Code Geass Stops, Excited and Satisfied Kids Get Off the Rollercoaster
I’m not a big theme park person but I’ve been to a few of them. At one point in my life I used to go every year. In a way, big-budget mainstream anime are a bit like amusement park rides.
At least in the US, where land is plenty and people pay an arm and leg to go to them, theme parks attract goers through new and exciting advertisements of their new (well) attractions. They are aptly called attractions because when you see this single rail that goes up and down like a graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in recent years, plus those loopy things, you get this feeling of excitement. No fancy ads or viral marketing necessary.
In a way that is basically the experience of Code Geass, I think.
The first season is a well-packaged, top-of-the-line Sunrise TV anime. I think the story made sense and people liked the sporadic moments of “JUST AS PLANNED” Lulu had. The heroics and scheming were entertaining, even if hollow by more sophisticated standards. And the CLAMP characters are always the rage. The gut-wrenching plot twists towards the end of the first season gives us a taste of what kind of an experience Code Geass was set out to deliver. The non-ending, and aptly announced sequel at the time was just the period (or better, semicolon?) that punctuates the point.
For the most part the second season started out without much issues, but at some point we realized something was different. Goro Taniguchi himself, supposedly, confessed regarding the reworking of the second season due to business constraints that lead to a lot of lost labor in working on the second season. I think the fans would take kindly to that position as Code Geass R2 does look somewhat derailed from the original ride.
But as a packaged experience, in a lot of ways R2 supersedes the first season as long as you don’t look too deep. And for experienced viewers, anime of this type is more of an experience than a work in itself so we’re trained to not poke where it doesn’t look like you should be poking. Looking too deeply just makes you hate it more. It isn’t to say you ought not to analyze Code Geass or shows like that, but that was one of the main ways how R2 fell apart from the expectations viewers had from the first season. It’s safe to say many of us have mixed feeling about Code Geass R2, even if it was highly entertaining.
I guess, to go back to the Goro Taniguchi thing, things are rushed. And it clearly shows.
Unlike the typical rushed production, however, it seemed Code Geass R2 actually has a destination in mind, and a destination that isn’t made of fail. The last episode delivered a reasonable conclusion that few anime of this kind of dynamic amplitude could even hope for. What’s more, it got away with the degree of open-endedness that characterizes the usual rush job, and a fair amount of both plot hole type things and thoughtful, canonical conclusions that will give all of its riders something to think about once they step back onto the platform and head out to the parking lot, elated.
And just for the record, I could care less if Lulu is dead or alive at the end. Color me in for the “Requiem of Nunnally” camp as the heart of the second season of Code Geass, although it seemed easily that Goro wrote the story for the C.C. “good” end. Like UBW or Fate. Maybe. Meanwhile curious minds can listen to the kids as they look up at the telecast replay of their best impression of the emoticon “\o/” while walking down the ramp from the ride and towards the exit.
Itazura na Kiss And Where You Can Go on a Train
There’s not a whole lot to say about the romance story of Itazura na Kiss. Yet at the same time, there’s a whole lot to say that should and will be said about a story that is integrated within societal norms, posed both from the perspective of the ones in love and the various viewpoints around the couple. You can look at Kotoko and Irie as an abstraction of a set of social norms. You could look at them as tvtropes. You could even look at them as parallels from your own life. I’m sure people will say what inspires them, as Itakiss is fundamentally inspirational.
Recently I’ve been finally reading Train Man, partly because of Saimoe. To me that book, much like 90% of asian dramas out there, tells the same kind of story. So on that end, much like what I think this guy is getting at, Itazura na Kiss offers more origin than originality to a tired genre that almost dare not touch its foundational core. Probably because it’s so played to the death from the mainstream media’s bombardment. At least in East Asia.
But from the Densha Otoko perspective, Itakiss is a story that approaches the opposites-attract concept in a wholly different manner. Itakiss has a friendly and relatively popular girl who chases a boy who’s hard-to-get despite his well-broadcasted virtues. Densha-san is however a self-professed outcast, gathering courage from others like him, to pursue a girl he likes.
The method between the two are the same–both Kotoko and Densha carries with them some inner virtue which translates into some overt behavior. The behavior did the talking despite each’s best effort of the contrary, just as much so as their steady chasing of their potential partners. However, the way the two romances are framed within society is the polar opposite. Kotoko and Irie’s family are part of their romance story. A bunch of random strangers on 2ch are who is behind Densha’s push to transformation and we don’t really hear about Hermes’s and Densha’s real life.
I guess that’s just how kids roll today. Itakiss started 18 years ago, and it makes me wonder just how far we have come in both the liberation of the individual affair as it clashes with the erosion of nuclear family ties. But maybe new ones are forming to compensate?
Back then I certainly would not have thought this kind of “Autumn Anime Preview” posts would be the only one worth reading. Enough of mainstream romance stories. Give me some Psychic Lover + Space Opera + …actual Opera? Is it me or is Shikabane-hime is kind of cool?
And that’s probably why the otaku is so withdrawn.
To note, I will be at the NY Anime Fest starting tomorrow, and hopefully at all three days. I can’t say what events I will cover but most likely the Rie Tanaka events and the anime blogging panel on Saturday. Others are all up in the air. Still going to charge my batteries and hope for the best. Here goes tomorrow’s prereg won’t be 4+hr linecon. And yes, I’ll be taking the train in, so coverage of it will be even more limited.
Xam’d Episode 11 - Bigger Badder More LOLWut?
Overall, episode 11 is an improvement over the past half dozen episodes. Granted for some, the emotional rush of Akiyuki meeting up with Haru marked a plateau between highs and lows that is the Xam’d rollercoaster, but for most episode 11 is where the action lives. ..More
Form Without Power
[It’s weird to be posting things you’ve written 3 months ago.]
When things are done for the sake of itself, depleted of its underlying purpose, it is a type of powerlessness.
That is what a cliché is, and that is why they are bad. But cliché only are cliché when they become a form that lost its significance. The same form, but infused with importance, ceases to be a cliché even if the two looks exactly the same.
Before I got derailed by HaruSummer 2008, I think I was trying to say something about following through and having good form is no substitute for solid storytelling. But at the same time I praise Denno Coil, I end up reminding myself that I still am no fan of its gorgeous production and intelligent weaving of a child’s fantasy with adult sensibilities. Because, at the end, it still feels like a fable used to teach kids to look two sides before crossing the street. (Which, if you think about it, is Denno Coil in a nutshell.) The adult-child that I am longs for intercontinental ballistic missiles going off or long-necked dinosaurs going extinct, not admonishment for spending too much time in front of a computer. It was a blessing that I got both, but it feels like deception, like coating bitter medicine in a candy shell. And maybe it would sit well with me if I was younger. A lot younger.
The wholesale invalidation of its fantasy construct in Denno Coil’s conclusion may be repulsive to me simply because I’m an old geezer, beyond reprimand, but it is still good storytelling. It’s solid. It’s got style and it’s meaningful. Wall-E’s simple, Green and independent message is much the same. I just dig post-apocalyptic Earths much more than I do angry (or worse, worried) Asian parents. Or maybe it’s the inherent message about resistance to change in Denno Coil that bothers me?
The fact that one can discern and make an argument about Denno Coil’s message about resistance of the changing way of life is a testament of its quality. And in some twisted sense of ego-stroking sophistry I think the innate quality of an anime story can be measured in such a way…
But to me, that speaks power. But power here doesn’t mean merely having the guns and knives and bombs and tanks to do war, but the will and meaning behind the threat of force that can drive a nation to win one. Indeed, that is the ultimate problem with fanservice in general; porn and things like Megami Magazine–all for show. The whole moe subculture. There’s nothing behind it (at least at first).
Xam’d Episode 10 - Girls on Film
Yet another edition of “omo blogs anime like, for giggles and not to tell people what Xam’d is about, because it’s way too cool and you just have to watch it on your own.”
I still think this is either a Tower of Druaga or Mario Bros reference.
