Animating tactical genius: Miho, Marika and Shinon

by dm00

I came to Girls und Panzer very late and for an odd reason — the soundtrack amused me.  I’d written the series off as moe fluff (it is that), but something about the soundtrack on top of all the enthusiasm for the series prompted me to give it a try.  I started watching the series a week or so ago, and found myself plowing through all the episodes.

Between its production values and charm, it’s no wonder so many people rated the series so highly.  I’m sure it’s been talked to death.

But I want to express my appreciation for one thing the series does that’s rarely done so successfully: we see a brilliant tactician at work.  We see Miho being brilliant, we aren’t just told how brilliant she is.  We see her scanning the landscape through her binoculars, we see staring at her knees as she mentally tabulates her resources and the resources of her opponents. We see the flash of inspiration that leads to the audacious move that carries the day.

Anime (nor any other fiction) rarely pulls this off.  After all, it takes a bit of genius to show us the work of a genius (you can borrow some of that genius though: I suspect the military otaku have dissected each of Oarai High School’s battles and found possible inspirations in the history of tank warfare for Miho’s successful maneuvers).

Fortune favors the prepared.  We rarely see genius, even less often do we see the 99% perspiration that accompanies the 1% inspiration that makes up that genius.

We see it just a bit in Girls und Panzer as Miho spends a late night contemplating the forces tomorrow’s opponent will array against her.  We saw it as Marika in Bodacious Space Pirates struggled for sleepless days to hatch a plan to take on the shocking new opponent who had appeared and was destroying her fellow pirates.

One of the best renditions of the genius-by-sweat-equity was portrayed by the character Shinon in Starship Operators.  Throughout the series we see her strategic cunning at work. Then at the end of the series, when the odds looked hopeless, Shinon spends several days in the simulator, running battle plan after battle plan, looking for one that has a prayer of keeping them alive through the coming conflict.  She emerges with a plan that uses her ship in a completely unexpected way, and they live to fight another day.

(I guess we do see a lot of the “hard work and guts” school of winning the day through sheer determination and strength of will. I’m not talking about that, here.)

Girls und Panzer does this subtly and well.  It was a joy to watch.

Six years. Hm.

By TheBigN

In 2012 I watched about 30 or so series, OVA and movies related to anime, and while I thought that was a lot, according to this handy page, it barely scratched the surface. Time flies, work calls, and other stuff seemingly keeps coming around the bend in terms of this pastime. How I’ve watch anime  has changed by necessity, with my laptop currently on the road to brickdom and utilizing streaming to the fullest extent on my Kindle Fire. That being said, there’s been plenty of stuff that’s piqued my interest, but it’s been hard to write more substantially about them other than “WOWTHATWASCOOL“. I’ve tried to stay away from that sort of writing style because it felt to me like people wouldn’t get much out of that. And crazily enough, most of the time I try to write, I want whoever reads the finished product to get something out of it other than, “so that’s what TheBigN thinks”. It’s hard to get out of this way of thinking, though I should, especially since there’s fun stuff that happens over the year related to anime, both in the medium, and in the culture surrounding it (like the Otakon Music Festival. Fun times that). So I’ll try at least to shift the quips about anime I drop on Twitter and IRC onto here a little bit more. Whether or not that will be a good thing will be determined, I guess.

As always, I give a big thanks to dm00 for dropping his own bits of experience, excitement, and exposition to this endeavor. Thanks to the readers/glancers/etc. who stick around or follow this blood for our impressions.

It’s interesting to get to a point where the question “what else is there to say?” jumps around. I feel like there’s more to come than what’s been done so far here (although there’s been less and less as the years have gone, I think), so I’m hoping to never find out that answer.

Happy six year anniversary, DMAB.

Though I still like to think of DMAB as a blog of many hats. Picture by 腔子: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=19196614

The Anime Paradox: Anime and the traditions of Noh and Kabuki

by dm00

Slow, fast, faster: Sengoku Collection will ensnare even the most jaded.

If you are interested in Japanese history, you should check out The Samurai Archives, particularly if you are interested in the Sengoku era.

(Not so) Recently, they hosted Stevie Suan, talking not enough about his forthcoming book, The anime paradox, in which he examines anime through the lens of traditional Japanese theater.

Part one. This episode is mostly about the idea of viewing anime through the precepts of Japanese dramaturgy, in particular, the idea of Jo-ha-kyu, “beginning, break, rapid”, or “slow, fast, faster” — a fifteenth-century framework for Noh that has been inherited by kabuki, and plausibly applies to anime as well. Sadly, they just touch on the thesis and evidence for it, but they certainly make the book sound interesting (I haven’t looked to see if there is any discussion of the podcast in the Samurai Archives Forum). Stevie Suan sounds like he knows his anime, and is on to something in comparing anime to traditonal Japanese drama.

(Amusing aside: one of the podcasters, a military historian known for his disdain of anime, spends a bit of time marvelling at the way he’s been sucked into Sengoku Collection — and how Sengoku Collection illustrates part of Suan’s jo-ha-kyu framing.)

Part two. This episode is mostly about anime as a gateway drug for Japanese cultural studies, and the general trend in the humanities of cross-fertilization (e.g., 16th-century Japanese politics through the lens of modern political theory).

The book is forthcoming enough that Amazon doesn’t yet have it up for pre-order, but keep your eyes out for it.

And check out the Samurai Archives podcast. I spent many happy hours last year going through their archives. There’s some great stuff in there, especially if you’re interested in the Sengoku era.

Update: Here’s the publisher’s prospectus for the book. Eek, $133. Maybe a university library near you will get it.

Kotoura-san and the Power of Emotional Manipulation, Successful or Not

By TheBigN

So far, of the shows  I’ve watched so far this season (a list which slowly grows the more free time I have and the more interesting statements I hear about it from others), Kotoura-san two episodes in has been the one that’s grabbed me. It helped that I didn’t know anything about the show before hand, as a large part of it is the pathos that they try to induce by quickly dropping misery on the namesake character, and whether or not they’ve done too much with depends on the eyes of the beholder, I guess. While I can easily seem some moments in both episodes so far that could give me a feeling of “they’re trying too hard here” (in episode one, DAT CAT. In episode two, the lonely house as examples), I haven’t come out having that feeling as of yet.

The show’s been trying to advance the idea of  ”how someone with psychic powers is ostracized in today’s society” with the heavy dump life takes on Haruka in the first half of the show, as well as how it still affects her (and Yoriko) in episode two, and it’s been effective for me. In fact, I wish they could have been more visceral in some ways, such as actually showing Haruka’s emesis in episode two instead of a discretion shot. If it went that far however, I’d assume many people would be scared off by watching something that intense (might be too serious for something that’s supposed to be a romantic comedy). That being said, it’s hard not to notice that I’m trying to be played like a violin in order to care for Haruka as she comes out of her shell. And it’s pleasant for me that I know this and (so far) I don’t care about that.

So far, it’s hard for me to fault her. Picture by muneyuki: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=32893426

Another Reason Why I Like Anime #4726: Nekomonogatari’s opening

By TheBigN

There is always a hope of being wow’ed by something that comes up while watching anime. Something intriguing enough for me to actually post for the first time in months, I guess. :/

What caught my interest this time was the (I guess 1st, knowing how SHAFT does things) opening to Nekomonogatari covering the “Tsubasa Family” arc, one prequel to the story introduced in Bakemonogatari. By itself, the story of how Araragi gets to know my favorite character in the show, Tsubasa Hanekawa, as well as the anomaly that comes to inhabit her is intriguing enough as is for me. There wasn’t much necessary to pump me up for watching it (can’t wait for Kizumonogatari later on as well), but I was blown away by the opening to this adaptation: To preface though, I still have not watched the full episodes yet, so there will be plenty of randomness and likely BS to follow the video.

The song itself grabs me, reminding me a little bit of the Chobits 2nd ED “Ningyo Hime”, but here, “Perfect Slumbers” goes on its own path, striking a hopeful tone despite Tsubasa’s thoughts of an unrequited love. The cinematography coupled with the motifs used in the video such as the bookmarks (so many forms!) , the guitar/headphones/record, the sun becoming the moon, and the train lend help me further define her character, of which we already know a “fair” bit about. “Isolation” comes to mind here, and it helps that right until the end, she’s the only person in this OP world. And then when the guitar dissolves, and turns into a bed of flowers setting the backdrop of Koyomi prostrating himself in front of Tsubasa, as it looks like he can seemingly do nothing before the anomaly comes out is “the shot” for me. Of course, I’ll see how powerless our main hero really is in the actual work, but the shot of Tsubasa right at the end seems resigned to whatever comes regardless of any attempted interventions.

The marriage of the music and visuals together created a dazzling experience for me, and I too quickly compare it to the live action  and animated  (both links not safe for work) OPs that were done during the “Tsubasa Cat” arc of  Bakemonogatari, which isn’t fair. Since while those do a decent job at showing the Tsubasa’s duality, despite the intensity and shock value (especially of the animated version), I doubt they will have the staying power in my mind that this opening will. 

SHAFT x Shinbo already had me at Hello in animating more Hanekawa, but this is icing on a cake I haven’t even begun to have yet.  It’s not a bad deal.

Bakemonogatari, episode 12, in one picture

by dm00

The moment of utter victory of one of the most surprising(ly) romantic heroines in a lifetime of anime viewing.

Revived Experiments Lain

by dm00

You’ll never look at power-lines the same way again.

Long before there was Mawaru Penguindrum, or Kaiba, roughly contemporary with Evangelion and Utena, there was Serial Experiments Lain, an ambitious exploration of the impact of networks on the way we live and think and interact, steeped in hacker lore, UFO crankery, Timothy Leary/John Lilly expansions of consciousness, disorientation, future shock, and dreams of IP Version 7.

The series begins with a schoolgirl jumping from the roof of a tall building (you’ll note that she has her shoes on — she hasn’t removed them, as is traditional for suicides, perhaps because this is not a suicide). A week later her schoolmates start to receive email from her, email explaining that she’s moved to “the Wired”, and that “God is here”.

Lain is a quiet, withdrawn middle-school student. At the beginning of the series she’s “not very good with computers”, and seems largely unaware of things happening around her. News of these emails makes her curious, though, so she digs out her old “childrens’ PC” to see if she has mail. This act begins to connect her to the world, and she begins to come out of her shell.

The second episode takes us to Club Cyberia — an all-ages rave where Lain’s classmates see Lain’s doppelganger — the complete opposite of the shy, retiring Lain. Intrigued, they persuade Lain to join them at the club. She joins them, dressed in dowdy little-kid clothes, only to find herself in the middle of a shooting incident involving a deranged gunman — a gunman who is terrified of Lain.

Horizon on the edge of endurance

by dm00

tl;dr: You can find in a work what you go looking for.  When I wrote off Horizon on the middle of nowhere as fanservice fluff, friends suggested that there was more there.  I went looking, and was surprised at what I found.

If you’ve found your way to this blog backwater, you’ve probably seen the Blinded by the Tits project*. When I first looked at Horizon on the middle of nowhere, I made the same mistake as the titterers — I assumed that with its character designs, the series was putting its sole asset up front, that there was no substance behind those designs. Like the titterers, I didn’t even bother with a single episode of the series.

Friends, whose taste I trust, told me the series was better than that.  So I set aside my prejudices and took a look at it. This led to Horizon becoming one of my favorite series of the past few years. I’ve found subtlety and creativity in the series that I think rivals shows like Kaiba, Tatami Galaxy, and Mawaru Penguindrum.