Year in Review: She’s Going the Distance, a Great Feat of Strength
Going to mention a list of 12 lists of 12 items each. So a nested list. All 144 items. Annotated for the most part. Don’t ask me why I use these pronouns the way I do…
Tenderness
It’s been bugging me for a while now, but to distill the charm of Haruka Nogizaka’s Secret into discernible words has been something I’ve got brewing on the back burner. Except it’s like watching water boil on low heat–that moment of clarity has not yet come.
At first I simply thought, to be precise, that this is the kind of romance anime made for heterosexual guys who reads shoujo and josei comics. I mean it in a way that there’s something feminine about the entire experience that makes it attractive for guys. Kind of like how a guy can find a feminine girl attractive?
But that’s not quite it. Really stretching things, I thought about all those confused fanboys and fangirls in the west that confuse genres entirely, thinking manga like Love Hina or anime like Popotan are for girls. Maybe my explanation from before points at the root cause of the confusion.
There’s more, however. The word I’ve been coming to, seeking for help, is tenderness. Looking back, I have only considered this in the context of Touka Gettan’s wiles, but I think that is an appropriate starting point.
In some way, Touka Gettan is about tenderness. Well, beyond the visuals; both of the lead roles had chips on their shoulders. That tenderness is what weaves them together emotionally despite their transcendental destinies and the nonsense plot.
The story of Haruka’s Secret is thankfully easier to digest. Ultimately, it is about our nice guy protagonist. He’s reasonable, level-headed, even if not the smoothest kid on the block. In fact, in a lot of ways Yuuto’s stubbornness and old-fashioned (dare I say, normal?) way of life is what makes this show appealing. And it is about his tenderness towards Haruka that makes the character interaction blossom.
And since there is no real alternative to handle Haruka (but nicely), the buck really had to stop there (to the relief of many and the chagrin of those who’ve already dropped the show like the bag of cliche they think it is). Being nice to the girl you like is, after all, normal.
I think this is really what I mean by “shoujo manga.” From a certain level of abstraction, the composition of the primary relationship that drives the story is a version of the social ideal. Without much probing or pretense, Haruka’s personality as revealed to the audience is simply an idealized persona with a dark underbelly. It is the secret. However what is dark isn’t her cynical or doormat personality, but a fear all too common to many, otaku or not.
But with all that said, the underlying character drama and exposition become one that is built upon understanding and maturing rather than one about evolution and discovery as partners in a relationship. In other words, this is going to be a very fluff story that hinges on people getting over themselves rather than actual, growing characters. It’s a story of becoming who you are and not becoming something more beautiful? It’s a subtle distinction.
Then again, this sort of treatment is probably unfair. Haruka’s Secret doesn’t pretend to be anything more than a bag full of late-night anime references and romantic cliches that appeal specifically to that audience. In fact one of its obvious redeeming point is its shamelessness in cross-referencing other works. With just 6 episodes we were graced with at least 3 voice acting crossovers, and the seiyuu fanboy in me squeals. We’ve gone through entire calendar years with fewer such occurrences!
Anyways, I tried. And I think that moment of clarity has not yet come. So while we’re waist-deep in this summer’s seasonal offerings I will continue to dwell on this little fluff show rather than talk about the other interesting offerings on the air right now. Beats talking about Otakon again at any rate. And by the way, I do have something for WAH as I promised in his podcast. Maybe later.
Evil Sales Is Evil
So CD Japan is putting up a sale, realizing no one is going to spend the huge bucks on … remastered DVDs. O RLY? Referral-supported links incoming.
And oh, by the way, these are limited quantity items on sale, so get them while they’re still there. Some items are much more limited than others.
Cowboy Bebop remastered collector’s box (notably, it contains session #0!)
Macross Plus complete remastered box (Has the 4 episodes AND the movie version, and other crap)
(Just a brief note on the CDJ affiliate program–well first I appreciate those of you who actually patronized my links, and it’s working out so far even with my sparse pimpage. Not fully tested yet because I’ve not “cashed in” anything.)
I noticed there is a whole series of these hi-def remastered DVD sets out there. Like the Yamato TV set or the three Gundam movies. I can see why these two titles would be below my radar but it doesn’t explain the first two up there that are singing their siren’s song.
Is this (Maho Tsukai Tai box) remastered? Does anyone know?
The irony is a little thick considering just not too long ago I was talking about $250 a pop anime series with some people on the internet. And here we are.
Still, something like this is just … too much to bear, even for me. Especially when it tempted me repeatedly. It’s like Princess Tutu–if I find some place selling the original releases, I would buy it in a heartbeat (assuming it was priced no more than it was originally), just for the soundtrack omake.
Last note on this pure-pimp filler of a post: Touka Gettan is available in its entirety on this latest CDJ sale. The discount is meager but it’s better than nothing.
Touka Gettan Episode 21
Wow, WTB moar Notokawaiiyonoto.
The name of the colors are lovely.
So is the simple b&w trick. Actually all of Touka Gettan has very good color, and it conveys this sense of an exorbitant fantasy to the atmosphere of the show.
Thanks to tenacious fansubbers with a love for the strange, Touka Gettan has been fully subbed for some time. However its backwards (literally) narrative and a fancy towards the silly makes Touka Gettan a difficult watch. It’s especially difficult to take seriously when you have such straightforward characters mixed with an otherworldly sense of humor.
But at the same time, enjoying Touka Gettan is possible if you abandon some of the more traditional limits to viewing anime. There’s no reason why you can’t skip around and just watch the episodes you like. There’s no reason why you can’t fast-forward through the episodes focused on the overall plot, and take your time and refresh yourself with older episodes. There’s also no reason why you can’t just watch episode 21 over and over again. And there’s no reason why you should watch all of it. Its narrative confining the backward story makes it possible to enjoy many of the episodes stand-alone once the viewer obtains some introductory knowledge about Touka Gettan’s world.
And as a novelty, Touka Gettan episode 21 is penned by the voice actress Mamiko Noto. Episodes 13 (lol onsen episode) and 11 are penned by voice actress Maria Yamamoto. Episode 18 (lol beach episode) is penned by also voice actress Ai Shimizu. Plus, some of the episodes in the series are basically Yamibou cameos. What surprised me was when finding out which episode exactly Noto wrote only after watching it. Needless to say the fans who found this gem generally praised it.
I guess it’s episodes like these that makes Touka Gettan so good. And it’s probably why I’ll continue to watch it even now, albeit with a slow and premeditated pace, at a random order. To Touka Gettan’s credit, most of the episodes I watched commanded my attention to some extent, so I think any order is a good order.
The Balanced Diet - Sorely Lacking In Kisses
No, this has nothing to do with the blog by a similar name.
But the idea behind this rant is the same: there are different stories out there; as a genre or a medium, anime offers some variety of themes and stories. Even more importantly, anime offers a wide varieties of storytelling.
Moyashimon is an inspiration of sorts for this post: The Eskimos cuisine, kiviak, was the center of a joke when Dr. Moleman came out and sucked the juices of dead birds, straight from a dead seal. The show went on and explained that as Eskimo cuisine started to use cooked meat instead of raw meat, the Eskimo then used fermented seabird juices to supplement their vitamin-lacking diet as heating the meat broke down some of the essential vitamins within the food. Indeed, it was not like taking a multivitamin pill in the morning as you rush off to school or work.
Point: all people enjoy a wide variety of stories, but delivered in a format that works for them.
A fine example of this is Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. To be honest the story behind it is pretty uninteresting once you know what it is, but because it’s packaged in a fairly fresh, layered and intriguing way, with a lot of superimposed and juxtaposing moe and gore, it works. Indeed, compared to shows like Shigurui, Higurashi is almost like an episode of Dragon Ball Z.
But I am not saying DBZ is bad. It is good, at times. It’s like while delicious steak is delicious, you probably don’t want to have that for breakfast everyday. It’s okay to learn about life through a kid’s dialog with a ghost while playing go. It just won’t have the same effect of learning about life through a kid’s dialog with her friends while planning a school festival. Or a kid’s dialog with his friends while riding on a giant robot. Or a kid’s dialog with her friends while riding on a dog. We need all of them, at different times in our lives, for different people.
The bigger framework here is simple: there are stories, and there are different ways to tell it. A character-driven monologue-heavy narrative will have different effects than a crew-gathering boss-fighting mecha show. Both kind of shows will draw different crowds even if the underlying story and theme is pretty much the same, with characters running on the same set of outlook and perspective, in drastically different situations
Problem: Perhaps you are like myself and watch a lot of new anime. If you follow what’s new and fresh from Japan’s airwaves then you are prone to not having a balanced anime diet. We are at the mercy of whatever delicious morsel of cartoons fansubbers, anime studios, and your preferred means of obtaining these shows, to deliver what captures your attention. Instead, we should also seek to watch some other shows to balance out of what you have seen the near past. Variety is a cure in of itself, let alone enabling a more balanced view of anime both as a hobby and as a medium. If all you watch is tentacle porn, I guess that’s fine too but that might be a bit Eskimo-esque, and you might want to look into something odd to keep your perspective fresh. Same can be said of people who watch mostly action anime, or mecha anime, or shoujo, or romance, or generally not getting a good grip of what it is like out there, what anime generally can offer to its viewers. A balanced diet is recommended, even if it’s in the form of a weird alternative. What’s key is with the right delivery. For example, Touka Gettan on DVD… or Colorful?
I jest.
Actually, I think I just wrote this up because I just can’t quite fathom my obsession with Mao and Kimikiss anime. After giving the weird impulse I had some thought, I think, besides the “hot for <insert chara name here>” factor, I have this deep craving for a good shounen/seinen pure romance story. I know there was a “Shizuka” thing a year ago, but that was no where near as … moe. The delivery didn’t work for me. I suppose the Ah My Goddess TV series counted too, but those are more like “old” stories rehashed. Shows like H&C and Nodame were great, but they’re incomplete substitutes as josei manga adopted. In other words, there’s just a lack in this category of anime in recent years. A bishoujo game adaptation just doesn’t work like that unless it’s rewritten alike to Kimikiss Pure Rouge.
