Marble
No puns this time! (I think.)
I’ve grown to like Marble’s music, the pop duo Micco and Tatsuya Kikuchi that have re-launched their brand of music since 2007. To be more concise than Wikipedia, the two signed up with Lantis in 2007, and since then they’ve released a line of music that really gets to me.
Before then, the two also have worked for and with different artists, writing music, touring, and releasing stuff. Both can compose, play and write; and in stereotypical musical-duo-form, Kikuchi gets to do the bulk of programming and play. Some names they’ve written for include Nana Kitade, Mai Nakahara, and Ryoko Hirosue, among others. Recently, they’ve written one of the character songs (at least?) for Hatsukoi Limited and provided the OP song and the Christmas episode image song. Their first single from Lantis launched with Hidamari Sketch (2007), as the ED song, and you can hear their latest single in Hidasketch Hoshimitsu (X***?). More (outdated) info can be found at the marblepedia.
Actually, I want to talk about that ED. See here. With lyrics. It’s a bit of a divergence no? I thought the way they sounded since 2007 had a particular method to their madness. It is like dressing up street pop with a lot of glitz, but in a fluffy, diet-soda kind of way. Compared to the songs on their two re-release albums, which was a lot more mainline indie/folk/jazz influenced, the new stuff is just outrageous. And I don’t mean outrageous like Lady Gaga. It’s like Akiba/Dempa with a much smaller dose of the electricity.
Oh right, their new song, “Sakura Sakura Saku ~Ano Hi Kimi wo Matsu Sora to Onaji de~,” is a freaking mouthful. And catchy in that cheapass teenage powered rock music way. Sigh. Perhaps it’s a progression from Hatsukoi Limited? Wait, there is a PV to Hatsukoi Limited? LOL?
It’s like seeing Micco in that outfit for Kuusou Jet reminds me of Elizabeth from Persona 3. Farm their old blog for pics–the two of them post quite a bit, and you can follow their new posts on their ameblo.
In fact it’s probably more amusing than a blog post full of links you can google up in a few minutes. In a nutshell that’s partly how I feel about Marble–they are nothing really extraordinary, but somehow they’re just really enjoyable. It is as if they are in a niche that takes advantage of their competent if humble skill set. It’s like, moe?
It’s so much like moe, that all this poking and researching don’t add much to my appreciation of their works. So weird. I guess it beats writing a post about the lone nipple pointing at the moon…
A Last-Minute, Visual Review of 2009
I wasn’t able to squeeze in these “year in review” pictures in my earlier posts, but here they are anyways. These are some screen caps w/ captions that somehow I have kpet around this year. Minor spoilers are present. Enjoy at your own risk. I may have an odd sense of humor, but I believe it’s at least backward compatible!
Why I watch Bakemonogatari in a nutshell.
Year In Review: N-Squared List
Just like last year, I guess some things have not changed. This could be a reference.
Romance Is Code for Limited Bromance; Hatsukoi LLP Closed for Business
Yes, a it is a Hatsukoi Limited wrap-up post. I actually was writing a longer, more theory-type thing, so maybe that’ll come later.
Girl’s Side: Bad Luck Party plays the Takemoto card.
Guy’s Side: RIUVA fires back, saying there’s a Takemoto card to be played. And girls to play said card.
[But actually I think TJ was the earlier of the two, so whatever.]
My side:
Hatsukoi Limited is definitely a great visual treat for the male mind. If you can get over that you’re drooling on 14-year olds, that is. I mean, it’s kind of unfair isn’t it? What kind of 14yo is a knockout like Kei? The other four girls, sure, they are reasonable approximation of reality. And 14yo can have boobs, too. Big ones. But the complete package like Kei? That’s just “lol animu lolicon” nonsense.
Yamamoto is indeed a bombshell, and I think while she’s fine and all, the problem with her is that the source material left her out to dry. Or rather I should say Rie Tanaka’s performance was wanting, and the source material didn’t get into Yuuji Arihara. You can’t have a romance without revealing the other guy’s schtik, so her story was stillborn. Too bad! And as much as I hate to say it, Tanaka tried for the noutenki kuudere and it just didn’t work with the story for me. It is probably caused by the lack of source material, but it made the Yamamoto part of the story a little boring.
Still, the anime went above and beyond the manga in some cases. One example of that came to me in the last episode. I might have missed it earlier on, but while Yuuji is the “sisucon” archetype, he played it like a normal, righteous manly sisucon type. It’s like the stereotypical overprotective American dad that chills on the porch, late at night, to supervise the teenage daughter’s boyfriend’s behavior. Usually with a shotgun or a Louisville slugger. I guess it’s A-OK if you’re dad, but the 3-year-older brother probably qualifies to some extent. Ayumi is still just 14 after all. Anyways, what drew that point home was how he was relatively resolute about the ordeal between Ayumi and Monster-kun. Contrary to his initial attitude from the first episode, Yuuji realizes what was going on and took a stand against the gentle beast in the final episode.
Heck, the middle school trio is a parallel of the high school trio that found themselves on the train, carrying out their duties as older brothers. [And all it needed was Yuu Enomoto…]
I mentioned earlier about the gender role reversal that’s at the heart of this thought experiment. I think it’s partly why this show is so attractive to me in concept, that it’s ultimately about girls doing constructive things to catch their fleeting first loves, like what the guys are also doing (oddly enough).
And what is up with people looking down at the guys in Hatsukoi Limited? I think there is one generalization I’m willing to pin my name on, and that is far majority of popular anime and shows worth watching earn their badge through strong, careful characterization. And the guys in Hatsukoi Limited exactly that–carefully crafted, strong characters. Strong meaning they are distinctive; they may stand in as generic archetypes; they may even be kind of shallow (like some real 14 year olds), but they are each standing on their own. In fact, this is why you can play the Takemoto card at all! Alpha or omega, neither applies in these relationships to the extent that some may exaggerate.
Here is a revised theory: a guy’s “romance” for anime is like an Ernest Hemingway novel. It’s not one about melodramatic Korean idols; it’s one about solitude, the sea (hopefully involving fishing) and the wild, about the subtle, unmentioned internals and not so much the external. It’s a little Zen Buddhist, maybe. On the other hand, this is just about never the case for any anime written for girls. How can you do it with a running internal monologue? Using techniques from both genre categories, Hatsukoi Limited takes a balanced approach; Chikura’s story is probably the most exemplary instance of Hatsukoi Limited’s philosophical stance on explaining things, despite being an outlier from the group. The story explains the relational subtlety and the wrinkles in Chikura’s emotions pretty clearly, yet managed to be pointed and concise. It holds its own notion of mono no aware, so the term goes.
And what’s a more suitable topic for that than that feeling for first love?
To contrast Chikura’s episode with a Makoto Shinkai narrative probably does well to show just how much more verbose (perhaps even too verbose) and illustrative Hatsukoi Limited is, but that is a necessary thing for its target audience.
And that is what I don’t quite get. What is its audience? Dumb guys like me? Sure. But why do girls like it too?
For the tl;dr, I think of it like this: Shallow male characters will always fail, where as shallow female characters will only sometimes. Ultimately, I think the anime for Hatsukoi Limited gambled on the latter and it surpassed the manga in creating believable, romanticized (if flat) male characters. Is that it?
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The Terai-Dobashi Reversal, Or the Ayumi Axiom
Hatsukoi Limited is like a suite of thought experiments. Let’s look at Dobashi’s one-shot. [img src]
I picked this one out of the mixes of relationships from Hatsukoi Limited because of the contrast between the manga and the anime rendition. At this point, it might be safe to say that the anime adaptation of Hatsukoi Limited is very true to the manga (someone is doing a good job posting the chapter matches on Wikipedia). Still, when it comes to Terai and Dobashi, the anime actually changes things around for the better in subtle ways. Is it better? Why?
Boiling it down, Hatsukoi Limited is a play on stereotypes of first love stories. The Terai and Dobashi story is the gender reversal of the “athletic” sports stereotype–the girl is the athletic one, and the guy looks up to her for that reason (but also for others once they got to know each other better). It even has the “oh they’re just respecting me for my game, but deep down they don’t really care about me except for you <3 <3 <3″ plot thread, however thin. It’s a straight-up gender reversal.
The manga actually gets a little further than the anime in hammering home what made the Terai x Dobashi story works, and I think it’s a very important thing to remember when we talk about Hatsukoi Limited. Actually, that’s exactly the theme that threads all the love stories in Hatsukoi Limited. And I quote Ayumi (lol, soramimi subs):
