Archive for the ‘Mnemosyne’ Category
July 27, 2008 – 5:14 pm
It’s rather sad, but Mnemosyne, an anime that started out with quite a bit of potential to be a nostalgic throwback to the 80’s girls and guns era, has wound up a muddled mess.
Although the series, up till ep 4, was rife with plot holes, extraneous service, and middling art quality, it was still watchable if you took it at face value. After seeing ep 5, and especially the finale of ep 6, I cannot be so kind. It was a train wreck, plain and simple.
Ep 4 jumps 20 or so years into the future. Rin is gone; in her place is a woman who looks like her but has no memories. Rin-who-is-not-Rin lives a normal corporate life, has a lover who wants her to marry him. Mimi is a now a Buddhist nun. Teru cleaned up his act as is now boss of a very high profile conglomerate. The latest generation of Maeno is a pretty young thing who’s gutsy, great at manipulation, and forever pining to her boyfriend that there are no good men in her life. I like her :)
I thought the setup of this episode was quite good. It was cool to see Rin be given a normal life, and then to see her reaction on regaining her memory. She says, “It’s been centuries since I’ve had a lover. It was like living in a fairytale”. That’s pretty deep, to me anyway. Rin, who has no innocence left, was given a chance to taste it again. The plot also unfolded decently, although Apos’ use of Laura is getting old. Apos himself is shown to be the worst kind of villain, the one who personifies the trope “Rape the Dog“.
So far so good… The part I have beef with is just the gratuitous scene in the middle of nowhere. You know the one I’m talking about. The one with Mimi and the other immortals, in the monastery, which served zero plot value, and negative service value, because it was so bizarrely placed anyway. I’d have given this ep 3 1/2 stars without the scene, and 1/2 a star with. Bleh, I say.
And as for ep 6. Well, all’s well that ends well, Rin saves the universe and becomes God, literally, Apos is banished to eternal suffering (I think, I couldn’t tell), Mimi lives on, alone, and Mishio becomes yet another follower of the cult of Rin… and I don’t care one whit. Ah, you see, obviously they tried to tie it up into a whole with now loose ends. You know, leave no mysteries, explain it all, etc. Well, it sucked. Badly. This sounds like something a 4th grader would come up with. It’s horrible. It’s so bad, Mnemosyne will have the dubious honour of being the only anime series in which I, out of protest, refuse to buy the final DVD.
Now that I think about it, perhaps they also intended to follow in the old 80s tradition, showcasing an anime that sucks just as well as some of our other terrible classics did. Begone.
Posted in ANIME, Mnemosyne | No Comments »
June 3, 2008 – 1:16 pm
As I was waiting for episode 5, to kill time I broke out the Vol1 DVD and watched the first episode. The Japanese release actually contains English subs, which although not unheard of is a bit of a surprise still. Anyway, I’m glad I rewatched it because I had forgotten a lot of things between Ep 1 and Ep 4 ^^;;
like this
Because of the way this series progresses through time, the sub characters change appearance, and the relationships are different too. Some like Maeno and the assassin are obvious, but then I guess I hadn’t been paying much attention to the others as I had not realized who the old policeman geezer was in ep 4… Doh, it was the young totally shy guy whom Rin was twirling around her little finger. Another interesting tidbit I forgot was how Rin was totally hitting on Mimi after her “bad day at work” :P Kinda weird to see the tables turned, and makes you wonder what Rin is about, aside from her strong sense of justice, habit of picking up stray boys and having one-night stands with policemen, and talking in loving tones on the phone to a mysterious man.
The art in this episode is, of course, stellar. I wish the rest of the series could be like this, but although it is an OVA it seems to be done TV series style, ie where production teams alternate between the “real” studio and the “farm-out” studio. Too bad, since that’s the one place this series could shine. It’s not like I can advocate its intelligent plot or deep philosophical themes…
Rin’s expression when her butt sets off the laser is hilarious. And seriously, although I’m not a seiyuu fan much, Noto Mamiko is really quite dang awesome.
Unfortunately after watching this I felt rather sad because Rin was so kickass here what with the ninja chains and stuff, and as the series goes on she just becomes not-so-kickass cannon-fodder, or jet-engine fodder as the case may be. This episode also had some sophistication that was missing in the later episodes, like the attention to detail with Rin’s glasses. Ah well, time to move on to Ep 5!
Posted in ANIME, Mnemosyne | No Comments »
May 8, 2008 – 9:38 pm
I watch Mnemosyne just for entertainment’s sake and don’t give it much thought once an episode is over, but to my surprise I really like ep 4. The reason is, pure and simple, Mimi - Mimi and the change in the relationship between her and Rin. For the first three episodes, she’s been a rather one-dimensional character, what with Rin taking center stage and Kouki being the human foil; Mimi’s the sidekick with a taste for vodka and a rather forward way of displaying affection towards Rin. We’ve seen Rin and Mimi as colleagues in a dangerous line of work. They’ve been together a long time, and they care a lot about each other. We know Mimi flirts a lot with Rin and Rin takes it in stride; in episode three, their interactions indicate that they are in a relationship.
In this episode, however, 14 years or so have changed things. Mimi still teases Rin, but she doesn’t flirt with her. More tellingly, when Mimi decides to go to the information dealer, it becomes a point of tension. Rin prods Mimi by saying she thought Mimi didn’t quite like the woman. Mimi responds indignantly that of course she does not, but Rin says, somewhat teasingly, that it seems Mimi has been using her more than Rin herself, lately. Mimi then becomes defensive, telling Rin to make sure to turn off the gas and lock the door. Rin then mentions casually that perhaps she will take Teruki to her home (there is no indication that Rin and Mimi live together), to which Mimi looks shocked and upset. Rin but smiles kindly and says, “It’s all right.”
Now, I may just be reading too much into this, but to me it appears that Rin and Mimi are no longer together, and it’s an issue that’s been eating at them for a while. Perhaps Kouki’s death hit hard, or maybe it was the passing of time… More likely, I think it was Mimi who fell in love with Rin, back then, and Rin reciprocated but was never fully in love with Mimi; rather, she had always loved that mysterious bearded man, or angel as the case may have it. And Mimi’s heart got broken, and the relationship was no more because Rin couldn’t love Mimi like Mimi loved Rin.
And Rin knew this, and so she been trying to let Mimi go for several years now. When she said, “Maybe I’ll take Teruki home with me”, it was her implicit permission for Mimi to go to someone else. When she said, “It’s all right”, she meant that she didn’t want Mimi to continue trying to stay in love with her, that it was all right to start having feelings for that woman.
Some people might argue that Mimi doesn’t enjoy her “payments” with the woman. I’d say that may have been true in 2011, but it’s no longer so in 2025. In 2011, Mimi did it for Rin. In 2025, she did it for a boy in trouble. Admitted, Kouki’s son, but still, obviously she’s been buying information for more than a few cases before then already. Look at their interaction in bed. The woman teases Mimi, and Mimi’s reaction isn’t terribly hateful or resentful. When the talk turns serious, Mimi sounds somewhat melancholic. Would it be too much to read that the woman may hold affection for Mimi, and Mimi, while loathe to admit it, does as well? I see the last scene from the episode, where Mimi walks off with a lone suitcase and Genta, as someone in deep pain when the woman she loves ie Rin has failed to return. But I can imagine Mimi burying the tears inside and stoically showing up on the information dealer’s door, so that she would at least have someone to hold her.
Anyway, that’s my take on this episode. How utterly depressing. But now I am a Mimi fan ;-)
Although, dammit, Rin looks too damn good when she tells Teruki they are going out, and she says, “Ii toko! <3″
Posted in ANIME, Mnemosyne | 2 Comments »
April 14, 2008 – 11:35 pm
I’ve been following, and quite enjoying, AT-X’s anniversary production Mnemosyne. It’s been billed as edgy, violent, gory, with copious amounts of nudity and S&M and sex. Eh, well yes to a certain degree, but not really bad at all I thought.
It’s true that the show is gratuitous - sex, blood, nudity, fetishism, violent death and nekkid women getting it on, more than you’d see on TV anime these days, and with the conspicuous absence of OVAs (*cough* ICE *cough*) it could be considered one of the more adult-oriented anime.
Bah, pish tosh. This is simply entertainment. There might be cause for complaint if it was truly exploitative, but you see, it’s all really rather tastefully done. Reminds me that anime also has its role in this sort of genre, unabashedly. I guess what I’m getting at is, this is quality entertainment, and fun.
I wondered why people might feel that this anime was a bit much. Then I realized that, possibly, these people never grew up with stuff like Akira and Ninja Scroll, which were staple fare when I was in college. Those two, and several other anime, were brutal. I actually felt queasy watching them, but watch them I did because they were considered the best of their genre. But I never enjoyed them, because victims were simply that, victims. They died horrible deaths or suffered terrible violations. And the hero went his merry way to fight the good fight. Mnemosyne is good because the victims are strong people who fought back, and beat the baddies. I love that kind of show.
Hmm, I wonder if this post will start getting a whole bunch of hits from Google… :P
Posted in ANIME, Mnemosyne | No Comments »
