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Nov 25, 2013

Uchouten Kazoku (Anime) add

Recommended

Uchouten Kazoku opens with Shimogamo Yasaburou, an energetically laid-back shape-shifting tanuki, giving us a quick rundown of his hometown of Kyoto. This is a city with a storied history of mostly-regular humans, proud tengu magicians, and oh, playful tanuki shape-shifters, of course and here, he tells us, there are endless quantities of amusement to be had. As the camera follows him deftly navigating the beautiful cityscape, he declares with conviction that while he is a tanuki, he's far too proud to be a mere tanuki and is instead one who passes his days admiring tengu and imitating humans. He assures us that he is so ... busy that he doesn't even have time to be bored.

The introduction now complete, the opening theme plays.

And with that, the frenetically paced Uchouten Kazoku is now over. As if to drag the show back down to earth, his younger brother appears and bestows upon our main character that which is most dreaded by every magical shape-shifting bohemian, a responsibility—and one from his mother, no less! It quickly becomes apparent that although he neglected to make mention of this in the introduction, he is in fact the third of the four sons of a once-prestigious and close-knit family of tanuki. Although you might suspect, due to the now-conspicuous absence of this little bit of important information in his introduction or simply just due to his nature, that he is somehow resentful of this, he in fact makes no real effort to escape from these bonds. And so we have settled into the basic premise of this series.

Though not without frequent bursts of excitement, this is now a much slower show and its many strengths begin to reveal themselves to the viewer. With its vivid reds and yellows that perfectly capture the fall season, saturated yet earthy greens, and fantastic nighttime blues, this show likely has the best color palette of any anime from 2013. (The doubtful are invited to consider episode 6, titled "Taking in Fall Colors," which is about just that: taking in fall colors.) Combined with the excellent way that texture is used in the visuals of this show, this makes for amazing backgrounds; as the viewer may have already noticed during the introduction, Uchouten Kazoku's Kyoto is an inspired city of lively streets, fanciful props, and amazing interiors. Also worth noting is the way that the animators expressively use the body language of the whimsically designed and deceptively minimal characters. For an obvious example of this, you could watch the way that Yasaburou moves even after taking a female form in the first episode, although it's really something that deserves your attention throughout the entire series.

The strongest aspect of all, however, is the writing, and as such Uchouten Kazoku features an amazing cast of characters. While Yasaburou doesn't completely embrace his familial obligations—certainly not to the degree of the eldest Shimogamo brother—his relationships with his immediate kin are shown early on to be his most significant and enduring ties and as they should be, they are all great characters, from the eldest—the comically severe Yaichirou, to the youngest—the endearing Yashirou. But the best non-Yasaburou member of the Shimogamo family might just be the unnamed matriarch, who plays many roles over the course of the series but is always a fun character due both her quirkiness and her naturally likable demeanor. All of the main characters are given the development that they deserve, and Uchouten Kazoku deserves credit for doing so in such a way that it feels like part of a natural progression where the viewer is increasingly drawn into the lives of its characters. Although this can be mostly attributed to the thoughtful way in which the story progresses, some credit should be given to the production for the excellent way in which all of the flashback scenes were executed. Flashbacks can easily feel tacked-on and tacky, especially when silly effects, bad transitions, and other such missteps are involved, but the flashbacks in Uchouten Kazoku are not only well-integrated, but also executed to a standard that is higher than much of the rest of the show, lending them emotional impact and narrative strength. The main characters aren't the only fun and interesting ones, however, as almost any given supporting character from the scheming Ebisugawa brothers to the perpetually grumpy Akadama-sensei has the ability to steal the spotlight for entire scenes. Both the writing and the production deserve to share the credit here, as the supporting characters are not only written in a way that makes them instantly likeable, but are depicted on screen in a lively and colorful way that is on par with the main cast. (If you've been keeping count, you may have noticed that I've neglected to mention one of the four brothers. Well, he's currently a frog in a well and for the purposes of this review, there isn't too much more that I should say about that, but I suppose that it should be noted that he is both one of the funniest and most interesting characters.)

Arguably even more impressive than it's cast, however, is the way that the it can effortlessly evoke meaning from absurdity. For example, I did not expect to truly feel bad for a frog in a well—that is to not just have a meaningless emotional response due to some cheap puppy-kicking, but to actually really truly feel bad for a frog in a well. Though Uchouten Kazoku presents itself as a slice of life comedy with whimsical supernatural elements, it flexes its storytelling muscles in a big way on an episode-to-episode basis, so is not only thematically rich, but crafts a meaningful emotional narrative over the course of its thirteen episodes. The key to this is perhaps the way that elements of the story are quietly and thoughtfully built up over the course of the slice of life portions of each episode, leading to catharsis much more naturally than is obvious to the viewer.

I want to finish by talking about yet one more important character that I've intentionally avoided even making a passing reference to thus far, and that is the cryptically beautiful figure who is now only referred to by the name of the god Benten. Though she makes appearances as early as the very first episode—the world of Uchouten Kazoku is a small one after all—she remains an enigma for much of the series. This is largely due to the fact that as much is said about Benten by the other characters in the show than is said by Benten herself, which leads me to why I chose only now to bring her up: Benten frequently serves as the focal point of all of the strongest elements of this series. Captivatingly beautiful to almost every character in the show, the impassioned moments that she inspires are many (but not all) of the most powerful scenes of the series. But Benten isn't just your archetypal muse character who sits around looking pretty while legitimately interesting characters swarm around her and do legitimately interesting things. She herself has a hand in almost every single major plot event of the series and is furthermore the main actor in, or at least an active participant of, many of the best scenes, so while her appearances are sometimes infrequent, they are always memorable. The best aspects of Uchouten Kazoku just seem to become even more apparent whenever Benten is involved. Indeed, everything from the quality of the writing to the quiet strength of the soundtrack and the ability of P.A. Works to deliver sublime visuals seems to be on display during moments like late in episode 3 when Benten waves her fan, and as if on-command, everything immediately comes together to create one of the best scenes of the entire show.

As something with no significant flaws that come to mind, I wholeheartedly recommend Uchouten Kazoku to anyone whose interest is even slightly piqued by this review. Though often restrained in its pacing and contemplative in tone, the show is much more engaging than you might think. Even if you think that you will find it difficult to appreciate the writing or the humor, P.A. Works does a great job of creating an immersive experience for the viewer with the superbly-crafted setting and soundtrack lending the series strong atmospheric qualities as well. Just watch it—I'm sure that you won't be lacking in things to appreciate.

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Oct 30, 2013

Oniichan dakedo Ai sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne! (Anime) add

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"At the end of the day, at the end of the day when all was for naught, I can at least take pleasure in knowing that my little sister is waiting at home with open arms and a warm bosom." — Sophocles

Since the Armory Show of 1913, the state of Western Civilization has been one of decline. Though the rise of Modernist Art might not seem terribly significant to the average uneducated reader, the paradigm shift from Representational Art to Abstract Art planted the Seeds of Degeneracy that sprouted into the base and rotten Popular "Culture" that we are all so familiar with today. Indeed, ... with shameless and vile works like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey standing proudly at the vanguard of a modern Literary Movement that panders and coddles its audience, Western Literature has never been in more dire a state. What happened to authors who challenged their readers like real writers do? Where is the bravery? What happened to Subversive Literature like Great Expectations, a veritable seven-part Landmark Masterwork by David Copperfield about an orphan who goes to a secluded school that straddles the edge between "magic" and "reality"? And this horrible trend of dumbed-down throw-away culture is not limited to the realm of Literature (if horrible books like Twilight can even be called as such). We no longer have true artists like Fragonard whose shockingly honest and realistic depictions of the harsh reality of daily life were barred from the Paris Salon of 1863. But where the West has fallen, the East will rise, and today I am going to talk about the work that will undoubtedly serve as the herald of the most important Literary Movement of the new millennium: the Japanese animated television series "As Long as There's Love, It Doesn't Matter If He is My Brother, Right?"

There is a genre of writing called Allegorical Fiction. Considered by the vast majority of Rational and Moral Enlightenment thinkers to be the Highest form of Literature, the great Dutch librettist Voltaire famously said, "Give me not a story about a man who does deeds, but one where the man becomes the deeds." However, it is not nearly as accessible as a conventional linear narrative with wish-fulfillment elements like Fifty Shades of Grey and as it is very rare to find a work of Allegorical Fiction these days, it is an exceptionally rare treat to be fortunate enough to experience one. As such, we should be very thankful that the underground Japanese Literary Movement known as "Imoutocore" is giving us the opportunity to once again experience works from this all-but-forgotten genre.

The heart of Imoutocore is Family Values. Yes, these are the same Family Values that have been so savaged abandoned by the vulgar abomination that is Western Popular Culture, and it is a miracle that a small group of Japanese writers were somehow able to remember these vaunted Family Values after almost an entire century of Western Degeneracy. As Saint Thomas Aquinas so eloquently proclaimed on his deathbed, "As men there is much for which we should be thankful, but above all things, it is not the opportunity to know God for which I am most thankful, but the opportunity to know the bosom of my little sister." Thus, as Aquinas was one of the discoverers of Western Morality, we can infer that the central tenet of Family Values is the ability for one to love one's little sister.

Though the seminal Japanese light novel ("light" is short for "en-light-enment") "My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute" (Oreimo for short) is arguably the founding work of the Imoutocore Movement, the animated television adaptation of the light novel "As Long as There's Love, It Doesn't Matter If He is My Brother, Right?" (OniAi for short) will undoubtedly be remembered as the most important for both its deep and meaningful narrative and the sublime art and animation that was wrought from the hands of the maestros of Studio FUNimation. The crux of the story is what the early 20th century (aka. Pre-Degeneracy) Russian philosopher Edsger Dijkstra called "The Teapot of False Choice." Although Akito is living in the same house as his rightfully beloved little sister, he is surrounded by temptation in the form of other women. However, as this a work of Allegorical Fiction, the reader is not to think of them as "real" women. Instead, one is best served to think of each as a False Choice that together compose the metaphysical structure that Dijkstra termed "The Spout of Deontology." As for Akito, although it is tempting to think of him as some sort of Reader Avatar of sorts, he is what translators have varying called "The Cap of Moral Righteousness" or just "The Cap of Justice." When the Cap of Justice is in place, the only way for tea to escape the teapot is by following the Path of False Choices on the Spout of Deontology. Or in layman's terms, Akiko is best girl and a perfect miracle of the universe and MC is an ignoble gentleman for ignoring her and consorting with other females.

Although Visual Art is the most corrupted aspect of contemporary Western Civilization—recall that the Seeds of Degeneracy were planted by Modernist Artists in the first place—the Japanese arthouse film collective Studio FUNimation was able to shed the weight of one hundred years of Degenerate Art and produce what can objectively be called nothing less than a feast for the eyes. Drawn in the style of Socialist Realism that was favoured by Russian masters like Lu Xun and Ai Weiwei, a complete mastery of the female anatomical form is not only demonstrated in the art of "As Long as There's Love, It Doesn't Matter If He is My Brother, Right?" but employed as a key element of its unique style of visual storytelling. Indeed, even the Greeks were not fully confident in their mastery of the human form and frequently used lewd distractions like exposed genitalia in order to distract viewers from anatomical imperfections. Furthermore, they, nor any culture that followed were skillful enough to use the female form in such a bold way as the Siscons (the term that Imoutocore artists use to refer to themselves) do in this work. Boldly bringing new meaning to the term "False Choice," Akito's temptation is profoundly palatable in each and every scene where the talented artists of Studio FUNimation grace the screen with their powerful depictions of the components of The Spout of Deontology.

The reason why I started this review with a quote from the great Roman tragedian Sophocles is simple: "As Long as There's Love, It Doesn't Matter If He is My Brother, Right?" is a tragedy. In the end, Akito is unable to make the right choice, is unable to love his little sister, and is unable to uphold Family Values within his household. The ending of this story is perhaps the very saddest in Literature, as the heart of any viewer should wrench during the highly emotional climax and somber aftermath. And after everything, when we realize that his little sister will never truly know the love of her older brother, we also realize that just as Akito is doomed, Western Civilization is as well. But as the Korean sociologist Watari Wataru added to the end of one of his treatises recently, "My wife might have left me and I didn't get tenure, but goddamn am I glad that OniAi is getting a second season."

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Aug 15, 2013

Gifuu Doudou!!: Kanetsugu to Keiji (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (9/25 eps)

If it weren't for two other particularly strong entries, Gifuu Doudou!!: Kanetsugu to Keiji—the double exclamation marks say it all, really—would probably be a strong contender for the most righteous show of the summer 2013 anime season. Gifuu Doudou!!'s premise is simple: Naoe Kanetsugu and Maeda Keiji, two ridiculously large and powerful "legitimate eccentrics," recount their exploits dispensing their brand of "RIGHTEOUSNESS" all over Sengoku-era Japan. It has the right attitude to make this sort of narrative funny and fun, clearly not taking itself very seriously with things like an over the top opening (entirely composed of recycled footage of course) named "SAMURAI ROCK" with ... lines like "come on come on come come on SAMURAI BABY" in English and heavily, heavily caricatured depictions of most of its characters. When watched with friends this can all make for a very righteous (and enjoyable) experience.

But don't get me wrong, this show is not very righteous (or good) in any traditional sense of the word. Gifuu Doudou!! is plagued by all sorts of problems, from its extremely low budget to its terrible writing and strawman characters. In the world of Gifuu Doudou!!, physical size roughly correlates to righteousness which roughly correlates to power.

Most characters are not very big.

Okay, so having our protagonists tower over all of the other characters in every scene can be fun if you are the sort of person who can look at that sort of absurdity with an appreciative attitude, but there is one aspect of this show that absolutely lacks righteousness: Gifuu Doudou!! hardly deserves to be called a piece of animation. Perhaps Studio DEEN decided that its money was better spent elsewhere, but this is one of the most plainly underfunded anime of recent years. Foreground characters rarely do much more than flap their mouths, background characters never even move, some episodes are almost entirely recycled footage from previous episodes, and most shots are slow pans across a still image or hilarious slow dramatic zoom-ins on some character's massive face. Most egregious, however, are the "action" scenes. Shirohata Bob, the director, generally does a good job of avoiding action whenever he can by just cutting to shots of bodies on the ground after the enemies have been dispatched (wouldn't want to have to draw too many frames). However, whenever he is forced to show actual combat, the result isn't pretty. Having the top of someone's body literally slide off of his stationary legs while an enormous quantity of horrible looking blood gushes out is bad enough, but even worse is when the director takes a still shot, overlays some diagonal lines, and literally just shakes it for about ten seconds in some sort of pathetic attempt to convey motion. I understand that you're working with approximately one frame every ten seconds, but please, Bob, please don't just shake the camera like that.

If you have friends available to take along for the ride and the right kind of appreciation for absurdly over the top samurai-ninja-tiger-monks (Maeda. Keiji.) I wholeheartedly recommend Gifuu Doudou!!. If not, you won't get very much out of this weekly dose of righteousness.

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Jul 26, 2013

Kaikisen (Manga) add

Mixed Feelings

Well that was just a little heavy-handed.

Kaikisen: Return to the Sea falls into a classic trap. Is the greedy land-developer character not perceptibly evil enough despite the fact that he literally wears sunglasses indoors? Let's also have his driver almost hit the main character in his fancy car then, just to show that he really isn't someone who cares. It should be enough to let the motives and major actions of your characters speak for themselves, but sometimes authors just can't resist adding that extra little "kick."

Yes, our villain actually kicks a dog.

The absurd portrayal of the people behind the development project ruins what what ... would have otherwise been a relatively reasonable portrayal of the trade-offs between sticking to tradition and accepting modernization. (Well, it would be a little biased still, but we can accept that fiction in general has an inescapable fondness for the days of yore.) Instead, what we get is some hackneyed pseudo-profound mash-up of "respect nature/tradition/something" and "Magic and Miracles are Real!"

The climax and conclusion of Kaikisen, I feel, are similarly poor. A poorly-integrated extended car chase and a gratuitous all-out brawl at a festival might be excused perhaps, but some things are unforgivable. Not only is the age-old (and just absolutely tiresome) trope of Faithful Dog Companion Frees Hero By Attacking Evildoer invoked, but a similarly cringe-worthy moment is when the main villain has a complete change of heart in the space of two pages. And how can we be so sure that he's a good guy now? Well, just look at how sympathetic he looks without his sunglasses! Clearly, the sunglasses had been controlling him all along.

All that said, there is one major redeeming quality. As others have mentioned, the art is superb both technically and stylistically, and the confident linework, solid panelling, and careful shading and texturing can feel like a clinic in how to actually draw manga that looks good. Stylistically it's nothing to write home about, but that's just fine. Not everything needs to look like Gogo Monster or not simple, and if I were to borrow for just a moment that good old MAL system of assigning sub-scores for art, characters, and et cetera, I'd give this a full 10 in that category. First and foremost, the particularly strong art saves Kaikisen from being an unengaging read, but it is also valuable in one other notable respect. The subtly expressive way in which figures are sometimes drawn by mangaka can bring instant yet meaningful characterization to a character if done properly, and some of the best characters of this manga are not the main characters, with the exception of Natsumi, but characters like Yosouke's father, the mermaid, and the less caricatured of the townfolk.

Ultimately, however, it is difficult for Kaikisen to save itself from its heavy-handed moralizing, and while enjoyable enough most of the time due to the excellent artwork, the shallow build-up and entirely empty conclusion will not leave very many readers satisfied.

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