Re:Zero Episode 12, Subaru, and Anime Chauvinism

I know many wait with baited breath in preparation of calling “PC police!” when criticism is directed towards representation in media.  I love art, and I love diversity, and so with many issues my ideal solution would be more media that takes a different stance, not a silencing of that which is already out there.  That being said there are certainly instances where I feel things are just in poor taste, and that was the feeling I got from this week’s episode of Re:Zero.

The Genius Failings of the Kizna System

Many people have criticized Kiznaiver for the absurdity of its central conceit.  Looking at it logically there’s no way that the Kizna system is a feasible way of bringing about world peace, so it just ends up being some gimmicky piece of sci-fi tech just to give the show an interesting premise.  The thing is that on the former of those two points, Kiznaiver seems to agree.  We don’t see it at first, but now nearing the end of the series we have been told quite clearly that those who advocated and worked for the Kizna System were wrong.  The Kiznaiver project is winding down, with the majority of its financial backers now withdrawing their support after seeing that it was indeed a flawed premise.  At the end of episode 10 we are presented with the most striking results of the system’s failure, the vegetative subjects of its experimentation, but more importantly than being told that the technology itself didn’t work as well as was initially hoped, multiple characters also make remarks about how futile the whole thing was from a conceptual level in hindsight, specifically the pair of scientists Yamada and Urushibara who probably display the most regret and guilt.  This is also the only thing that I can think of that defends Hisomu’s existence as a character.  His masochism reveals a one of those clear conceptual flaws that the system had.  For a series to build its initial premise on a novel worldview (in this case the idea that forced total empathy could bring about world peace), and then to challenge and refute that same notion is a bold move, and Kiznaiver deserves some praise for pulling it off as well as it does.  

Kiznaiver Is the Ultimate Melodrama

Kiznaiver is among the handful of most talked-about currently airing series, and the single element that probably comes up in these discussions most frequently is the show’s (melo)drama.  Did this development take anyone who saw Mari Okada credited as screenwriter and/or read the series’ synopsis by surprise?  Not likely, but I think this series provides one of the best platforms for the exploration of a term that is as widely-used as it is overly-vague.  The term “melodrama” has become almost ubiquitous among the anime fandom in recent years as a go-to buzzword, and an often lazily-employed cudgel with which to express one’s displeasure for a series in scant detail.  To play devil’s advocate, the term does hold some value in that it lets one quickly describe a response to a series that could otherwise require a meticulous explanation of why a series failed to resonate with one on an emotional level, but having this shorthand being employed so often has led to a real lack of critical discussion about those meticulous details.  Along with that comes contention, as those who enjoy a given series are understandably frustrated by this one word being used as if its presence was an automatic indictment of a series’ quality, especially when the question of when drama crosses the line into melodrama is such a subjective one.  As vague as the term is on a colloquial level though, it is actually fairly well-defined.

Re:Zero and Visual Novel Mechanics

Eight episodes into Re:Zero I’ve gotten a very interesting vibe from the series.  Starting with Subaru’s death at the hands of Rem, it felt kind of like a visual novel.  The most obvious thing suggesting that is Subaru’s own comment that he must have angered her with his actions during that life, by stirring up her jealousy of her sister’s affections through his own relationship with Ram.  This whole scenario felt very “bad ending” to me.  He chose the girl whose affection he would focus on building, but in so doing failed to realize how yandere her sister was about her.  With episodes in this arc where Subaru “goes after” each of the four girls that share the mansion with him I can’t help but feel that this was conscious to some degree.  

Is Osomatsu-san Funny? – Review

For one reason or another Osomatsu-san rarely made me laugh.  I struggle with this fact because I found the series to be fairly funny, and I did generally enjoy my time with it.  I did find that I enjoyed the series more as it went on, and while some of that is due to what I saw as an increase in quality during the second cour, part of that was also due to finally getting a grasp of who each of the Osomatsu brothers were, and what their personalities are.  In the end though, I can’t really place my finger on what made the show “work” for me to the degree that it ended up doing so.  I think the most effective route for me to arrive at a conclusion about this will be for me to analyze what I found funny about those elements of the series that were that way to me and proceed from there.

Night on the Galactic Railroad and Angel’s Egg – Discussion

I recently watched Night on the Galactic Railroad (NGR from here on out), and was surprisingly reminded of one of my favorite films, Angel’s Egg.  These two 1985 anime really have a number of striking tonal and stylistic similarities, from the long periods of silence, to the interspersed Christian iconography.  They have a somewhat similar structure as well.  We get a very uncomfortable-feeling introduction to the main characters and their worlds, complete with eerie (and gorgeous!) music, before the entrance of something that radically diverges from the main characters’ normal lives, the soldier in the case of Angel’s Egg, and the train in the case of NGR.  Throughout Angel’s Egg and beginning with the train’s entrance in NGR each of these films presents a series of vignettes that seem to be attempting to communicate individual messages that tie into the larger themes of the films as a whole.  In NGR these splits are more obvious, being marked by transitional title slides, but I believe that the girl waking up and heading to the lake, her walking through the town, the whalers, she and the soldier walking through her bottle collection, the scene in her bedroom, etc. are all separated by obvious enough cinematic transitions, and have enough of a unique set of motifs and symbols to seem distinct from each other as well.

[Archive] The best example of its highly-popular subgenre

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  A shut-in gamer, a self-obsessed goddess, a volatile arch mage, and a masochistic tank wander into an MMORPG party.  No?  I didn’t think so.  “Konosuba” utilizes what is quickly becoming one of the go-to anime plot setups, a young man being thrust into a video game or a fantasy world with video game mechanics, surrounded with attractive women and sent on a noble quest, and takes great delight in lampooning the trope.  Irreverent humor, self-awareness, and witty subversion abound, all the while building a cast that can’t really be called likeable, but is certainly entertaining.

[Archive] “Erased” falters while executing an intriguing premise

In mid-2012 a series called “Sword Art Online” began airing that would rock the anime fandom.  Drawing popular and commercial success and intense critical ire in equally-large volumes it is now ranked as the second most-watched series on anime review-aggregator site MyAnimeList.  Early this year Tomohiko Itou, the director of that series and its equally-controversial sequel, returned with a new series, “Erased,” that greatly excited the community as a whole, as well as many of “SAO”’s detractors with its intriguing premise.  But does it deliver on that promise?

[Archive] “Rakugo” is a masterful period piece

Every year you can generally count on there being at least 2 or 3 anime that will turn out to be unique and memorable experiences that will stand the test of time, that remind us fans of the medium that there is in fact a purpose for our seemingly-irrational devotion to these Japanese cartoons.  Shouwa Genroku Rakuga Shinjuu is the first such series this year.