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.
