Category: Anime

Zeta Gundam, Punching people in the face = Saying hello.

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When it was announced that Yoshiyuki Tomino was coming to NYAF Narutaki and I jumped for joy, it was without a doubt a dream come true. While it was fantastic news it also meant we had to radically change our viewing schedule to accommodate watching one of Tomino’s most respected works, Zeta Gundam. While Zeta Gundam does not go without criticism it is one of the few parts of the Gundam franchise that gets universal approval by all but a few heretics. So this is one of the few Gundam series I went into with high expectations.

Even if I wanted to go into Zeta Gundam without expectations, it was virtually impossible. After I watched Original Gundam, all I heard was talktalktalk about Zeta and chastising for putting it off as I have. Well, that is all over! I have watched it kids, and though we aren’t doing a full run down of the show, we are sharing some choice thoughts from the series.

Seven years after the One Year War things are very different. While Zeon has been defeated, remnants still remain after all these years and plan to overthrow the Federation. In response the Federation created the Titans a task force given extraordinary powers to root out any Zeon or other anti-federation forces. But with extraordinary powers can come extraordinary abuses and the Titans have abused their power to the extreme. The Titans do what ever it takes to ruthlessly crush anyone who gets in their way including people who speak out against them and any bystanders. Zeta starts when Kamille Bidan helps the Anti-Earth Union Group steal three new Gundam Mark II prototypes. Soon Kamille is caught up with the AEUG’s three way battle against the corrupt Federation forces and the Axis Zeon forces.

Taking the Federation and making them the ones with the crazy plans this time around was a nice change. This also helped press the idea from Original Gundam that both factions have people in positions of power who abuse it. In conjunction with this it was great to see characters switch sides even if some of them happen very abruptly. One problem I found was that the opposing side didn’t really have a rival for Kamille considering Jerid is more of a joke and usually only survives by the skin of his teeth. There was tension there due to many deaths of many characters for each of them but I never wondered who was going to be victorious. So while many of the plots of the Titans put things in dire straights, the personal factor of suspense was sometimes lost. Though such was not the case in the final episodes when characters square off and it’s a coin toss to see how it was all going to lay out after the dust settled.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #057

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I recently attended the Student Anime Film Screening & Discussion with anime scriptwriter Dai Sato at the Japan Society. There, 25 students attended the A*NI*ME: Japanese Animation Production class for two weeks to learn the basic philosophy, theory, and techniques behind anime production. They were split up into 5 teams which had to create a full write up for an anime series or movie complete with character descriptions, plot outline, and a small trailer for their pitch. After the trailers, Dai Sato and the other instructors mentioned what they liked and what could have been worked on. They were always very polite and kind but Dai Sato did give them legitimate feedback in a constructive manner. The first group did a pirate adventure very similar to One Piece called Casa Dulce in which a band of pirates are looking for the legendary Utopia but instead find family through their crew. The students in group two did an adventure series called Floreixen about a society were peoples’ destinies are determined by the eggs they are hatched from. The third group did a western horror influenced series called Scindo in which a mad scientist calling himself Grandfather kidnaps a group of teenagers and injects them with a drug called Scindo. The fourth group proposed a title called 99 where everyone is a partial conversation cyborg but one day a man who is 100% human is found and he is quickly draw into a conflict. Our last group was the only on to pitched a movie, it was called Hybrid where a half human/half robot boy goes on an adventure that makes him wish to seek peace between the warring human and machine sides. We were then shown a dubbed episode of Samurai Champloo about a graffiti battle. After the episode each of the groups was given an award. The first group won the grand prize but all of them got some award of recognition for what they did best. Even though the projects were clearly amateurish they were enjoyable considering they only had 2 weeks to complete the project and much of their time was spent learning how to do the writing and the philosophy behind it. Kishotenketsu the 4-part structure for Chinese and Japanese narratives seemed to be an important part of the classes and was mentioned by each group. After the award ceremony I got my Eureka 7 case and Narutaki’s Cowboy Bebop case signed by Dai Sato.

The Walking Man by Jiro Tanaguchi is a simple, short piece about a man exploring his new town which emphasizes the beauty of noticing the little things in the world and taking a minute to appreciate them. It also seems like a great excuse to draw incredible backgrounds and environments. In fact this is one of the few times where those take precedence over our character so much so that he doesn’t even have a name. The dialogue is sparse with some chapters having none at all. It doesn’t even come across as slice-of-life but just these very brief, serene moments in time.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #056

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A bunch of us finally caught (no pun intended) Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea over the weekend. It starts with the basic premise of Ponyo, a little goldfish, who escapes her father’s ship and rides to the surface out of curiosity but she is foiled by a bottle she gets stuck in. Once a young boy named Sousuke rescues and carries around the stranded Ponyo for a day, she is hooked and decides to become human. Sousuke and Ponyo’s relationship is very sweet and innocent as one could imagine. There are some very magical moments as Ponyo, along with her father who wishes to purify the oceans, and her mother all possess powerful abilities and when they are used they create some of the most beautiful parts of the film. An unsurprising fact is that this film has some very visually striking moments, but surprisingly the animation quality for many parts of the movie seemed less than Ghibli-esque. My biggest concern with the film was Miyazaki’s decision to essentially throw out some of the narrative and conflict on a whim and then to tie it up with a less than satisfactory climax to the story. In fact, I can’t really discern any climax at all. About two-thirds of the way through any amount of suspense starts to dissipate and the rest of the film is rather meandering and boring. Ponyo loses its momentum and refuses to deliver on the build-up it created for a good portion of the film. While I found some of the visuals quite appealing, the story was rather lack luster and in the end that matters much more.

As has been said many times, Miyazaki needed someone to stand up to him and keep him in check. This could have gone from an okay film to a Ghibli master work had someone had the bravery and power to make this film go through one or two more retoolings to tie everything together. The ending was extremely anticlimactic causing one to wonder if Miyazaki tired of the story and decided to just end it as soon as he could much like a Neal Stephenson novel. They made such a big deal that Ponyo’s parents wanted to test Sousuke and Ponyo’s love but in the end it comes down to a simple: Do you like Ponyo? Check yes, no, or maybe. The test did not need to be hard or dangerous, it just need to be one Sousuke could fail because that makes things not only dramatic but cathartic when they are overcome. Ponyo’s mother could have made duplicate Ponyo’s and see it Sousuke could tell the real one apart. Or maybe Sousuke could have to make some sort or moral judgment due to a test set up by Ponyo’s parents but was unaware he was being tested. Overall the movie looks great and is really fun at many points, like when the typhoon comes, but it does not work as a cohesive narrative film. The characters had a lot of potential that was partially realized but never truly developed. It’s worth a rent to take in the visuals but not worth buying.  Hopefully if Miyazaki makes another film he will let people help him cut out what is extraneous and focus on what is important.

I am very excited to present the latest piece of art we had commissioned at AnimeNEXT! It is by syun rii who does many different styles for her fanart. I really wanted something chibi so I think she was the perfect choice! You can check out her gallery, too.

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