Anime – Page 10 – Wis[s]e Words

Makoto Best Girl — Rewatching IdolM@ster

Published on January 17, 2023Leave a comment

The eight episode of The IdolM@ster (2011) is what you get when you take an old fashioned Hollywood comedy caper and condense it into a 22 minute anime:

Everybody is chasing Azusa in her bridal wear

IdolM@ster started out as an arcade video game which developed into an entire franchise of arcade and console games in which the player usually takes the role of an idol producer who has to make a range of idols famous by guiding them through lessons and live shows and such. It’s been popular enough that the series has gotten multiple anime adaptations. The first was an utterly bizarre mecha show, but the 2011 series, based on the IdolM@ster 2 is one of the best idol anime shows ever released. 765Pro is a small idol agency with twelve idols under its wings and with the protagonist being their new producer, though the focus really is on the girls. It’s a really fun series with the agency at first struggling for success, then struggling with success. I first watched it in 2015 and have rewatched it a couple times since, but this time I just wanted to this particular episode. Why? Well, for scenes like this:

It all starts when three of the idols have a wedding themed photo shoot in a church. Azusa, the one playing the bride takes a selfie to tease a friend of hers with and when the friend calls back, she wanders out of the church only to collide with an actual, runaway bride, on the run from the henchman of an oil baron who wants to marry her. Of course Azusa is promptly mistaken for her and kidnapped by said henchmen, but who led her go once she convinces them she’s not. All’s well that ends well, if not for two problems: a) she has no sense of direction whatsoever and b) she’s still carrying the wedding ring the actual bride dropped. Meanwhile Makoto, the idol playing the groom saw the kidnapping and dragged the producer along to free Azusa. So we now have the runaway bride, the henchmen and Makoto and the Producer all running around town looking for Azusa, who herself is aimlessly wandering around and getting asked for help from various people. It all culminates in the chase scene above, as every party comes together and a happy ending is reached for all…

Makoto reading a shojo manga with big sparkling eyes and flowers popping up around her

It all works because Azusa is such a natural airhead as well as kind enough to help lost children find their mum or an old lady look for her son. This sort of thing can be immensely irritating as a plot but here it works because of her charm. Still, the reason I watched this in the first place was for Makoto and the scenes of her fighting those goons. A proper tomboy, raised by a father who’d rather had a son, forbidden anything girly, she’s 765Pro’s Prince, putting maidenly hearts aflutter everywhere. Knight on a white horse for all her female fans, she’d sometimes rather be a princess herself, as she complains to the producer in episode seventeen. It’s a familiar character type, the cool girl who wants to be more girly. The grass is always greener on the other side after all. It can be a bit problematic, reinforcing outdated gender stereotypes, but that’s not the case here. Even when Makoto decides to dress more girly for her ‘date’ with the Producer e.g., the skirt she chooses matches what she’d normally wear. In the end and with the encouragement of the Producer she also comes to terms with how her fans she her, as the only idol who can play their prince, makes them feel princesses like she herself also would like to be. It’s this what makes me like her so much and why she’s perhaps my favourite IdolM@ster character.

Scooby Doo without Scooby Doo is just pointless.

Published on January 13, 2023Leave a comment

With all the shows HBO cancelled without ever airing just for tax purposes, why couldn’t this be one of them?

I first learned about this show three months ago when Polygon previewed it and it sounded so horrible already:

The show introduces Velma in her high school years as a bespectacled loser. If two cockroaches copulating in the opening scene doesn’t establish Velma’s tone, the next scene should do the trick: nude teenage girls partaking in physical violence in the gym showers (all while debating the ethical appropriateness and exploitation of blatant nudity in media). Later, the corpse of a teenager is found in Velma’s locker, making her the prime suspect in the eyes of two cops (Wanda Sykes and Jane Lynch). Of course, she has to solve the mystery to clear her name. One problem: Velma hasn’t really solved a mystery in a while, not since her mystery novelist mother vanished from her life. And whenever Velma tries to solve a mystery, she gets harassed by ghastly zombielike spirits.

Taking a kids show and making it all adult by upping the blood, tits and rampant cynicism is the oldest and most boring trick in the book. Going for an origin show is also a bit, ehh, unnecessary. Scooby Doo of all things does not need an origin. Four kids and their dogs traveling America in their own groovy van, in search of the supernatural and only ever finding fakes trying to cheat the local town out of its cash reserves is a formula that just works. You don’t need to dress it up. In this context making the cast somewhat less sixties whitebread is good, but even this seems suspect when everything else in the show is so damn cynical and it’s leaning hard into rightwing memes for its ‘jokes’. But the worst insult is this:

Grandy addressed the brown-spotted Great Dane (not) in the room by explaining that the team thought hard about what it could do to distinguish Velma as an adult show. “What made Scooby-Doo a kid show is Scooby-Doo,” Grandy said. “We couldn’t have a take on it, like how can we do this in a fun and modern way. [Our efforts] coincided with Warner Bros. Animation saying we can’t use the dog!” For Grandy, the omission of the iconic Great Dane accentuates the adult tone of Velma — though who knows what will happen along the show’s serialized journey.

Yeah, that makes sense, to remove the most iconic and recognisable element of the original because it’s nOt AdUlT eNoUgH. It does feel like somebody came up with an idea for an orginal show and the Scooby Doo brand (ugh) was forced upon it.

Executive producer Mindy Kaling meanwhile is if not an outright transphobe herself, certainly a tad too sympathetic to them, so that’s another reason not to waste your time on this show.

Tracking with Close-Ups: Anime

Published on January 12, 2023Leave a comment

Let’s nick another nifty post title from John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar for this round-up of anime focused links. Considering the time of year we end with two best of twentytwo lists, but first there’s a look back at the 2000s cult classic Vandread, a review of Godzilla Singular Point, an indepth look at how the 86 series uses letterboxing and a neat little Spotify playlist for o.g. IdolM@ster tracks.

Vandread
Vandread was an anime that came out in the year 2000 and it’s a bit tricky to introduce because everything it is it’s also not quite. It’s a harem anime, but not quite. It’s a space giant robot anime, but not quite. It’s a science fiction anthology anime, but not quite. It’s about genders, but not quite, about relationships, but not quite, and about identity, but not quite. In a lot of ways, Vandread is a really confused piece, a gem of its time.
The Jet Jaguar Show
Godzilla Singular Point is a gorgeously designed, beautifully animated sci-fi show that often feels like arriving mid-lecture to a physics class. This, somehow, is part of the appeal. The 13-episode anime series is weird and dense if not weird because it is so dense, cramming a prodigious amount of information into a franchise that historically just kind of waves its hands around whenever the science comes up. Stories about stopping some rampaging giant monsters tend not to foreground this much math. But to summarize exactly how granular the series gets about concepts like the passage of time would require me to dive into ideas that I only half-understand myself, so to give a quicker and more digestible impression for just how odd, how left-field/galaxy-brain out there the first Godzilla TV anime is, we need to talk about Jet Jaguar.
Bringing Letterboxes To Life: Toshimasa Ishii, Tomohiko Ito & Eighty-Six Episode Twenty-Two’s Use Of The 21:9 Aspect Ratio
Episode Twenty-Two is predominantly shot in the 21:9 aspect ratio or what some may call a 21:9 ‘letterbox’ since there are two horizontal bars that clasp the animation from above and below. 86 has opened up the door to experimenting with aspect ratios before. Fido’s flashback in 4:3 within Hirotaka Mori and Satsuki Takahashi’s episode (Episode Ten), as well as Ken Yamamoto’s use of 21:9 in the second cour’s opening, are examples of how they can be mobilised to add to the anime’s ongoing discussion on the multiple perspectives that are present during times of conflict. Shifting to a different aspect ratio represents a shift in worldview and provides viewers with an alternative lens to interpret what is going on in front of them. So what exactly makes Ishii’s experiment in ‘Shin’ different from the ones that preceded it? In my view, the use of 21:9 helps to express the pent-up emotions felt by the characters. The director breathes life into the bars and makes them responsive to the feelings of the subjects.
Million Live — Essenti@ls
music from the idolmaster million live (アイドルマスターミリオンライブ) sorted in categorical, then chronological order! all songs are included except solo/unit mixes & off vocal. playlists will be updated frequently as new albums get released. WELCOME to 765PRO’s theater! | missing: VARIETY 02
Top Anime of 2022 (and Year in Review)
“Alright, great, I can always count on you for cynicism about art and culture, but didn’t you say something about being invigorated in your anime viewing?” Sorry, yes, I got away from myself a bit there. I include all this doomsaying preamble merely to say that while I understand the industry’s situation isn’t great, my own year in anime has been littered with reasons to hope. I’ve leapt backwards across anime history, and discovered that the early shows of Miyazaki and Takahata are just as enchanting as their film work (to say nothing of the fantastic early Toei Doga films). I’ve rediscovered the unique joy of group watching, and have munched through hundreds of episodes with my housemates cheering beside me. Hell, I’ve even watched some currently airing anime; this year lacked a “this is what I watch anime for” production on the level of Heike Monogatari, but it’s made up for that with an altogether wider spread of commendable shows, alongside One Piece’s preposterously consistent adaptation of its most ambitious arc so far.
The Backlog, Year… 5? And a half?? A Hiatus in Review
Counting everything together, I do only come to a mere 48 new shows to run down, barely more than half of my busier years, even though we’re counting almost six more months in here than I usually would. I can’t even bother to put the usual “watched in rotation”, “watched off rotation” brackets in, because there’s really only four rotation shows here, and I finished none of them! Yet. But you know what? I’m still gonna put my all into it. If there’s one thing this girl here cares about, it’s lists, right?

Mundane beauty — Mou Ippon!

Published on January 11, 2023Leave a comment

One overlooked strength of anime is how it can make the mundane beautiful, how it can set a scene or mood by just a serious of establishing shots and the right music:

Yes, this could be done in live action as well, but it could never be as beautiful.

It sets the stage for the story Mou Ippon! wants to tell perfectly. We start with the sun high in the sky, a hot Summer’s day, the noise of cicadas in the background reinforcing it. Pan down to your typical anime high school, slowly focusing on a cicada on a tree. A loud thud scares it and it flies off. The thuds repeat as we come to the martial arts dojo. Coming inside we still don’t know what’s causing the thuds as the camera focuses on the details of the hall: the half open blinds, a fan, a water bottle, the tatami mats covering the floor. Then, a hand pushes off the mats and we zoom out to see a girl in judo gear doing rolling exercises, causing the sound that lured us here. When she finishes them, we get our first look at her face and follow her line of sight to the doors, where her three friends just came in. The scene continues for a while, showing how comfortable and content the four are practising with each other. Three of them spar for a while, while the fourth does stretches; she’s slightly different from the others. It ends with them in a circle on the tatami mats, hot, sweaty but happy. Then cue title drop and the actual start of the story.

The four main characters lying in a circle on the tatami mats in judo and sports gear

It all starts with Michi, the girl practising on her own, and Sanae going to her final judo competition in middle school. They’re the last two left of their school’s judo club and have little hope of making it far. And indeed, after Sanae is eliminated so is Michi, when her opponent gets her in a headlock and she loses consciousness. To make matters worse somebody videoed it and put it on social media. Michi isn’t too heartbroken as she wants to quit judo anyways in high school. When they do get into high school some time later, their other friend Anna tries to convince Michi to join the kendo team. She lures the both of them to the dojo where they stumble upon the same girl who defeated Michi holding off the entire kendo team while trying to lay out the tatami mats needed for judo. Turns out the judo club no longer has members so the kendo team will take over the entire hall. Towa counters that they only need three members to revive the club and then starts fighting with Anna over Michi. Then, through some clever foot work by Sanae, Michi gets in a judo grapple with Towa and defeats her with an ippon. End result: they’ll join the judo club.

Towa and Anna in a literal tug of war using Michi as rope

If you watch this and notice a little bit of a lesbian tone to the proceedings, you’re not wrong. It’s clear that Sanae only started judo to be with Michi, while Anna is as obviously infatuated with her sporting prowess — and maybe more — as well. Even Towa seems to be strangely attracted to her, stalking her as she left that judo competition trying to get her attention, but failing to do so through Anna turning up at the wrong moment. And then she engages in a literal tug of war about her with Anna, which couldn’t be more obvious. Now all of this may just be simple friendship but I’d like it to be a bit more if possible. In any case this already looks a really fun series. The fights so far have been excellent, selling the physicality of the sport really well. This looks to be more of a series about the camaraderie of doing a sport together than about winning the Interhigh, which I can only approve of.

I was a Teenage Spy Girl — Spy Kyoushitsu

Published on January 8, 20231 Comment

After the horrors of the Great War, the nations of the world resolved to from now on fight through espionage instead, with each nation creating entire schools for them. In the Din Republic, seven failed almost dropouts from these schools have been assembled to be trained under the world’s greatest spy — and wworst teacher — to become a team capable of completing Impossible Missions.

The seven spies looking like they stepped out a Key visual novel

The team certainly looks good, even though I got the feeling I’ve seen some of them before in some Key visual novel. This first episode was very much the setup for the rest of the series, following Lily, the girl in the middle. She’s the optimistic, air headed type and the one to get the group settled as they get used to their new situation. Things come to a head the next morning, as it turns out their teacher Klaus is one of those geniuses who thinks everybody can understand him if he tells them that to pick a look you need to use your lock picking tools the correct way. It sinks in for Lily and the others that their’s is indeed an impossible mission, but Lily refuses to give up. It’s in the second half of the episode that she shows off both her resourcefulness and her cynicism as she attempts to blackmail their teacher into returning them to their schools, only to inadvertently give Klaus an idea on how to train them properly…

As a piece of entertainment this was fun. I hope the focus stays on the training and our various spy girls attempting to defeat their teacher and we don’t get too much into the actual spy missions though, our that it loses its light hearted tone. Animation wise this is also one of the better shows so far this season, with crowd scenes in which we had actual movement! But. I’m always a bit worried when an anime series has a Taisho-era inspired setting, as that seems to be pretty much the time period of choice for people nostalgic for Imperial Japan before WWII spoiled things. Combine that with the pseudorealist but strangely apolitical idea that war has grown too terrible but nations still need to fight each other, but now through espionage and alarm bells start ringing.

With this setup, it’s naive to think that this will ever offer “a robust look at humanity”, as the Anime Feminist review hoped for. That’s not what this show is interested in. Lily’s backstory confirmed that. Her motivation to become a spy because a spy saved her as the only survivor of a horrible tragedy is again, an apolitical motivation. It’s idealistic but with no ideology behind it. In real life, you had people like the Cambridge Five who become spies out of solid communist convictions and regardless of what you think of it, that makes sense. But Lily doesn’t even become a spy out of patriotism, but from some generic belief that by doing so she can prevent further tragedies, without much regard for whom she will serve or which cause she’s spying for. This is a rightwing anime, a series that presents its status quo as right and just, that accept that nations will always be in conflict, with no intent to examine this worldview other than perhaps some cliched clash between idealism and realism.

Which doesn’t stop it from being a fun little spy action series, but I don’t expect anything more from it.