Archive for January, 2005
January 25, 2005 – 3:45 pm
Well, it’s time for the next part of my journey. After a real lazy month in Michigan punctuated by a trip to New York (to say Happy Birthday) and another to Palo Alto (to say Good Luck in Shanghai), I shall now fly to Japan to meet my destiny…
Or perhaps just find a really awesome high-paying job and settle down in a nice Tokyo apartment for a few years :P
I left Japan in March of 2001, because it felt it was time to move on. The company wasn’t doing too great and I never wanted to be in software development anyway. Plus, it was getting kinda scary how much of my life revolved around Hekiru. So it was off to Singapore and to a totally new job in i-banking, M&A to be exact. Well, that was okay but it wasn’t great either, and so, continuing my search for the answers to the age-old questions “Who am I and what do I want to do with my life?”, I went and got myself an MBA at INSEAD.
Unfortunately, while INSEAD was a blast, one month after graduation I am not much further along in the “What do I want to do with my life” part. But, I think I want to go back to Japan. I like the country and the people, I miss my friends, and I don’t want to go home yet.
So Japan it is. Now, what kinda job? Ugh, that’s an even harder question.
Posted in MISC. RAMBLINGS | No Comments »
January 23, 2005 – 6:00 pm
Continuing on the Bee Train theme, we next have .hack//SIGN. It’s a 26 ep series (actually 25 eps, with 1 ep as a summary of the series, plus 2 more bonus eps) made between Noir and Madlax for Bandai and, despite its premise of a boy lost in an online world, does not betray the usual Bee Train formula of character and mystery driven plot. I went in expecting little, and came out very pleasantly surprised. In fact, it could even be the best of the series I’ve seen this time around.
What does .hack//SIGN have going for it? Again, it’s not a show that will appeal to everyone. It’s all about characters and the mystery behind the plot – the show begins with little background on the setting, almost no information on the main character Tsukasa, and adds more characters whose motivations and back stories only slowly come to light over the course of the series. It’s really slow (the bulk of episodes consist of just dialogue upon dialogue) but it’s also really fascinating, because the characters are surprisingly developed and the script is one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of watching in anime.
Bee Train’s main flaw with this sort of formula, aside from pacing which tends to be uneven, is that they bite off more than they can chew, ie over-promising and under-delivering. They seem to build up a great setting and atmosphere, taunt and tantalize with convoluted mysteries, suck you in with complex and interesting if not necessarily very likeable characters, and then drop the ball at the very end by giving you a resolution to the characters but leaving massive unexplained holes in the plot. In the case of Madlax, the revelations of plot were just plain lame and silly.
.hack//SIGN also suffers a bit from this, because the ending just makes you go, “Huh? What the heck just happened?” but actually not too bad in terms of filling in the background (although it is a case that you have to just conjecture with the clues they give you). Apparently, more is explained in the games and sequels which are part of the massive .hack Project universe.
Otherwise though, this series is far superior to Madlax and, from the 13 eps I have seen, Noir. The pace is admittedly slow (hello, 13 eps before Something happens?), but it’s far better executed. The production values are high and not only is it very pleasant on the eyes, the direction is mature as well. As I mentioned, I thought the writing was excellent. But the highlight of the show is the characters. Because .hack//SIGN is set in an network game world, it allows the producers to contrast online personas vs their real-life counterparts, leading to explorations of how people view their roles and purposes in “The World”. Seemingly shallow or one-dimensional at first, as the show progresses these characters become surprisingly real to us as we are given glimpses of their offline lives.
Why do people play “The World”? We are shown a variety – there’s Tsukasa, of course, seeking escape from an abusive father, fearful of human contact yet craving desperately emotional warmth; Mimiru who is a high-school girl playing for fun but becomes worried about Tsukasa; Bear, an older man with a long gaming history who finds himself trying to atone online for his failure as a real-life father; Sora, an extremely powerful character whose online personality belies his real identity as a young brat; BT, a young woman who trades in information online but who is actually lonely for real human companionship; Crim, the flamboyant gung-ho hero who plays for totally for fun because he has too much to juggle with his real job as a businessman; Ginkan, the opposite of Crim, a young man who immerses himself into his role as a knight because he isn’t much of anything on the Outside.
Personally, however, I liked Subaru, a little girl who is leader of the Crimson Knights, the most. Her values on justice and fairness, her beliefs about her online role, her attraction to Tsukasa as one withdrawn soul to another, and her own story of looking for escape and finding, in “The World”, the freedom she cannot have in real life – I think she is a real inspiration for the growth in character that we are shown. Naive, weak, hesitant, yet stronger than anyone else because she learnt to overcome her weaknesses…
Overall a surprisingly mature show, this series is a real treat for those who have the patience. I’m glad I decided to give it a try.
BTW, the music was, of course, by Kajiura Yuki. Not as good as the other series, I thought, in part because the lyrics are in English, but still a big part of making the show as good as it was.
Posted in .hack//SIGN, ANIME | No Comments »
January 22, 2005 – 6:10 pm
After watching 2 eps of Xenosaga, I’ve decided… KOS-MOS is HOT!! Something about long blue-haired, emotionless androids with enormous destruction capabilities… :P
Don’t much care for the outfit though.
Posted in ANIME, Xenosaga | No Comments »
January 18, 2005 – 3:37 pm
Hmm, I’m rapidly becoming a fan of postings about Kannaduki. While trawling for the ED theme “Agony” by KOTOKO, I found another one at yayapapayaz.com which is perhaps the most eloquent summation of a person’s reaction to the show. It’s unexpected touching, and reworks it from an anime which you could otherwise interpret as cheezy fanservice knockoff to a very moving tragic love story.
Other reviews, good and bad, can be found here
Hmm, I’m tempted to rewatch this show again – fast-forwarding all the mechs of course – and even buy the R2 DVDs. Gotta encourage quality yuri, right? :P
Posted in ANIME, Kannaduki no Miko | 1 Comment »
January 16, 2005 – 12:07 pm
As I was overcome by absolute sheer boredom last night (there’s only so much resume writing research one can do, especially for Japanese resumes), I went a-surfing for totally random crap on various anime blogs. Most were nothing special, but I noticed that those who actually made it all the way to the end of KnM tended to post some pretty funny, or at least entertaining, writeups on this series.
I’m still ashamed to say I watched and enjoyed this drivel, but after reading some of the *ahem* analysis, I began to see it in a new light of respect. Yes, it has borrowed plot devices from 50 sources; yes, it’s a horrendous clash of genres; yes, the characters are really stereotypical; yes, it’s unabashedly exploitative of the whole yuri thing. But yah know, there was some original stuff there too, and it still takes a certain amount of talent and focus to bring it all together in a package that delivers, even if it’s not exactly high-brow entertainment.
Enough of what I think, because actually I don’t think that much and I’m not a rabid Chikane worshipper. I do sympathize with the girl and it’s refreshing to see a female anime character who really really wants someone (and I don’t mean in the “onii-chan atashi ha mou otona da yo!” 12-year old way) and is fully burdened with all the guilt and shit but is strong enough not to run away, but that’s about it. Perhaps you could say I’m more fascinated with how people react to this series, more than with the actual series itself. So, without further ado, I present you some of the more interesting postings on KnM’s shocking events in ep 8 and the ending.
Um, goes without saying there are spoilers. :P
An Electic World writes up the events of KnM ep s 5-8 – filled with great comments and ending with a sentence that sums up perfectly what I was feeling after watching that last episode!
Stripey’s diatribe on Chikane and KnM eps 11&12 – this one really really liked Chikane as “intense protaganist” in a “powerful love story”.
Fencedude’s take on the events in KnM ep 11 – a whole slew of screen caps, but mouse-over them for the captions!
Some Japanese dude’s analysis on the latter half of KnM – okay, it may seem as if he’s just a massive Chikane fan getting his kicks from HimekoXChikane, but really, he’s pointing out that the production staff really knew what they were doing with the story and plot execution. Yeah.
So what did you think of KnM? If you haven’t yet seen this *snicker* masterpiece, don’t wait, start downlo^H^H^H^H run out and buy the legal copy and watch it now!!
One day I really must get some fans together to MST3K this…
Posted in ANIME, Kannaduki no Miko | No Comments »
January 15, 2005 – 4:48 pm
In my little About section to this page, I had tried to explain why I felt it was so important for me to preserve my memories. It’s so you don’t lose bits and pieces of yourself… because over time feelings change and thoughts are forgotten, but dammit they are important to me now, and so I can’t bear to think that, although as a person I would never stop changing, I would forget the things that make me what I am now.
Which brings me to this story that I just rediscovered as I was randomly surfing (I had read it before several years back). It’s a fanfic based on the anime Lodoss, so if you haven’t seen it, the impact might not be as great. In this show, Deedlit and Pirotessa were elves in love with two men who fought on opposing sides in the struggle to free/rule the land of Lodoss. In any event, it really touched something deep inside of me… perhaps in sadness, or fear, or just a strange sort of melancholy.
It’s called Through the Eyes of Infinity and is written by DB Sommer. Google that if the link becomes broken. Because hey, things always change, right?
Posted in MISC. RAMBLINGS | No Comments »
January 15, 2005 – 2:19 am
Noir is one of those anime with a fervent but limited fandom – I’d first heard of it several years ago when it started getting picked up in the fanfic circles by writers who’d concentrate on the two main characters… and that’s when you know there’s a special something in the series that transcends simple popularity.
I’ve been meaning to watch Noir for a long time – it was the only anime that sounded even vaguely interesting to me since I quit the stuff way back when – but I simply didn’t get around to finding it until now. After Madlax, Bee Train’s flagship production for 2004, it is only appropriate that I go back into time and see the show that really gave them a name for the studio’s particular brand of heavily (perhaps over?) stylised, character-focused and mystery-driven concoctions.
Noir is named for the team of Yuumura Kirika and Mireille Bouquet, two deadly assassins who have been drawn together in their desire to uncover their pasts – in Kirika’s case, to recover her memory and understand who she is, and in Mireille’s case to delve deeper into the murders of her family in her childhood. They call themselves Noir, the codename for the blackest and most feared killer in the underworld, for this is the only thing Kirika remembers when she woke up in a room empty save for a school uniform, an identity card, a musical watch, and a gun – “Who am I? I am Noir.”
Kirika contacts Mireille, “the best and most trustworthy assassin”, who only agrees to help Kirika because the watch Kirika holds is Mireille’s only link to the murder of her family. Still, it is not long before the two of them become a strange partnership in the killing business, and the mystery of Noir and their pasts unfurls…
Although the setting is brutal and violent, Noir, as a series, relies not on action and gore but on the pull of the back story and the revelations of the characters to hold the viewer’s interest. There is still gun shots galore and many dead bodies in each episode, but it is all understated. No fanservice, for which I am always grateful, and as you might expect no humour either. This is definitely not your typical shounen series, but neither is it even close to shoujo. It’s quite a unique directorial style, one which I enjoy despite the flaws.
And flaws there are aplenty, too. Right off, you can tell that it’s much rougher than Madlax – lower in budget, clumsier in execution. The art isn’t as consistent, and to be honest I don’t really like the character designs as done here compared to Madlax; even though it’s the same designer, they are not as aesthetically pleasing, to my eye at least. The animation isn’t that great, although there was this one 3 second sequence where the frame rate suddenly jumped and you went “WHOA!!” and the guns are, in usual Bee Train style, rendered in loving care.
Pacing-wise, the show could use a lot of tightening up. Flashback abuse is rampant and shameless, to the point where you know they are doing it because of budget constraints and so that they can drag the series out to its prerequisite 26 episodes. Madlax was a far superior work here, because at least the flashbacks were well integrated into the actually storytelling. There are some situations that strain plausibility, like why on earth Mireille would adopt Kirika into her life so readily and completely, that could have been addressed with just a bit more early stage development. Oh, and then we are treated to several episodes of filler that do little but rack up the body count whilst moving the story at slightly under a snail’s crawl.
Thank god, then, that things look like they are really starting to pick up at ep 8. Seems that some shadowy people called Les Soldats are manipulating Kirika and Mireille, and we get to see more back story on Mireille too! Well, time to get back to watching, and hope this turns out a bit more comprehensible than Madlax.
Oh, and before I forget, the music is also done by Kujiura Yuki, who did the soundtracks for Mai-HiME and Madlax. I love Kujiura’s music and there’s no denying it makes a huge difference to the enjoyment of the Bee Train shows. It’s possible that I would not like these series half as much if not for Kujiura and a sound director with an excellent sense of atmosphere.
Posted in ANIME, Noir | No Comments »
January 15, 2005 – 12:30 am
Funny how you can get attached to make believe anime characters… that’s what I thought during my run today, musing on how Madlax (the character, and not the anime) has continued to grow on me in the days since I finished the series. She’s so cool, a killer, unstoppable and brutally efficient, but who bears the sin of another and carries that person’s pain. For some reason I just can’t get that phrase out of my mind, “yasashii hitogoroshi” (“the gentle killer”).
I especially like the first part of the opening where she turns around slowly as a drop of water flies across the screen, then suddenly falls back as if shot just as the water touches her forehead and breaks into a spray around her. Awesome direction!
Okay, now that that’s out of my system, I can get back to Noir, the other Bee Train series. You know, these guys really have a thing for guns. The loving detail lavished on each firearm must be collectively worth half the art budget.
PS, you can find a great blog on Madlax at Cinnamon Ass, an anime blog that also looks really cool. I unashamedly took the color scheme and line designs, yes. My apologies to the original blogger, hope you’re not pissed, I was just too lazy to come up with my own at the time.
Posted in ANIME, Madlax | No Comments »
January 14, 2005 – 9:50 pm
Oh my god, my LCD is back.
One week ago my LCD took a real big gulp of water, and after being confronted with ultimate deadness in display despite repeated attempts at resurrection, I had just about given up and contacted IBM to get it fixed. Heartbroken I was, because they said it would cost $895 to replace it. I had gone so far as to get them to send me a box… but couldn’t bear to take that final step because goddamit it costs less than twice that to get a new T42!! Plus I couldn’t live without my laptop anyway, even for a 4 day turnaround.
So I had been working with my laptop connected to an old monitor this whole time. Well, just now, my brother tried to get the laptop to throw something up via the S-cable to the TV so we could watch Azumanga Daiou… and when he swapped the LCD and monitor displays, oh my god the LCD came to life!!
Okay, it’s not perfect, not by a long shot. You can still see these ugly spots on the back of the screen where there’s still some water residue. But hot damn, it displays and it looks like it displays pretty fine. Time to pray to the electronic gods up in cyberheaven that my LCD won’t relapse and continues on its road to recovery.
But wow, I never knew electronics could self heal! Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!
Posted in MISC. RAMBLINGS | No Comments »
January 14, 2005 – 2:17 pm
Roger Zelazny is probably my favourite author. A mix of fantasy and science fiction, his style and breadth of imagination has produced works which range from the Hugo Award-winning “Lord of Light” to the swashbuckling “Amber” series to really obscure stuff even I can’t figure out. When I heard that he had passed away (in 1995), it felt as if a hammer had fallen on my chest; the world would never see more of the wondrous images conjured up in his mind.
I came to know Roger Zelazny through the Amber novels, completely by accident. I must have been around 12, and wandering into a bookshop in Bangkok I saw these books with cool covers – the Sphere editions of the first five Amber novels. I bought them on a whim, read them, loved them, and thus began my affair with one of science fiction’s most imaginative authors.
What I like most about Roger Zelazny is his writing style – simple yet sophisticated, with vivid imagery brought to life in poetic nuance. At the same time, his themes which frequently portrayed characters who were greater than human, perhaps with the powers of gods or magic, resonate with my own interests as well.
Understand that his works, while skirting the realm of popular fiction at times, are far from pulpy. The Amber novels are easily accessible, but even then you are confronted by a whole new universe that challenges your ability to grasp (what was then) unprecedented ideas on the nature of reality. “Lord of Light”, my favourite full length novel, recreates a world and a people so alien, yet still human, that it takes several readings just to understand the setting. If you do put in the effort, though, the reward is a superbly crafted tale of the triumph of one man to rediscover himself.
Of his short stories, I like the compilations “The Last Defender of Camelot” and “Frost and Fire” the most, and within those “The Last Defender of Camelot” and “For a Breath I Tarry” are the stories I love. Perhaps what makes Roger Zelazny’s writing so appealing to me is his knack for portraying, in elegant, straightforward terms, the battle of good against (sometimes not-so-straightforward) evil, and the triumph of people more than human against the whole weight of worlds, or time – the ultimate story of those who overcome incredible odds to find human happiness.
I think, in the end, many of us long to be more than human and to experience far more than any person ever could, but what we really wish for is to touch and feel love, fulfilment and companion – those things that come only from being as human as we can be.
Goodbye Roger, I will always miss you dearly.
Posted in READING, Science Fiction | No Comments »
January 13, 2005 – 7:51 pm
Spoilers below! Don’t read unless you’ve seen it, because otherwise it wouldn’t make sense anyway 8D
Kannaduki no Miko, a 12 episode series stuffed with every conceivable anime cliche known to man, and then some, has the dubious honour of being the best godawful anime I have actually liked. ^^;;
It’s hard to decide where to start when describing this show, because there’s just waaaay too many genres colliding in one mess. The problem isn’t the art and animation, which is actually quite good and consistent if rather fond of cost-cutting triple takes. Nope, it’s that every single piece of the setting, story and characters seems to have been ripped-off, uh I mean inspired from some other anime. It’s as if they took a bunch of half-rate anime writers, sat them down in a room with kegs of beer, and told them to come up with a shojo style anime (since it’s easier to make a crappy shojo anime stand out amongst the slew of good shounen anime) but would appeal to all shounen fans including those who love destruction and badass action; but it also had to draw on the recent Maria-sama ga Miteru boom of schoolgirl anime; but it also had to have magic and evil since hey those are real cool too (didn’t you see Fushigi Yuugi and how much that made?); but remember all your characters have to be just like your typical anime heroines and heroes so we don’t scare away the mainstream otaku; then toss in fan service so we also hit the hentai crowd; oh and yeah before I forget, just to make sure this REALLY sells, stuff it full of shojoai innuendo, um, on second thoughts skip the innuendo and just make it obvious, and we’ll laugh our way to the bank, MWAHAHAHAHA!
Um, so yeah, basically Kannaduki no Miko is about a girl called Himeko (typical ordinary blonde ditz) who is secretly friends with *gasp!* the ojousama of the school Himemiya Chikane (cool and aloof long dark-haired girl who is worshipped by everyone in school for being rich and beautiful). Then you have Oogami Souma, the obligatory cool guy who also happens to be childhood friends with Himeko, and you can tell the poor guy has it bad for her but can’t really bring himself to confess his feelings.
The love triangle – Himeko and Chikane and Souma
So the story opens with Himeko about to have her birthday. Unfortunately for Souma-kun, Himeko and Chikane both have the same birthday (ooooh… foreboding + destiny!) and Himeko turns down his invitation to be with Chikane-chan, whom for reasons she can’t understand makes her all happy and her heart go ba-dump whenever they are together. (If you think this is hammering in the obvious, wait till you get to the end of the episode.)
You see, little do they know that Himeko and Chikane are the reincarnations of the Priestesses of the Sun and Moon, respectively, and Souma-kun, that poor dude, is the embodiment of Orochi, an ancient evil that drives its hosts to kill kill kill KILL the Mikos! So on the day of their birthday, Orochi awakens and some baddy in a nasty tentacled mech appears and suddenly Souma-kun himself goes psycho and start thrashing around in a massive robot that looks like it was an outcast from G Gundam. In the ensuing chaos, Himeko gets tossed around, until Chikane shows up on a horse (I kid you not!) to find her unconscious on the ground.
Or something like that. Anyway before the baddy can deliver the final blow, Souma-kun’s pure heart and love for Himeko overcomes the black hate of Orochi in his soul, and he powers up and start beating the crap out of the tentacle mech, screaming, “Ore ga Himeko wo mamoru!” (‘I’ll protect Himeko!’) and similar nonsense. In the meantime, Chikane herself desperately tries to overcome her sudden lust for Himeko to administer CPR (um, I don’t think the technique was quite correct but I guess it worked as Himeko started to breathe again).
And so, in the climax of the episode, as Souma screams out his final victory attack “Destructive Wave Beam!” or some other crap and blows the baddy mech away into wherever, we are treated to *wow!* elegant and refined directorial subtlety that cuts away from said mech-stomping action to show Chikane-chan finally unable to hold back and doing the ol’ “kiss-heroine-while-she’s-unconscious!” thingy to Himeko, and of course Himeko just happens to regain consciousness at the precise moment! Gee, who woulda thunk? But of course after the initial shock value wore off the girl just closes her eyes and seems to take it for what it’s worth :P (Admittedly if someone like Chikane was kissing me I would just sit back and enjoy it, too.)
Which then brings us to the most hilarious and kick-ass final scene in an anime yet,
Souma strikes a pose as Himeko and Chikane…
A classic in the making? Yeah, I thought so too! :P *ROTFL* Dude, I can’t even begin to decribe everything they stuck into here. The funny thing is it’s not meant to be a parody, but at the same time I guess even the writers couldn’t take themselves seriously and tossed in some other, equally bizarre, goofy stereotypical bad guys, plus a ton of rehashed anime cliches like bullying classmates, boy-n-girl caught in rain shower forced to take shelter in old shack, main bad guy is actually oh-my-god a long lost *fill-in-your-favourite-relative* from hero’s mysterious childhood past, more cheesy mech action, good guy turns bad, etc etc.
The totally whack thing is, it’s so bad it’s really entertaining. I blew through this series faster than all the others I was watching. Fine, I’m ashamed I actually watched to the end, okay? But dammit, how could you not? Because for all I’m dissing this show, in the second half there was some real messed up shit happening. I mean, I cannot be the only one who was watching episode 8 and then starts yelling at the TV, as Evil Chikane starts ripping the clothes off a screaming, struggling Himeko, “WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?!?!!?” Yeah, way to blow your mind at 9am in the morning.
And okay, I admit, as I watched that last episode and they start making their 15 minute long confessions of undying love (over dying bodies) with entire swaths of the Earth having been rendered nuclear wasteland, I could feel a tear or three coming.
So, in the end the girl gets the girl (kinda), the world is saved (sortof), and poor Souma-kun who sacrificed everything for a decidedly thankless task – I mean, it doesn’t get more shit when you’re dying as you fight for a girl you know loves somebody else more, and you still keep fighting – finds his peace (yeah right…). You know, I wound up feeling really sorry for Souma, because he was the first male underdog character in anime I’ve seen who hasn’t been a prick at all, has in fact been an incredible gentleman, an awesome completely unselfish guy, and in general overall decent nice guy. And he gets screwed over by fate and screenwriters. I guess nice guys do finish last *sigh*.
Huh, anime really has come a long way. Three cheers to creativity, both good and bad.
Posted in ANIME, Kannaduki no Miko | No Comments »
January 12, 2005 – 3:12 pm
I love reading. Before anime, there was something called a book, and in books, there were words which created new worlds and characters and stories. My favourite genre is science fiction, although as a child I read just about anything that I could get my hands on or showed up in our house, from Enid Blyton to the science of carbon-dating. Unfortunately, I never read the classics! So that’s a huge hole in my education. Nowadays, I like magazines, such as the Economist or Far Eastern Economic Review. Yeah, call me boring. I also read a ton of fanfiction, and I’m always searching for a new good sci-fi author.
I like a good writing style, imaginative worlds, sometimes good ol’ military SF, and I have a special penchant for superhuman kick-ass characters who aren’t cheapo knockoffs. These do not necessarily have to mix; in fact, it’s better if they stay separate.
When I read fanfiction, I tend to read based on couplings of my favourite characters. However, there are certain stories which bowl me over in their sheer magnitude and ambition. These I consider the unsung treasures of fiction, not an ounce less worthy than the bestsellers in the bookstore.
I think the Internet is the best thing that ever happened for a reader. There is suddenly a huge world of material available, where previously it required one to leap buildings and outrun trains to publish anything; now it’s freely posted and freely read. All you have to do is find it, and in a way that is part of the pleasure too, to find those hidden gems amidst all the crap. For someone with eclectic tastes like me, the Internet is heaven sent.
The most amazing thing is that whenever I think I’ve run out of stuff to read, that I’ve gone through it all and there’s no more, something new jumps out. Sure, it’s sad when your favourite authors stop writing and even worse when they do so in the middle of a story you’ve been following for years. But there are always going to be new ones, working on new material. I can’t believe how good some of this stuff is. And you know that it just gets better.
Posted in READING | No Comments »
January 12, 2005 – 11:39 am
Well, I just watched up to ep 11, and I have to revise my opinion of Yumi, yet again. True, the last couple episodes have had her angsting and having breakdowns over “having her Onee-sama stolen away”. But she redeemed herself by being a real trooper in this episode – recognizing that her world has been constricted to Sachiko all this time, doing her best to stand on her own feet, cheering up and not worrying others, and simply being a great girl who bounced back.
I look at Yumi this episode and I see echoes of myself. I, too, am glad I had wonderful friends to pull me through some of the weirder times.
Posted in ANIME, Maria-sama ga Miteru | No Comments »
January 11, 2005 – 10:20 pm
An interview with a Japanese fan of Maria-sama ga Miteru, in English. It’s interesting to fans of anime, evn if Marimite isn’t your cup of tea. Culture references, better explanations of why such a series actually took off in Japan.
http://mariamite.free.fr/maria_article_eng.htm
Posted in ANIME, Maria-sama ga Miteru | No Comments »
January 11, 2005 – 7:39 pm
I first heard of Maria-sama ga Miteru in Japan, summer of 2004. It was a shojo manga which I picked up on a whimsy, but mainly because I liked the art on the covers of the novels. I guess it had quite a large following in Japan because that section of the bookstore had a huge spot devoted to Marimite.
To be honest, I didn’t really like the manga much. It was you typical girls’ school shojo manga, and quite average at best. Unbeknownst to me, however, the novels on which the manga is based were gathering a huge following both in and out of Japan, especially amongst shojo-ai fans who were backlashing against all the harem and shounen stuff that’s been the boom this past decade.
I’d have to say I’m firmly on the shojo-ai side. I detest harem anime (it was fun with Tenchi and El Hazard had a good story to go with it) but it got old real fast. On the other hand, there’s something about the romanticised play on female-female relationships as shown in Marimite which appeals to my idealist and, yes, sappy self.
Marimite essentially depicts the life of several highschool students at a Catholic school “Lillian” – it is a tradition at Lillian for an older girl to adopt a younger “sister” whom they would guide towards growing up and being a proper student and a better person. To be honest the setting is a fairytale construct, a beautiful, romantic ideal of young girls passing from childhood to adulthood. The stories themselves are completely dramatic, and they all deal with “the human connection”, the struggle and reward to form emotional bonds with another person. It’s not for everyone, and indeed I can see most people, even girls, either scratching their heads over the actions and angst of the characters or simply snorting in ridicule at their overwrought dramatics.
Of the guys who enjoy this, I wonder if it is because the girls embody the innocence and purity of female love, stronger and more selfish than friendship but never sexual and therefore never threatening? Ah well, whatever the reason, the novels have made their way to a highly successful anime series that just finished two seasons of 13 eps each.
I watched Marimite having read the first manga (but not the novels) and so I knew what was happening in the first arc. There was actually very little of the more interesting emotional conflicts and motivations in the manga, which is why I tossed it. The anime also starts pretty shallow, following Yumi as the first-year student who finds herself adopted by the aloof, elegant, distant and so highly admired Sachiko. Typical genki girl and closed ojousama setup, where Yumi finally helps draw Sachiko out. Yep, seen it all before, nothing special there.
What makes Marimite good, however, is not the story but the details of the interactions. I was surprised to see how realistic some of those exchanges were, how a surprising number of the anxieties and insecurities and misunderstandings in that show actually do crop up in real life. I think there does exist a sort of love that is far above simple friendship but does not cross into eros; I’ve heard it referred to as agapes. I find it very touching because it implies that you have a special bond or connection with someone, and this is a person who, by just their presence, makes you feel warmth and safe and happy.
Perhaps it is because I have felt something like this before that I find the idea of such an emotional bond a wondrous thing. And so I feel sympathetic to the characters in Marimite as they work through their own weaknesses to reach that other person. Another reason is that I also tend to react that way, deferring to the other, trying not to put too much inconvenience on them, worrying about how the other feels. Perhaps an American-raised person might think they are simply being stupid for worrying so much and never saying what they feel. I sit there and go, shit, I’ve done that before, and whap myself mentally for being an ass at the time, of course knowing full well that my personality would not let me do things any differently.
So, that’s what I found good about Marimite. Unfortunately, there was also a lot of stuff I didn’t quite care for. Yumi is starting to annoy me with her childishness – you know she’s an insecure little girl but for heaven’s sake you want to shake some sense into her. Sachiko holds no appeal to me – she had some great moments in the first season, but where I am now she acts as if she never learned those lessons. Storyline-wise, there’s both great(Sei and Shiori, graduation) and godawful (Valentine’s Day and the dates, ugh). I’d say I find Shimako, Yoshino, Sei, Noriko… actually most everyone but Yumi and Sachiko, and probably Rei, more interesting to watch. Those two are just too straightforward.
Anyway, I’m interested enough that I’d read the novels once I get hold on them. Apparently there is a far richer material and back stories.
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