Akemi’s Anime Blog AAW Blog

• Author: Marc
• Date: February 23, 2010 - 5:39am
• Filed Under: manga

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.

• Author: Marc
• Date: January 18, 2010 - 11:26pm
• Filed Under: manga

After reading the complete manga on which Emma is based, I’m rather surprised at how disappointed I was with the manga. The anime makes some substantive changes, and with two (or three, depending on taste) exceptions they’re very much for the better.

It’s interesting to note that the first two books of Emma cover the entire first season of the anime; the subsequent five—one of which is extra-thick to boot—cover the second season. This says something about how slow the anime is for the first season, taking its leisurely time establishing the main characters, their innocent, halting romance, and the people around them. For those who prefer a somewhat punchier story, the manga will be preferable in this section—it certainly feels more lively. It also makes a difference that when you spend three pages on Emma taking her glasses off and getting ready for bed, you can skim past it in a few seconds; that takes quite a bit longer in real-time onscreen.

Personally while I liked the somewhat livelier manga pacing, I did appreciate the mellow, wistful feel of the anime. The other substantive difference is that the anime spends noticeably more time establishing Elanor (and William’s siblings), which gives you a better hook into them once they become more central to the plot. It also gives Emma and William’s relationship more time to flow along in happily vague terms before reality hits hard, giving more punch to things once they do go bad.

The second season is quite similar to the manga through about book five, but takes a drastically different path at that point. This is where I would say the anime also does a much better job with the characters. The manga introduces a kidnapping plot, travel to America, and then a comparatively slow non-segue into a real relationship in its final two volumes. Now, if you’ve only seen the anime, your reaction might be like mine when this was mentioned to me:  ”Kidnapping plot?! Say what?”

The thing with the anime version is that it is romance and drama, not melodrama—it maintains a remarkably grounded, real, and oh-so-British feel right through the big extremely-indirect showdown with the Campbell family. It never once resorts to histrionics or cliche plots—there is indirect political scheming and business dealing in addition to very low-key manners of the heart. The manga, in contrast, pulls out most of the penny dreadful stops, tossing in a kidnapping, several tearful, screamy scenes, and and oddly drawn-out wind down that is caught somewhere between epilogue and finale. This isn’t inherently bad—there’s emotional impact to a lot of it, and I like the firmer emotional connection to Emma’s friend Tasha—but in contrast to the anime, and indeed the rest of the manga, it seems overblown.

The anime, in place of this physical separation—and the implied emotional separation—goes with a much more real segment of Emma merely avoiding William, which in a way is actually more effective from the standpoint of an emotional connection you can empathize with.

The other interesting change is more subtle; because the manga doesn’t put any effort at all into establishing any alternate romantic tension, there’s really no question at all how it’s going to turn out. Elanor, in the anime,  really does have a substantial amount of innocent appeal, where she’s rather underdeveloped in the manga; Hans is barely even present in the manga, let alone any kind of romantic rival. Since in the anime both Emma and William have appealing alternate options, you wonder if maybe they couldn’t just move on and forget their feelings for each other. Thus, when the two big emotional scenes—which again are far more low-key than the manga—roll around (first the ball where they see each other again, and then the fire at the end, which is a minor event much earlier in the manga), they have much more impact. You feel the repressed heartache and share in the elation that much more when you aren’t entirely sure where things are going.

On the same note, the manga is quite explicit almost from the start of the post-Emma period in which William is playing perfect son that it is, indeed, an act. The anime doesn’t tip its hand near as obviously, leaving you wondering if maybe William really has moved on, again heightening the impact when he lays eyes on Emma—the shot of him coming to meet her in her room afterward is quite good in the manga, but more powerfully romantic in the anime, where you suddenly feel the repression much more strongly.

The end is also quite a bit different; the manga choses to leave things on a relatively clear path—and oddly chummy with the two parental women in the story—but very much unfinished, while the anime builds to a much more traditional moment-of-truth crescendo, followed by a brief, far more satisfying epilogue. While I appreciate the up-in-the-air nature of the manga’s tack, the end seems to trail off more than grip as finale, since it already hit the big moment several chapters earlier. While you can also call the uncomfortable point at which William’s relationship with his father and siblings is left realistic, it honestly feels more unfinished, like Mori (the author/artist) didn’t want to bother figuring out how things work out. Then there’s that it has gone much farther in establishing William’s father as a villain, having had a somewhat-willing part in Emma’s kidnapping, which it doesn’t follow up on at all. There’s also the peril that, when you establish a much more blunt villain, lacking any denouement at all seems unsatisfying; in the anime, since Campbell’s plot is distant and comparatively abstract, you can accept a somewhat low-key, political foiling of it and the related implication of his shame as comeuppance. In the manga, if he’s going to do something blatantly criminal like have thugs kidnap a woman and haul her off to America, you rather expect a little more than it just not working as backlash for it.

The manga does do one thing notably better, which is the relationship between the two older couples in the story, William’s parents and the Molders (oddly changed to Meredith in the CMX English manga translation). The latter, being German, are more openly romantic and attached to each other than the British characters, something the anime implied but didn’t really show in any detail. This would have taken no extra screen time, so it was an unfortunate omission. I also much preferred its handling of the absentee Mrs. Jones and her husband’s relationship.  Both versions make clear that they are still husband and wife, but that she lives elsewhere due to being unable to cope with stifling society. Where the manga does eventually show them talking and doing things together (and her with her younger children) on occasion, she pointedly stays away from all of the above in the anime for no particular reason that is explained. Given that the change wouldn’t have taken any time or interfered with any of the story, this was again an odd change.

There were three other bits in the final portion of the manga that I liked very much that didn’t make the anime. One couldn’t have carried over; having Emma’s confident determination to get back on her feet after being dumped penniless in America was a nice bit about her personality—almost enough to offset her being rather weepier and emotionally weaker in the later parts of the manga relative to her quiet strength in the anime.

The second also would have been difficult to work into the different plot flow of the anime, though from a symbolic standpoint it was subtly beautiful: William finally takes Emma to get a new pair of glasses. Since it had been established that she was attached to her glasses despite not being able to see all that well with them anymore, having her relent and allow him to replace them (or at least the lenses) with ones that let her see the world—and, as the manga depicted it, William himself—more clearly was a symbolic acceptance of wanting more for herself, and taking a further step away from the past and into a new life. Maybe it comes of knowing what it’s like to have a too-weak glasses prescription, but I kept wondering when she’d get that dealt with, and it was a powerful enough image that it would have been nice to have worked this into the anime somehow.

The third was a wonderful, almost wordless scene with Elanor being drawn out of her melancholy by three Indian girls her wacky sister brought back as retainers, who go about miming her facial expressions. That could have worked in the anime—and in fact, due to her being a more substantial character there, would have probably had more impact—but I can see why it was left out both for time and that it avoided introducing more than a quick bit of her sister traipsing off to India. Monica’s doting-if-wussy husband was a fun aside that also would’ve broken up the flow.

The manga also established a nice language barrier between the German Molders family and their original household staff and the new English hires, but it would have been too complicated to handle the same in the anime without either bilingual actors or a lot of contortions to keep you up on who was speaking what language when—square speech bubbles are rather easier.

Looking at the manga itself, the art is simple and unassuming, but has a very nice feel to everything—both the reserved-yet-elegant character designs (you really have to love Mr. Campbell’s face) and the pleasant, true-to-life backgrounds (uncommonly detailed compared to a lot of shoujo manga). The art improves somewhat through the run of the manga, and it’s surprisingly pleasing to the eye for something that isn’t in the least bit flashy or obviously eye-catching. The character designs and soft-yet-lived-in feel of the environments carried through well into the anime, though the manga somewhat surprisingly had a lot more nudity. (Exclusively, as you might guess, Mrs. Molders and some of her German household staff, what with their improprietous, unashamed dress and bathing habits—the same thing was established in the anime as well when a single scene in which Mrs. Molders showed more skin than the entire first season combined, but without any actual nudity.)

(On the topic of uninhibited Germans, there were a couple of bits with two of the more reserved Molders maids that seemed to be hinting that one was unsuccessfully flirting with the other; I’ve chosen to assume it was just them being chummy in their aloof way so as not to introduce a bucket of additional shoujo stereotypes, but I am curious what the original intent was.)

In all I did very much enjoy the manga, and some of the different directions it took the characters in were as pleasing as experiencing the scenes that were the same again. That said, the sharp melodramatic turn it takes toward the end seems so much less grounded and realistic than the early parts that, while enjoyable, it just doesn’t feel like it fits properly. The slightly more traditional, yet also more reserved, realistic, and British, finale of the anime has both more tension and a more satisfying conclusion, and frankly fits quite a bit better with the rest of the setting, story, and characters. The manga gets a slightly hesitant recommendation, while the anime I can speak of with far less reservation, and given its improvements with the tension, I’d recommend watching it first if you want to enjoy both. It’s nice, I must say, when the animation team actually brings something better to the table rather than taking something away.

• Author: Marc
• Date: December 20, 2009 - 12:28am
• Filed Under: Anime Notes • manga

Despite the anime being a huge letdown at the end (or rather because it was), I read through the Aoi Hana/Sweet Blue Flowers manga version to see where it might be going.

The 11 episode anime (weird number—I can’t think of anything else that’s below the standard 12-13-episode-long season range) follows the first 18 chapters (three books) very closely. Through about 17 it’s practically line-for-line the same (the anime actually adds a little more to some conversations, and in fact one of my favorite little bits was barely noticeable in the manga). The final episode of the anime somewhat rearranges the sort-of-montage wrapping up the remainder of the school year in the last couple of chapters, but even that is pretty close.

There are only two plot changes.   The smaller is that one chapter of the vacation interlude (ch. 15) was removed entirely (or rather mentioned but not shown).  This segment mainly served to introduce Kyoko’s apparently severe family problems. I can see why it was skipped; though it sets up the beginning of a very slow build into her backstory/problems, it would have made it even more obvious that the story wasn’t finished yet, while the end of the anime as-is could theoretically stand on its own as an end, albeit one that leaves things frustratingly unconcluded. The omitted section could also easily be moved to later if a second season is produced (even put in the right spot chronologically via flashback—the series does that occasionally with other things within its own main timeline).

The other change is more major, but I assume was done for the same reason—to set the anime up such that it could theoretically stand on its own if a second season is never produced, and set the final couple episodes up as more of a finale. In the manga, Fumi realizes (and mentions) that Akira was her first love much earlier, rather than at the very end. The manga also only does a bit with Fumi’s sort-of-jealousy about Akira going shopping with Kou, using it to introduce the idea that Akira wasn’t just her first love, but someone she still feels for (it doesn’t even bother to show the follow through of it indeed being nothing—Fumi’s assumption of such is enough). The anime, in contrast, plays the event through to a happy conclusion, and uses that as the prod that reminds Fumi that Akira was her first love.

That does provide a vague sort-of-conclusion, instead of the very definitely not-yet-finished sense of unease that following the manga more closely would have ended on. Not much of an improvement, but a little. It’s certainly not enough to satisfy me, though, and I’m rather glad the sense things were just getting going was right. For that matter, the message, if left there, would be “adolescence is sometimes fun, but nobody you love will love you back (and the resulting depression will creep into every area of your life).” Not exactly… romantic. Something you might write a story about (it may well still be where the whole thing is going—not sure yet), but not romantic, nor something I particularly enjoy stories about.

(Non-sequitur side note: Emma, now that’s real romance, in a deep, involved, substantive way even with all the avoidance, hurt feelings, and drama.)

Where was I… As for the manga, books 4 and 5 initially appear to slip a little at first when it leaves the whole Sugimoto thing on asomewhat unsatisfying note and adds several new characters (particularly a very energetic new first-year student starting at Fujigatani, Ohno Haruka). It initially jumps around enough to make me feel like I was losing a bit of a grasp on who all was who (several of them look similar enough that, combined with slightly loose page layouts and unfocused word bubbles, I occasionally lost track—probably wouldn’t be a problem in anime due to somewhat more solid art and voices making it easy to tell who’s talking).

However, once Fumi confesses that she’s still got feelings for Akira things rapidly get interesting again, enough that I was willing to forget my dissatisfactions with the vague end to the whole Sugimoto arc. Even more so when, as hinted early on in a flashback of her relationship with Chizu, she tells Akira that she is most definitely not talking about idealized hand-holding puppy love. As with coming right out with the L word I was pleased to see the comic go there in no uncertain terms. (In a way escalation of things makes sense, given that the characters are moving quickly toward adulthood, though of course Fumi’s physical relationship was when she was significantly younger, not to mention with someone significantly older and a relative on top of it, adding an additional layer of impropriety.) The drama looks to be getting meatier, the stakes upped, and generally speaking it seems to be going somewhere interesting.

Which does leave me wondering why it took so long to get there; I feel like it was a little too leisurely through the first year of school, when there was time and room for either more to happen or it could have been shortened to something a little more punchy. The anime, likewise, could have easily been much shorter without losing anything, though to get to a stopping point at the end of the first season I can see why you’d want to drag your feet through year one, as it’d be almost impossible to find a satisfying might-be-the-end spot anywhere past there.

(Come to think of it, maybe that’s where the weird 11 episode length came from; there flat out wasn’t enough material to pad it for another episode.)

My main complaint, though, is that the increasing number of girl-interested characters is pushing it back in the opposite direction from the relative realism of the first three books, over toward Maria Watches Over Us territory. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but after establishing a comparatively realistic setting and some straight characters it just seems to be overloading the sapphic end of the spectrum—if everybody is a lesbian it sort of deflates the social awkwardness of it and impact of coming-out and such. This perhaps annoys me in particular because I don’t like soap operas.

To define, I mean I prefer stories focused on a small group of characters in more depth, so the more people that get added on as potential romantic interests the closer you get to the character overload and tangled mess of plot that ends up (in my mind) sinking so many long-running comics and TV series. Books 1-3 of Aoi Hana didn’t feel that way, 4-5 seem to be threatening, though not yet nearly enough to stop me from wondering what’s going to happen next (and in general it’s doing a good job of keeping me guessing as to how things are going to play out).

Part of what gives me that feeling are some brief “bonus” chapters showing fragments of story from the pasts of other, peripheral characters (for example, Sugimoto’s sisters). There’s nothing wrong with these, but frankly they add nothing to the main story and break up the flow by distracting you with unrelated things and a bunch more characters to keep track of. I’m all for substantive backstory, and I’m in no position to complain if the author feels like drawing up some of the events of the past with the other characters she’s created, but from a narrative standpoint they feel pointless. (They’re also a little bit disorganized in terms of narrative flow, feeling like truncated excerpts more than side-stories.) I suppose I should probably just skip them, since they’re not at all important (at least thus far) to the main story.

To toss in some more technical notes, the artwork features sparse, airy linework, but unlike a lot of shoujo manga it has detailed, concrete backgrounds in most scenes (the process of collecting photos of Kamakura and its environs are discussed in some author notes at the end of each book). There’s an acceptable sense of realism to the character positioning, and I can see how that could have translated into the wonderful character animation of the anime. Speaking of which, the character designs (and background art style) are as faithful to the comic as everything else in the anime.

Bottom line, I’m looking forward to book 6, and if the series sticks to three books each for years two and three of high school and stops there, rather than trying to spiral into something epic and out-of-control in college and beyond, it may well add up to a satisfying whole. Here’s hoping that, at minimum, they animate another three books’ worth into a second season, as it’d be wonderful to see the new material onscreen, particularly if the character animation, mood, and treatment is kept to the same level.