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Oh, dear, Utawarerumono. Whatever happened to you ?

I watched the 2006 series half a year ago. It was far from perfect, but its bizarre blend of harem hijinks and bloody war stories (with intense mood whiplash from an episode to the next) ended up quite charming. It had a focus on nation-building (betraying its tactical-RPG origins) that is rarely explored in anime and I found fascinating. It also had a very weird ending that put the world’s origins into quite uncomfortable a place, but that’s not an unredeemable taint. And for all its faults, it was never a boring show.

Still, it was quite a surprise when a sequel was announced for this Fall, tying in with a sequel to the original game. And it started decently enough, featuring a strong and multidimensional main couple, while promising a new take on the complex politics and world-building that had drawn me in. Big mysteries and conspiracies were hinted at around the edge of the slice-of-life stories, and the supporting cast from the first series made guest appearances to comfort the illusion that this was all leading to something.

Fast forward to episode #10. The main couple’s romance is not only getting stale, but actually regressing ; both of them have been getting more of a caricature by each week. And they’re barely in this episode anyway. Instead, all the focus is on a bunch of freeloading girls belabouring the running gag of fantasy yaoi bookstores (which wasn’t that funny the first time around, and has gotten downright painful by now). I have no clue what those girls’ deal is ; admittedly, I fell asleep during the episode introducing most of them, but it’s alarming that right now there’s no clue of them having any life besides their empty cookie-cutter banter. (The one exception being the naive young princess, who does have a visible reason to exist despite her one-dimensional personality.)

Who are these people ? Why are they here ? Why hasn’t anybody kicked them out, as they steal valuable screentime and audience goodwill from anything else that would make the show watch-worthy ? Has the show so little content planned out that it needed to be padded out with such dire nonsense ?

And thus my patience ran out. Goodbye, Utawarerumono ; I’ll remember you for the best moments of the first series, and pretend the second doesn’t exist.

Back in February 2013, I made a foolish bet with myself : within a year, I’d watch ALL OF GUNDAM. Oh, and I’d write some commentary of it along the way. At an average of two episodes a day, it’d easily work out, right ? Ahahahah, nope.

It started quite well, actually. Before 2013 was over, I had watched the original series, its compilation movies, Zeta Gundam, Gundam ZZ, Char’s Counterattack, War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, Gundam F91, Gundam Victory, G Gundam, the 08th MS Team, Gundam Wing (and the Endless Waltz OVA), Gundam X, ∀ Gundam, Gundam SEED, and some of MS IGLOO. SEED Destiny was done a couple of months later. And then, I got burnt out, and let the whole project sleep for a year.

(For the record, not because of Destiny ; I actually enjoyed that show, and certainly more than SEED itself. It’s 00 I found hard to get into.)

Earlier this year, I went back at it. I finally finished Gundam 00, Gundam AGE, the remainder of MS IGLOO, and the tons of shorts I had forgotten about along the way. Taking into account that post-2013 series were off the table (as I watched them as they ran), the only thing left was Gundam Unicorn. Which I watched half off before trailing out again.

This is the awkward moment where I realize there’s no way I’m finishing this project in 2015, because of the four measly one-hour episodes left sitting on my plate for several months. And of course, there’s all the work of republishing it on this blog (with hundreds of articles and images). Nope, that won’t be until 2016. Oops.

Oh, well. Shit happens. Better luck next year.

Durarara!! is one of my favourite anime ever. The intricate plotting that mixes the adventures of an immense ensemble cast into a tapestry of weird happenings and chaotic feuds between numerous factions and colourful wildcards is immensely rewarding one you get past the non-linear storytelling and the weird initial focus on a trio of highschoolers who don’t seem to have much involvement with anything else.

So of course I welcomed the surprise announcement of Durarara!!x2, more than four years later, with some trepidation. Especially as it would be animated by a brand new studio who could easily get in over its head. (Remember Attack on Titan and its embarrassing still frames once Wit got crushed by delays ? Yup, happened here too.) But the more pressing question was, could it recapture the magic of the first season ?

Its first part in Winter was a bit underwhelming. Lots of good bits, but a focus on youth gang wars that didn’t really come together as a cohesive whole and reminded me of the weakest parts of the Yellow Scarves arc. The Summer part got off to a much better start, with a series of one-episode portraits that did a lot to flesh out some of the numerous new characters and explain how they fit into the grander scheme.

But the true moment that made me fall in love with the show again happened at the end. New big villain Yodogiri had been a background presence ever for a while, establishing his credentials by knifing Izaya out of nowhere as a cliffhanger. The long-coming retaliation was a joy to behold ; not only because it showed Izaya being as petty as ever as he got him run over… but also for the true nature of Yodogiri, which makes perfect sense from the few contradictory glimpses we’d had of him so far, and makes him fit right in with the bizarre bozo populating the show’s Ikebukuro.

Also, the new series deserves an award for finally making Mikado compelling to watch.

NoitaminA is a fascinating timeslot. Its stated purpose it to coproduce anime series for a more “mainstream” audience than the usual otaku-bait. In practice, this has led to a number of shows set in university (as opposed to anime’s usual obsession with highschool) and targeted to a more female audience than usual (see Honey & Clover, Nodame Cantabile, Princess Jellyfish…), as well as some aiming at the “arthouse” market (such as Mononoke, Tatami Galaxy, Ping Pong…). The remit seemed wide enough to allow for ambitious techno-thrillers (Eden of the East, Psycho-Pass…) or adaptations of critical-darling manga series (Bunny Drop, Silver Spoon…). Some may have found noitaminA lost its way when it aired generic crap like Guilty Crown or spent half a year doing reruns, but it has still managed to retain an identity and an ambition that I can only respect.

I only came into watching noitaminA shows in late 2010, with the aforementioned Princess Jellyfish. Still, it had enough of a reputation for me to not only consistently look forward to any new shows (with fewer disappointments than average in a given season), but also delve with enthusiasm into their back catalogue. With most of the usual suspects out of the way, this year I finally came back to a show I had skipped the first time around in 2010 : Shiki.

Shiki sounds at first like an odd fit for noitaminA. An adaptation of a vampire manga series ? With a highschool protagonist (at a time where the timeslot still avoided that) ? As soon as you get into it, though, it makes for perfect sense : with its super-stylised character designs (those impossible haircuts !) and deliberate slow pace entrench it firmly into the “arthouse” category. All this while working perfectly as a horror series ; the terror comes not from the camp vampires themselves, but from the methodical and deliberate way at which they kill and take over a rural society that didn’t see them coming. (And to their credit, the people who should notice them, such as the doctor now facing a bizarre anaemia epidemic, do put two and two together relatively quickly ; it’s just that it’s hard to collect evidence while their support structure are getting more and more eroded by the day.)

Shiki is a harrowing watch, at least in its first two thirds, as the protagonists get whittled down one by one and face increasing despair and impotence with either resignation, madness, or just abject failure. Now, of course they eventually manage to strike back meaningfully against their vampire invaders. What’s fascinating is that the show makes the point that even if you’ve got the upper hand and initiative, getting rid of dozens of vampires, while at first exhilarating, quickly turns into being exhausting, and then just tedious.

Which leads to this hilarious scene opening the penultimate episode. By now, the village’s win against the vampires is mostly acquired ; but there’s still the matter of getting rid of dozens of vampire corpses. So it’s up to a number of women (most of them background characters) to make sure nobody’s playing possum, secure the stakes, and bury all of them to avoid future awkward questions from the authorities (while the men complete the hunt). Since it’s gruelling work, they take a break, have tea and gossip for a bit. As though this were as natural a social activity as preparing for a festival.

Shiki excels at this kind of gallows’ humour ; and of course it raise the usual genre question as to whether the humans are the real monsters. (Maybe. But the vampires, however much they’re shrieking for mercy, definitely were.) It’s a great moment which exemplifies why I loved this show and rate it as one of the best anime I’ve watched this year.

Rokka no Yuusha – Braves of the Six Flowers initially presents itself as a rather straightforward heroic-fantasy romp : the Dark Lord is about to reawaken, so it’s up to a new set of six heroes of legend to go and defeat him. There are some nice Mesoamerican-like trappings and animal motifs to make the show visually distinctive, but otherwise it feels like it’s going to be relatively conventional…

… Until SEVEN heroes show up at the appointed time and place, and they get stuck into a trap that looks like it could only have been purposefully triggered by one of them. So now we’re in a variation of one of my favourite genres : the closed-circle, fairplay whodunnit mystery, as the characters are trying to find out who’s the traitor. As you’d expect, this was pure catnip for me.

I won’t elaborate on the actual resolution of the mystery itself ; it was decently-executed and the journey there was entertaining enough. Its deliberately slow pacing gave ample room to develop the characters and build intriguing relationships between them. (Adlet & Hans, best bros forever !)

No, the moment that made me love the show forever comes from the coda, after the traitor has been unmasked and dealt with. Finally our six heroes can go and confront the Big Bad, as they had planned all along ! Except ANOTHER seventh hero then shows up, having arrived late to the rendezvous point. Since she has decent enough credentials , it reignites the mystery of who the fake hero is anew.

It’s a blatant trollish sequel hook, but I admire it for its brazen showmanship. It’s also the confirmation that, whatever happens next, it’ll be a continuation of those fun mind games and NOT back to the straight heroic-fantasy adventure the show had originally teased. Admittedly, sales have been dire enough for there to be little chance of a second season, but this was promising enough for me to get interested in checking out the original light novels.

Well played, Rokka.

So, this year I’m trying to participate in this 12 days of anime thingie : each day until Christmas, I will be rambling about a particular moment of watching anime this year that I found memorable. Let’s kick this off with…

Well, I’ve always liked The Casefiles of Young Kindaichi. It’s not a particularly great show, but it’s got a fun gimmick, and I’ve always had a soft spot for fair-play whodunnits. But while I’ve been enjoying the recent “Returns” revivals, I had always been miffed at the unavailability of most of the original TV series beyond the first 40 episodes (out of 148). So I was delighted to recently find some very rough translations of the middle third of that series. Even though the translators were in dire need of an editor with better mastery of the English language, at least I could now watch it !

And for the most part, it’s been rewarding ; seeing the first appearances of supporting characters such as young idol Reika Hayami (who’s a big deal in Returns) or Kindaichi’s bratty kid cousin Fumi, who’s amazingly not a terrible character. And there were some good mysteries along the way, even when a bit contrived or gimmicky.

And then I reached episodes #70-73, aka The English Hotel Murder Case. And boy, what a mess this was. (Warning : some unavoidable plot spoilers about this case below.)

Continue reading 12 Days #1 : When Kindaichi Disappointed Me