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27 Nov 2007 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouCurrently on the HD/DVD (since we don't have cable, lalalalala) or CD/iPod... lines bolded are what's in this post. Rest will come later (as usual).
Dai Sato: Eureka Seven, Ergo Proxy
Higuchi, Asa: Ookiku Furikabutte
Uehashi, Nahoko: Seirei no Moribito
Kawai, Kenji: Seirei no Moribito OST1, OST2
Keiichi, Sato: Karas
Kuroda, Yousuke: Gundam 00
Masamune, Shirow: Ghost Hound
Narita, Ryohgo: Baccano!
Urasawa, Naoki: Monster
Urushibara, Yuki: Mushishi
Hamaguchi, Shiroh: Ookiku Furikabutte OST1
Ike, Yoshihiro: Ergo Proxy OST1; Karas OST1
Kajiura, Yuki: Baccano! OST1
Kajiura, Yuki: Madlax OST1, OST2
Kanno, Yoko: Darker than Black OST1
Mancini, Mark: Blood+ OST1, OST2
Masuda, Toshio: Mushisi OST1, OST2; Naruto, OST1, OST2
Sagisu, Shiro: Bleach OST1
Sato, Naoki: Eureka Seven OST1
Eureka Seven
It's not just mecha. It's surfing mecha.
I'm still not entirely certain what prompted CP (yes, that CP) to pick out the series, because I doubt I would've looked twice with that kind of premise. The general idea of the world is that it somehow creates/carries wind currents that can be sailed/ridden, similar to snowboarding. Okay, a lot like snowboarding. I mean, mecha... on a big honkin' snowboard.
For all that -- and the copious nods here and there to the great tradition of mecha, including the sole female pilot being called 'princess' by her peers, the dashing guy who's of questionable morality, the young man coming of age, and a few stylistic elements in the mecha that are somewhat like watching a science fiction series where the zippy little floating speeders look remarkably like the mechanical designer was once enamoured of Cobras -- ahem -- it's still turning out to be a passable way to spend the time.
Mostly, because the characters are engaging, and the seiyuu are top-notch; for instance, the seiyuu for Holland, Keiji Fujiwara, was Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist, Ali Al-Sarches in Gundam 00, and Yue in Karas. There are enough twists here and there -- so far, at least -- to keep me interested. Entertaining, fun, good for the 11 to 15 year old boy in the house, or anyone with an inner!tomboy.
Ergo Proxy
Talk about a radical jump from the other script. This is a series that's not just working on the same grounds as Matrix, or Ghost in the Shell, or even Bladerunner, but does so with a huge compendium of Great Philosophers stuck under its arm. It's one thing to have characters named for Derrida, Husserl, and Lacan; it's another thing to have an entire episode take place in a character's id, which looks to be a great deal similar to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, complete with (possible) Ferlinghetti playing host.
The series, for the most part, is amazing: a blend of 2D digital cell animation, 3D computer modeling, digital special effects -- when it's not abruptly cut-rate. It's one of the more inconsistent series I've ever watched, but it wasn't intolerable. Just at times a bit off-putting, because given the incredible mental juiciness, I wanted every frame to be incredibly rendered.
I can't even think how to describe it! The first two or so episodes, it seems like it'll be just another "girl-cop in the city with AI sidekick" -- and then the story quickly, and unexpectedly, takes a severe turn to the left. Suddenly you're not even in the bubble-city anymore, and you're exposed to an entire set of concepts and realities that may fit with the city's version, or may not, or perhaps they all do and it's just that you've only held a single puzzle piece and didn't realize you weren't the entire world. It's a story of Re-L, the young detective/security officer, and Pino, an AI, and Vincent, who may be an immigrant or he may be untrustworthy or he may be in love with Re-L, but perhaps he's none and everything, but then, perhaps so are they all. A disease is spreading through the AIs, called the Cogito Virus, and something called Proxies may be at the heart, but they may also be at the heart of the city itself. It's a long journey into night and back into a day that becomes an even deeper night, swirling down through layers of knowledge and philosophy and questions about what is reality and what is a soul and what does it mean to be a person but what does it mean in relation to another -- which is a key I didn't see much of in Matrix (though Bladerunner does touch on it): that some element of humanity, any definitive description that is, must include our relation from one to another.
It's a series for those who liked the mind-twist of its precursor SF movies, but it's also for those folks who know their classic science fiction: who get the connotation in the AIs having a "Turing mode", or who'll recognize a character's ID of 12C41+, or would laugh at the graveyard shot with the chief scriptwriter's name on the nearest gravestone... and it's a series for those who find the intellectual challenge hidden in otherwise obtuse or opaque -- or apparently purposefully-mysterious -- dialogue, such as when the bookstore host says, "It is not, in the end, true that cogitum ergo sum. For you, perhaps, you should say cogito ergo es." What remains ambiguous both in the original Japanese and in the translation is the question of "you" and "I" in that statement: to whom is the statement being made, and by whom, and about whom? When you jump through the intuitive hoops to grasp the bigger picture, it's almost breathtaking.
And, to a good degree, breathtaking because if you rewatch, the story does not fall apart. In fact, its cohesion is even more amazing. So many times, a story reveals the layers of mystery and I'm left thinking, that's it? I've been holding my breath all this time for that? Oh, please. Not in this case, though -- I watched it first in fansubs, and then again on the official release, and while CP had to take regular breaks because his head hurt, I was going bonkers internally over how it all fit together. Things I'd missed, or dismissed, the first time around, I could see now -- and yet I know I still missed hints and details. It's really layered, just that much.
One warning, however: the official translation is truly horrendous. I mean, atrocious in times (and don't even go near the dubbing). I think they gave a monkey a bag of peanuts and a Japanese/German dictionary and told it to start typing for the english. What's especially egregious is that not a single DVD has any extras pertaining to the series -- and for a series like this, you need that. One of the fansub groups used to release two to five page PDFs bundled with each episode, that explained references made in the show. Mayan names and mythology, science fiction pop-culture references, philosophical treatises, even scientifically (if mostly theorectical) details, as well as modern science terms as in psychiatric pathology. If you can find those PDFs, or know anyone who saved them, I'd suggest getting a copy and keeping it handy.
It's just too bad the distribution companies won't simply hire the folks at Anime-Keep; their translation proved to be not just the most accurate in terms of meaning, but also the most poetic in terms of capturing the style and cadence of the original Japanese -- which in some places is phrased just a bit off, as you would (I'm told) phrase poetry, for the sound as much as the meaning. This may have confused the professional translators. Or something. But it did annoy me especially after the fansubs, and for once actually had me wishing I could get AK's version at DVD-quality. I'd pay for it, I'd be glad to -- as long as I could send back the professional version at the same time. Barring that, I'll keep what I've got. Better than nothing.
But I still say if you can find the episode notes on PDF, do so.
Seirei no Moribito [Guardian of the Sacred Spirit]
The series has completed its run in Japan and is still available on fansubs, and I'm waiting for the day it arrives on DVD so we can watch it on the television instead of a 15" laptop monitor (grump, grump). However, that's with a caveat, in that Geneon had the distribution rights. Despite a big announcement of Geneon becoming a joint venture between its parent company and Toshiba (IIRC), shortly after that Geneon announce -- in mid-September or thereabouts -- that it'd be discontinuing its entire international distribution segment. The dubbing contract had been granted to an American company, but with the announcement apparently came the warning that any work had to be wrapped by December. I'm dubious as to the quality any company can provide in terms of subtitling, translation, let alone voice work or even (if we were so lucky) footnotes or extras.
I do know, however, that an excellent Canadian author, Cathy Hirano, is translator for the original children's manga by Nahoko Uehashi. At least we should be seeing that version come down the pipes at some point. Rumor has it that if Seirei no Moribito does well, the distro-publication company will also release the sequel, the Tabibito (Traveller) series, which follows the main protagonist into her next journey.
Just reading the author's biography is fair warning this isn't your normal children's book.
If that doesn't warn you that this series won't be a lot of pap, I don't know what will. I posted on my former journal about this, but for those of you unfamiliar, I'll summarize (somewhat) here.
Seirei no Moribito is about Chagum, the Second Prince of an empire, the carrier for the world's water spirit until it's ready to be reborn. The empire's astrologers believe the water spirit a demon, and Chagum's mother hires Balsa to protect Chagum from assassins. As the story develops, the astrologers discover falsehoods in the empire's history/folklore. Meanwhile Balsa works to keep Chagum safe from assassins while her friends Tanda and his master, Shaman Torogei, seek answers via indigenous knowledge. Yes, there is strong correlation between Conquerers/Invaders and Conquered/Indigenous in the cultural undercurrents, and the coming-together of the two sides is part of the tension.
Every episode is well-crafted, and its true-to-lifeness with the characters constantly delights me. Each one has a true character, both in the sense of "a coherent wholeness" and in a sense (in some cases) of "that boy's a real character." This point occurs relatively late in the series but it stands out for me: Chagum, the 12-year old protagonist, approaches Tanda about Tanda's friendship with Balsa. Tanda -- at first startled that Chagum's aware, then a little embarrassed at the directness -- admits to Chagum that he does like Balsa... Chagum asks -- in that so-realistic, straightforward, disingenuous way that a young man can have: "Why don't you just sleep with her?"
I just about spit tea all over the keyboard, in a combination of embarrassment on Tanda's behalf, surprise at the question, and deeper surprise that it would've been left in the script (let alone put in, in the first place). Clearly the story's author knows the mind of a young man, and the folks doing the anime aren't taking the easy way out of pulling their punches. Unlike so many media where the implication of sex is never more than hinted (especially in the American media, unless the intent is shock value), here it's treated just as frankly as the backstory episode where Balsa's own bodyguard has to fight, and kill, six trained warriors at once.
Honestly: if the story can tell of a man forced to defend himself in a life-or-death contest against former friends -- why wouldn't it also treat the issue of love or companionship with the same sort of honesty? Why is it we can see people getting blown up, cut up, killed, and yet fade-to-black on anything that smacks of a positive intimacy? I'm not saying we need porn in every story, just that as readers/viewers (and this seems to be true across cultures), the violent is treated with almost hyper-realism while the nurturing/connections moment -- usually the first kiss or First Time Nekked -- gets little more than the start of the motion, fade to black... and then it's not mentioned again. If we get anything, we get an assumption that something has happened, a la "deal being sealed," and it's treated like it's at most supplemental to the plot.
Again, I'm not saying anyone requires porn so much as the simple acknowledgment that attraction/love/lust are part of humanity as much as violence. I notice this only because Seirei does have fight scenes, but when those are done, there's little discussion or looking-back on the character's parts... while the emotional does remain, isn't dropped, doesn't become just the implied "now they're holding hands so they must be together" silence.
Even when I've watched/read romantic storylines, there's often a reluctance to face/handle the implications of intimacy -- emotional as well as sexual. I was about to say something about fighting versus liking, and then I realized the only series I can name with any major attention on the emotional quality/level in relationships are invariably shojo/girl-focused, and man I hate that kind of angst. (Not to mention the question raised of why must it always be the female-audience stories? Just because many guys don't talk about their feelings doesn't mean they don't have them. Sheesh.)
There are so many reasons to love the series, though. The music is understated but balances the scenes well, the script is both subtle and eloquent, the fight scenes are absolutely kickass, the longshots with no voiceover let us enjoy the visual (and the body language) instead of more talk talk talk, the plotline is simple but the characterizations are what carry things... the backgrounds are rich and complex with varying scenery that befits the different environments, the characters themselves are both alternately close-mouthed and communicative.
Especially wonderful to me: the animation makes every effort to let the visual carry just as much as the tone. Tanda puts his hand to his cheek when he's skeptical, although he voices little more than a "hmm." Balsa says nothing but turns her head while the grip on her spear shifts a little. A particularly evocative moment (and indicative of the no-expense-spared element, I think) was when a young girl repeated her grandmother's story about the guardian who bears the spirit-egg that will become the world's water spirit. At first, her hands sat in her lap, then she raised them up, fingers open; but as her words became more patterned (in the oral folklore style of telling), she began to mimic what must have been her grandmother's motions, the kind of hand-based illustration that appears in nearly every culture (even if the motions are different for each). Hands reaching up like claws for one passage, becoming a single fist, then one hand held out palm up while the other arm sweeps a broad stroke of a fist. I found that one scene amazing, because so often animators will try to skimp in a long passage like that: they'll show reaction shots, which are too often just a long still shot of the people listening. Or they'll show an overhead/longshot, with everyone sitting still, or just the person talking, with no significant animation other than the mouth.
I understand the mechanics in cell animation, and that it's more efficient both financially and time-wise to draw the entire face and animate only the mouth. But sometimes, watching the cheaper anime (even that with an otherwise good story or characters), I feel like there's a disconnect between what's moving and what's still, on the screen. It's much of the reason I can freely dismiss the entire "lip-flap" issue of sound matching mouth movements, because so often I just ignore the mouth-movement completely. It's obviously not even animated in the same pace/timing as the rest, so whatever.
With Seirei, however, everything feels tied together, and the animated mouths move in conjunction with the eyes, the nose, the line of the jaw. And speaking of faces, the story now as progressed from Chagum's original place as the Second Prince of the empire -- an independent, if somewhat insulated, boy of eleven -- to a young man who's spent the winter learning to fight, to hunt, to fish, to hold his own. There's a distinct, if subtle, change to the way they're drawing him: his jaw isn't so rounded but has developed a slight line to it, his face is now just a little more oval, the eyes not quite so large, and even his height is just a bit taller than at story's start.
I am so definitely, definitely giving copies of this story to the young women I know -- and I include the 8yr old and 10yr old girls in that, too. Yes, Whedon's Buffy was a great role model in the sense of a strong woman who could also express hope, fear, love, lust, sadness, etc (as contrast to the strong-silent lone warrior with implied frigidity) but a lot of her baggage is, well... it's baggage. Okay, yes, adolescent character comes with baggage, but she's also at heart metaphorical, and that detracts slightly for me in terms of saying, "here's something worth watching," to a young girl.
Seirei no Moribito is a radical departure in that sense. Balsa is strong and fully competent, but there's no bones made that she's spent a vast part of her life training those skills. She's conflicted at times, can be cautious, is patient but when pushed does have a serious temper, can make mistakes, is stubborn to the core, is principled, is good-humored, can tease, can laugh, has good friends, can be uncertain what her heart really wants. I like that this is a character who really is a woman, as a woman is: not just a cardboard 'serious threat' who otherwise shuts off all emotion. Not as a stereotypical "shut down emotions to get through the day" crap we see in grown quasi-mercenary male characters playing the strong/silent/cold game, or the teenagers (male and female) who can't handle both strong positive emotion (love/nurturing) and strong negative emotion (anger/killing) and thus shut down one completely rather than swing wildly. Balsa is thirty when the story begins; she's done her time as an adolescent, she's learned the balance. Buffy may be a role model for young women struggling through the teenage years, but Balsa is who Buffy might someday become.
What's especially fascinating -- moreso when you consider the remarkable author, from a culture like Japan's which may have its good points but cripes are they still in the dark ages on gender equality -- is that this story is a complete and total reversal. I mean a complete reversal: Balsa is the fighter, the strong woman who really can take all comers, knock 'em down and keep going. Tanda is a gentle, nurturing healer with a wry laugh and a subtle sense of humor, though his tenacity and sometimes foolhardiness matches Balsa's. Chagum is a young boy, yet he carries the 'egg' of the Water spirit... it's the classic family setup and it's completely reversed, with fatherly-mother and motherly-father and daughterly-son, yet at no point is Tanda feminized any more than Balsa is masculinized. They retain a familiar gender-identity and character, but the roles they fill are not the usual square slots. In that, alone, it's a phenomenally powerful story for young women (and men), to show them a template for a nurturing man, to show them that such a man is not weak by any stretch and can (and will) love a strong woman, who can be strong without being A Man. And, too, that being a young man growing into his place in the world doesn't mean leaving feelings behind.
Ōkiku Furikabutte
I will admit freely that I never had even the least interest in watching Tenisu no Ōjisama (aka Prince of Tennis, aka TeniPuri). For starters, it's about tennis, and with the exception of watching MacEnroe's temper tantrums as a kid, I've never had any interest in sports that require significant eye-hand coordination. Mostly, because I sucked at them, and I've enough trauma in my past when it comes to being the last person to bat and always striking out. There's a reason I went into crew, damn it, and it sure wasn't because I was all that crazy about water. Other than track, it was the only non-ball-related sport at my high school.
And, too, I've been to baseball games and they bored the crap out of me. At least with track, or crew, you can see the finish line, and cheer the runners/rowers on. Soccer and hockey, too, and I know those are cerebral sports in ways not obviously apparent, just as I knew the same for tennis and baseball; the truth is that all sports use strategy to some degree or another.
The problem as an uneducated spectator is knowing when strategies are used, what they are, and why. Ōkiku Furikabutte -- Ofuri for short -- tells you.
It's also a coming-of-age story, wrapped up in baseball. What sets it apart from 90% of the other sports-based manga is that while it's also about a young wonderboy finding his place on a team, it's not a story that focuses on every team member having his/her own 'special moves'. (A cultural obsession I think is based, somewhere in history, on the idea that every kata has a name, and particularly good swordsmen/fighters would sometimes create their own moves, and name them. So you have giant robots with Moonlight Whatever Giant Something, and little schoolgirls twirling a baton and yelling out Fancy Starlight Extra Special Tigerlily and turning into a princess, or samurai-ronin-ninja who feel obligated to holler out the name of their next move like they're permanently stuck on their third-belt test.) Instead, no one in this series is that spectacular except in the normal ways, as befits their character.
The premise of the story is simple: Ren Mihashi transfers to a public high school, where he's decided he won't play baseball. He'd played through middle school (IIRC, that's grades 7-8-9 in US terms), and was the primary pitcher for his team. But his grandfather also owned the private school, and his teammates were certain Mihashi was pitcher solely because of nepotism. The fact that the team never won any games just proved their accusations, and Mihashi wants to put that behind him... until the new coach for the Nishiura High baseball team ropes him into playing.
Mihashi is, fundamentally, a kid with little to no confidence -- but what's hiding under that almost pathological insecurity is a phenomenally dedicated and talented pitcher. He's not strong, in the sense of a zippy speedball, which seems to be the emphasis I see in other manga I've paged through. What he does have is control, but with three years of his teammates shuning him, and his own catcher refusing to give any signals, he's convinced their losses were entirely his fault. It's up to Coach Momoe -- who recognizes Mihashi's hard-won skills -- and the team's catcher, Hitaka Abe -- to bring out Mihashi's confidence.
From the point of view of an observer, like I said, baseball looks like... well, not much. Pitcher stands there, focuses, throws, and the guy either hits or doesn't. What makes this manga/anime so fascinating -- and probably the reason it won both the prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize (2006) and the Kodansha Manga Award (2007) -- is that the strategies of baseball are the character dynamics. How a person is on the field, his strengths, are reflected in his plays, what he can do, what he can't, where he must push himself, both in the game and off the field.
Too, there are elements in the story I've just not come across, in American/English stories or translations. They exist, I'm sure, but they just don't get exposure. Like the fact that Momoe is a damn good baseball player, and scarily sharp not just about the game but the psychology of her players -- and she's a woman. At the story's outset, one of the young men actually disdains playing for a female coach, and then Momoe -- who's busy tossing a ball in the air -- tosses it into the air and mid-swing shifts stance to hit the ball into far left field without missing a beat. A move, I do know at least, is pretty amazing; feasible and possible, but still not a beginner's move (not to mention the strength required to hit a ball that far).
It's a lot of psychology between the players, as a team, and then you get into the team's first game. It's their break-week, and they've gone on a baseball-only team trip to some secluded house. There, Momoe and the team's faculty advisor (since Momoe is not a teacher at the school) have a variety of odd tricks and stunts to get the kids to break out of their mindsets and start to understand how training for a game means not just throwing a ball, but training one's mind, and that this hidden level of training can occur at every minute, even while sleeping. (It may seem far-fetched at some points to viewers not used to a team sport, but I do recall similar arguments/ideas being introduced by my coaches, though never that well explained, heh.)
But this series gives you all that, and if you find strategy intriguing -- along with each character trying to puzzle each other out, psych each other out, and camoflage their own intentions -- whew! A bit of dialogue to give you a feel. This is from episode four, when Momoe arranges a "practice" game against Mihashi's old teammates, who are now at the senior high branch of Mihashi's grandfather's school. Normally the private school wouldn't play the public school, and the Nishiura team is understandably worried -- this is the team that practiced for three years, hitting Mihashi's pitches. They'll have all the tricks figured out, except that only works if you're not counting on the catcher... who, it turns out, is the real brains behind the team.
The private school isn't all the same teammates; they have a few new members, including a kid transferred from Kansai. That means Mihashi has no idea how he plays, so Abe (the catcher) comes out to Mihashi before the next inning and lets him know that Abe wants to "gather some data" on the kid. "Don't worry," he tells Mihashi, "we may get hit [end up with the batter gaining a base] but we can get the rest out. Don't be scared." It leaves Mihashi feeling a flush both of gratitude to Abe -- for speaking to him as his previous catcher never did -- as well as a growing amazement at Abe's talents and a sort of crush-like adulation. It's really a combination of amazement that Abe would work with him, but also a developing appreciation for just how much difference it makes in a game when the catcher is on the ball. Err, so to speak. Anyway, the Kansai kid, Oda, is up to bat, and Abe's taking notes.
Of course, I can't help but be tickled everytime these Japanese voices repeat the words I heard off and on throughout my childhood... except now it's more like "won ow-toe!" for "one out!" and "nie-se-peetch-u!" for "nice pitch!" It's rather charming, actually -- especially when one kid reaches first base and cries (in English), "Yes!" The subtitles say "yatta!" That would be a fansubber's sense of humor, I suppose.
(For those of you in the Gundam fandom, Abe's voice may sound familiar. It's the same seiyuu who voices Graham Acre.)
This series was released in Japan in '04 or '05, I believe, and it's still not reached our shores. In fact, one of the fansub groups has only reached episode 10; the second group (releasing in avi format) is only now up to four. It's a pity, really, because it's an excellent series and deserves a larger audience. If you can find the fansubs, I recommend them. It's a charming, and challenging, and educational and just plain fun and touching series, where kids can be kids but without losing their softer edges -- where they need support, acknowledgment, too -- as well as their drive to compete and be good at what they do. It's not all about who's top dog; this is a series about being a top team, and what it takes to get there.
Seirei no Moribito OST1, OST2
Highly recommending these. Unfortunately, the only version available is a Japanese distribution, which means the OST 1 and OST 2 are both about $35 to $40. Nothing quite like the Japanese export taxes to really boot a somewhat-decent price up to completely unsupportable. (And they wonder why people like me get fanburns of the OSTs... because I don't want to wait the two years before the company bothers to release an American burn, and I don't want to bloody well every pay 50USD for a frickin' soundtrack again! Ridiculous.)
But, if you can find a fanburn, or a used copy of the Japanese, or just note the title and get it when it arrives on Western shores, I recommend both OST1 and OST2. In the course of the series, the music is subtle, never really pushing itself forward, but as a listening experience independent of the series, it stands beautifully on its own. It's proven to be gorgeous background music for my day; although it's a good-sized CD (twenty-something songs on each), and the pieces run from 1:30 to 3:00 at most, the music order is arranged in such a way that the CD flows nicely from one to the next. There's none of that shonen/theme crap where each character gets a theme, and when you string the 1:30 themes together, it makes for a jarring and almost unlistenable CD -- nope, this is highly instrumental, somewhat influenced by Asian melodies and progressions, but with a delicate amount of Western orchestra, too.
Dai Sato: Eureka Seven, Ergo Proxy
Higuchi, Asa: Ookiku Furikabutte
Uehashi, Nahoko: Seirei no Moribito
Kawai, Kenji: Seirei no Moribito OST1, OST2
Keiichi, Sato: Karas
Kuroda, Yousuke: Gundam 00
Masamune, Shirow: Ghost Hound
Narita, Ryohgo: Baccano!
Urasawa, Naoki: Monster
Urushibara, Yuki: Mushishi
Hamaguchi, Shiroh: Ookiku Furikabutte OST1
Ike, Yoshihiro: Ergo Proxy OST1; Karas OST1
Kajiura, Yuki: Baccano! OST1
Kajiura, Yuki: Madlax OST1, OST2
Kanno, Yoko: Darker than Black OST1
Mancini, Mark: Blood+ OST1, OST2
Masuda, Toshio: Mushisi OST1, OST2; Naruto, OST1, OST2
Sagisu, Shiro: Bleach OST1
Sato, Naoki: Eureka Seven OST1
Eureka Seven
It's not just mecha. It's surfing mecha.
I'm still not entirely certain what prompted CP (yes, that CP) to pick out the series, because I doubt I would've looked twice with that kind of premise. The general idea of the world is that it somehow creates/carries wind currents that can be sailed/ridden, similar to snowboarding. Okay, a lot like snowboarding. I mean, mecha... on a big honkin' snowboard.
For all that -- and the copious nods here and there to the great tradition of mecha, including the sole female pilot being called 'princess' by her peers, the dashing guy who's of questionable morality, the young man coming of age, and a few stylistic elements in the mecha that are somewhat like watching a science fiction series where the zippy little floating speeders look remarkably like the mechanical designer was once enamoured of Cobras -- ahem -- it's still turning out to be a passable way to spend the time.
Mostly, because the characters are engaging, and the seiyuu are top-notch; for instance, the seiyuu for Holland, Keiji Fujiwara, was Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist, Ali Al-Sarches in Gundam 00, and Yue in Karas. There are enough twists here and there -- so far, at least -- to keep me interested. Entertaining, fun, good for the 11 to 15 year old boy in the house, or anyone with an inner!tomboy.
Ergo Proxy
Talk about a radical jump from the other script. This is a series that's not just working on the same grounds as Matrix, or Ghost in the Shell, or even Bladerunner, but does so with a huge compendium of Great Philosophers stuck under its arm. It's one thing to have characters named for Derrida, Husserl, and Lacan; it's another thing to have an entire episode take place in a character's id, which looks to be a great deal similar to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, complete with (possible) Ferlinghetti playing host.
The series, for the most part, is amazing: a blend of 2D digital cell animation, 3D computer modeling, digital special effects -- when it's not abruptly cut-rate. It's one of the more inconsistent series I've ever watched, but it wasn't intolerable. Just at times a bit off-putting, because given the incredible mental juiciness, I wanted every frame to be incredibly rendered.
I can't even think how to describe it! The first two or so episodes, it seems like it'll be just another "girl-cop in the city with AI sidekick" -- and then the story quickly, and unexpectedly, takes a severe turn to the left. Suddenly you're not even in the bubble-city anymore, and you're exposed to an entire set of concepts and realities that may fit with the city's version, or may not, or perhaps they all do and it's just that you've only held a single puzzle piece and didn't realize you weren't the entire world. It's a story of Re-L, the young detective/security officer, and Pino, an AI, and Vincent, who may be an immigrant or he may be untrustworthy or he may be in love with Re-L, but perhaps he's none and everything, but then, perhaps so are they all. A disease is spreading through the AIs, called the Cogito Virus, and something called Proxies may be at the heart, but they may also be at the heart of the city itself. It's a long journey into night and back into a day that becomes an even deeper night, swirling down through layers of knowledge and philosophy and questions about what is reality and what is a soul and what does it mean to be a person but what does it mean in relation to another -- which is a key I didn't see much of in Matrix (though Bladerunner does touch on it): that some element of humanity, any definitive description that is, must include our relation from one to another.
It's a series for those who liked the mind-twist of its precursor SF movies, but it's also for those folks who know their classic science fiction: who get the connotation in the AIs having a "Turing mode", or who'll recognize a character's ID of 12C41+, or would laugh at the graveyard shot with the chief scriptwriter's name on the nearest gravestone... and it's a series for those who find the intellectual challenge hidden in otherwise obtuse or opaque -- or apparently purposefully-mysterious -- dialogue, such as when the bookstore host says, "It is not, in the end, true that cogitum ergo sum. For you, perhaps, you should say cogito ergo es." What remains ambiguous both in the original Japanese and in the translation is the question of "you" and "I" in that statement: to whom is the statement being made, and by whom, and about whom? When you jump through the intuitive hoops to grasp the bigger picture, it's almost breathtaking.
And, to a good degree, breathtaking because if you rewatch, the story does not fall apart. In fact, its cohesion is even more amazing. So many times, a story reveals the layers of mystery and I'm left thinking, that's it? I've been holding my breath all this time for that? Oh, please. Not in this case, though -- I watched it first in fansubs, and then again on the official release, and while CP had to take regular breaks because his head hurt, I was going bonkers internally over how it all fit together. Things I'd missed, or dismissed, the first time around, I could see now -- and yet I know I still missed hints and details. It's really layered, just that much.
One warning, however: the official translation is truly horrendous. I mean, atrocious in times (and don't even go near the dubbing). I think they gave a monkey a bag of peanuts and a Japanese/German dictionary and told it to start typing for the english. What's especially egregious is that not a single DVD has any extras pertaining to the series -- and for a series like this, you need that. One of the fansub groups used to release two to five page PDFs bundled with each episode, that explained references made in the show. Mayan names and mythology, science fiction pop-culture references, philosophical treatises, even scientifically (if mostly theorectical) details, as well as modern science terms as in psychiatric pathology. If you can find those PDFs, or know anyone who saved them, I'd suggest getting a copy and keeping it handy.
It's just too bad the distribution companies won't simply hire the folks at Anime-Keep; their translation proved to be not just the most accurate in terms of meaning, but also the most poetic in terms of capturing the style and cadence of the original Japanese -- which in some places is phrased just a bit off, as you would (I'm told) phrase poetry, for the sound as much as the meaning. This may have confused the professional translators. Or something. But it did annoy me especially after the fansubs, and for once actually had me wishing I could get AK's version at DVD-quality. I'd pay for it, I'd be glad to -- as long as I could send back the professional version at the same time. Barring that, I'll keep what I've got. Better than nothing.
But I still say if you can find the episode notes on PDF, do so.
Seirei no Moribito [Guardian of the Sacred Spirit]
The series has completed its run in Japan and is still available on fansubs, and I'm waiting for the day it arrives on DVD so we can watch it on the television instead of a 15" laptop monitor (grump, grump). However, that's with a caveat, in that Geneon had the distribution rights. Despite a big announcement of Geneon becoming a joint venture between its parent company and Toshiba (IIRC), shortly after that Geneon announce -- in mid-September or thereabouts -- that it'd be discontinuing its entire international distribution segment. The dubbing contract had been granted to an American company, but with the announcement apparently came the warning that any work had to be wrapped by December. I'm dubious as to the quality any company can provide in terms of subtitling, translation, let alone voice work or even (if we were so lucky) footnotes or extras.
I do know, however, that an excellent Canadian author, Cathy Hirano, is translator for the original children's manga by Nahoko Uehashi. At least we should be seeing that version come down the pipes at some point. Rumor has it that if Seirei no Moribito does well, the distro-publication company will also release the sequel, the Tabibito (Traveller) series, which follows the main protagonist into her next journey.
Just reading the author's biography is fair warning this isn't your normal children's book.
Nahoko Uehashi [graduated from] Rikkyo University after successful fulfillment of the doctoral course of cultural anthropology. She specialized in the Australian aborigines. After working as an assistant at Kagawa Education Institute of Nutrition, became an assistant professor of Kawamura Gakuen Women's University. She writes unique fantasy novels from the viewpoint of cultural anthropology. Her works include the debut work Seirei no Ki (Tree of the Spirit, 1989), Tsuki no mori ni, Kami yo nemure (Sleep in the Woods of the Moon, Oh God, 1991, winner of the 25th New Artist Award from the Japan Children's Book Artists Society, 1992), Koteki no Kanata (Beyond the Fox's Flute, 2003, winner of the 42nd Noma Children's Books Award, 2004) and the essay Tonari no Aborigine: Chiisana Machi ni Kurasu Senjumin (Aborigines Next Door: Natives Living in a Small Town, 2000).
The Moribito (Guardian) series, a grand epic fantasy in Asian style, started in 1996, and is continuously expanding today with the Tabibito (Traveler) series. The whole corpus counts now 10 volumes, that grossed 400,000 copies sold in Japan. The Guardian series has also received many awards, including Noma Children's Books Award, Sankei Children's Book Award, Nippon Broadcasting System Award and Iwaya Sazanami Literary Award.
If that doesn't warn you that this series won't be a lot of pap, I don't know what will. I posted on my former journal about this, but for those of you unfamiliar, I'll summarize (somewhat) here.
Seirei no Moribito is about Chagum, the Second Prince of an empire, the carrier for the world's water spirit until it's ready to be reborn. The empire's astrologers believe the water spirit a demon, and Chagum's mother hires Balsa to protect Chagum from assassins. As the story develops, the astrologers discover falsehoods in the empire's history/folklore. Meanwhile Balsa works to keep Chagum safe from assassins while her friends Tanda and his master, Shaman Torogei, seek answers via indigenous knowledge. Yes, there is strong correlation between Conquerers/Invaders and Conquered/Indigenous in the cultural undercurrents, and the coming-together of the two sides is part of the tension.
Every episode is well-crafted, and its true-to-lifeness with the characters constantly delights me. Each one has a true character, both in the sense of "a coherent wholeness" and in a sense (in some cases) of "that boy's a real character." This point occurs relatively late in the series but it stands out for me: Chagum, the 12-year old protagonist, approaches Tanda about Tanda's friendship with Balsa. Tanda -- at first startled that Chagum's aware, then a little embarrassed at the directness -- admits to Chagum that he does like Balsa... Chagum asks -- in that so-realistic, straightforward, disingenuous way that a young man can have: "Why don't you just sleep with her?"
I just about spit tea all over the keyboard, in a combination of embarrassment on Tanda's behalf, surprise at the question, and deeper surprise that it would've been left in the script (let alone put in, in the first place). Clearly the story's author knows the mind of a young man, and the folks doing the anime aren't taking the easy way out of pulling their punches. Unlike so many media where the implication of sex is never more than hinted (especially in the American media, unless the intent is shock value), here it's treated just as frankly as the backstory episode where Balsa's own bodyguard has to fight, and kill, six trained warriors at once.
Honestly: if the story can tell of a man forced to defend himself in a life-or-death contest against former friends -- why wouldn't it also treat the issue of love or companionship with the same sort of honesty? Why is it we can see people getting blown up, cut up, killed, and yet fade-to-black on anything that smacks of a positive intimacy? I'm not saying we need porn in every story, just that as readers/viewers (and this seems to be true across cultures), the violent is treated with almost hyper-realism while the nurturing/connections moment -- usually the first kiss or First Time Nekked -- gets little more than the start of the motion, fade to black... and then it's not mentioned again. If we get anything, we get an assumption that something has happened, a la "deal being sealed," and it's treated like it's at most supplemental to the plot.
Again, I'm not saying anyone requires porn so much as the simple acknowledgment that attraction/love/lust are part of humanity as much as violence. I notice this only because Seirei does have fight scenes, but when those are done, there's little discussion or looking-back on the character's parts... while the emotional does remain, isn't dropped, doesn't become just the implied "now they're holding hands so they must be together" silence.
Even when I've watched/read romantic storylines, there's often a reluctance to face/handle the implications of intimacy -- emotional as well as sexual. I was about to say something about fighting versus liking, and then I realized the only series I can name with any major attention on the emotional quality/level in relationships are invariably shojo/girl-focused, and man I hate that kind of angst. (Not to mention the question raised of why must it always be the female-audience stories? Just because many guys don't talk about their feelings doesn't mean they don't have them. Sheesh.)
There are so many reasons to love the series, though. The music is understated but balances the scenes well, the script is both subtle and eloquent, the fight scenes are absolutely kickass, the longshots with no voiceover let us enjoy the visual (and the body language) instead of more talk talk talk, the plotline is simple but the characterizations are what carry things... the backgrounds are rich and complex with varying scenery that befits the different environments, the characters themselves are both alternately close-mouthed and communicative.
Especially wonderful to me: the animation makes every effort to let the visual carry just as much as the tone. Tanda puts his hand to his cheek when he's skeptical, although he voices little more than a "hmm." Balsa says nothing but turns her head while the grip on her spear shifts a little. A particularly evocative moment (and indicative of the no-expense-spared element, I think) was when a young girl repeated her grandmother's story about the guardian who bears the spirit-egg that will become the world's water spirit. At first, her hands sat in her lap, then she raised them up, fingers open; but as her words became more patterned (in the oral folklore style of telling), she began to mimic what must have been her grandmother's motions, the kind of hand-based illustration that appears in nearly every culture (even if the motions are different for each). Hands reaching up like claws for one passage, becoming a single fist, then one hand held out palm up while the other arm sweeps a broad stroke of a fist. I found that one scene amazing, because so often animators will try to skimp in a long passage like that: they'll show reaction shots, which are too often just a long still shot of the people listening. Or they'll show an overhead/longshot, with everyone sitting still, or just the person talking, with no significant animation other than the mouth.
I understand the mechanics in cell animation, and that it's more efficient both financially and time-wise to draw the entire face and animate only the mouth. But sometimes, watching the cheaper anime (even that with an otherwise good story or characters), I feel like there's a disconnect between what's moving and what's still, on the screen. It's much of the reason I can freely dismiss the entire "lip-flap" issue of sound matching mouth movements, because so often I just ignore the mouth-movement completely. It's obviously not even animated in the same pace/timing as the rest, so whatever.
With Seirei, however, everything feels tied together, and the animated mouths move in conjunction with the eyes, the nose, the line of the jaw. And speaking of faces, the story now as progressed from Chagum's original place as the Second Prince of the empire -- an independent, if somewhat insulated, boy of eleven -- to a young man who's spent the winter learning to fight, to hunt, to fish, to hold his own. There's a distinct, if subtle, change to the way they're drawing him: his jaw isn't so rounded but has developed a slight line to it, his face is now just a little more oval, the eyes not quite so large, and even his height is just a bit taller than at story's start.
I am so definitely, definitely giving copies of this story to the young women I know -- and I include the 8yr old and 10yr old girls in that, too. Yes, Whedon's Buffy was a great role model in the sense of a strong woman who could also express hope, fear, love, lust, sadness, etc (as contrast to the strong-silent lone warrior with implied frigidity) but a lot of her baggage is, well... it's baggage. Okay, yes, adolescent character comes with baggage, but she's also at heart metaphorical, and that detracts slightly for me in terms of saying, "here's something worth watching," to a young girl.
Seirei no Moribito is a radical departure in that sense. Balsa is strong and fully competent, but there's no bones made that she's spent a vast part of her life training those skills. She's conflicted at times, can be cautious, is patient but when pushed does have a serious temper, can make mistakes, is stubborn to the core, is principled, is good-humored, can tease, can laugh, has good friends, can be uncertain what her heart really wants. I like that this is a character who really is a woman, as a woman is: not just a cardboard 'serious threat' who otherwise shuts off all emotion. Not as a stereotypical "shut down emotions to get through the day" crap we see in grown quasi-mercenary male characters playing the strong/silent/cold game, or the teenagers (male and female) who can't handle both strong positive emotion (love/nurturing) and strong negative emotion (anger/killing) and thus shut down one completely rather than swing wildly. Balsa is thirty when the story begins; she's done her time as an adolescent, she's learned the balance. Buffy may be a role model for young women struggling through the teenage years, but Balsa is who Buffy might someday become.
What's especially fascinating -- moreso when you consider the remarkable author, from a culture like Japan's which may have its good points but cripes are they still in the dark ages on gender equality -- is that this story is a complete and total reversal. I mean a complete reversal: Balsa is the fighter, the strong woman who really can take all comers, knock 'em down and keep going. Tanda is a gentle, nurturing healer with a wry laugh and a subtle sense of humor, though his tenacity and sometimes foolhardiness matches Balsa's. Chagum is a young boy, yet he carries the 'egg' of the Water spirit... it's the classic family setup and it's completely reversed, with fatherly-mother and motherly-father and daughterly-son, yet at no point is Tanda feminized any more than Balsa is masculinized. They retain a familiar gender-identity and character, but the roles they fill are not the usual square slots. In that, alone, it's a phenomenally powerful story for young women (and men), to show them a template for a nurturing man, to show them that such a man is not weak by any stretch and can (and will) love a strong woman, who can be strong without being A Man. And, too, that being a young man growing into his place in the world doesn't mean leaving feelings behind.
Ōkiku Furikabutte
I will admit freely that I never had even the least interest in watching Tenisu no Ōjisama (aka Prince of Tennis, aka TeniPuri). For starters, it's about tennis, and with the exception of watching MacEnroe's temper tantrums as a kid, I've never had any interest in sports that require significant eye-hand coordination. Mostly, because I sucked at them, and I've enough trauma in my past when it comes to being the last person to bat and always striking out. There's a reason I went into crew, damn it, and it sure wasn't because I was all that crazy about water. Other than track, it was the only non-ball-related sport at my high school.
And, too, I've been to baseball games and they bored the crap out of me. At least with track, or crew, you can see the finish line, and cheer the runners/rowers on. Soccer and hockey, too, and I know those are cerebral sports in ways not obviously apparent, just as I knew the same for tennis and baseball; the truth is that all sports use strategy to some degree or another.
The problem as an uneducated spectator is knowing when strategies are used, what they are, and why. Ōkiku Furikabutte -- Ofuri for short -- tells you.
It's also a coming-of-age story, wrapped up in baseball. What sets it apart from 90% of the other sports-based manga is that while it's also about a young wonderboy finding his place on a team, it's not a story that focuses on every team member having his/her own 'special moves'. (A cultural obsession I think is based, somewhere in history, on the idea that every kata has a name, and particularly good swordsmen/fighters would sometimes create their own moves, and name them. So you have giant robots with Moonlight Whatever Giant Something, and little schoolgirls twirling a baton and yelling out Fancy Starlight Extra Special Tigerlily and turning into a princess, or samurai-ronin-ninja who feel obligated to holler out the name of their next move like they're permanently stuck on their third-belt test.) Instead, no one in this series is that spectacular except in the normal ways, as befits their character.
The premise of the story is simple: Ren Mihashi transfers to a public high school, where he's decided he won't play baseball. He'd played through middle school (IIRC, that's grades 7-8-9 in US terms), and was the primary pitcher for his team. But his grandfather also owned the private school, and his teammates were certain Mihashi was pitcher solely because of nepotism. The fact that the team never won any games just proved their accusations, and Mihashi wants to put that behind him... until the new coach for the Nishiura High baseball team ropes him into playing.
Mihashi is, fundamentally, a kid with little to no confidence -- but what's hiding under that almost pathological insecurity is a phenomenally dedicated and talented pitcher. He's not strong, in the sense of a zippy speedball, which seems to be the emphasis I see in other manga I've paged through. What he does have is control, but with three years of his teammates shuning him, and his own catcher refusing to give any signals, he's convinced their losses were entirely his fault. It's up to Coach Momoe -- who recognizes Mihashi's hard-won skills -- and the team's catcher, Hitaka Abe -- to bring out Mihashi's confidence.
From the point of view of an observer, like I said, baseball looks like... well, not much. Pitcher stands there, focuses, throws, and the guy either hits or doesn't. What makes this manga/anime so fascinating -- and probably the reason it won both the prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize (2006) and the Kodansha Manga Award (2007) -- is that the strategies of baseball are the character dynamics. How a person is on the field, his strengths, are reflected in his plays, what he can do, what he can't, where he must push himself, both in the game and off the field.
Too, there are elements in the story I've just not come across, in American/English stories or translations. They exist, I'm sure, but they just don't get exposure. Like the fact that Momoe is a damn good baseball player, and scarily sharp not just about the game but the psychology of her players -- and she's a woman. At the story's outset, one of the young men actually disdains playing for a female coach, and then Momoe -- who's busy tossing a ball in the air -- tosses it into the air and mid-swing shifts stance to hit the ball into far left field without missing a beat. A move, I do know at least, is pretty amazing; feasible and possible, but still not a beginner's move (not to mention the strength required to hit a ball that far).
It's a lot of psychology between the players, as a team, and then you get into the team's first game. It's their break-week, and they've gone on a baseball-only team trip to some secluded house. There, Momoe and the team's faculty advisor (since Momoe is not a teacher at the school) have a variety of odd tricks and stunts to get the kids to break out of their mindsets and start to understand how training for a game means not just throwing a ball, but training one's mind, and that this hidden level of training can occur at every minute, even while sleeping. (It may seem far-fetched at some points to viewers not used to a team sport, but I do recall similar arguments/ideas being introduced by my coaches, though never that well explained, heh.)
But this series gives you all that, and if you find strategy intriguing -- along with each character trying to puzzle each other out, psych each other out, and camoflage their own intentions -- whew! A bit of dialogue to give you a feel. This is from episode four, when Momoe arranges a "practice" game against Mihashi's old teammates, who are now at the senior high branch of Mihashi's grandfather's school. Normally the private school wouldn't play the public school, and the Nishiura team is understandably worried -- this is the team that practiced for three years, hitting Mihashi's pitches. They'll have all the tricks figured out, except that only works if you're not counting on the catcher... who, it turns out, is the real brains behind the team.
The private school isn't all the same teammates; they have a few new members, including a kid transferred from Kansai. That means Mihashi has no idea how he plays, so Abe (the catcher) comes out to Mihashi before the next inning and lets him know that Abe wants to "gather some data" on the kid. "Don't worry," he tells Mihashi, "we may get hit [end up with the batter gaining a base] but we can get the rest out. Don't be scared." It leaves Mihashi feeling a flush both of gratitude to Abe -- for speaking to him as his previous catcher never did -- as well as a growing amazement at Abe's talents and a sort of crush-like adulation. It's really a combination of amazement that Abe would work with him, but also a developing appreciation for just how much difference it makes in a game when the catcher is on the ball. Err, so to speak. Anyway, the Kansai kid, Oda, is up to bat, and Abe's taking notes.
Abe: «thinking» He stands right around the center. His stance is narrow-ish, but with his arms, he can probably reach out anywhere if he steps in. For the first pitch, we'll throw a fastball up and in, outside the zone. «shot of Abe giving signals to Mihashi» If he likes the inside, he'll make a move, and I can observe him more closely that way.
«Mihashi pitches»
Umpire: Ball!
Abe: «thinking» He was thoroughly looking at the pitch. If they intend to swing they usually make some sort of move even if it's a ball, but... «throws ball back to pitcher» Is he a kind of batter who always takes the first pitch? Okay. Let's try inside again. This time around, it'll be low.
«Mihashi pitches»
«Oda doesn't move»
Umpire: Ball!
Abe: «looking disgruntled now, still analyzing» He's not even flinching? Is he just ridiculously cautious or something? «throws ball back to pitcher» No, there must be something, for him to not swing at these slow pitches.
Oda: «looks baffled» What kind of pitch was that...?
Abe: «thinking, getting situated again» Looking from afar, Mihashi's pitches aren't the kind that a hitter would wait on. For him to take two pitches, someone must have instructed him to take the pitches. There's got to be someone on the [private school] side who's noticed the peculiarity of Mihashi's fastball. Then there's no reason for us to let him see more of it. Let's get a strike with a curveball outside.
«Mihashi pitches»
Oda: «watching pitch» Dammit, a breaking pitch. «doesn't move»
Umpire: Strike!
Oda: «thinking» Wow, right on the edge. If he was aiming for it, that's awesome. But anyway, come with a fastball, a fastball!
«Mihashi gets signal from Abe, pitches»
Kansai: «looks disgusted at pitch» Geez. Guess it's all right, then. «swings»
Abe: «startled» He moved!
«Oda hits ball off to far side»
Umpire: Foul!
Abe: «thinking» Oda's finally made his move. That curveball was a strike. He fouled it because it was his favorite location and he swung too fast. When you think about it, he's got such long limbs. It means he likes it outside, rather than the tight inside. However, when he's waiting for a fastball... he doesn't have the skill to switch off to a breaking ball, but he has the power to hit the ball out. Unlike our Tajima, he's a cleanup who can hit homeruns.
Of course, I can't help but be tickled everytime these Japanese voices repeat the words I heard off and on throughout my childhood... except now it's more like "won ow-toe!" for "one out!" and "nie-se-peetch-u!" for "nice pitch!" It's rather charming, actually -- especially when one kid reaches first base and cries (in English), "Yes!" The subtitles say "yatta!" That would be a fansubber's sense of humor, I suppose.
(For those of you in the Gundam fandom, Abe's voice may sound familiar. It's the same seiyuu who voices Graham Acre.)
This series was released in Japan in '04 or '05, I believe, and it's still not reached our shores. In fact, one of the fansub groups has only reached episode 10; the second group (releasing in avi format) is only now up to four. It's a pity, really, because it's an excellent series and deserves a larger audience. If you can find the fansubs, I recommend them. It's a charming, and challenging, and educational and just plain fun and touching series, where kids can be kids but without losing their softer edges -- where they need support, acknowledgment, too -- as well as their drive to compete and be good at what they do. It's not all about who's top dog; this is a series about being a top team, and what it takes to get there.
Seirei no Moribito OST1, OST2
Highly recommending these. Unfortunately, the only version available is a Japanese distribution, which means the OST 1 and OST 2 are both about $35 to $40. Nothing quite like the Japanese export taxes to really boot a somewhat-decent price up to completely unsupportable. (And they wonder why people like me get fanburns of the OSTs... because I don't want to wait the two years before the company bothers to release an American burn, and I don't want to bloody well every pay 50USD for a frickin' soundtrack again! Ridiculous.)
But, if you can find a fanburn, or a used copy of the Japanese, or just note the title and get it when it arrives on Western shores, I recommend both OST1 and OST2. In the course of the series, the music is subtle, never really pushing itself forward, but as a listening experience independent of the series, it stands beautifully on its own. It's proven to be gorgeous background music for my day; although it's a good-sized CD (twenty-something songs on each), and the pieces run from 1:30 to 3:00 at most, the music order is arranged in such a way that the CD flows nicely from one to the next. There's none of that shonen/theme crap where each character gets a theme, and when you string the 1:30 themes together, it makes for a jarring and almost unlistenable CD -- nope, this is highly instrumental, somewhat influenced by Asian melodies and progressions, but with a delicate amount of Western orchestra, too.
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no subject
Date: 28 Nov 2007 03:45 am (UTC)everybody talked to each other and compared information and accepted their mistakes (the way Shuga connected to Torogai, for example), if grudgingly. no saints, but no villains as well, and comparing to usual anime deal it felt so real - it felt like respect to viewers and story both, without needing additional angst to carry through.
no subject
Date: 28 Nov 2007 04:38 am (UTC)I really liked that Chagum's father regretted his decision, and didn't want to make it, but had to do what was best for the kingdom, even if that meant great personal sacrifice to himself. (Nearly every one else redeemed themselves in the end, I thought, including the elder brother's tutor, although the chance to do that was thanks to Shuga wising up on being political.)
no subject
Date: 28 Nov 2007 07:07 am (UTC)Also, I've begun to see Eureka Seven as a reply to Evangelion in many ways. I finally saw the last episode the other week and...I was actually quite pleased. I wasn't prepared to like the series as much as I did. (There was some filler where I felt that Renton and Holland and Eureka had better just Get On With It, but really it was just slow, steady character development that made the ending all the sweeter.)
Thanks for reviews like this one. I think I may have found someone I trust, someone who notices the same things I do, and now I know where to go for recommendations!
no subject
Date: 30 Nov 2007 06:09 am (UTC)Really an amazing series, and a rewatchable one, which is even better.