Summing Up Summer Wars
Tokikake:
Summer Wars:
Sometimes I wish I was more of a graphic artist, so I can illustrate my points without words.
Let me open with an anecdote. I was talking to some guys (non-anime people) about this film I saw over the weekend. I am a person of few words, so I described Summer Wars’ plot as, to paraphrase:
“So you got this high school geek who somehow got tricked by this girl, who goes to her school, to help her out during summer vacation. He ended up going to her family’s reunion because there are a lot of old people and they need extra help. Stuff happens. Towards the end of the movie they ended up trying to save the world from a rogue AI who threatens to blow up some nuclear power plant or something.”
Isn’t that 24 in a nutshell?
I think that’s distorting what makes Summer Wars a good film. But as media consumers, what I’ve describes should flag as something, at the very least, intriguing. It’s one of those things that reminded me of anime from the 90s; it combined crazy hijinks with the outright ordinary. It’s catchy at least in concept, regardless of how the show may have truly been.
At the same time, my description above isn’t so far off the mark. I pulled some key elements of the show and threw them together–namely the basic setup and the driving force of the plot for the second half of the film. Maybe this is why Summer Wars is sort of a difficult thing to process. It’s got that stuff on top of your Tokikake-style family drama. And then the Google-Murakami world, the King T. Kazuma things. (T is for trap right?) Then there’s the action/tension vehicle. Then comes the meta references.
If we assume that a family film, a blockbuster formula, has to appeal to multiple sorts of audience, then this sort of mix and match is a good old try at it, yes?
But I think we all will agree that the mix in Summer Wars is a far cry from what we’ve seen in Pixar’s works. If anything, Summer Wars is a little too otaku-ish. It’s almost like a brilliant and almost-eloquent man, with good things to say, but waves his hands and glosses over the detail, presuming his listeners already have some idea what he was going to say in the first place. His constructs are like an intricate, 3D object made of paper, an origami that reminds of databases. It appeals on a visceral level but only very few can digest what it is in entirety, simply due to the background knowledge necessary to understand.
Thankfully that might very well be the right presumption; most do have some background knowledge necessary. But it’s the kind of presumption that I wish nobody had to make. It’s the kind of bets that good stories make and win, but the best stories don’t even bother with.
Well, unless you are that kid at the NYICFF showing that had to ask how do people play games over the internet.
The Nutbladder Ranking: 2010-02
February is 2 days too short I think. It’s jam-packed and I could use that extra time…at least so I can make more progress on the UC Gundam backlog. (I’m holding off on Unicorn until The Time Is Right. Even if that usually means RIGHT THIS MOMENT.) So much stuff, so little time. Let’s get on to it.
[Just to recall, this is just a list of things I found notable during this month.]
Mai Mai Miracle is WOAAAH
Since Summer Wars is out on DVD/BD this week, you can watch it pretty easily. But Mai Mai Miracle is not going to happen for a while still, and my goodness.
If you like Omohide Poroporo, or know what inaka means and like anime, then you owe it to yourself to watch Mai Mai Miracle. I am actually not exaggerating at all; the film is all about that inaka-crap. For the record, I probably don’t qualify for either, so maybe this is just over-reaction or something.
It’s been years since I last saw Omohide Poroporo, but I still remember it vividly, if spottily. And as much as I hate to pin Mai Mai Miracle on that excellent Ghibli production, I think I have to, out of my inability to stand on anything else to criticize it.
Which is to say, I think Maimai Shinko to Sennen Mahou doesn’t quite stand up to that work, but at the same time it isn’t equally boring. Make no mistake; it is still boring. I saw the film with a theater full of kids, and a lot of them are fidgeting throughout the affair. You can hear it. It’s definitely a low octane experience. Still, it’s a visually competent work with good music and all that as you’d expect from a Madhouse feature film that opened just a few months ago (Began screening in Japan back in Nov. ‘09). It just doesn’t have as much of that softness, that human touch, than the Isao Takahata masterpiece. On the other hand, Shinko’s life in the boondocks was notably less controversial and friendly to certain things and ideas.
The story itself is based on the autobiography of a writer, and it’s set during her childhood. The presentation is, actually, like another Madhouse film. I hope that got you curious enough. It was my first impression. I even wrote it on the ballot… A writer is akin to an actress, but even more powerful since she created whole worlds from scratch; but I guess on the silver screen, we’re given the treat the same way, no matter if it originates from an act or a script.
On some level, this is a film that’s mainly for kids, or Japanese people. But the film’s presentation isn’t exactly the most easy thing to understand for the young as it overlays fantasy over reality and it’s quite the raw countryside (well, packaged nonetheless) experience to well-to-do New Yorkers and their children. I’m sort of at a loss as to how foreigners should engage the work besides as a, well, foreign film. But maybe that’s why the term “slice of life” is still a butchered metaphor rather than anything else, despite the earnest desire of people trying to use it to describe something way more profound than they realize.
As obligated, I’ll write more about both this and Summer Wars. Summer Wars is notably more mundane in comparison. I mean a mainstream-appealing action-adventure work with attractive Sadamoto designs is a win-win formula, but we’ve had just that a few years ago. Well, see for yourself.
The screening I attended featured Mamoru Hosoda himself, and after the screening he gave us a good 30-40 minutes of Q&A time. As this was the NYICFF, about 70% of the questions came from kids, as in people who looked like kids since they were yea big. There might be a few adults who actually asked questions, as in certifiably people over age of 25, total, out of the 2-3 dozen questions he entertained.
This was simply the best, most delightful Q&A session involving something anime in nature that I’ve attended. The questions from the kids were earnest, straightforward, and even thoughtful (as kids could be). Like why the Love Machine was called that (not just a Momusu thing). Or the big diss on lacking on juice. I had a great time anyways. Hosoda had to entertain the kids, but he also asked them some things to get feedback. And boy did they give feedback… I was amused when Hosoda was trying to explain the concept of internet-based multiplayer gaming to this kid, who looked like 7 or 8 years old. Well, you get the idea. Appropriately he went for a smoke after the time spent w/ the general public; it’s a tough crowd.
I’ll save the comparison with Tokikake and the rest of the review for later, but the thing that struck me about Summer Wars the most was the references. I mean, we all got the John & Yoko bit (and to the NY crowd, that’s a funny joke, if you are over the age of 20). But I just can’t help but to think that the Hanafuda Koi-Koi game is like Mahjong, and Natsuki is like, well, Nodocchi.
Came for Kanno, Stayed for Natsumi Kiyoura
I have this bad habit of gambling on debut albums. Thankfully it happens only once every year or three. It’s no big deal; only $40 tops down the drain tops… Maybe that is why I kept on doing it.
This time, it is Natsumi Kiyoura’s first solo album, called 19 Colors. CDJapan actually wrote it up better than I could have. To save you the trouble, I’ll just word drop a bit:
- A song produced w/ Yoko Kanno
- Spice and Wolf Season 1 OP
- Sasameki Koto OP/ED
- Keroro ED14
- Some song from Ristorante Paradiso (full version)
- Sketchbook OP new version
And other stuff.
If you read that CDJ promo piece, you might wonder why people compare Kiyoura with Maaya Sakamoto. Besides the Kanno connection, I guess, that is because both of them are child talents that grew up into this weird acting/music/seiyuu niche after they aged out the children’s talent bracket. Maaya is roughly 10 years senior of Natsumi IIRC.
As for the Yoko Kanno connection, the Kanno song, “Ano ne demo ne,” is not much to write home about. It reminds me of Maaya’s pop-ish tracks from, I dunno, Dive. It is a little jarring considering the rest of Kiyoura’s album is laid-back, jazzy, and overall nowhere nearly as intense as Maaya’s sound. I didn’t like it much, and you know I whore out for Kanno (who’s actually on the keyboard for it) any day.
On the other hand, unlike Maaya’s very early work, Kiyoura’s songs actually are cohesive, and the overall product is spot on if you enjoy crap like, well, Ristorante Paradiso. It’s like, sometimes these seiyuu-pop-idol types need a while to find a sound that works with their voice, but Kiyoura has already got it. Or is closing in on it, at any rate.
In short, just need more songs like Tabi no Touchuu yeah? Yeah. I’m not going to break the tracks down one by one; not my style anyways. I think it’s a good thing rather than a bad thing when the album goes down smooth without dips, but also without many outstanding marks. The more rock-like tracks on the album sound like “winded down idol group music” for lack of a better term, but even so Kiyoura adds a notable touch to the sound. It just isn’t so haunting or so memorable as her most outstanding track.
I was oddly surprised by Nijiiro Pocket however. The full cut is so much better…
Random factoid time.
- I think there really are a total of 19 colors on the album if you add something to something.
- The studio live that’s on the DVD were televised at one point? Not sure how they got on Youtube in the first place. Nice to have on DVD nonetheless. There are 4 performances, total, acoustic arrangements, I had a good time playing it in the background.
- The front cover of the insert booklet, which you see as the album cover, writes the album name “19 Colors” in (American) English. The rest of the album, at least everywhere I looked, writes it in kanji (十九色). I take this to mean that the proper way to refer to the name of this album is by its translated term in whichever language you choose. At the same time, the first track, also the title track, has the same name, and it is labeled itself by kanji only. For that I used the romanized term. Seems inconsistent but oh well.
Track list–
- Jyukuiro
- Tabi no Tochu
- Ano ne Demo ne
- Giniro no Kanashimi
- Neverland
- Nijiiro Pocket
- Kanashii Hodo Aoku <album version>
- Pallet
- Kaze Sagashi <full-colored samba mix>
- Bokura no Aikotoba
- Nanairo
- Midnight Love Call
PS. Limited Edition and Regular Edition at CDJ (affiliate links).
Shiro Emiya and the Economy
Shiro Emiya in UBW is all about the hero who “saves one meaning not saving another.” In other words, when you choose to save one person, you lose your chance to save another person because there’s only so much you can do. It’s the limited resource constraint in economics.
There is no way we can save everyone. There is not enough resources for everything that everyone wants to do, if it is even possible to achieve it. The anime otaku is intimately familiar with this concept, simply because it takes a large amount of time to consume all the anime a real otaku would want to watch. There are limited numbers of minutes and seconds in a person’s life, after all. We have to drop some shows!
That is the basic criticism as seen here, as applied to economics. A unit of money spent in infrastructure project via taxation means a dollar of money not spent being invested in a private enterprise which may very well drive the same infrastructural development. Or maybe it’ll sit in some safe investment portfolio, not doing much. I’m not saying which way to spend the money is better than the other, but that there is a dichotomy. A sound fiscal policy doses both the pros and cons of a spending policy, as well as the pros and cons of an if-we-didn’t-spend-the-money-could-have-done-that policy.
A more relevant example than brick-chucking hoodlums can be seen in the video game resale issue that some are making things out to be. The scenario is, if you are unfamiliar, is that used game sales do cannibalize into new game sales especially as many people purchase new games and used games from the same store, where the same games, new versus used, are displayed in proximity for shoppers. While the marginal profit retailers make on new games are small to none, they make much more off used games, usually purchased from the very same customers, sold for credit. In order to try to get in on the used game action, publishers are trying a variety of things, but invariably at expense of customers of new games.
The “limited economics” reversal as applied to the used game situation is summed up simply here. TL;DR, it just means that because people trade in old games primarily so they can buy new games, by meddling with used game sales, it makes more expensive effectively for people who trade in games, and with that could mean fewer people buying new games as it raises the effective cost of new games.
I think in UBW, Shiro comes to terms with his ideal (borrowed, perhaps, from classical economists) both by trying to double that dollar, to save two birds with one projection magic. This way you traverse two alternatives at the opportunity cost of one. Then again there WERE two Shiros so that was a possible route, AMIRITE.
Shiro is oddly the strongest example of this principle that I’ve seen in all of anime/manga/games, and even so the stories themselves are fairly weak examples. Are there any better ones?
