together a review that’s considered, an opinion that can be at least appreciated, even if it isn’t agreed with, a recommendation that’s pointed squarely at a target audience without compromising my own position. I watch a crapload of anime, moreso, I imagine, than he does, and from a much wider array of dispositions. I admit that my sense of taste and, consequently, my opinions, are guided by personal preferences which have developed over time, but they’re certainly not strictly defined by them. I’ve reviewed a number of titles from a number of different genres, and have tried to be forthright, but have always tried to ground my opinions in something much deeper than superficial preferences. I’ve made my disinclination for the shounen action genre well known, and the reasons for this is because of a tendency for titles in the genre to resort to established cliches and questionable storytelling, moreso, in my experience, than many other genres. But that certainly hasn’t stopped me from giving a shounen action series a positive review when I’ve been impressed (My-HiME, Claymore, Akagi). Mecha? Sure, why not, mecha can be great (Idolm@ster Xenoglossia, Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid) Shounen romance? This is a bit more challenging, but yeah, I’ve given a positive review to a kinda shounen romance before (School Rumble). But, the fact remains that the titles most likely to score positive reviews are the ones that don’t conform wholly to a single genre, but are a novel mix of multiple genres or something that really pushes the boundaries of its genre. The reason, to oversimplify, is that these title are less likely to offer tired cliches, and that they’re usually ambitious in one way or another. After that it comes down to things like execution, emotional impact and meaning. It could be something as simple as a coincidence, but in my experience the iyashikei genre has a better track record with these things than most other genres in anime. But it’s not like I go into iyashikei anime with a preconceived positive bias. Want to see my initial reaction to Natsume Yuujinchou? It’s in writing on the AnimeSuki Forums. It wasn’t enthusiasm at another slow-paced, theme-driven, episodic story, it was indifference!

Sorrow-K»
Ep 1

I think the Mokke comparison is more apt than the Mushishi one (haven’t read Tactics).

First ep didn’t really grab me all that much, but I can easily enough believe this could get more interesting later on. Brains Base was the obvious draw for me to this series, they’re last two series were outstanding. I’ll keep this series at arm’s length for now.

For the record, I consider Mushishi a masterpiece, but didn’t like Mokke. Like every single other anime I’ve seen, Natsume Yuujinchou had to earn my respect, it wasn’t instantly given out just because of any arbitrary superficial preferences I may have.

Now, at this point, having outlined my own philosophy towards critiquing and commenting on anime, I’m going to point out what I find so incongruous about Kaoishin Sama’s.

Anime is a hobby to me, I analyze and interpret it to an admittedly unnecessary degree, but I make no allusions as to it’s content being of equivalent social relevance compared to what you might find in a socially oriented documentary that confronts real issues affecting, and here’s the kicker, real people. So when your most realistic anime scenario is hardly realistic a person from my school of thought tends not to worry to much about the intellectual quality of a shows content.

This is a dangerous sentiment, because if you take it to its logical conclusion, the suggestion is that fiction can’t effectively analyze social issues, because it doesn’t involve real people. I certainly won’t argue that documentary is a very important medium in increasing awareness and analyzing social issues, but one can’t limit it to be the only one. While a well made documentary can be very effective in communicating ideas such as the dangers of unregulated corporate influence in our daily lives, or the facts about climate change, or the ongoing tragedy of poverty or the inadequate state of higher education, etc, there are a number of relevant social issues that may be analyzed just as well, possibly better, in fiction. Race is one such issue which has been examined extensively in fiction, and one of the best examples I can think of off the top of my head is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Films like Crash and American History X also use carefully controlled cinematography and an intimate examination of its characters to make a point about the issue which is resounding and powerful. War is another issue that is served just as well in fiction in general and film in specific, as it is in documentaries. There’s a established tradition of really outstanding films about Vietnam and World War II, that show, in gory detail, the travesty of war, and the list of such films that are dramatic and powerful is lengthy (Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, just to name a few). There are lots of other issues which are less social and more intimately human that don’t work as well in documentaries as they do in film and/or fiction: revenge, temptation, loneliness, just to name a few. Anime doesn’t have the same tradition of analyzing serious issues in a dramatic context, but its potential to do so isn’t muted because of that. Koi Kaze is one of the most obvious examples, dealing with a complex issue of incest in a mature and even-handed way that really wouldn’t work outside of fiction, since so much of it is driven by introspection. But that doesn’t make it any less realistic or emotionally affecting. Now and Then, Here and There is another anime that tackles a tough issue about human rights with its contention towards war and how children are victimized in a war situation.

Most dramatic anime are less about dealing with social issues than they are about coping with the challenges of life, and, in that respect, anime offers a lot of freedom as a medium to do that in. Such anime tend to be more about building characters than what happens to them, with the plot acting more as a vehicle for exploring the characters’ decision making in the wake of an ethical quandary. At this point, looking at it from a critical point of view, it becomes mostly a question of execution. Are the events unfolding believable? Are the characters sympathetic, or at least understandable? The answers to these questions, among others, are the sorts of things that define the difference between Honey and Clover and True Tears.

So it’s not a matter of taste to me as it is from your school of thought, but a matter of perspective, and in the case of anime I feel why pretend that your Minami-Ke’s or your Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei’s are gunning for your grey matter and not moreso your funny bone, emotions (I have explained that aspect of me whereby this approach doesn’t work right?) and wallet. To me you either go full on educational/intellectual or you get the same level of expectations and treatment in my list as your Kotetsu Jeeg’s or your Moetan’s.

Well, ignoring the fact that no one has ever tried to credibly claim that Minami-ke is an intelligent anime, this strikes me as a rather black-and-white way of setting one’s expectations for anime. My own attitude towards expectations is that the less you have, the better. Critics are human and can get it wrong. Reviews are really meant as a guide, not a thesis (and not even theses are infallible). And anime are often designed to have an appeal past the visceral. The extent to which they want you to actually think about what’s happening on screen varies wildly, and, in my opinion, expectations need to be flexible enough to adjust to that, especially if one wants to give an anime a fair opportunity to communicate its meaning. You have a better chance of being objective (I know perfectly well that true objectivity is a myth, but that certainly doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s worth aspiring to) when you don’t let expectations influence your opinion, which is why I try to be ahead of the curve and watch anime as they’re fansubbed. I generally choose anime on premises, (and films on critical response), but the less external influences, which includes a misguided set of expectations, I have about a title, the easier it is to form an honest and “objective” opinion. If I find my expectations are wildly wrong, I have to quickly throw them in the bin before they get a chance to significantly effect my opinion.

I’ve always had my suspicions that unfair expectations were part of the reason why I could never see eye-to-eye with Kaoishin Sama. I’ve always had a feeling that much of the genre/studio pettiness stems from a general bitterness about what’s popular in certain circles in anime fandom and that his own loyalty towards Sunrise and mecha anime, alongside other people’s indifference to Sunrise and preference towards other genres, were, in his own mind, two sides of a single coin… opposites that were irreconcilable. First it was Suzumiya Haruhi, then it was KyoAni, then it was moe, but he later turned around and embraced the lolicon fad (for completely asinine reasons, by the way), then it was slice-of-life, then it was anyone who dared to be critical of Code Geass R2. (”Anti-Sunrise“, he’d hysterically shout in the same way Uncle Leo from Seinfeld would accuse people of being an “anti-semite”. Because Sunrise is so victimized, being one of the biggest and most established animation studios in Japan and tied to the hip to a giant toy-making multinational, you know, seeing as how it’s so maligned anonymously on the internet). I’ve often wondered if it’s not unfair to label Kaoishin Sama as a prolific anime reactionary, and that his opinions, or, at the very least, the thinly-veiled vitriolic nature of his responses, were governed more by a need to respond to what other people were saying or doing rather than an innate desire to express opinions formed on his own, through his own direct observations of anime itself, rather than anime indirectly through its fans. But, right now, I don’t think this is quite right. I think there’s something more complex at work which is probably impervious to all but himself.

And in my case I think you ought to know that my tastes which you call superficial are far broader then you’d ever begin to imagine. And if you must ask the question as to why I don’t talk about or review the same types of shows you do in the same manner….well I’ll let you puzzle that one out.

Well, I can’t say I read minds, so an explanation would be appreciated.

I’ll tell you what though, if you ask nicely I’ll give you my real honest impression of the show you bitched at me for not previewing properly. Yes I’ll even watch the first three episodes minimum and give my impressions on it and if I like what I see I’ll continue it, but you have to then promise to never try and tell me what I should be watching or what my tastes should be ever again. Your up.

Look, in all honesty, I don’t give a flyings what Kaoishin Sama thinks about Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou, and I’ve certainly no intention of getting on my knees and sucking his cock in order to get an honest and considered impression. My entire point is basically that I shouldn’t need to. If he considers himself a respectable anime commentator, he should offer that for free, and out of an innate desire to share his opinion with the greater world. Anyway, I’m perfectly capable of forming my own opinion. This, after all, I don’t think is a matter of taste, it’s a matter of credibility, and the method of forming opinions rather than the opinions themselves. I mean, there are a bucketload of prominent anime writers on the internet that I don’t typically agree with, yet don’t have any problem with most of them. I’m trying to get to the bottom of why it’s Kaoishin Sama that annoys me more than any other. If it were something as simple as “he’s a troll”, then I can live with that, but no full-time troll is that sophisticated, which is why I’m pretty sure that he honestly believes most of what he writes. If I had to gander a guess, I think part of it is because he gives off the impression that he’s watching the fandom much more hawkishly than he watches the anime itself. And yet he still can’t seem to come up with anything better than sweeping generalizations about the fandom that are, in a lot of cases, way off and underestimating.

Although, then again, maybe he’s onto something by suggesting that our favourite slice-of-life anime aren’t as deep as we like to pretend. I mean, what would we know after watching, thinking about, and writing about dozens of them? Not nearly as much as an outside observer who hasn’t actually seen them, it would seem.

It’s hard to make head or tail of 2008 as a year at this point, and that’s something I don’t intend to tackle until our annual review (coming to a NHRV near you soon). And while the year didn’t deliver any titles that I’d call an outright masterpiece (which is pretty disappointing), there were a few pleasant surprises here and there. Here’s a short list of the titles that particularly caught me off guard, and certainly exceeded my expectations.

Kure-nai
This is a strange title to put on this list, considering the list of names involved in this title. But, then again, when it first came out director Matsuo Kou was only acclaimed for Red Garden, and production company Brains Base was only really recognized for Baccano!. Eight months later, and Brains Base is on an eighteen month winning streak that doesn’t look like ending soon. (…Yes, yes, I know about Akikan). Kure-nai was ultimately a mature and very even-handed anime that knew how to do good character analyses, sparing the audience from insulting pleas for sympathy. This allowed it to develop very flawed and very complicated (and, thus, very interesting) characters. It was only about three episodes in before most people watching this knew this was going to be a winner, and while it didn’t quite fulfill all my expectations, it still ended up being an excellent series.

ARIA The Origination
It’s no surprise that this was a winner. But, the reason this title is on the list is because I’d never have imagined that it could possibly be better than The Natural. But, it was, and it exceeded its predecessors without doing anything all that much different to them. ARIA is, in one sense, the archetypal slice-of-life series, but it’s so well executed that it’s set the bar for future titles in the genre. But, like so many good slice-of-life series, ARIA is, and always has been, all about its characters, and by allowing us to learn so much about these characters and watch as they deal with challenges and grow up, they become more and more endearing with time, and so does the show as a whole. ARIA The Origination also had the single best episode of the year, when show spoiler

Itazura na Kiss
Itazura na Kiss was all over the place for the first half, but once show spoiler

Natsume Yuujinchou
Natsume Yuujinchou rounds out Brains Base’s impeccable year. This is one of those series that didn’t really grab me during the first ep, but by the end of the second, it showed its potential. The series has been referred to as Mushishi-lite, but the comparison isn’t meant to be unflattering (Mushishi is a masterpiece, after all). But, I was surprised how good the storytelling in this anime was, even if the stories themselves don’t quite compare with those from the anime that pioneered the genre. Natsume Yuujinchou’s delivery was outstanding, simultaneously subdued, but also tender and emotional, and, thus, very affecting. And, I daresay it has the best soundtrack of the year.

Kannagi
This anime is the best reason I’ve come across to give Yamamoto Yutaka the benefit of the doubt for Lucky Star. Nonetheless, KyoAni may well be sorry they let him go, and not just for all the barbs he’s throwing at them through this series. But, if there’s something that can be said about Kannagi, other than the fact that it’s very funny, particularly if you appreciate metafiction humour without it being taken to the extremes it was in Lucky Star, is that it’s very well directed. And the voice acting is outstanding.

There are a few other titles like Chaos;Head which I haven’t included on the list (even after ten episodes, I’m still not sure if Chaos;Head is a winner or not, even if it is very engaging), and I’m sure there are many series I’ve forgotten or simply haven’t seen yet. So, what other anime were you pleasantly surprised with this year?

Seems like I’m taking over, doesn’t it? This week, I had the extreme displeasure of watching SHAFT butcher what I thought was one of the most moving moments I’ve ever experienced playing a visual novel. As there were no real linguistic problems with this episode, this will be the aforementioned “Yuuko Rant” I aluded to in my last post. Read on to see how, where and how badly SHAFT destroyed my favorite character. If in the miniscule chance that ef ~the latter tale~ becomes translated around six years in the future, stop here if you don’t wish to spoil the game for yourself. But seriously, by the time the game comes out, you won’t remember any of this anyways.

Amamiya Yuuko. Oh boy. Arguably the main heroine of the series, she begins the ef saga in the opening moments of ef ~the first tale~. Says she:

I believe everyone has prayed to God at least once. Even if one doesn’t believe in Him, there will come a time in every person’s life when he get down on his knees and prays from the bottom of his heart.

This is important, of course, as we all know about Yuuko’s staunch athiesm. What could she be alluding to? During much of ~the first tale~, Yuuko serves as the old, wise advice-giver and friend of Miyako, Hiro, Kei and Kyosukei. All four of them are puzzled by her past, shrouded in mystery. Why is she always at the church? Who is she waiting for? Why doesn’t she want to talk about her past? These are all questions that players had during the course of ~the first tale.~ Yuuko doesn’t serve as a deus ex machina in the game, unlike her appearance as a quasi-supernatural being in the anime. (Which I thought was rather lame and unexplained.)

Then came ~the latter tale~. Finally, I thought, I could understand who this enigmatic lady really was. Her story, as we all know now, is a sad one. Abandoned, orphaned, rejected by Yuu, raped and abused by Akira; it’s no wonder she doesn’t believe in God. She had been abandoned by Him, or so she thought. Hell-bent on seeking revenge on Yuu, the man who hurt her so deeply, she gets close to him in order to destroy him, but ends up falling in love with him.

This is where the story begins to deviate, and it is also where SHAFT’s rendition begins to take a sharp downturn. Akira dies by fire; Yuu and Yuuko begin their life together. Two poor, young, star-crossed lovers, trying to scrape together a living. Yuuko becomes pregnant, and is staunchly opposed to having the baby. She understands that the addition of a third member to Yuu and her family would lead to a total financial collapse. She doesn’t want their baby to experience the same hopelessness and sense of loss that she experienced as a girl. She doesn’t want to give birth to a baby when both Yuu and herself are in no position to love or care adequately for their child. In one particularly moving scene, in desperation to Yuu’s staunch opposition to her abortion, she grabs the knife that Akira gave her and attempted to kill herself.

A child born out of accident is a pitiful thing… with this act, I can take care of two things that get in your way, Yuu-kun.

Yuu, in desperation, grabs the knife from Yuuko, severely injuring himself.

A short while after this incident, the two of them meet Miki, the orphaned girl at the church. Yuuko develops a beautiful friendship with Miki.

Then comes Christmas morning. This is where I believe SHAFT screwed up the worst. According to episode 10, Yuuko was waiting for Yuu when she got hit by a car in a seeming freak accident.

In the game, Yuuko and Miki are together, talking outside the steps of the church while Yuuko waits for Yuu. Miki, seeing one of her friends, runs across the street, and almost gets hit by a car. Yuuko, in a stunning move of selflessness, throws herself on Miki, saving her life while ending her own.

As she dies, she crawls, inch by painful inch, into the church, and literally drags herself up to the altar. There, with tears in her eyes and blood gushing from her wounds, she says:

Look… it seems I don’t believe in you after all. But, if you’re there… please. I beg you… I don’t want to die! There are… so many things I want to talk about… I want him to know me even better… I want my thoughts to reach him… so please, I beg you, I’ll do anything, just let me meet him again!

Text alone can’t really express the emotional impact of those few lines. The visuals, plus the background music, plus the flawless voice acting from Yamada Yuna AND the text blended together… I cried.

Yuu comes to the church, and realizes something is amiss when he sees the trail of blood leading up the stairs. Inside, he finds his lover, the mother of his child, dead; weeping, sobbing, he begs her to not leave him.

I feel that the death scene would have meant much more were it done the original way. :/ For one, I think a little kid running out into the street is a lot more plausible than a grown, competent woman running out in the middle of the street. I think that had the death scene been done the way the game did it, it would have had a great impact on the viewers, especially Yuuko’s act of prayer, which totally goes against her own personal paradigms. I don’t know, the death scene in the anime just seemed a bit too muted, a bit too random, a bit too insiginificant for my tastes.

Disagree? Drop me a line.

zzeroparticle recently panned the ED theme of Chaos;Head, “Super Special” by Seira Kagami, in a review he posted on the Anime Instrumentality Blog. Now I can understand why he gave it a bad rating, he outlined a reasonable enough justification based on the bizarre, nonsensical lyrics and some rather noticeable technical shortcomings, but, while I can see where he’s coming from, I can’t help but find the song charming and fun to listen to. Arguably my attachment to the song is totally irrational, and I’d have a tough time formally reviewing it, since I just couldn’t put it at arm’s length and reason my way through it in a way required for a good review (add to that the fact that I just don’t have the knowledge to confidently write music reviews).

But I do find it interesting that I can have that irrational fanboy-ish reaction to music. After years of writing anime reviews, it’s extremely rare for me to have an irrational fanboy-ish reaction to anime because there’s always the chance that I could end up formally reviewing it. I almost always approach anime with the intent of understanding it enough that I can express a rational, reasoned set of opinions that I can defend. It’s particularly challenging, because anime, like all art, is more about interpretation than observations, so I need to have confidence in my own interpretations, and if I don’t, that means going back and thinking about things for longer.

But I don’t want to give the impression that I no longer have spontaneous, visceral reactions to anime. I wouldn’t watch (and enjoy) anime like Rosario + Vampire if I didn’t. Nonetheless, just as zzeroparticle wouldn’t give a positive review to “Super Special”, I sure as hell would never afford R+V any genuine critical acclaim. But, in anime, I tend to quickly attempt to rationalize any visceral reaction I have. My immediate reaction to Allison & Lillia might be “Allison is moe”, but I’ll quickly follow that up with the question “hang on, why do I find Allison moe? Is it because she’s voiced by Mizuki Nana? Is it because she’s a strong-willed tsundere with a hidden vulnerable side? I guess it’s a bit of both.” I think a lot of reviewing is just that. It’s an attempt to rationalize one’s reaction and express them in a way that’s considered and reasoned.

Now, I don’t think that’s a bad way to watch anime, and I wouldn’t say that it impedes enjoyment as people unfamiliar with this approach to watching anime might possibly think. I certainly don’t lament that I can’t turn off the critical, ultra-rational approach to anime and just “enjoy it for what it is” (which I seem to hear from some AnimeSuki Forum denizens more often than I’d like), partly because I haven’t (as some seem to think) become so bitter and cynical that I can’t enjoy mediocre, meaningless anime with no ambition past twenty minutes a week of mindless fun, but, moreso because I genuinely think that the desire to understand something at a deeper level, which inherently goes along with writing about it, leads to a greater appreciation of it, whether that be its subtleties, messages, symbolisms, dilemmas, depth, etc, etc. I don’t want people to think that I’m faulting an anime that doesn’t have these things when I slap it with an “Above Average” rating and end my review with a “enjoyable, but ultimately shallow/meaningless” conclusion. Instead, I’m trying to put the anime that do have these things, and do them well, on a pedestal.

“Super Special” does make for an interesting analogy to point out some tendencies in taste across critics (in all honesty, this isn’t a label I’m totally comfortable with, since it carries an inherent elitism, but for now it serves the purpose of highlighting what group I’m talking about… in anime circles, that’s probably people who write at length about anime in a… err… critical fashion). While this probably isn’t the intention behind the song, one could almost see “Super Special” as a rather direct attempt to make the listener feel like they’re… err… super special. The problem with this is obvious, it’s much too blatant. By telling you outright that “you’re always super special”, it’s trying to force its sentiment upon you rather than guiding you to the desired emotional state, which is more likely achieved with a more gradual, subtle approach, which makes it harder to be genuinely taken in by what the song is trying to achieve (if we assume that the song is in fact trying to make you feel “super special”). The anime that tend to be critically panned are often guilty of the same thing: forced emotions. It’s much easier to be absorbed by an anime, to the point of being genuinely moved, if there’s a more subdued approach to delivering emotions. People may disagree with me, but I think ARIA is a great example of that.

Not that there are circumstances where forced emotions aren’t a bad thing. Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is one such example of that. The intention behind the series is blatant and there’s very little in it I could credibly call “subtle”. Arguably a comedy can get away with being forced moreso than a drama (but I could easily call on Seto no Hanayome as a counterargument to that). Arguably an ambitious and unique title can get away with being forced a little easier as well. It’s hard to rationalize, but then again, I’ve never maintained that my reaction to ZSZS was a rational one. Even in my review of the title, I put in a “fanboy” disclaimer and, relatively speaking, it’s one of the reviews I’d be less surprised about if it wasn’t taken credibly by the wider community.

Titles like ZSZS challenge a rational response, and I think strong arguments could be made that a rational response isn’t the type the series intended. Hell, if I were more egotistical, I’d suggest that ZSZS’s creators see an irrational response from otherwise critically minded, rational commentators as a triumph of sorts, as if they broke down a wall of analytical stand-off-ishness and incited a visceral, spontaneous, unexplainable reaction which would have otherwise been unlikely (I don’t out-and-out state this, because in all honesty I don’t think Shinbo’s crew give two-shits about what pretentious anime nerds like me, posting crap on the internet, think. You should, though :P)

Maybe “Super Special” is the same type of thing. Perhaps its intention all along is an irrational, visceral response, which works because its campy upbeat style makes for such a gaping juxtaposition compared with the dark, paranoid feeling of Chaos;Head itself, and the two very different moods side-by-side makes for a unique and ambitious mix. Or maybe “Super Special” is a crap song and it’s all a matter of taste.

Anyway, to prevent the post title from being a complete misleading lie, here’s some themes from the current season that make me feel super special.

Back again with my semi-regular column. How’s everyone?

This week, I was asked again to fill in for our translator, who was absent due to personal reasons. In this installment, I’m going to give all of you a deeper insight into my job as a translator using Episode 9 as a case study; the second half of the article will be devoted to my general impressions of the series, which I haven’t really talked about yet.

Let’s first talk about what I had to do for episode 9. Needless to say, it was a lot more simple than the two minutes of episode 6 I translated; there was less emotion, less tension; there was, therefore, no need for me to beautify the text or wrack my brain for alternative translations. Of course, my translation checker is free to disagree with me on everything I’ve done, and the final product which you all will see on either Wednesday or Thursday afternoon is a group effort. But as for me, I often prefer to sacrifice literal meaning (especially in the case of idiomatic expressions) in the pursuit of natural-sounding English. I feel that, as viewers, you all should be able to feel that the characters in the show are speaking in English, and not Japanese

A word on the German, as I’m also responsible for those as well: Ironically, the German presents a unique challenge to me as I do not know how the seemingly random words that appear in each episode interact with each other. Therefore, I can only guess as to how the German fits together, and I usually choose to translate them separately from each other, independently. If the German does, in the end, fit together into coherent sentences… well, then I’m in trouble.

On a separate note, a little bit of trivia: the German sentences that appears during the eyecatches at the half of each episode and during the OP are all German translations of the lyrics of the OP for both ef games, the first tale and the latter tale. These two songs, Yuukyuu no Tsubasa (Which translates to eternal feather) and emotional flutter, are both liked very dearly by me; to translate the German that uses lines from these two songs, I simply looked to the original and used the Japanese lyrics. Astonishingly enough, however, I have yet to find a grammatical error in the German used throughout the series. (Or, perhaps, I’m just not looking hard enough?)

Back to the episode, though. There were a few points where I had to be a bit more careful with the translation; both of these points were monologues. First was Yuu and Yuuko’s internal monologues, in which they both expressed regret for not admitting to each other’s love sooner and causing each other so much pain. Perhaps my TLC will disagree with me on this one, but since the Japanese word “suki”, as you all know, can describe quite a large range of emotions, I chose to go with the strongest possible meaning, “love.” I felt there was more impact, more guilt, more regret associated with “If I had loved her sooner” as opposed to “If I had liked her sooner.” You know what I mean? I tried, also, to keep the balance of dialog and anaphora as closely as possible. I’m not sure that I did such a good job, but that’s up for you, my audience, to decide.

The other point where I had to be careful, of course, was Kuze’s inner monologue. I felt I did a better job there, keeping the parallels between Red-Mask Kuze and Blue-Mask Kuze pretty consistent. I do feel a bit of reservation with the line “Do you think you can win or lose at life?” and “Just thinking that is loss.” Both of these phrases had to sound a bit awkward, since I didn’t want to say “win or lose” again during the second phrase. I toyed away with simply saying “Do you think you can win at life?” but some meaning is lost there as well. Anyways, enough ranting about semantics from me. (Then again, it IS my job.)

Now, before I talk about my impressions of the series in general, a word about the preview at the end of each episode. These are my favorite things to translate, because each one is only one or two sentences, yet each preview manages to capture the spirit of the next episode very well. They’re also really beautiful to listen to, as well as aesthetically pleasing. For example, from this week:

思い出す過去。

思い巡る邂逅。

In Romaji:

Omoidasu Kako.

Omoimeguru Kaikou.

Very poetic, the anaphora is very strong. If you look at the kanji, even if you can’t understand it, you can see the parallel; it’s visual. Here’s my translation:

A past remembered.

A reunion surrounded by memories.

Not as strong as it could be, but I couldn’t think of a succinct way to do it, like the Japanese. I blame the English language.

Now, enough about that. Moving on, notes about the series in general:

To sum it up, I’m not a huge fan. There are a few reasons for this; I believe that SHAFT made some serious blunders in terms of characterization and plot development that, honestly, killed, in my mind, at least two characters: Kuze and Yuuko. Potentially Mizuki. I’ll just talk about Kuze today, since I want to keep this short… a bit late for that, isn’t it?

NOTE: Pretty much everything after this point is a spoiler for either the anime version or the game.

First, I’ll talk about what I believe to be SHAFT’s greatest mistake: flow. Unlike Chihiro and Miyako’s stories in season 1, the story between Mizuki and Yuuko are not concurrent. They are the opposite. As we discover at the end of episode 9, Mizuki knows Yuuko. It would have made a lot more sense, in my mind, to finish up Mizuki’s story cleanly (at least, until that point at the church) and then jump into Yuu’s recollections of Yuuko. It makes sense because Mizuki brings up the name Yuuko; it makes sense because it gives Yuu a reason to think back to the times that he and Yuuko had together. The way SHAFT did it, it feels slightly jarring and one can’t see the relationship between the two stories very well. It becomes confusing.

Now a word on Kuze. I honestly believe SHAFT ruined him. In the original, Kuze was a man who was deeply hurt by his illness, yet found the will to live through his own determination and Mizuki’s encouragement. He never cried, never broke down; he was a different person. One thing remains the same, however; he wished to push others away so they wouldn’t be hurt by his death. It wasn’t that he ran away from battles he couldn’t win, but rather, he was a more kind and considerate person, in my opinion. The defining scene in that arc, I remember, is when Kuze wants to push Mizuki away. This happened in the anime too; Nagi invents a clever lie to get Mizuki away from Kuze. In the game, Kuze takes matters into his own hands and almost succeeds in raping Mizuki, in order to get her to hate him. I think this was a better plot device. It shows both Kuze’s determination to get everyone away from him and Mizuki’s deep, deep love for him as well as her compassion. In episode 9, they gave Kuze’s most memorable line from the game (in my opinion) to Chihiro. Chihiro’s little lesson to Mizuki at the train station about having a dream and achieving one’s dreams was originally spoken by Kuze to Mizuki; I feel the switch in character turns Kuze into a spineless coward, someone who’s unwilling to go out and get what he wants, and turns him into a suffering emo crybaby.

That’s it for this time. Yuuko gets her own article because she’s so fucking awesome.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? All are welcome. I’m hoping I’ll see you all soon.

This is one of the few times I’ve commented on other anime writers. Zac Bertschy’s reign as ANN’s Answerman is over after he stepped down, which I’d say is for the best. As he said in his post, he’s burned out, and the signs of this burn out have been apparent for a number of months now. Most would agree it’s time for a fresh face; Bertschy’s been putting up with the same questions for years and for the most part he’s been delivering the same answers which has probably become tiring for all involved. It goes without saying that Bertschy’s not the most popular of anime commentators; find the right crowd of people and you can collect some pretty spirited vitriol about him. Personally, I’ve always had some time for him. I’ll never say I completely agree with him all the time, there’s a small but significant percentage of his opinions that I couldn’t disagree more on and he does have a knack for really underestimated certain subsets of the fandom and he does frequently come off as jaded. But, the majority of the time, I actually find myself agreeing with him, or, at the very least, understanding where he’s coming from.

In his send off column, while talking about the drastic shift in demographics in fandom over the last almost-decade, Bertschy made an interesting comment about the political leanings of anime fans right now.

After spending the better part of a decade working as a writer and an editor in the world of anime, and specifically, writing this column, there’s one observation I think I can make - anime fandom has changed drastically in the last 8 years. If you took someone from 2000 and transported them here I doubt they’d recognize it. It’s gone from being dominated by college-aged and older men to being pretty evenly split between genders - perhaps now leaning toward being predominantly female. It’s gotten way younger too. A decade ago the stereotypical anime fan would be in his late 20s or early 30s, likely have a beard, wearing a self-made Lum shirt and pride himself on his big laserdisc collection. Nowadays the stereotypical anime fan is in their mid to late teens; the fujoshi and moe crowd have pretty much taken over, with a million different varieties of fans in between. I’ve noticed a shift politically, too - nowadays the fans I meet are likely to be libertarian and conservative rather than liberal, which is something I find fascinating; I’d love to research that phenomenon.

I haven’t been an anime fan for this long, and my active involvement in the anime community obviously spans even less time, maybe half a decade. Nonetheless, I have noticed some, but not all, of the trends Bertschy’s talking about. There’s even some rather straightforward explanations for these trends; anime fans have gotten younger since anime itself is much easier to get hold of now, the shift towards moe can be explained by its profitability, and the shift towards a more prominent female demographic can be explained a number of things, marketing and the decreasing stigma among them. But the political observation? I only have very limited anecdotal evidence to go on, but that’s certainly not what I’ve observed. Arguably there’s been a shift right in anime fans (it’s hard to know, since I don’t go around asking anime fans about their political philosophies), but I’d still say the majority of anime fans that I interact with lean left.

The problem with making a claim about the political leanings of anime fans is that until someone runs the surveys and crunches the numbers, all we have to go on is anecdotal evidence. Like all things to do with political polling, it all depends on who you talk to. I, myself, did a very quick and seriously shonky survey, and took a random sample of posts written in a political thread on the Animesuki forums, and found that the posts where the inclinations of the poster could be discerned, there were more than two left-leaning posts for every conservative-leaning post. Most of The anime fans I associate with IRL are university students as well, in fact I associate mostly with post-grads. You have to look seriously hard to find a conservative post-grad in science in this part of the world.

The point is that I hang with people that lean left. Seemingly, I go to internet forums that do the same. Maybe this isn’t the case with the places Bertschy goes. Do the ANN forums have a political tendency? I’ve never bothered to look it up. It could be a matter of geography as well. Bertschy goes to a lot of cons, but I don’t, maybe this could explain the discrepancy in observations. As he says, it’d be fascinating to research the phenomenon. Factors like age, demographics and geography are all obviously going to play a role in it. Common sense implies that, since anime fans are young and tech savvy, they’d lean left. But that may not be the case. It goes without saying that to answer the questions, we need hard data from a large sample. Which means that some sucker has to do the leg work. I suspect you’d see a difference in results between surveys taken online and surveys taken in an offline fashion, such as at a convention or on campus. I suspect such differences could have some startling implications.

As a generalization, critics tend to prefer titles that do something different, when it comes to genres. That could be trying to mix two or more genres in a way that hasn’t been done before, subvert commonly used tropes or start out with an unconventional premise. Suzumiya Haruhi is one of the more prominent recent examples of a simply bizarre genre mix that (many) critics went wild for… although, this genre mix is the exact same reason why it divided audiences. But there’s value to a really well executed genre piece. An overt sense of ambition is always good, but it’s certainly not impossible to make a compelling anime series that doesn’t really do anything that’s genuinely new, let alone something that hasn’t been seen time and again before. In this post I’ll be presenting a short list of anime that play well within the boundaries of their respective genres, and probably have a list of tropes as long as my sister’s Christmas wishlist (zing), but still turned out to be (to varying extents) better than the average anime in their respective genres. Feel free to add your own titles to this list.

Minami-ke
Azumanga Daioh popularized the moe slice-of-life comedy genre, while Lucky Star launched it into the otaku age. Minami-ke came out just a bit after Lucky Star, but I’ve made no secret about which I found funnier. There’s very little ambition to Minami-ke, and while it has a few references here and there, they don’t get the emphasis they do in Lucky Star. Much like Azumanga Daioh, Minami-ke’s jokes tend to be about the characters. But there’s very little that’s new in Minami-ke, and it’s stylistic similarities to Ichigo Mashimaro are obvious. But, unlike Ichigo Mashimaro, Minami-ke was consistently funny. One could maybe make the argument that Ichigo Mashimaro had funnier jokes, but Minami-ke did a better job at delivering laughs on a regular basis, IMO. It’s simply a better executed comedy series.

Lamune
Lamune is what would happen if you took something like To Heart and slowed it down to a crawl. The anime itself is pretty firmly entrenched in the renai game adaptation genre, along with the likes of Da Capo, Gift and Wind: A Breath of Heart, but it’s much more grounded in realism, which aids believability to no end. The characters are a lot more charming than what tends to come out of similar series and while something actually happening in a given episode is entirely probabilistic, it’s simplicity is what ultimately makes it sweet and enjoyable. It’s a standout in a genre that’s too often plagued with unlikable characters and melodramatic storylines. (But, be that as it may, I certainly wouldn’t call it “outstanding”.)

Claymore
When you go into Claymore, and read the premise or watch the first episode, and come to learn that it’s a Medieval-esque fantasy/action tale about half-monster females that fight demons with swords, you pretty much know what to expect, atmosphere- and style-wise. Claymore’s value is that, despite this, you still have no idea what’s going to happen, story-wise. Claymore is filled with the super powers, unrealistic sword techniques and bouts of training (with lots of monster killing along the way) of the brand that one would likely expect, and would probably be familiar with if you’ve seen Berserk and while I’d in no way imply that this is as good as the anime based on Miura Kentarou’s epic, Claymore has a competent grasp of atmosphere and storytelling (Madhouse Studios‘ strengths) that makes it compelling and keeps its audience on their toes.

Nagasarete Airantou
I’ve always thought that the problem with many harem series is that they take themselves seriously. I mean, yeah, there are many that just aren’t funny at all to begin with, like ToLoveRu, but there are the occasional harem series that do a decent job at supplying low-brow laughs, such as Rosario + Vampire. The problem with a lot of such series is that they have some sort of serious turn in the plot near the end towards something darker and more serious, which makes for a jarring change in mood, and is utterly impossible to take seriously given what’s gone before it. Nagasarete Airantou is one of the few anime that forgoes that, and remains consistently enjoyable and light-hearted right to the end. I’m not sure what it is about Nagasarete Airantou, in all honesty I hated it at the beginning but it really grew on me as the episodes passed. It is just another mindless harem series, but it’s a strangely amusing and enjoyable one.

Natsume Yuujinchou
It’s probably wrong to say Natsume Yuujinchou is unambitious and does nothing new, since at the episodic level, it has quite a few quirks and a healthy bout of originality and I’d be highly surprised if anyone really called it “cliched”. But it is a genre piece, one could almost say the examplar iyashikei anime. In the past, I called it a travelling anime with no travelling. But, certainly, it shares a lot of elements with titles like Mushishi, Kino’s Journey and Mononoke (yes, I still haven’t seen this last one, but it’s high on my to-see list), and while these titles could be seen as the trailblazers of the genre, Natsume Yuujinchou was happy to follow their established path. But there’s very little in it that’s executed poorly and it has the same handle of pathos, emotion and humanity that lends the genre to be, in general, highly critically regarded.

So, genre pieces. What are your favourites?

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.

I’m Akira. Haven’t written much on this blog before, but those of you who know me know that I’m NHRV’s resident Japanese-speaking reviewer and niche anime geek. In addition to filling a role as the resident weirdo, I’m also a translator and fansubber. In this not-so-regularly updated series, I will strive to answer your questions on the supply side of the anime fandom. If you ever wanted a translator’s perspective on the fandom, here’s your chance. (WARNING: MAJOR ef ~melodies~ episode six spoilers!)

In this, my first article, I’m going to discuss one of my favorite series, ef. I’ve been a huge fan of the series ever since it first came out, having played both games, watched both anime adaptations and I own a large amount of ef paraphernalia. When ef ~a tale of melodies~ came out, I knew I wanted to be part of the translation process.

As a TLC (translation checker), my main job consists of making sure there are no errors in translation. In addition, I’m in charge of all the German in the series, as I also speak German reasonably well. Being a native speaker of Japanese, however, I’m called up from time to time to translate more difficult passages or fill in gaps in translation. One such occasion occurred this week, when I was called upon to translate parts of episode 6 of ef ~a tale of melodies.~

My main task was to fill in the last three minutes before the ED. Not a hard task, I originally thought, until I actually watched the episode.

At that point, I said to myself, “Oh, shit.“

Having played both games, I wasn’t surprised at what happened; I was surprised at the execution. The sheer beauty, chill and power of Yamada Yuna’s voice, haunting, pleading, pathetic, desperate. To be honest, I didn’t want to do it; I thought no degree of translation could do that voice justice. My friends who have watched the episode agree with me, I’m sure; I found myself not looking at the translation at all, and simply being drawn in by her voice. It doesn’t take the translation to understand the horror of what has transpired in the life of Amamiya Yuuko. One listen to that voice, and one can tell immediately. This is a broken, shattered, hurt woman, a replacement for a dead loved one. She is no more than an object to be used and abused. I kept that point in mind as I sat down in front of my word processor and began to record her rambling monologue, word for word.

Fast-forward. I finally caught every word (after about an hour’s worth or so of listening repeatedly, and hiatuses in the middle) and began to think of a way to render all this poetry into English.

My approach was simple: I wanted to keep it sparse, clean and repetitive. I felt the rhythm of Yuuko’s confession was important, so I chose to stick to a fairly regular rhythm which lapses in and out of anaphora every once in a while to describe her unstable mental shape; after all, she is confessing to being brutally raped. I didn’t want to make the entire section completely congruous, as I feel a speech like hers shouldn’t sound pre-planned or fake. I had originally envisioned the complete absence of punctuation marks as the tirade went on, her speaking got faster and faster, and the screen moved faster and faster. Alas, that idea was ultimately shot down; commas were kept after each sentence. In a way, perhaps it was a good move?

I also tried my very best to never re-use an adjective or participle until the final section of her monologue when she says “Beaten again, ravaged again… etc.” I felt that it was important that rhythm be preserved, but at the same time, all sorts of different adjectives be used to describe the multifaceted way in which she was mentally and physically destroyed. I was fresh out of synonyms for rape by the end of the session, that was for sure.

I debated with my compatriots over how to time the scene; I had originally advocated for a three-line “Star Wars” style scrolling subtitle, rolling faster and faster as Yuuko’s speech went on. Unfortunately, that couldn’t materialize either, so we simply timed each word one by one, having words flash on and off the screen as her speech became more and more incoherent and more and more hysterical. I thought that worked out pretty well, too.

Ultimately, those two minutes amounted to about four hours of work. I like the end result very much, and I hope all of you watching the show will enjoy that scene as much as I enjoyed translating it. It was a very emotional moment in the development of the series and Yuuko’s personal history, and I tried the best I could to emulate Japanese sentence structures in English.

Questions? Comments? Anything I could have done better? Constructive debate is appreciated.