True Tears Is a What?
[Okay, so wordpress just ate the ‘finished’ version of this post and spit back at me the revision prior to completing, so I lost maybe 2-3 paragraphs worth of blargh. Which is disturbing why it happened. Sigh. Anyways, here’s as much of it as I can recollect.]
I think I got True Tears, but I’m not sure. Something didn’t click.
I finished watching it a week ago, and I’ve been thinking about it when I could. Maybe it would be helpful to watch it alongside Simoun’s bonus material (thanks Media Blaster!) where the director, Junji Nishimura, gave some insights into why Simoun was the way it was.
I looked towards Simoun for answers because the two are actually quite complimentary. The key difference between the two is that Simoun did not follow a standard, dramatic formula; True Tears was a straight forward love-triangle. The rest of the two shows, from abstract reads of the mood down to the use of still-frame, traditional illustration stills, are quite similar.
They are also different, of course, but what puzzles me about True Tears is the purpose of the tears allegory. In a nutshell it simply symbolized [and I quote myself] the exchanging feelings, expressing them, and appreciating the other person. Shinichiro even got to appreciate his mom and dad; his mom appreciated what Hiromi is going through; and Hiromi with Shinichiro’s struggle with Noe.
But is that it? What does it mean?
Of course there’s also the Raigomaru/Jibeta story. The problem with that is the story itself is a parallelism for the character development pattern in the show, for the audience, and yet at the same time the characters projected themselves onto the chicken in a conscious manner. Both Noe and Shinichiro looked at Jibeta and Raigomaru similarly and expressed themselves through the chickens, identified with one or the other chicken throughout the course of the show. It got complicated when you start to think too deep; how did Noe know what Shinichiro drawn in the book before the last episode? Why did she wanted to throw Jibeta into the sea? And if seeing Shinichiro dance is her “Raigomaru sees Jibeta fly” moment, why did she jump afterwards? Or are they switched?
I guess understanding the last couple episodes symbolically will be key to understanding True Tears. Too bad I don’t.
I’ve read elsewhere that Simoun is much like a WW2-era war drama involving airplane pilots and attached love interest pining for their return, looking longingly down the stretched runway and into the skies. I suppose, fittingly so, such was exactly how True Tears ended. Minus the runway.
Great Feat of Strength (and Dexterity)
Yeah, yeah, you guys are probably sick of people blogging about True Tears. I wouldn’t know because I’ve been taking a minor break from reading blogs (if one can do such a thing) and writing blogs. I do understand that it’s a show that offers some persuasion to both mind and emotion to express just how… moe? it is.
Thankfully I don’t have a weakness against the backside of girls’ knees (or am I confusing it for Aria?). I think. And I’ve long since gotten my meganekko thing under control. I’m pretty good against porn generally. Most other forms of fanservice have the reverse effect on me (save when it’s well-done).
Am I the only one who wanted to have at Jibeta’s feet? I bet it tastes good.
Hm, I thought I already wanted some imagawayaki.
Hiromi’s feet is a wholly different matter. It’s really an inadvertent use of fanservice that turned into awesome.
And here’s why it’s awesome. So awesome that I’m going to spend many hundred words to talk about it.
True QQ for High Definition
With some major American studio jumping off the HDDVD ship and onto the BRD bandwagon, maybe that format war will be coming to an end soon.
But that is neither here or there. One small point I want to address is that a while back there are some reports of porn studios siding with the HDDVD format, citing lower production costs. Nonetheless, it’s highly questionable how much weight that has on the format war–simply because when it comes to porn, the internet has long been declared the winner. Indeed, the internet is going to win also in the non-porn category, and it already has started to in some cases in the form of on-demand delivery via cable/telephone providers and, increasingly, things like Apple TV, X-Box Live and Netflix.
That said, there has been fewer TV anime (read: virtually none) that made me think “WOAH Hi DEF” than True Tears. On the grey file trading channels of the intarweb people can find “high definition” encodes of whatever shows. And quite frankly 90%+ of them suck. The reasons why they do vary–sometimes the raw is just a poor upscale; other times it’s the fault of the subsequent encoders for other reasons; frequently it’s just because the source sucked.
The high-def formats are suppose to be attractive, in my eyes, because they wow you. It’s not because they merely look better than what we had before. In fact a tell-tail sign of what is an upscale and what is not–if it doesn’t punches you in the face, it’s not real HD. Sure, you can blow things up and make it look better (especially when it comes to anime) it’s still no substitute for a proper high-def treatment. And while True Tears doesn’t kick my balls like, say, the High-def 5cm/s trailer that was released over a year ago, it stands head and shoulder above its HD kins this season.
High-def anime is now more common than ever. The usual TV broadcast channels are doing the switch. It’s about time we get the same treatment in terms on home video. Com’on Japan. Don’t make me QQ for you.
In fact, the next person who mentions reverse-import gets headshot.
True Sweets
I have a thing for imagawayaki. Part of it was because of my youth, as the local Chinese population then adopted this casual eats from their ex-occupier in Taiwan which, like the nuts vendors at the street corners of Manhattan, promoted its own sales by smell… Sadly, it seems only when you’re walking around town will roasted chestnuts smell anywhere nearly that good.
Thanks to Kanon, everyone and their mom knows what the frell a taiyaki is. But just like how the nikuman is really a spin off of northern style bao zi (and we really need some anime to showcase my favorite Chinese export to northeast Asian cusine, zhajiangmian), the taiyaki is really an ornate relative of the imagawayaki. I think the Japanese variety of imagawayaki tend to be more cakey, with more filling and a generally larger construction than the shell-thin Taiwanese variety, but it’s still a step down from the whale that is an average taiyaki. Well, YMMV of course. These kinds of traditional snacks come in all kind of variety, if one can dare to generalize.
I don’t really know much about taiyaki for that matter. The real truth is that, from a frugal parent’s perspective, it’s a wasteful gimmick to lure kids. Woo it’s a cute fish! Ugh. It’s this unshapely mess that will get those filling all over your hands. It makes your kids whine if you’ve not had the chance to show them how it’s suppose to work. Down with silly shape gimmicks! Down with Macbook Air?
I jest. But it makes you wonder about the imagawayaki. All in all, it’s an unremarkable snack. To western sensibilities, flour-based snacks are quite common, so rice-based ones tend to draw more attention (like mochi and daifuku). I don’t blame them–those do taste hella good. However the imagawayaki is like, the ghetto choice of the everyday man’s confectionery. Not everyone’s snubby enough to enjoy their tea and wagashi all the time? I guess if you can turn into a butterfly and cackle like the best of them, maybe.
That said, in the US we have Waffle Houses and IHOPs, so maybe that niche is taken cared of. I’ve yet to see a pancake place that’d let you have red bean paste… but that’d be dorayaki? Isn’t that the granddaddy of all anime foods?
True Tears is definitely not. While it is an intriguing exhibition of strange people and the not-so-strange, the quirky interaction so far is definitely catching my attention. Plus a chance to relive the taste of imagawayaki!
