Akemi’s Anime Blog

You want a cracked idea for a series, try this: A history lesson about WWII with each country represented by a cute stereotypical character acting out metaphorically actual events in gooey-eyed, pastel-colored comic form. That’s Hetalia Axis Powers. As if it weren’t cracked enough, make every episode 5 minutes long and the central character the ineffective little Italia (presumably the title comes from the combination of “heta”–to suck at–and “Italia”). Given, Italy was about the lamest partner in an evil empire ever, so that’s pretty funny. Oh, and of course it’s made by not only one of the losers, but by a country rather unambiguously on the wrong side of the whole thing.

The whole thing sort of breaks my mind, but at 5 minutes a pop I can take it in small doses, and the number of brutal pot-shots at pretty much everyone involved are truly impressive. (Including Japan–oh, man, is there a low blow about their skill at “miniaturizing things.”) I’m mostly curious where they’re going to go once they get into the meat of it–currently it’s mostly backstory of European history as seen through the filter of “Poor little Italia getting kicked around by Austria–he just likes food and women.”

Now, contrast this with Valkyria Chronicles, which tells an entirely different re-envisioning of WWII from the perspective of basically Switzerland, if Switzerland were Lithuania and had a lot of oil. Valkyria Chronicles doesn’t portray either the Empire (Axis stand-in, though they’re geographically more Russia) or Federation (Allies) particularly favorably, though in general there is a distain for corrupt leadership in every country involved, including the good guys’. What’s interesting about it is that it does address the genocide head-on; the Darcsens stand in for Jews, and are strongly discriminated against for historical reasons by nearly everyone, including many of the main characters, though Gallia isn’t as overtly genocidal as the Empire. Both the game and anime have done a reasonably good job at portraying baseless racial discrimination in a country where, though not unheard of, that isn’t something understood on nearly as visceral a level as in many less-homogenous places.

As for the anime adaptation, I just passed the midpoint of the two seasons and it seems to have found its footing and be getting progressively stronger. As it has progressed the deviations from the storyline of the game have gotten larger, and because it’s had time to build its own path (or maybe just because I’ve gotten used to it) they seem to be fitting together better. The racial aspects–particularly Rosie’s discrimination–also seem to be a little more central and are noticeably stronger in terms of emotional punch compared to early episodes. I’d say overall it seems to have gotten more comfortable with mature themes, tossing in some significantly stronger material than the relatively innocent early episodes. The drama in general seems to be working better now, though the focus on the romantic aspect–or, really, a much stronger focus on the competition between Welkin and Faldio–has been a little heavy in terms of balance.

The one thing that has disappointed me is the lack of action. The story has enough substance to stand without much, but for a war story there’s an awful lot of talking and down time. What action there is has been a little disappointing as well–being based on a strategy game, I was hoping for a little more realism and sense of space in the battles than there is. Also, everybody just has carbines most of the time–Largo has used his antitank lance maybe once. This is particularly disappointing given how spectacularly they handled the tank combat–on the handful of occasions the Edelweis has gotten to strut its stuff it has an amazing sense of speed and mass. Welkin hasn’t gotten quite as many crazy nature-geek moments as I was looking for, either–Faldio seems to be doing more, though in a way I suppose that’s leaving more room for Welkin to develop as a leader.

On that not note, Isara–Darksen mechanic and adopted little sister to hero Welkin–is the only substantive character change that bothered me; she has a quiet but blunt way of dealing with people in the game that came across very well, giving her a unique character and making it understandable why she didn’t get along well with people. In the anime the blunt aspect of her personality has been toned down, leaving her just quiet and forthright; still interesting, but not as distinctive, and it leaves more of the burden of people not working well with her on outright prejudice. On the positive side, she’s gotten a low-key romantic sub-plot with a new character added for the anime (basically to replace the mechanic in the game, who didn’t do much until later on).

Oh, by the way, do NOT watch the opening of the second season if you haven’t already played through the game.  It is much better than the first season opening–great visuals and a decent song–but it is one GIGANTIC spoiler. Hugely disappointing, since they’ve otherwise been very good about keeping one of the two big reveals under wraps, and especially given how punchy and exciting the teaser/intro of the game was without giving much away.  The outro is also less weird and incongruent, so that’s also good.  Apparently no Jane, though.  How can you stick in 12-year-old shock trooper Aisha and leave out Jane?!

Tried an episode each of three different series, all of which looked silly and fanservice-y based on the box. Two of three didn’t end up being what I expected.

School Rumble: Drastically less fanservice-y than it looks, and also less Rumble-y so far. I do like the idea–dumb girl is smitten by clueless, apathetic guy that she can’t work up the guts to talk to, and raging punk delinquent is smitten by the girl and tires to go straight for her. Touch of the goofier bits of GTO, some generic schoolyard comedy, and at least passably amusing. Also a secondary character who looks and is like what Maria of Maria+Holic is pretending to be. Not lighting my fire, but enough amusing potential to watch some more of at some point.

Hanaukyo Maid Team: Every bit as fanservice-y as it looks–Emma, this is not. Basically 25 minutes straight of leering, drooling maid fanservice (maidservice?) with some violins at the end. Concept is that random orphaned nice kid gets taken in by his (apparently) insane and insanely wealthy grandfather, who skips town and leaves everything to the kid before the opening credits. Kid ends up living in a giant house stuffed wall-to-wall with maids, ranging from the demure, completely-clothed Belldandy clone he likes to the team of bathers and the three bed-warmers, who are every bit as sleazy as they sound. All the subtlety of a jackhammer, and already got to the random weapon that strips maids in the first episode, among other things. Huge variety of pretty character designs, at least, and there is a pretty funny mad scientist-maid. The slight hints of grandpa being some sort of evil mastermind (not to mention a massive perv based on his employees) means it’s probably going somewhere weird eventually, but it’d have to do something pretty spectacular to warrant wasting any more time on.

Nerima Daikon Brothers: Holy crap, what is with this series?! Not sure what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t Excel Saga and Weird Al get together to do a much dirtier, much gayer, musical take on the Blues Brothers. Seriously–it’s a musical, it’s a giant Blues Brothers reference, and the title of the opener looks like one of those sounds-like-dirty-innuendo-but-is-actually-innocent titles but turns out to be the exact opposite. Should have known when I saw Nabeshin’s name on it (you know, the Excel Saga ‘fro guy) it would be way, way crazier than it looks, which is already pretty crazy. He and his J-fro also make an in-series appearance as the shadowy dispenser of rocket launchers (and friend of Blues Penguins–he’s obvious got a thing for cute mascots that at least some of the main characters want to eat, though this penguin seems in a lot less danger than Menchi). The show’s technically about some poor radish farmers who have a fanless blues band and are trying (unsuccessfully, of course) to use their heroic, heavy-weapon-equipped alter-egos to come up with the money to become famous. I think. Regardless, the combination of cracked musical numbers, way cracked humor, and “Why are you not cutting away?!” horrors (the image of an alien violating the villain in the background of the preview is burned into my mind) is… well, kind of spectacular. And dumbfounding.

No idea where it’s going, but if it can keep me laughing even a quarter as hard as I was during the first episode it’s guaranteed itself a place on anime night.

In other news, very much enjoying Maria+Holic as of the halfway point. I’m pretty sure some of the more subtle jokes would work better if it didn’t have the… malleable visual reality of Zetsubo Sensei, but they’re still funny and a lot of the more random stuff is hilarious. Also love the character designs–beautiful, even through the crazy visuals. Some of the best little bits recently are a malaprop of copy-writer as copy-rider (leading to a quick shot of the protagonist speeding along on a copy machine), and the admonition that “All video game systems are prohibited. (Except the Virtual Boy.)” …because it’s tragic. As a geek and product of the ’80s, that had me laughing very hard, anyway. The music-video-style intro (and the intro theme itself) is also spectacular. The wacky 8-bit outro is nice, too–has adjusted visuals to match the content of every episode. The post-logues after the credits are funny, and the post-post-logue after that is random goodness akin to the 2nd season of Zetsubo Sensei.

Here’s that opening, courtesy Media Factory (the animation studio) getting their YouTube on:

Finally finished Code Geass, so a couple of additional notes on top of my previous comments:

The final six episodes, and the final 4 in particular, completely pull it back together and more or less save the whole thing. It’s where the series was, and should have been, going from the beginning, and a fantastic closing act. Even the mech fighting gets interesting again for the most part, including a final duel sans-flying, which was far cooler than any of the rest of the supermecha overload. Lelouch gets a nice, hard fight and to pull two vicious, carefully-planned blindsides, one of which is, indeed, the best in the series. His ultimate plan–which wasn’t where I necessarily expected the series to go until late in the game, but made perfect sense and was was satisfyingly decipherable–was characteristically unsympathetic and merciless in its execution. One hell of a finale–in some ways literally–to be sure.

It’s also painfully obvious that with minor adjustment the end segment could have immediately followed the first two seasons and the series wold have been better for it. Almost more annoying, the glut of new characters introduced during the filler in the first two thirds of R2, and some of the filler plot, made it impossible to just say “skip the first 18 episodes of R2″–there’s only a few good bits, but you’d feel like you missed as much as you actually had.  It also glossed over several decent sub-plots in a montage near the end that could easily have been more interesting than most of the fanservice-heavy filler.

In closing, two heavily spoiler-riffic comments that are mostly musing to myself, though if anybody has a good answer I’d love to hear it:

One, the series seemed to go a little soft at the end, letting far more characters survive–happily, even–than I was expecting. I’m actually not at all one for tragedy–I much prefer happy endings–but this series had laid on the melodrama so thick that having it get nice to so many in the huge main cast seemed out of character. I expect it was yet another cave to fans (as with the rest of the fanservice in R2) but really, it wasn’t necessary and took away a little of the impact. I will confess to being happy the maid lived, but the double-twist with Nunally was somewhere between a twist of the knife and far too kind. Not quite sure which, really, though if nothing else it served to demonstrate Lelouch’s dedication to doing something decent (on a large scale) at any cost.

Two, which follows from that, is what we were meant to infer from C.C.’s comment in the last shot. You could assume that she’s talking to dead people again, but I’m guessing not. On the one hand, having Lelouch live takes a lot of the punch out of the end. On the other, I’ll buy that, presuming he is alive, he had no other choice to grant C.C.’s end of the bargain, and he was not the type to go back on his word. The question, then, becomes mindset; certainly he was willing to put his life on the line from the beginning, so he wasn’t exactly the save-his-own-skin type regardless of how many backup plans he kept handy, at some point he seemed to develop a death wish, accepting that as punishment for his sins, and in addition to attempting to sacrifice himself for the greater good at least once he even attempted to exile himself to an eternal, undying purgatory.

Now, had Nunally been dead, living (in fact, being unable to die) would have been a most fitting punishment, and that’s where I had been expecting it to go. If she’d lived and he died, that also would be appropriately fitting. Since they both (presumably) lived, though, there’s real question of why he would have accepted survival. Possibilities:

Did he stay alive for the sole reason of granting C.C.’s wish, condemning himself to exile in a world where he can have contact with no one else, ever? That’s acceptable self-punishment, and I’d accept that as motivation fitting for his character.

Or, do we read it as a semi-happy end for him–if so, that’s just weak, and doesn’t really align with his character. If we further interpret the folded crane to mean that he talked to Nunally before exiling himself, that’s even lamer. He wasn’t the half-assed type, and it’d mean he would burden his sister with the knowledge he was immortal and exiled.

Personally, given the horrors he willingly wrought, and that he seemed increasingly burdened by them as he went “more good,” I’ll chose to believe that, assuming he’s alive, it’s still punishment for him (particularly once C.C. eventually dies and he is truly alone). It’s in character and the end emotionally works better that way, too.

Of course, given the pandering the series already succumbed to, there is this nagging feeling that they wanted to leave a loophole for another sequel. That, certainly, would be lame, and Pizza Hut says it’s probably the truth.