Akemi’s Anime Blog

A couple episodes into the second season of Welcome to the NHK, and thoroughly enjoying it. It’s one of those quirky, underhandedly intelligent series that mix goofy situation comedy with realistic characters to make something that gets you engaged with the characters while you’re laughing at them.

It’s fundamentally a series about people with severe psychological problems. Not “this character is crazy,” we’re talking “this character has major psychological issues and needs counseling at minimum, if not some psychotropic drugs.” At least one of them, in fact, has a wide array of medications that she most definitely needs, and the protagonist could probably use some psychiatric help himself.

What’s most interesting about the series is how it gets you laughing at things that really shouldn’t be funny. The season climax, for example, has the main character unwittingly joining a suicide club on their final journey in an attempt to get his life back in order. This shouldn’t be funny–it’s serious stuff, and everyoe but the loony odd-man-out is played straight. Yet his cheerful comments to the morose crew have that tragicomic flavor that have you laughing despite the obvious drama. In a way it’s tapping into the tragic absurdity of people’s all-too-real problems.

What’s also interesting about something that treads such a fine line between humor and psychodrama is that it’s sometimes hard to tell when, exactly, you’re supposed to stop laughing. It’s not that you don’t care about the characters–several are rather affecting, in fact–it’s just that the tragic absurdity of it has you laughing (and I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be) well past the point when most similar stories would have gone into full-on drama. The suicide club eventually gets some full-on drama, but it starts well past the point when by all rights it should have, and in fact what should be the dramatic climax is actually one of the funniest bits–most unintentionally awful suicide counseling ever. The drama is far lower-key, and more of a follow-up.

It reminds me a little of how Trainspotting played its black-comedy game; the Worst Toilet in Scotland scene early on was so patently absurd it let you see some humor in the comparative tragedy later. Welcome to the NHK, for its part, opens with the protagonist’s appliances talking to him and a particularly surrealist scene (compared to the completely concrete remainder of the series), introducing you to his humorously-over-the-top, if unhealthy, worldview. (Aside: The captions for the hearing-impaired during that Trainspotting toilet scene are the single funniest bit of subtitling I have ever read–if you have the DVD, go watch for yourself.)

The other thing it excels at is when-you-think-about-it humor. Most of this is fueled, again, by the protagonist, in particular his penchant for spectacular levels of apathy. One of the best conceptual parts is where he discovers porn on the internet. His request for computer help after deleting his operating system in an attempt to make room for more porn is funny (and, speaking as someone who does tech support periodically, entirely realistic). The unspoken implication that he lacked the initiative to find porn on the internet, now that’s just hilarious.

It’s also a nice looking series in a weird way; the character art lacks a lot of detail and the shading is usually very flat, but the character design is memorable and the character animation quite good. It’s often quite stylized in terms of shading or color, but otherwise the backgrounds are detailed and realistic, with a satisfyingly lived-in look (also props to the realistic computer hardware, which plays something of a central role–for once the art geeks made it look like a real geek’s hangout, rather than a parody of one). It’s something of a departure from expected Gonzo fare (or much else, really), but overall appealing.

I’m very much liking the series, and while the second season starts on a relatively morose (though still emotionally engaging) note, I’m wholly optimistic that it’s gong to hold itself together. It even dodges what at first looked like it was going to be a lame excuse for two characters not properly getting together; the initial excuse is followed up by an entirely valid reason.

Also, a theory, though the sample size is small: The protagonist’s appliances talk to him and say unhealthy things when he’s asleep, but when he’s awake and hallucinating that they’re talking to him, they try to be helpful. Maybe.

Though it’s only four episodes, I had high hopes for the Ghost Talker’s Daydream anime adaptation; it seemed like exactly the sort of series that could be bumped up a notch in animation thanks to the opportunity for creepy sound effects, atmospheric music, and appropriately suspenseful timing. I also thought that it had a lot of potential to benefit from a tighter sense of what was going on visually and in terms of story, my only real complaint about the manga.

Having watched the first episode, it’s hard to call it anything but a major disappointment. I’ll reserve judgement about the whole until I finish watching it, but it’d take a small miracle to be anything more than mediocre on the whole. I’m also a bit torn, as I kind of don’t want to ruin the story of the manga by watching the anime, which from the looks of the first episode and preview is going to try and give a highlights-only version of the whole series.

Crime #1: Terrible soundtrack. Honestly, this is one of those manga series where you can practically hear the music when you’re reading–creepy atmosphere a la Perfect Blue’s fantastic sountrack, maybe some funky, chaotic jazz mixed in. Instead, bland, grating, poorly suited to the scene, and way too loud. That alone was enough to ruin the mood in the whole thing.

Crime #2: Sacrifices most of the jaded, sarcastic edge of the humor to focus on the obvious slapstick jokes, making the whole thing seem more juvenile than it should.

General flaws: The character designs are relatively faithful, but the art is simple and not particularly good, and the animation is below average. It also fails to fix the weaknesses in the manga, and if anything makes them worse. The condensed story is also a tad on the rushed side, and the characters aren’t developed well as a result. At least so far it’s not the least bit creepy.

Oh, well. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, and at least it’s a relatively faithful, if very abbreviated, adaptation on the whole.

The protagonist of Ghost Talker’s Daydream is an emancipated, teenaged, albino S&M queen who can talk to ghosts and moonlights as a freelance paranormal psychologist. If that doesn’t sound like prime material for a Jerry Springer show, I don’t know what does.

Seriously, though, this manga takes the basic idea of any number of other shows and gives it a wicked little twist with a combination of gallows humor, a frankly sexual backdrop, and shoujo-ish tragedy thanks to a rather unsparing view of the unhappy afterlife. Uplifting, it’s not–the ghosts are usually of people who met a tragic end, they’re not at all happy (if not outright murderous), and the living are usually just as bad on all counts. Yet it’s got just enough sentiment to keep it emotionally engaging, and it stops short of crossing into weepy bathos. It also doesn’t take itself too seriously, and the relatively strong sense of humor keeps it from feeling like a total downer. The ghosts are also rather scary, though the pacing keeps it from being nearly as spine-tingling as it could have been (I’m very interested to see if the anime adaptation manages to do more with this).

It ends up being about 20% humor, 20% real-life character drama about the somewhat self-destructive protagonist, 20% action (there are a surprising number of martial arts fights in the first couple volumes), and 40% tragic horror. Its strongest point is, I’d say, the real-feeling characters. Even the humor rings true some of the time–if your talents are talking to unhappy dead people and beating willing perverts into submission, and you don’t enjoy doing either of those things, having a sense of humor about it is the only thing that’d keep you sane.

The sexual content, a bit surprisingly, is handled quite well–it’s not the least bit shy, but it also doesn’t try hard to shock. Rather, it slips in bits of background color–realistic, so far as I know–about a sub-culture that most of us find unsettling. The main character takes a pragmatic view of it–it’s her job, and it has its advantages, though she doesn’t particularly enjoy it (she doesn’t like talking to ghosts much, either, but she seems to prefer that to leather and bondage). A weird mix, basically, of something completely out-there and something completely familiar to many–stuck in a day job you don’t particularly like, but don’t hate enough to work up the confidence in your other abilities to quit and do something more fulfilling.

The more tragic end of the story–assorted sub-plots about how people met their untimely end, and the living people who either got left behind or were responsible–is also well done, in that it hits notes that are affecting without devolving into shoujo-syle melodrama. It’s actually a little impressive how well it treads the line between shoujo melodrama, josei-flavor heavy slice-of-life, and male-oriented shock stuff (the blunt sexuality and action scenes) without ever getting stuck in any of those categories. Also, do not expect any sort of soft focus, tearful-yet-somehow-uplifting notes ending the roughtly half-book-long storylines–there’s no happy-talk about “moving on” or such, the protagonist has a bleak outlook on the afterlife given she can talk to ghosts, and more often than not the ghosts (and living) are just as miserable when the story ends as when it began, just less destructive to others. More than once she says in no uncertain terms “Too late now, you’re already dead.”

The author, Saki Okusei, is a woman, which may account for the lack of misogynistic undertones (and a strong focus on female characters; the males are, thus far, mostly comic relief, bad people, or willingly bound and gagged, though the main character’s somewhat estranged relationship with her father is developing solidly). An aside, it’s interesting how female writers seem (at least in my experience) to do better than men with frank sexuality–men seem either tentative or trying too hard to shock or titillate.

Anyway, the only real weak point in the writing is that the scarier parts seem to be just a bit off in pacing, though it could well be that horror (or creepy thriller, more accurately) just doesn’t work as well for me in manga form compared to something more animated–no creepy sound effects or pregnant pauses to set tension.

On that note, the artist, Sankichi Meguro, is male, not that it should matter, and the art is quite good–detailed, expressive character art, realistic backgrounds and wardrobe, and a reasonably good sense of space and light. My only real art complaint is that some of the scariest parts don’t look as scary as I feel like they should; it seems like splash pages or dark backgrounds could have been used more effectively, though I can’t specifically say how. It’s also a little hard to tell who’s real and who’s a ghost some of the time when I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to know.

My other complaint is that it’s dense enough in terms of the plot and characterization that I had trouble catching everything on the first read-through; several times the show-(or imply)-rather-than-explain storytelling left me having to go back and re-read a section to get what was really supposed to be going on. I enjoy dense stories, so it’s not necessarily a down side, but it deflated a bit of the drama when I lost track of what was supposed to be happening, and I flat-out missed a couple of the should-have-sent-a-chill-up-my-spine moments until I realized that was supposed to be scary and went back to re-read the page and figure out why.

Enjoyed the first three volumes, and since there were 8 total in Japan and the story is complete, the length seems like just enough to get into and resolve the larger-scale plot arcs of the protagonists’ relationship with her father and some sort of dark supernatural force at work encouraging suicide that has been hinted at so far (and will presumably become the big ghost-related plot arc). It also got me interested enough to pick up a copy of the anime when the DVD was cheap; we’ll see how that compares, though at only 4 OAVs it’s probably going to be abbreviated at best.

On an unrelated note, it’s fun to see something spice up the now-somewhat-cliche “talking to ghosts” genre by adding some nice, hard S&M/BDSM. And really, what old genre couldn’t be made new by adding some bondage? Schoolyard romance + bondage = something entirely new! Or = Bludgeoning Angel Dokruo-chan, so maybe that one’s not such a good idea. Light Fantasy + bondage = Sorcerer Hunters. I’m sure this would work fantastically for other genres as well.