PinkuBentoBox

Yeah, I know, it’s been a while since I did any bloggings. College and some other things came up and I simply didn’t have time to get around to it. Hell, I haven’t even been watching much animu, period, and have simply been letting fansubs and DVDs pile up around my ears, mostly untouched. But with graduation fast approaching, I figured now was a good time to get back into things and finally make good on my promise to do regular blog entries for PBB. For this first entry in who-knows-how-many-months, I’ve got a show I’ve been dying to see, a show I’m well overdue to finish, and first impressions on two shows from this current spring season.

As anyone who knows me and my tastes in anime is aware, I pretty much worship Leiji Matsumoto as a high holy icon of Japanese animation. It was the Galaxy Express 999 movies that first got me into anime some ten years ago, and I find myself completely enamored time and time again with his sweeping space opera style of storytelling and iconic, almost mythological characters. In fact, I consider Captain Harlock in particular to be one of the single greatest anime characters of all time. So imagine my joy when I received the 2002 Captain Harlock OVA as a Christmas gift this past holiday season. Imagine my further joy when I watched it and found it to be among the better Matsumoto titles I’ve seen.

In its own fucked up way, Space Pirate Captain Harlock: The Endless Odyssey (inexplicably named “Captain Herlock” for Geneon’s DVD release) serves as both a sequel to and retelling of the original 1974 Space Pirate Captain Harlock TV series. It picks up some years after the Mazone threat of the first series has been defeated, and even references the conflict by name. But the introduction of some main characters is done almost exactly like the original, specifically having Tadashi run to the Arcadia for revenge after the main baddie offs his pops. The obvious problem of Professor Daiba living (and dying) twice aside, the show acts as if Tadashi had never met Harlock before, despite having joined him previously on a massive forty-two episode crusade against sinister plant women. Further punctuating Matsumoto’s seeming disdain for continuity between his works, one of the more prominent Mazone lieutenants has been recast for Endless Odyssey as Professor Daiba’s virtual assistant.

Matters of continuity aside though, the show is incredibly solid. Seeing Harlock and the rest of the Arcadia’s crew done up with current animation and a healthy budget is a treat, and the story is easily one of the tightest Matsumoto tales to date. Some parts of it get a bit off on a tangent (Commander Ilita’s arc could’ve tied into the plot better, rather than simply dumping him in a damn space van until he was needed again), but the story moves very briskly, and actually manages to involve the whole Arcadia crew in plot-related events a lot more significantly than what I’ve seen of the first series (where Kei & Co. did virtually jack squat…here only poor Mimeh is neglected ). The ending is a bit of a mix, with the internal character conflicts getting an absolutely jaw-dropping finish while the external conflict is resolved with a trippy Tochiro deus ex machina (which makes sense given the running trend of Harlock surviving through faith in his companions, but still feels a little simplistic for the enemy they’re facing), but all in all it’s a fantastic show that anyone with even a passing interest in Matsumoto simply must see.

And the fact that the plot in a nutshell consists of Harlock telling what is effectively the Devil himself to piss off? Simply awesome.

But where one of my idols in Japanese pop fiction succeeds brilliantly, another one falls tragically short. I utterly adore Type-Moon, and find their intricate, sweeping stories to be extremely captivating on a level well above most of their visual novel contemporaries. Sadly, the anime adaptation of Fate/stay night did not live up to that sort of incredible quality. Probably because it was trying way too hard.

You see, last year when the show was running, I became hesitant to finish out the last ten or so episodes, because I’d heard that after Archer’s amazing exeunt against Berserker, the show took a nosedive on all fronts, writing, animation, the works. Now I’d enjoyed the show pretty well up until that point, despite some nitpicks about the animation and some irritation that it was basically only going to follow one of the game’s three scenarios, and became wary of proceeding into what was being widely regarded as the show’s complete undoing. So I didn’t, and moved onto mostly bigger and better things until recently. I figured now was the time to dig this one out and wrap it up, whether it sucked or didn’t, and…it mostly sucked. The animation dipped to near Higurashi levels of awful during the Caster arc, and barely improved once Gilgamesh showed up. It got to the point that I was starting to count instances of stock footage on two hands; Saber’s Excalibur animation literally began appearing about once in every episode near the end. And the writing featured just a hair too much whining on the part of not only Shirou, but Saber as well, made worse by the fact that redeeming characters Rin and Ilya were reduced to mere background noise in the episodes after Berserker bit it. About the time Lancer popped back into the picture things improved a bit, but by then it was just a bit too late to save the series from the solid mediocrity it had firmly settled itself into.

So, ultimately, Fate/stay night’s anime ended up being a bit of a bust in terms of competent adaptation of the source. What’s strange though, is that it wasn’t because the anime strayed from the source at all. Varying animation quality, an overly angsting script, and the pacing of a snail were all contributing factors, but ultimately the biggest problem with the Fate anime was that it was too literal. Honestly, I don’t think visual novels should be adapted literally from their source, because inevitably that means adhering to one of several possible storylines, and neglecting others in the process. Characters will be reduced in importance, certain plot points will be abandoned because they only appear in certain routes (even when those plot points are vital to a main character’s development), and in cases where that visual novel has a particularly large scope and depth of character to it, like Fate/stay night or Tsukihime, having such things cut out will hurt the story considerably. Without Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel to back it up, the Fate route of Fate/stay night (on which the anime is based) feels incomplete, especially when left to stand on its own as a TV series. There’s no Unlimited Blade Works to tell you why Archer is significant (and that final scene with him in the anime will no doubt leave those who are buying the DVDs scratching their heads in bewilderment). There’s no Heaven’s Feel to tell you why the Matou family is important, and why Sakura even fucking exists at all, despite being a completely useless character in both Fate and UBW. The complete story of Fate/stay night is Fate/stay night, not just the first third of it, and if the anime were to be at all successful, I feel as though a hybrid of all three scenarios that hits each one’s high points was mandatory. It may not be literal, but it still would’ve given those people unfamiliar with Fate a better grasp of what’s going on and would’ve cut down greatly on the number of plotholes having one scenario stand on its own brings up. Even if Fate had retained its bipolar animation, whining protagonists, and clunky pace issues, having the whole thing represented (by competent writers, of course) would have elevated it to a higher quality than it currently stands at.

Ah well, here’s hoping ufotable finally do a proper Type-Moon anime adaptation with their upcoming Kara no Kyoukai film. And here’s hoping the Fate/zero novel gets a proper anime adaptation down the road, as well, because the story its brewing sounds utterly incredible so far (and we need a better Emiya as a protagonist than Shirou, we really do).

Now, for the first time in a good while, an anime season has come along with enough enticing material to goad me into following things from the start, rather than waiting three or four months and checking out what’s kept the hype alive. The first of these new shows that I’ve decided to follow is one Neg has been on me to check into for a while now in its manga form, Claymore. From what I understand, it’s essentially Berserk with a hot chick, but having never seen Berserk (shocking, I know), I can’t really comment one way or the other. What I can say, though, is that after two episodes I’m really diggin’ me some Claymore. The animation and artwork seem a step above most TV series, with a nice fluidity and a very dark, monochromatic feel to the scenery and characters, and the story has me hooked right from the start. It’s a bit derivative, with the plucky young hero and the tough emotionless fighter that will inevitably learn to have a heart as per anime plot convention, but said characters are generally likable, so all’s forgiven for the time being. The story so far seems to indicate to me that Clare will somehow go rogue from the mysterious organization that has her on their leash, with the shady ethics behind the group, the emphasis on the Black Cards, and the fact that “tough chick kills monsters” seems a bit too simplistic to carry twenty-six episodes all foreshadowing some pretty big twists in the works (at least I hope so). In fact, I’m getting a specifically Kiddy Grade vibe from the whole thing, now that I think about it. The whole “mysterious organization sends out independently-acting super-powered agents” bit in particular, in which case Clare would fill something of the Eclair role…not that any of this is a bad thing, though I wouldn’t mind being pleasantly surprised along the way. I’m digging Claymore, and I can’t wait to see where it takes itself in the future (Neg don’t you spoil anything! >:( ).

The second new show I’m following this season is one I’ve been anticipating for a while now, Gonzo’s Shakespearean adaptation, Romeo x Juliet. Gonzo’s last literary update, Gankutsuou, stands to this day as one of my all-time favorite anime (vying for position at the top with the likes of Twelve Kingdoms, Haibane Renmei, and Boogiepop Phantom), so to hear that they were taking the sci-fi/fantasy baseball bat to Romeo and Juliet came as a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, all of Gankutsuou’s production team short of the scriptwriter are absent from this project, but after the first episode, things still seem to be off to a reasonably good start without them. It doesn’t grab me like the opening episode of Gankutsuou did, but then I don’t think anything has, to be honest. The approach here is a bit different, though. Where Gankutsuou stayed reasonably faithful to the original novel, save for a shift in protagonist from Edmund to Albert and a completely different ending, Romeo x Juliet seems to take the core cast of the play and the concept of a tragic love and toss the rest into the trash. These are no longer two preteen kiddos from rival families gallivanting off together on some cheap infatuation. Rather, Juliet seems to be the leader of some underground resistance against the oppressive Montague…lordship (bah, my knowledge of Renaissance-era political structure is a bit rusty right now), and a capable sword-fighter tangling with Montague prince Romeo in public while getting some sweet, sweet lovin’ from him on the side. Or something like that, the first episode only gets as far as their first meeting (complete with Juliet doing her best Zorro impersonation) while strongly hinting that all of this is yet to come. Even the cast is dramatically altered, with a slew of new characters added to the play’s existing lineup, and characters like Benvolio taking an initial backseat to newcomers like Juliet’s bestest gal pal, Cordelia. Hell, the Lord and Lady of the Capulet family are offed before the opening credits, which further cuts down the play’s cast. Of course, all of this drastic departure from the original is fine by me, as I personally hated the original play, and thought it to be one of Shakespeare’s most childish and inane works (a far cry from such masterpieces as Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tragedies of Julius Caesar, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Hopefully this anime will do for Romeo and Juliet what the Julie Taymor adaptation of Titus Andronicus with Anthony Hopkins did for that play (though, to be fair, I still liked Titus Andronicus more than Romeo and Juliet, so that film had less to prove than this anime does).

Also, though I seem to be the only one, I find the ultra-effeminate caricature of William Shakespeare found within the series to be utterly priceless. I mean, look at him!

Hopefully by next week, I’ll be further along in both Claymore and Romeo x Juliet. I also plan on getting started on the new season of Nanoha, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, as well as the new Gainax hype machine Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and the most polarizing title this season, Lucky Star. I may also pick up the 2006 version of Kanon and try to finish it off over the next couple of weeks. ‘Til then!

–Nagi