Real Drive Is Fatty, Tree Hugging, Ordinary Shirow; Oyaji Only
The general gist of Real Drive (RD: Dennou Chosashitsu) is best explained by Production IG’s website. The profile page gives you key information about the setting and the setup, and it’s a must read if you are curious about the show. You can look at ANN for the Shirow’s connection but the description blurb they have reads like nonsense. And it’s even wrong at places. The “Metal” is short for “Meta-Real” which is, well, self-documenting, as they say in the trade.
Real Drive paints a much lighter side of that style of futuristic society than Ghost in the Shell. For the most part it feels like a high school slice-of-life “hey that sounds just like Mikan!” affair, full of giggling and of the everyday. But at the same time isn’t that where science fiction become reality, when the extraordinary becomes the everyday?
Perhaps that is why the first parts of RD wasn’t very engaging. There are so many anime that does the extraordinary-everydays. It is like when a spaceship crashes into your house and a hot chick in a tiny mecha claims to be your finance? Or when you get married to an alien who is also your homeroom teacher? I don’t know, there are a lot of these kinds of things. But this one features the technological framework and society as the catch, not a hot alien or a harem of monsters or pokemons or turning into a girl or what have you.
But just like the first season of Ghost in the Shell SAC, the main story eventually kicks in. There are some thriller/suspense chops to the show. Behind the various adventures of Minamo & Haru, there is an overarching plot which comes into the fore in the last 1/3 of the series. By the time episode 19 rolls around you are already familiar with most of the key characters, so when we see how the Aoi family struggles to play its role as a shining example in a futuristic society, bridging the old and the new, you can get into it. References to previous episodes and adventures come out of the last plot arc as well. There is a lot of fun to be had watching it through the end.
I am convinced that RD is good science fiction. Despite what it may say thematically about the role of people and the extent that we transform the environment, the focus of RD is not on what we can do or how we do it but why we’re doing it. To that end it’s already quite different than most science fictional works out there. For an analogy with GITS, it’s no longer about that there’s a Laughing Man and how and what is he, but what does it mean to have a Laughing Man.
It even go entirely fantastic to try to answer the question it posed. Fair enough. The fact that it even had an answer was admirable.
That said, there are some quirky-ness to the whole affair that needs addressing.
- Fat. It is self-evident. I suppose there will always be those who watch anime and expect some kind of aesthetics and find themselves unable to watch Escaflowne because of pointy noses. It’s nowhere as extreme with RD, but it could take some time to get used to the plump-ness. Also note this is only visible on the girls. All the guys in the show are built like killer man-bots with exception of the more homely trio that hangs around Minamo. I don’t think they’re fat, but I laugh whenever this topic gets argued anywhere.
- The chairperson-sex-symbol. It is odd. I am betting that it is some kind of fetish someone has, and they just had to stick that in the show. In GITS, the Major was a major (heh) symbol for a kind of power that is symbolized by the feminine form and identity, along with her strange take on sexuality. In RD, they toned it down and the chairwoman (or Secretary-General or Secretariat General or whatever) is just your average over-achiever (like the rest of the elite cast). Ok, so she is a pageant queen, research scientist-doctor AND a bureaucrat. Not to mention all the female androids are made after her likeness. But that’s not what’s weird. What is weird is that we don’t know a thing about her for the longest time in the show besides that she likes to do the horizontal tango with Minamo’s brother, while ruling the artificial island, snuggling in her love nest, via the Metal. I suspect all that character profiling comes in later to make her a more credible character and as a plot point. Much like how we don’t even know her name until near the end.
- The Metal. In RD, the Metal is really like SCUBA diving in real life, except for the fish and corals or whatever you think SCUBA diving is like. The Metal offers psychedelic fractal patterns as a backdrop. I mean, I guess all it is suppose to represent is that they are on the internet doing something. But the visual representation is just weird. I know they are trying to draw a parallel with diving and going on the internet–hey, isn’t that straight out of GITS? In RD, the two are linked even closer and more explicitly.
- The ending. Maybe it is just that I suck and my fansub translations suck but I don’t know everything about the mystery box and Kushima’s fate. It’s like the perfect setup to namedrop “God Lives Underwater.” But I guess unless you saw it you won’t get why that’s relevant. Ooops.
- The treehugging. There isn’t much, but there’s a mystical respect for nature in the later part of the show. It is a vehicle to bring forth the tension between change and what remains the same, perhaps. But just like how Johnny Yen is actually a good guy (really?) sometimes what is the “right” answer may sound kind of wrong. Its fast and loose play with your typical sense of justice and it may be jarring for some viewers, even if all of it is rooted in reason.
There are other quirks with Real Drive that are probably worth mentioning; you are better off finding them yourselves and tell me about it, because it feels as if I am telling someone who’s purposely trying to show off some eccentric aspect to his personal life. I suppose it’s interesting at least from a bystander’s perspective.
But overall I think this is a solid science fiction production along the line of the first season of Ghost in the Shell TV. At the same time it’s so unlike the dystopic setting of GITS that you wonder why you’re watching some high school girls acting like high school girls. As long as the mixed martial art stuff (among other eccentricities) can tide you over towards the last third of the series, it’s smooth sailing.
I’m glad that someone else liked RD. I’ve not heard too many people talking about it. But I think it’s a good series if you can get past all the quirks.
I really enjoyed it. There was comedy, action, sci-fi, slice-of-life, and muchi muchi womenz. It almost felt iyashikei to me. I thought the pacing was well done.
I had to drop it after the first few eps. Just llike Ghost Hound, I didn’t think watching it once a week with lousy subs was worth it, and would much rather wait for the DVD versions to all come out and I can enjoy it properly.
ix: mochi mochi indeed.
tj: I think you will enjoy this way more than Ghost Hound. Ghost Hound has crap pacing, this is more reasonable. But yea, it’s ok to way for better subs because the fansubs just don’t quite cut it at some places.
Scott: yea, it’s for oyaji like us. So people don’t pay attention to it much.
I never finished it — I do plan to — but I enjoyed what I saw (up to 16 or 18 or something) quite a bit. I dunno about oyaji, I mean, Aria is kind of cult phenomenon these days and they have a lot of parallels.
But I do enjoy the girls who… got much back.
For me, the first 2/3 of the show had a sort of iyashikei feel to it, much like Natsume Yuujinchou or ARIA. Watching it was exactly like taking a long stroll inside a rain forest that has an ocean at its heart. That’s what I fell in love with at the beginning, but the later, heavier sci-fi initiative gave it purpose and a common message. A perfect tie up. I think you’ve played down the tree-hugging aspect a lil’ bit as I believe the show’s whole purpose was how nature is a force to be reckoned with, that we can benefit from it if we let it do its thing.
I think Nature is definitely a big part to the show. But while you’d think the sea simply stood for Nature, the show saw it only as a part of it. To the characters the sea was a much bigger thing, but also just a part of a larger picture. The treehugging aspect is probably something that’ll seem different for everyone. To me they were trying to keep it to the side so it doesn’t sound preachy. In essence what Earth Order means as a plot device is the same as Stand Alone Complex is plot device for the two GITS TV series. How “treehugging” that is, that’s your call.
So yeah, I’m not sure if I can play it up at all because it’s not something very easy to grasp.
I never really thought it was particularly iyashikei. It was entertaining but it was just laying the foundation for the setting. Which included how the characters view the world from their eyes. I guess seeing it from healthy people can be healing ;)
RD is one of my top will-watch-when-series-batch-torrent-comes-out. I lagged with following it as the individual episodes (I lag even with shows I’m massively enthusiastic about) were released, but it struck me as a marathon show so I put it on the backburner and didn’t feel too guilty. Hopefully it’ll be worth the effort. Production I.G.’s pedigree, at least, suggests it will be.
Well it’s all out! Get with the watching :p Good anime isn’t going to enjoy itself without your help you know.
They’re not fat, they’re…Rubenesque.