PinkuBentoBox

In an attempt to force myself to actually put content up on this blog more than once or twice a year, I’ve decided to start actually writing a bit about anime that I finish. This is sort of continuing along the same theme that I started when talking about Slayers Next about a year ago. This is actually the third one of these I’ve started, but this time I’m finishing the bastard off.

I’m not interested really in summarising what I’m talking about or anything, since it’s not like there aren’t dozens of blogs who post summaries and have much better (and less lazy) writers. Not to mention that summary info can generally be found on ANN or Wikipedia or the like. I’ve also got no intention of holding off on spoilers. I assume if you’re bothering to read my long-winded bullshit then you’re actually familiar with the anime at hand, or if not, you don’t care.

With that aside, I should also probably admit that I apparently have an incredible tolerance for crap. I don’t particularly care if something is bad (as long as it’s not really, really bad) as long as I’m fairly entertained. Additionally I tend to hoard shows for ages, sitting on them until I suddenly get the desire to watch something and burn my way through an entire archived series in 3-4 days. This might actually have a bearing on why I can tolerate a fair amount of mediocrity - things like pacing problems end up being far less of an issue when you’re watching everything in one go instead of having to wait for a week or more for the next installment.

You’ve probably already realised where I’m going with this. Kaze no Stigma is mediocre. Highly so. Gonzo are essentially a mediocrity factory. They spent the better part of this decade churn out soulless, lifeless shows, adapting existing material with some kind of strange formula that appears to be built around sucking out all its redeeming features, lobotomising it and making it shuffle around like some kind of brainless automaton for a few months until the factory churns out the next one, then quickly forgotten. Though to be fair, their recent monetary issues have appeared to convince them to at least try and put an effort into making things that will actually sell. Shame for Funimation that they appear to have picked this one up by mistake. Before anyone asks, yes, I watched old fansubs I’ve had archived for ages, not the ‘official’ release. Not that it particularly matters in the end.

Anyway, Kaze no Stigma! There’s not a huge amount to say about this, it’s basically mediocre in every point. It’s certainly not terrible, but it feels like there was a lot of potential in the show that was hampered and effectively squandered by poor writing, inconsistent characterisation and bad pacing.

The pacing issue was probably not as evident for me for reasons already mentioned, however I could still notice that things seemed to plod along very slowly, taking a long time to resolve any given plot point. It’s no Noir, but it did feel like there was not quite enough plot to spread over the entire timeslot allocated to it, so rather than pad things out with bad filler episodes, they decided to simply attempt to spread the content they had further and more thinly as a result. Anime with poor pacing isn’t exactly uncommon, however, so this is hardly a major concern.

Characterisation was much more of an issue. I’m not so worried about the fact that the main heroine and love interest is a redhead (or more technically a pinkhead) tsundere who likes to set things on fire with magic. Sure, they’re pretty much a dime a dozen, but if we wrote off everything because it relied a bit on stereotype or convention in its character design then we’d end up with not a lot left to watch. She could be a lot worse than she is, too. More irritating for me was that the writing team clearly didn’t know what they wanted to do with the protagonist.

The real issues lie in the fact that their writing for him is incredibly inconsistent. They establish him one way, only to turn around and have him do things that seem to be entirely at odds with the character they’d already established. When first introduced, Kazuma is fairly cold, arrogant, seems to be very powerful and have some anger issues. Additionally he establishes very early that he doesn’t care about his old family at all. Yet everything that occurs subsequently is not in tune with this. His entire character changes within a few episodes. Instead of the grey, morally-conflicted character you initially expect, you end up with a cliche Diamond in the Rough-style Generic Male Protagonist.

What’s even more frustrating is that his actual motivations are just as inconsistent. He clearly has an interesting background, but it’s never expanded upon. We know nothing about how he ended up with his wind powers, we know practically nothing about the circumstances around the vendetta that he sometimes appears to have with Almagest. We get to see little snippets of his past, which just serves to make the story as a whole more frustrating, because honestly I found the flashbacks we did get to be far more interesting and compelling than the actual plot that was being developed.

The inconsistency seeps into the tone as well. Gonzo appear to have been targeting the usual sort of action-comedy niche. The problem is that I get a strong impression that this lighter tone might not be reflective of the original work from which the anime is derived. There are several spots in which a much darker tone seems to creep in, the most obvious of course being the flashback with a powerless Kazuma watching Cui-Ling, bleeding from a hundred cuts and being sacrificed to a demon while pleading with him to save her. These sorts of moments were vastly more compelling and engaging than the majority of the rest of the anime. A quick consultation of Wikipedia turns up accusations that the inconsistent nature of the tone is attributable to Gonzo, who have lightened the tone, removed many deaths and reduced Kazuma’s involvement in others to make him less of a dark character. I think that they’d have been better served by remaining faithful to the source.

In the end, however, despite its schizophrenic presentation and considerable failings, it’s not a bad show. While it never fully delivers on the promise shown in some scenes, as an overall package it’s passable, though exceedingly average fare. Surprisingly, despite how cliche they are, Ayano and Kazuma actually do work as a pair, though as a love interest in an anime show she’s fairly well-tread ground and will always play second fiddle to Kazuma in terms of her actual ability to get things done without having her hand held all the time. I’m not a big fan of the whole tsundere type, but Ayano’s particular blend of about 99% tsun and 1% dere appears to work far better for me than most. Perhaps because the few times she flips, it’s when Kazuma actually does something genuinely embarrassing. I could have done without the annoying little brother, however, who spends most of the time whining and periodically gets in the way. If he hadn’t been present in the show at all, I suspect that it would have been a stronger story. Though that wouldn’t have been hard given how retarded the writing is in parts - people participating in a real-life MMORPG for example is a stupid idea that we’d normally only expect to see in dumb hollywood flicks - there are still some interesting moments spread throughout the show. It’s just that honestly, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done better in other shows. I have a strong suspicion that the light novels that the show was adapted from are much better than Gonzo’s effort would indicate.

So, in summary, Kaze no Stigma is a typical Gonzo show, taking what may have once been a reasonably passable original story and running it through their special Mediocrity Factory, producing an anime that while watchable and entertaining, is ultimately inconsistent and schizophrenic, and on the occasions when it manages to line up everything properly, ends up only highlighting its frustrating failure to fully explore and capitalise on its better ideas.