Arjuna Is Magically Delicious
Kudos to these guys for bringing Arjuna to my attention. Back in the day (8 years ago seems like forever) I was pretty big on the show, and I liked it a lot. It’s probably still somewhere in my top 10-20 TV anime of all times list.
To fully appreciate Arjuna I think you do need to look at it with the right background information. And since a Kawamori anime is on the air right now, talking about his experience related to Arjuna may be insightful. For starters, I’ve still not read any detail besides casual mentions of his trip to India prior or during the production of Arjuna. However I’m pretty sure that is a powerful source of inspiration for the Hindu messages in Arjuna.
I recall my first viewing of Arjuna. It was preachy even by my standards, but at the same time I was probably squarely within its targeted audience–of east Asian upbringing, open to spirituality and dig Yoko Kanno. The sacred treatment of life in the show, still, is one of the more endearing thing personally that I’ve seen in anime. Life is gorgeous, delicious and deculture!
But at the same time, Arjuna was uncomfortably conforming to genre norms. It is a magical girls show! That kind of blew my mind; I mean like, we have this semi-reluctant heroine going through all these shocking and traumatizing ordeals. Dying and having that out-of-body thing was not as fun as Ghost Hound would make it to be like, right? All of that was wrapped in an Asian mythical voodoo with Hinduism tie-ins. And in some sense, Arjuna is like Ghost Hound in that both mix conventional/folklore metaphysics with some kind of practical, modern sense of what is unexplained by the modern worldview. It is like how Kawamori tries to figure out why these miracle workers work their magic when he visited India.
In other words, Arjuna’s world is a magical place that is just awfully similar to ours at a glance. At the same time, it’s yet another magical world in a fantasy/science fiction. There are a few other anime that follow this schtik; that after a major, life-changing experience, you look at life differently. It’s like learning that Soylent Green is made of people. That’s the magic of this magical girls show. It’s one thing when you found out you are the long lost princess of a magical kingdom, or have the super powers to lift mountains; but being the avatar of mother nature seems to have a more tangible grasp to the psyche of the average human.
What pushed Arjuna into my all-time list are two things:
1. The pro-life episode. Originally omitted from the TV airing, this DVD-only episode explored the event of giving birth, making love, and what the hell is an unborn. It’s kind of odd for an episode even for Arjuna, but I think it was pretty powerful. It was meaningful without being too provocative, as it was couched in a context regarding giving birth–a segment of the circle of life.
2. Arjuna x Tokio. It was one of the better, bittersweet relationships that I’ve seen in anime. Now I’m no magical girls anime guru, but this relationship was scarily genuine for the genre. In fact, the whole “I can see your emotions!” thing was pretty amusing for a magical girl ability and it worked out to highlight and add contrast to the relationship. Then again, when it comes to romance in the magical girls genre, stereotypically we think of puppy love crushes and unrequited coolness driving side characters to make their stages even more dramatic. Tokio and Juna, on the other hand, knew what they wanted. In Arjuna, not only the issues are real, but the people are as well.
Still, I know all about being pissed off at some minor part of some show and ditching the show entirely. Even with all of that production value, Arjuna touched on some sensitive topics and it came across preachy. If you strongly disagree with a lot of the stuff within the show, there’s not much anyone can do to persuade you otherwise.
To me, Arjuna isn’t really about Hinduism or natural farming or any of that stuff, as much as being able to appreciate the feelings and trials the various characters have to go through, and seeing those things for themselves. It’s about being enlightened rather than how one becomes enlightened. That’s something rare enough in anime that everyone into serious drama should give it a try.
So far, I’ve gotten 2 people, both who have very similar taste to me, to watch Arjuna. The first guy said that he was constantly divided between loving the show and hating it, liking all the experimental animation stuff and good character development, but not being able to stand all the messages.
The second guy who I constantly warned ‘it’s really really really hippy. Are you sure you can handle that much tree-hugging’ assured me ‘oh yeah, I love trees and hippies I’ll be fine’ but he didn’t end up finishing the show because of ‘too much damn treehugging’ XD
I’m thinking this might be one of the hardest shows to recommend to people ever, and should only be done for people that share the same beliefs as you as well as the same tastes (luckily I know of at least 2 people who will LOVE this show as much as I did).
I had no idea the pro-life ep had been ommitted from TV airing. Great ep, though I admittedly mostly loved it for the loli’s deranged story on the swing. Was very something I’d right : D
I watched Arjuna way back then, around 3~4 years ago when they aired it on Animax (subbed), and since I was a kid, well, I never really appreciated it.
Now, I’m pretty lazy to even try to bother to get the show. Adding that to my rather loaded schedule, and I’m pretty much probably never going to see it again, unfortunately.
Well you do what you can :) The issues surrounding Arjuna are more relevant today than they were 8 years ago.
Arjuna is the reason I started watching fansubs. I started writing the world’s most comprehensive website for the show (seriously, edit comparisons between TV and DVD release, information on the different bacteria in the show… scary stuff) until I realised I’d spent about two months on it and hadn’t even finished writing up the third episode and reclaimed my life back.
Well, I still love it, but it’s a pretty odd show. If I remember rightly, it wasn’t just that Kawamori had been to India before he made Arjuna - he’s now a member of some kind of environmental cult or something like that, and Arjuna was his attempt at spreading the cult’s message by wrapping it up with kickass magical girl action and rubbish CG mecha; whether or not that’s true I don’t know (although Macross Zero and parts of Aquarion would back up the hypothesis…), but I read/saw an interview back in 2001 or whenever it was that suggested Arjuna was meant to be something of a wake-up call for lazy kids - it aired in prime-time on a Monday and actually did quite well in the ratings.
It’s somewhat telling that the environmental stuff is the weakest part of the show - episode 4 (Transmigration), which is the one that turns virtually everyone off, is a Kawamori-only effort, whereas my personal favourite and one which mostly ignores the environmental stuff (episode 7, The Invisible Words) has the hand of Hiroshi Ohnogi on it as well. The real strength of the show, as you say, was Tokio and Juna’s relationship (whatever happened to Mami Higashiyama? She did such an amazing job voicing Juna and then obviously disappeared back into live action…) - Kawamori and Ohnogi both write truly excellent characters, and women in particular.
My favourite thing about Before Birth (episode 9, the pro-life one) was Tokio’s premature ejaculation - at least that’s how I’ve always taken the final scene. Never fails to make me laugh, despite the beauty of the moment (yes, I can be shallow sometimes).
At first when I saw that scene in episode 9 I thought the same as you did, and it was indeed LOLZ. Nothing wrong with that.
I should watch this show, if only because I keep listening to the ARJUNA OST every once in a while. :P