Akemi’s Anime Blog AAW Blog

• Author: Marc
• Date: August 30, 2010 - 6:35pm
• Filed Under: Anime Notes • First Impressions

Oh, great, another show about a school with a bunch of supernatural stuff going on, taken over by the surly high-school-aged daughter of the crazy founder.

…is what I was thinking, but wow does this show have a heck of a start. The first episode is spectacular: A quirky, brilliantly-timed sense of humor, huge animation budget, a pile of nods to movies from The Exorcist to Porco Rosso to Terminator 2 (heck, the whole thing seems to be something of a 12 Monkeys homage), time travel, Nostradamus, unintentionally undead parents, a huge, hilarious action sequence, a touch of human drama, and a funky, piano-heavy soundtrack.

The razor-sharp blend of way-funky humor—both offhanded, concept stuff and sight gags—and horror/sci-fi standbys reminds me a bit of the Evil Dead series, of all things, which is to say potentially all kinds of awesome. The second two episodes are rather lower-key than the spectacular opener—they seem to be setting up the premise and developing the characters as people some—but still have some funky stuff, and the comic timing is near-perfect. Plus, the characterization even seems to be decent.

It’d be too much to ask for it to keep up the first-episode momentum all the way through, but if it manages to stay even half as good it’ll still be a memorable show. Definitely looking forward to more of this one.

• Author: Marc
• Date: August 16, 2010 - 12:57am
• Filed Under: Anime Notes • Midpoint Notes

Having finished the first season of Toradora, I’m surprised with the way the series is walking a well-trod path, and pleased at both the choice and execution.

Ryuuji is a fiend... for cleaning.

The set-up is pretty simple: You’ve got Ryuuji, an entirely domestic boy who happens to look like a scary punk and Taiga, a pint-sized girl with no social skills and a bad attitude who people are rightly afraid of. Ryuuji likes Taiga’s energetic friend, while Taiga likes Ryuuji’s hyper-competent buddy. Toss in Ami, a model who puts up a ditzy front to hide an entirely unpleasant, mean-spirited interior who may or may not like either of the guys, to mix it up. Taiga and Ryuuji team up to help each other chase the ones they’re after.

Now, you can see pretty much exactly where this is going from the first episode: Taiga and Ryuuji will, of course, fall for each other, and at the last minute decide that they’ve been chasing after someone else while their true love has been right in front of them the whole time. What happens to the other three is kind of irrelevant, apart from maybe some character building or a last-minute three-way competition for the male’s attention.

Instead, the show dodges that entirely; Taiga and Ryuuji both figure out quite quickly that they could get something going between them, and even that it wouldn’t be entirely bad. But neither of them necessarily wants that to happen, and they also have fire for the unobtainable alternate, which they lack in the more practical partnership with each other. So rather than the show being about coming up with increasingly implausible excuses to keep them apart, it comes right out and accepts the underlying pretext, then says up front that maybe it just doesn’t want to go there.

Taiga and Ryuuji are sort of opposites when it comes to energy level.

Having the characters admit that outright would have been enough to make the series worth watching through for me—I like the straight-faced decision to aim for something else, rather than avoid the truth that’s right in front of them. It establishes the old married couple (or maybe brother-sister) dynamic right off, with both participants wanting a relationship with more passion, less practical.

Further, it does a particularly good job with making the alternates appealing. Ryuuji’s friend Yuusaku is kind, cheerful, bespectacled, and unlike your average smart anime guy with glasses, hyper-competent in pretty much everything—he’s even got a hardbody at the pool. No surprise Taiga would get excited about him.

Taiga’s girlfriend, Minorin, is something else entirely—she’s such a force of nature she could probably carry the show. In terms of role she’s the “happy, crazy girl,” but unlike most characters in that mold, who are non-functionally crazy and funny because they’re entirely unaware of what’s going on around them (or don’t care), she’s quite aware of what’s up, quite competent at life in general, and entirely wacky. She’s basically paying attention, yet never fails to do something colorful and/or hilarious when necessary. That she also feels like a real person underneath it is a testament to the characterization in the show.

Shows have been built around characters less fun than her, and pretty much every minute she’s onscreen she’s doing something entertaining, even if only in the background. Her voice actress, Yui Horie, deserves a lot of the credit—she makes something of even the most generic lines. (She’s been in just about everything; not entirely surprised that she voiced the rather-similar title character in Jubei-chan 2, nor Toru in Fruits Basket, although I didn’t expect to see the viciously-annoying Aun in Photon among her credits.)

Minorin's mere presence can make pretty much anything funny.

So you can see from minute one why Ryuuji would be smitten with her—she’s just plain fun to be around, and when she reveals a little of her heart, it’s clear that she’s also an interesting person inside. All the more so because he’s… well, boring and domestic.

Now, by all indications, neither of the two people being chased would be a particularly good match for the ones chasing them. But it isn’t going to stop them from trying, and there’s enough contrast there that the dynamic actually works. That everybody is friends with everybody else also makes for more fun and less pointless drama—they’re mostly hanging out, not hiding from each other.

In short, there are only five characters (thus far not even any significant secondary characters), but they’re all fun, colorful, and substantive enough to make the series work.

The other thing that the show has, unexpectedly, going for it is emotional substance. The setup is pretty wacky, as are the characters, yet somewhere around half of the time is spent on emotional drama of some level. Bad parenting is the main constant here—Ryuuji’s mom is amusingly nonfunctional (good excuse for him being so good around the house) while his gangster dad got himself killed long ago, Taiga’s absentee dad offers a clear explanation for her bad personality, and there’s a hint that Ami may also have some parentally-induced issues hiding inside (even superficially, the stress of life in the spotlight has obviously done bad things to her).

Working around these issues provides worthwhile drama that doesn’t feel out-of-sync with the humor or broad characters. Kyouran Kazoku Nikki is probably the closest emotional match I can think of (and there’s a little of Kyoka in Minorin), but the drama here is much lower-key and the wackyness less insane.

I also like very much that, due to the characters having useless or entirely absent parents, they’re left to fend for themselves emotionally. As such, Minorin’s steadfast friendship with Taiga has more substantive meaning, as does Ryuuji—who’s essentially his own (competent) parent—filling in the family vacuum that existed in her empty home.

Unexpectedly, there's actually drama, too.

This is, coincidentally, an interesting parallel with Persona, which has a cast of mostly-orphaned high schoolers who, similarly, have no one to rely on for emotional support but each other.

The art in Toradora isn’t much to speak of, but I like the character designs, and the lively character animation makes up in personality what the backgrounds lack.

The first of two seasons ends strong, with a pleasantly dramatic finale that reveals enough about what makes the characters tick for me to want to see more, while leaving plenty of room left to have things not get where they will almost certainly end up too quickly. Thoroughly looking forward to seeing where it’s going to go with the remaining half.

Final note, because I just can’t say this enough: I don’t care what else is right or wrong with them, NIS’s DVDs of this series rock—a single chunk of minimal, skippable logos at the start gets you watching almost as quickly as if you’d downloaded an illegal copy. Why every company doesn’t do this is a mystery to me, but I hope they learn.

[I originally said, mistakenly, that Ai Nonaka voiced Minorin; she's got a minor role, and a somewhat similar-sounding voice, but doesn't get the credit.]

• Author: Marc
• Date: July 31, 2010 - 12:22am
• Filed Under: Anime Notes

I’ve already established that I love Spice and Wolf. I don’t tend toward fanboy-ness, but if I did it’s the series I would be obsessed with. It so happens that Spice and Wolf is based on a series of light novels, which it also so happens are being translated into English. Nice.

This is what the book should look like, and what it will if you order it from RightStuf or somewhere that is in on the promo.

Now, I’m not a big reader. Or rather, I’m not a big novel reader—I read plenty, just not in long, uninterrupted chunks of fiction. So it’s saying something right off that I liked the series enough to actually buy, then sit down and read the book once I got my hands on it. Says more that I finished it almost immediately because I couldn’t put it down. (It is, admittedly, relatively short—hence the “light” in “light novel,” I assume.)

The verdict: Surprisingly good. Further, it’s similar enough to the anime adaptation to be entirely familiar, while adding enough that it feels like you get something extra out of it.

Now, unlike anime or manga, a translation of a novel relies heavily on the quality of the writing in the translation. There’s also a whole lot more room for creative liberty that will go unnoticed by readers—you can tell exactly the same story using wildly different words, to drastically different effect. It made me a little nervous that Spice and Wolf doesn’t credit the translator on the cover, but that was unwarranted.

The writing is quite nice, with a smooth, casual flow that nonetheless feels noticeably “old fashioned,” in keeping with the roughly Renaissance-era fantasy setting. Indeed, the prose does a notably good job of feeling not-modern without reading like it’s trying too hard or being hard to understand. It also doesn’t particularly feel like a translation from Japanese, which in this case (on account of the European-esque setting) is a definite plus; Japanese prose translated into English usually has a distinct (not negative, just noticeable) sort of structure, which Spice and Wolf has little evidence of.

There are only a handful of typos I noticed, so there’s only one real complaint I have about the translation. Or, I should say, probably have, based on the dialogue in the anime, as I haven’t gotten a look at the original Japanese yet. In the anime, the dialogue generally sounds like standard, straightforward Japanese, with the exception of Holo, who speaks in a significantly more archaic, quite colorful dialect. The novel does give a bit of the flavor of this, but since all the characters sound somewhat old-fashioned there isn’t much room to make her sound different without going full-on Shakespearean (though her use of nushi (ぬし) for “you” pretty closely translates to “thou”).

Admittedly, neither the anime nor manga translations do much to differentiate her manner of speech from everyone else’s, either. There’s also the disappointment that her unique use of the word “watchi” (わっち) for “I” isn’t indicated in any way, but since I can’t think of any way to do that in English given our single available pronoun I suppose I’ll have to let that slide.

Now, comparisons.

I really like that I felt like I was getting something unique but complementary out of both the novel and anime adaptation. Normally when comparing a book to an adaptation of it, you have one of three situations:

1. The adaptation is functionally identical, so it just feels redundant.
2. The adaptation cuts a bunch of stuff out, so it feels abbreviated or shallow in comparison.
3. The adaptation makes substantive changes so they seem like different stories, and you need to pick which you prefer as the “real” one (usually whichever you saw first).

Spice and Wolf is none of the above. The first half of the first season of the anime exactly mirrors the novel, almost scene for scene, and cuts nothing at all (in fact, it ads a little at the beginning). But, where the anime has the strength of its art and the smooth, well-acted dialogue to offer, the book lets us listen into Lawrence’s thoughts as he works things out in his head. (And, since most of the story is about verbal sparring, there’s quite a bit of working-out to do.)

This means that reading the book lets you hear explicitly what the anime implies through facial expressions and tone of voice. Both equally legitimate, both enjoyable in different ways, and either one complements the other. Similarly, the anime fleshes out the world through the realistic images of cities, buildings, and people, while the book has bits of trivia and background information about culture, history, and politics added. Both, again, complementary to each other.

The one thing the book has over the anime are the descriptions of various trade schemes and economic systems, which seem to be easier to understand. It could be because I’d already heard it once, but I think it has more to do with the fact that you can easily slow down and read carefully when things get complicated, where in the anime it’s at full conversation speed and if you get lost you probably aren’t going to go back and watch the explanation a second time. The mentions several times of how much trouble Lawrence had grasping these concepts originally also makes you feel better if you just don’t get it (not to mention emphasizes how smart Holo is, one of her many charms as a character).

And the one thing the anime has over the book is the only significant plot adjustment, which gives you a slightly better emotional hook into the situation and a more visceral explanation of the lonely life of a traveling merchant, without exposition. In the book, Lawrence never visits the town with the festival to Holo at all, as they don’t allow outsiders during it, and the aspiring merchant from the town, who is only mentioned rather than introduced at the beginning, is male. Switching him to a her in the anime, and having Lawrence visit the town and introduce her as a potential romantic interest, gives you a much better emotional hook later in the story arc and a better feel for the disrespect of Holo by her nominal worshippers. This also increases the impact of the dramatic climax significantly.

There is one other difference that I generally liked. The anime, so far as I remember, never explicitly mentioned how old Holo looks, while the book puts her physical body at around 15, mentioned more than once. While her wit and wisdom is, of course, intended as a contrast with her youthful appearance, by never mentioning her age in the anime (and the fact that she doesn’t look memorably young) it bypasses any of the potential creepy vibe you can get from series with characters hundreds of years old who just happen to look prepubescent. (Kanokon and Dance in the Vampire Bund, I’m looking at you.) Actually, in the handful of illustrations in the novel, the character designs are recognizable but a little young-looking all around, Lawrence included; the outro of the anime used the same style, while the show itself goes with a more realistic look, a wise decision if you ask me.

The bottom line is Spice and Wolf is a pleasant, easy book to read, one I expect would be enjoyable even if you hadn’t seen the anime, but is a nice companion piece if you have. I recommend it and am anxiously awaiting the second book, which I immediately pre-ordered but appears to be delayed in getting to the store.

On that note, one last comment about the presentation of the book: What the heck were they thinking with the cover? See, the dust jacket, which appears to be a sort of “early bird” bonus if you buy it while supplies last, features the same beguilingly innocent-looking picture of Holo that the Japanese edition used. Under the jacket, however, the softcover art—featuring the shadowy photo of a girl below—looks weirdly dark and, frankly, like cheap clip-art.

This is what everybody not in the know gets on the cover. Technically all the elements are there--girl with tail, grin, pouch, naked--but what on earth were they thinking?

Given that the art inside is anime-style anyway and the “real” jacket is better-looking and already extant, I have no idea why you’d intentionally pay money to have someone design a morbid-looking photo cover. I’d say maybe they were looking to pick up a few clueless Twilight fans browsing at Borders or something, although I expect they’d be hugely disappointed when they realized the story was a playful mix of romance and economics. Maybe they just thought a naked girl would sell better. Again, I sense disappointment.