The Shining Darkness Series: The Place Promised in Our Early Days

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There are simple love stories and there are complex love stories. Both of them have their place. Sometimes you need a simple boy meets girl story. Sometimes you need a love story with a little more dimensions and depth. I won’t say more real because sometimes love is not all that complicated. Angst does not make things more real. Love may be powerful, there might be numerous obstacles blocking it, and there might be hard choices involved with it but it is not necessarily complicated. Makoto Shinkai has progressed in his career and as such his love stories have gained more complexity.

I was so looking forward to this film. Seeing Makoto Shinkai jump from his little-over-half-hour creation to a full film was a very exciting prospect. What sort of story would be tell with a full cast, crew, and a more liberal budget? He brings the themes he cemented in our minds so well in Voices of a Distant Star and combines it with a more complex vision.

Japan is a divided nation. Southern Japan is allied with America and Northern Japan is allied with the Union. Since the division the North has created a mysterious tower that scrapes the heavens which can be seen from miles away. Two best friends, Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirakawa, decide to take a downed fighter drone they found and turn it into an airplane so they can examine the tower. One day the girl they both like, Sayuri Sawatari, tags along to visit them and becomes involved with their project. Sayuri disappears and it kills any momentum the boys had for working on the project. They grow up and go their separate ways each leading different lives and each dealing with the events of that summer in their own way. But what happened to Sayuri and what was her connection to the mysterious tower?

Sayuri’s first interactions with the boys, from the audiences perspective, are very different from each other. However, through them we see a girl who is full of life but constantly running from an unknown force. Everyone in the story is connected around the tower whether it is through relation to one another or helping to get there. While the story takes place in a warring and dysfunctional era, it is merely the back drop for an endearing story about love and friendship.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #034

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Picked up the Gundam SEED movies in a Right Stuf sale a few weeks back and just sat down to watch the first of three. I was pretty blown away by the amount of fan-service inserted into just a 90-minute movie. Kira, Athrun, and Cagalli each have an individual shower scene. Flay is also pimped out quite a bit throughout her appearance. And one scene between her and Kira that was merely implied in the TV series, is full blown in the movie. It was almost laughable how quickly events were flying by but since I’m watching these after knowing the plot it didn’t really matter. I was looking for an abridged version of the series that I could sit down and watch once and while because I loved SEED that much! It’ll be interesting to see the other two now, where is the Mu fan-service?

I for one appreciate more naked Cagalli and only regret there is not more. They seem to focus on the battles as opposed to the people. This makes for good robot porn but makes the people less important which was not the case in the original TV series. I guess in a way the purpose is to increase the fan-service while giving you a good recap of what happened. I think the SEED movies really only work as a supplement to people who already saw the TV show. You could figure out what was going but it would take some effort. That should not be the case. On a somehwhat unrelated note is it ever important that they discovered an alien skeleton in the Gundam SEED series? They make such a big deal about it in episode 14 and then it just fades into the background like it never happened.

I had been wanting to try High School Debut out for a while, I finally found a copy of the first book on the cheap at the Strand. The basic premise is as follows: Haruna was a complete tomboy who did nothing but play softball in middle school, now in high school she has made it her goal to be more girly and find a boyfriend. She totally sucks at this and decides she needs a coach, like in softball, enter tall, dark, totally cool Yoh. After some coercing, he agrees to be her coach on the condition that she DOESN’T fall in love with him. Now, I have mentioned before that a predictable plot doesn’t really bother me if the characters are good. Haruna is a rather enjoyable protagonist and it did have me laughing out loud a couple of times. However, it wasn’t sticking out of the crowd and it used its tropes a little too frequently. I’d say pass on this series, even though Yoh is incredibly cute.

After going to NYCC, having Mr. Scott VonSchilling talk about it several times, hearing generally good reviews, and finding a buy one get one free sale I picked up Scott Pilgrim volumes one and two. I guess I was curious about this title in two major respects. How was it as an OEL manga and was it entertaining overall? The first question is simple. It’s not an OEL manga no matter how some people may market it. It’s a comic from someone influenced by manga but it never tries to pass itself off as anything other than an American comic. This is certainly to its benefit because it does not try to fit itself into to some fictitious manga template. In fact,  most OEL manga would be much better served to adhere to this philosophy. As for the entertainment value, it was entertaining but nowhere near the level of awesome the hype would have led me to believe. Scott Pilgrim is a unemployed slacker dating a high school girl until he meets a girl in his dreams that he can’t get out of his head. If he wants to date her, he has to defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends. It has a quirky sense of humor and likes to make music and video game references. It sort of reminds me of Blue Monday in that respect but the sense of humor is different. The main characters are interesting but the side characters are numerous and not as developed. That might change as the books go on but they mostly seem thrown in for no reason other than to be there. Its quirky sense of humor will either endear it to people or turn them off. It’s mostly a matter of having a resonance with the author.

Read Kekkaishi 16 and loved it through and through. Karasumori is really getting out of control and everyone is starting to take notice. Even giving an appearance to a character we had only heard tell of. It is great to see the overall mystery of the series starting to be explored though we are still without too much information at this point. Middle of the book are some funny chapters about a girl who falls in love with Yoshimori when he saves her after she falls off the roof of the school. She then proceeds to stalk him much to the amusement of the audience and the chagrin of both Tokine and Yoshimori. These chapters were just supposed to give us a break between arcs but it was nice to see Tokine finally taking a little more notice of Yoshimori. There were a number of cute moments throughout this book. And we end, where I had been reading the Japanese, with the start of Yoshi helping his brother on a mysterious mission. I love that they always give Masamori two-sides when he appears. You can just never really figure him out. Great as usual! Why isn’t everyone and their mama buying this again?

They are too busy reading Soul Eater so they can’t be bothered to read Kekkaishi. And so I weep for anime fandom. I finished off the original Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Overall an enjoyable show that earns its place in the pantheon of anime space operas. Though it’s a little more pulp sci-fi than stuff like Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Banner of the Stars. It stays the story of one ship vs. the most powerful armada in the galaxy. The plot would probably throw feminists into hysterics because the alien invaders have a military made of beautiful women who use trickery and deception to beguile men’s minds. While it can be seen as misogynistic, it’s mostly done so they can have willowy women on the screen. Tadashi Daiba and Kei Yuki sort of fade into the background as the series goes on in favor of the man that is Captain Harlock and his amazing ship/friend the Arcadia. They realized that Harlock is the selling point of this series. The audience wants more Harlock then you better give it to them. But every named member of the crew gets their day in the sun with at least one episode having back story. I must also point out that randomly in one episode we have full frontal nudity in a series without that much fan-service. It also has the odd habit of having episode titles that clearly says who dies and shows them being killed in the preview. I would suggest fans of old school anime should check the series out but I think most of those people have already seen Harlock.

Because one must ALWAYS share the Kekkaishi love, this is the pic of the week:

The Shining Darkness Series: Voices of a Distant Star

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Most artistic endeavors are impressive no matter how many people work on them. Some things are awe inspiring when done alone. It just boggles the mind that one person could be so dedicated and talented that they could do such an enormous endeavor solo. One man wrote, animated, and produced Voices of a Distant Star. In the original version the only help he had was his fiancee providing some voice acting and a friend providing the music. Makoto Shinkai made by himself as an amateur what usually takes a team of professional animators to do. He did the work of a writer, director, producer, traditional animator, CG animator, and even a voice actor. Although it looks amateurish at points it is as good as most mass produced professional anime works. It is awe inspiring because one man did brilliantly what a team so often can’t do together.

I heard a lot about this movie when it was originally released and for some unknown reason it just slipped right on past me until this year. And honestly, I feel sort of ashamed now that I have seen it. How could I let something so beautiful and amazing, not only because of the one man team but because of its simple and thoughtful story, go unwatched! Not to mention it’s ability to create something so remarkable in just 30 or so minutes of film. Well, I have now reconciled this grave oversight! Now I share it with all of you just in case you too have missed this little treasure.

In 2047 Earth has gone into the far reaches of space. While excavating some ruins on Mars a race of aliens, dubbed the Tarsians, began to attack humanity. Using the technology found on Mars humans created a fleet of faster than light ships to strike back at the aliens. Mikako Nagamine becomes a space pilot to fight against the threat. This inevitably separates her from boyfriend Noboru Terao. They communicate over their cellphones but the further she gets from home the longer it takes their messages to reach each other. It is a love story over a seemingly insurmountable distance of both time and space.

We are set down a fast track path, only getting snippets and glaces at these characters. Nevertheless, their path becomes entangled with our own. Mikaki exhibits a fascination with space (which also seems to be a theme in Makoto’s works) and also a bit of naivete of what it would be like fighting out there. Both Terao and her start off seeing it like an adventure, that the distance will not stop them. As we continue on with them, the natural doubts of not seeing someone creep in but are pushed away. Even when you think Terao might move on, or even when he thinks he might, memory and hope move to block the path. It is hard to pinpoint what is so engaging about Mikako’s characterization style, but perhaps he just knows us better than we know our selves.

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