“If it cannot break out of its shell, the chick will die without ever being born. We are the chick-The world is our egg. If we don’t crack the world’s shell, we will die without ever truly being born. Smash the world’s shell. FOR THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORLD!”
–Revolutionary Girl Utena

Shokuzai (Penance) is a story of people dying without ever being born. Exposed to a tragedy at a young age, it’s like they were frozen in time and encased within a shell of adolescence as they grew into adulthood. They were five girls in their school’s playground when one of them was abducted right in front of their eyes and murdered. 15 years later, we return to their lives and find them still struggling to come to terms with what happened. Stunted, empty, cursed; they could never break out of their shells. Thus began the 5 episode series Shokuzai, a 2012 Japanese TV drama directed by the horror maestro Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse, Tokyo Sonata.)

When I began investigating Japanese film in 2008, Kurosawa fast became a favourite of mine. Like a Japanese Tarkovsky, his style is calm and atmospheric, using background noise and image to convey a strong feeling of alienation and disquiet. If you’ve ever seen anything from the anime directors Ryutaro Nakamura (Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost Hound) or Hiroshi Hamasaki (Texhnolyze, Shigurui,) you’ll know what to expect. Kurosawa’s made a lot of horror, but in a genre renowned for its visceral qualities, his films are unusually meditative and artful nightmares that play with the strange and surreal to emphasise an ugly and desperate reality. When even Martin Scorsese is a fan (the excellent Shutter Island owes a lot to Kurosawa,) you realise this is a filmmaker worthy of note.

Anyway, back to Shokuzai. I’m writing about it with Mira of Hachimitsu (episodes one and two) and E Minor of Moe Sucks (episode five) because we all just wanted to spread the word (and I needed an excuse to write about Kurosawa anyway!) There’s a misconception out there, particularly amongst anime fans, that Japanese live-action is somehow not worth the time because “the Death Note movies weren’t any good.” To that I say, rubbish! Like with any medium, there’s good and bad, but some of my favourite films are Japanese. Shokuzai is a TV series, but if you’re into the likes of Game of Thrones, there’s really no excuse not to give this a shot. Rant aside, then, episodes three and four are what I’m supposed to be writing about.

Episode three may well be the series’ best, and certainly most difficult. Shokuzai has a latticework-like structure, where each instalment focuses on one of the affected girls 15 years after the event. This time it’s the turn of Akiko Takano, a NEET woman still living at home, browbeaten by an overbearing mother who’s more concerned with the shame of being a “lower class” family than the welfare of her own child. Into all this comes Akiko’s older brother, Koji, back from Tokyo with a new wife and step-daughter in-tow. This is when things start to get more than a little weird and wrong.

Akiko is in love with Koji, but the more he ingratiates himself back into her life, the stranger a man he seems. It turns out that he’s a paedophile. At one point, his frightened step-daughter runs to Akiko crying for help, but she does nothing. She knows what Koji’s up to, but doesn’t seem capable of facing reality. In the end, she saves the girl by killing him, but far from being the moral choice on her part, one is left to wonder if she did it because he didn’t return her love.

The fourth episode is less affective, but similarly delivers a distorted world-view. Yuka Ogawa has grown into an attention-craving, petty temptress more concerned with besting her little sister, Mayu, than anything else and starts an affair with Mayu’s newly-wed husband just because she’s convinced that Mayu only married him because she knew that Yuka had a thing for policemen (wow, that was complicated to write!) She’s just a remarkably empty woman intent on taking back everything that’s been “taken from [her].”

After what happened to them 15 years ago, the girls all became emotionally stunted: pupas that didn’t hatch, chicks that didn’t break out of their shells, adults who never grew up. All of them are still preoccupied with the things that bugged them as children, like being in the thrall of an older brother, or being jealous of the attentions lavished upon a sister: immature notions that normal people grow out of but just never happened here, to abnormal ends. Visually, there’s a notable shift in palette between their colourful childhood years to the faded, decaying look of their adult lives, as if they’ve become the ghosts in their own ghost stories.

They aren’t ghosts though, they are real people. We live in an age of science that has demystified the supernatural, but if Shokuzai is anything to go by, we were never terrified of those things anyway, we were terrified of each other. Akiko’s brother moved into an abandoned warehouse, the kind of dead building you’ll find in every city in every part of the world, and made his home there. Why? Why do people do such strange things? This is a story filled with such illogical people and that, precisely, is what’s so scary about it: chaos and the idea that, for all of our progress towards a modern world, someone or something can still be truly unknowable.

Every season has its dark horses and this one is no different. I’ve been excited about Flowers of Evil, Attack on Titan and Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet since the offset, but I ignored Majestic Prince, which I figured would be as cliché as it looked. I don’t know if it’s just Hisashi Hirai’s dated character designs or the general vibe of nostalgia that permeates its whole production, but Majestic Prince feels old. For example, I’ll always remember Hirai’s drawing style for his work on 1999’s Infinite Ryvius (and later, 2002’s Gundam SEED,) but there’s other points of reference, too, like how it has an ending theme by Chiaki Ishikawa of Bokurano’s great Uninstall OP. It all just feeds into that datedness that has seen many dismiss it with barely a second glance. Like I did, sadly. It has a score of 6.77 (from 3001 users) on MyAnimeList, which is notably low for what’s fast becoming a very decent series, but is also revealing in how far out of sync it seems to be with the fans of today.

It reminds me of how Toward the Terra was received back in 2007, in that it was this very straight forward space opera that went unnoticed by many. It has a solid, fascinating story with consistent animation but just never seemed to spark much of any interest. Of this season’s three robot anime (Valvrave and Gargantia being the others,) Majestic Prince is the least popular, but given my reaction to it, I suppose that’s not a big surprise. I just hope more are willing to dig a little deeper. What turned me around? I stumbled into a conversation on Twitter comparing it to Ender’s Game, and that was that. Sometimes all it takes is a different perspective.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Ender’s Game and Majestic Prince are worlds apart in tone. Both are stories of child prodigies swept up by Earth’s military and used as weapons against a strong alien enemy, but where as Ender really struggled to cope with the intensity of his duties, the kids in Majestic Prince are a little less burdened. They still get stomach ulcers, freeze in battle and fear for their lives, but it’s mostly played for laughs. This is a strange series like that, one that makes light of otherwise traumatic situations, but one that also feels like it could shift into absolute despair at the drop of a hat. Team Rabbits is their unit’s name and they are made up of three boys and two girls renowned for their (lack of) skill on the battlefield. They pilot robots in space, of course, but all they have is each other. If one were to die, the whole complexion of the series would change.

Indeed, it feels like Majestic Prince is preparing us for harsher times, but I’m really beginning to sense a tightness and strength in Team Rabbits, too. If there’s one thing that keeps me coming back to anime time and again, it’s in search of these long form stories of shifting eras and friendships, where heroes and dreams are made and lost through a sheer force of will and persistence. I’m not sure if Majestic Prince will ascend the pantheon of great anime those words may recall, but it’s an unpredictable and honest trier, and I’m behind it all the way.

It’s the other side of the coin to a series like Attack on Titan, too. Both have graduation scenes early on in their stories, both are about young people thrown into the deep ends of their worlds and trying to remain strong in the face of overwhelming odds, but there’s a surface layer of optimism to Majestic Prince, misplaced or not, that’s otherwise absent in Attack on Titan. Given the underlying message of hope for young people in Gargantia too, it seems like Japan’s anime industry is suddenly hell-bent on coaxing its young adults out into the real world.

There’s something of a power struggle going on in Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. Although he doesn’t seem to want it, Ledo could easily become a tyrant. His robot is so powerful that the sheer disparity in strength between him and everyone else is frightening. What will he do next?

One need only think back to last season’s Shin Sekai Yori for a potential answer. In that story, the most powerful PK users, no matter how sadistic, attained God-like status and sent the world tumbling through centuries of subjugation and rebellion. In Death Note, Light starts out by using his power to enforce a sense of justice, but soon loses perspective and starts abusing it to serve his own ends. Of course, there’s an argument to be had that those with the ability to change the world are fine as long as they aren’t also crazy (Legend of the Galactic Heroes,) but that still means our fate being decided by another, imperfect human. Is this the path that Ledo will take? I doubt it, he isn’t the ambitious type, but it’s still interesting to consider what he’s capable of. When he disposes of the pirates in episode 3, he’s received back by the people of Gargantia as if he were an angel sent down from heaven. That is what he could become, if he so desired it.

But ultimately, Ledo’s just another soldier waiting for his next round of orders, which brings into question his moral responsibility, and lack thereof. When Amy asked him to attack the pirates in episode 2, he routed them, mercilessly. It’s a shocking scene, but the fallout from it is just as important. At first, I blamed Amy for it all: she asked Ledo to attack, and he did, killing them all.

It was a naive thing for her to do. His attack was her order, but this whole idea of responsibility brings into question Ledo’s role, too. He used to be a soldier, yes, which is to say, he would act on the behalf of others. He was a weapon, pure and simple, but now he’s alone and stranded is it still fine for him to abdicate responsibility like this? It’s an idea that ties into the underlying themes of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, as mooted by writer Gen Urobuchi on Wikipedia, where he talks of a story that’s “[...] aimed towards those in their teens and 20s, who are either about to enter into society or recently have, and is meant to cheer them on and to encourage them that “going out into the world isn’t scary”.”

Children grow-up without responsibility in their lives. Your parents and school teachers look after you and tell you what to do and how to act, but once you reach adulthood, you’re expected to start making decisions for yourself. In other words, to be an adult, you have to become responsible, and I suspect that’s what Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet is driving at with Ledo especially. When he was a soldier, he wasn’t expected to question orders, but if he’s going to become more than just a weapon/child, he needs to become responsible for his actions and recognise the effect he’s having on the world around him.

Quite where this story is headed for both him and the world at large in Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet is a point of fascination for me, and seems very finely poised. How will the leaders of the Gargantia come to treat him? As a mere tool to be used in domination of the planet? And how will Ledo react to them? Rebel or acquiesce? How much will his presence fundamentally affect the world? In Gurren Lagann, great opposition led to great strength and evolution, but can anyone stand against Ledo here? So many questions, and not nearly enough episodes!

What actually surprises me about the Kyoto Animation ‘fan’ ‘backlash’, if you want to call what Kyoto Animation’s hardcore male fanbase is doing (and, in general, how some males are reacting to this) is that they fail to realize a simple fact: Kyoto Animation is a company. All companies that aren’t nonprofits seek to profit (that is, earn more back than they put in) to everything they endeavour to do.

It’s not like this is a new trend, either; it’s a growing one. Manga Therapy notes the growing segment of the Japanese work force which is female, and Comiket stats in recent years show a phenomenal amount of Tiger and Bunny doujin being sold. There’s a fairly large, and mostly untapped by anime market waiting to be pandered to, and Kyoto Animation does nothing if not pander. Unlike Shounen Jump’s, Kuroko no Basuke, or even earlier, Prince of  Tennis, which had the occasional yaoi undertone (while still sticking to a majoratively male oriented storylines), Kyoto Animation is going to be one of the first companies doing this kind of anime specifically for females. And they are going to make themselves rich doing it.  With such strong fan support for a thirty second clip, they’d be stupid not to.

But they’re not upset about all that. As mefloraine puts it on twitter:

I finally figured out what bothers me about people complaining about swimming anime (besides the obvious).

— Keely (@mefloraine) April 26, 2013

It’s that they think they OWN kyoani. kyoani is OURS; kyoani draws cute GIRLS.

— Keely (@mefloraine) April 26, 2013

No one complains about Kuroko no Basuke or the like because it’s not from their PRECIOUS kyoani.

— Keely (@mefloraine) April 26, 2013

 

They’re upset because it’s Kyoto Animation. In deciding to create Swimming Anime, Kyoto Animation took women off their pedestal for these men, and they’re butthurt about it.  To these dudes, all women are ideals but especially the geek girl. For the otaku, most girls are impossible – they’re too girly, too chatty, too cute, too womanly, too whatever -  but the geek girl? He might actually have a chance with her.

The geek girl plays games with you, watches anime with you, has just as strong opinions on directors and studios as you. But, in the male mind, this girl also wears short skirts. Isn’t overweight. Is a model on the side.  Maybe a cosplayer. Probably an imouto. And obviously as heteronormative as can be, to the point of enjoying the twisted version of  ’heteronormative’ displayed by most ero games and, indeed, by shows titled My Little Sister Can’t Possibly be this Cute. 

When confronted with the reality of a geek girl, they’re disgusted. Obviously, she isn’t their ideal. The excellent Neojaponisme describes this as the divide between Fujoshi – females who are anime fans in their own rights, and consume media directed specifically at them – versus Akiba girls, or girls who participate in male otaku culture, and may or may not be anime fans within their own right. Akiba girls = good, approachable, in the home court, so to speak. Fujoshi = bad, because who knows what they’re doing over there on Otome road? Whatever it is, it’s certainly not the same as the highly formalized, controlled, and safe interaction promised by the maid cafes dotting Akiba.

So what happens when their patron saint of studios, Kyoto Animation, starts pandering towards this kind of geek girl – the otaku ideal - that isn’t anything like their ideal at all?  When men themselves are sexualized and - gasp - the male ideal held by these women isn’t a wimpy, whiny, conservative otaku but  sexy boys with built shoulders and 6-packs and real interests?  That they find man-on-man action as titillating as some men find woman-on-woman? When they realize that even the one type of woman they were supposed to have a chance with doesn’t actually (in the aggregate) like men like him? Of course he’s upset, because the fantasy world he’s constructed around himself is revealed to be a lie. Women are, in fact, capable of a sexual gaze. Women do, in fact, chose for themselves the kinds of men they associate with, and no one calls you goshujin-sama in the real world. They realize that they can’t live up to the female ideal any more than a female can live up to theirs. And maybe, in the process, we all spiral back to some sense of normalcy in our little subculture.

Mamoru Oshii doesn’t make forgettable anime. Be it Ghost in the Shell or Patlabor 2, the man injects so much personality into his films that it’s impossible not to recognise his touch. There is, of course, his famous basset hound, but there’s also a poetic side that transports this viewer into the ether. I can’t tell if it’s just that his films are ageing like fine wine, or if I’m now of an age where I’m better able to appreciate what he’s trying to say, but whatever the case, he’s now one of my favourite film directors.

I watched The Sky Crawlers for the first time last night. With Kenji Kawai and Production IG alongside him, it’s a film as thoughtful as it is beautiful. Set on an alternate Earth, the ageless Kildren (“kill-dolls”) are fighter pilots forever clashing amidst the clouds in a war that is at best extremely vague and at worst totally pointless. The story exists in a place that’s like Neverland gone bad, where the children’s only escape from the endless cycles of war is heavy drinking, sex and suicide: the sheer monotony of their lives is reflected in the film’s subdued colour palette, everything is so hazy and drained: an apt worldview for a doll. A doll isn’t alive. A doll doesn’t have memories. A doll is content with its place in the world because it knows no better.

There’s an urgency that underpins The Sky Crawlers. Is it okay to live a life like this? To feel so desensitised and free of passion? In both a very literal and metaphorical sense, it’s about people who can’t grow up, but has a message of perseverance for us too: “You must live until you can change something.” Throughout the film, Kusanagi carries a loaded gun, points it at her temple and threatens to kill herself. To put this into context, when you realise that 30,000 people in Japan kill themselves every year, the ideas behind The Sky Crawlers begin to make sense.

The Kildren are clones, and coming to terms with the fact that you’re not special, or unique, can be hard, but being human means accepting that reality and moving forwards anyway. “Just because it’s the same path doesn’t mean it always has the same scenery. Isn’t that… good enough?” For me, at least, it’s good enough. It’s like how I’m an anime blogger, and I’ve been doing this for years now. I could give up and nothing would change. People will still be writing about anime tomorrow and I’d be forgotten. Why should I bother? I’m not asking for your sympathy here, it’s just a fact.

This is what The Sky Crawlers is about. Facing the reality that you’re not doing anything different with your life, but taking the responsibility to push yourself forwards anyway, that is how I’m interpreting Yūichi’s last line, “I’m going to kill my father.” Although it means he’s almost certainly going to his death, he’s at least trying to step out of the cycle, cast aside his history and change his life. There’s a huge difference between dying in pursuit of change and dying without ever having tried anything. It beautifully transforms what’s ostensibly such a sad end into such a moment of rapture. It’s wonderful to struggle, to be imperfect, to change. Life would be so boring otherwise: don’t give up.

Suffice to say, The Sky Crawlers is an excellent film. As should be expected of Mamoru Oshii at this point, it’s another deliberately paced, deep drama punctuated with moments of exciting, visceral action. I couldn’t ask for any more from a film. It’s one of the best I’ve seen in years.

All these years, I wanted K-On! to prove me right. I wanted it to be a shitty anime about cute girls doing cute things. I wanted to hold myself above it and I wanted you all to point and look and say “Look at those folks over at Bateszi Anime Blog, they have such good fucking taste, they’d never blog about K-On! because it’s moe-moe shit!”

K-On!‘s 2nd episode ends with a dubious(?) countdown, recording the 1000-odd days the girls have to achieve their dream of playing in Japan’s national stadium, the Budoukan, before they graduate high school. Perhaps the most jarring part about watching K-On! for me, with all my preconceptions, was that the show had me from this moment on. As soon as I saw the countdown, I knew I was watching for keeps, and that I had to see the girls through to their dream, or wherever they ended up instead.

If this were any other anime, playing the Budoukan would actually be an attainable goal, and something its characters visibly worked towards each episode.  The long-since gone anime blog Iwa Ni Hana once mentioned that at the core of all anime (and indeed, all Japanese culture) is the spirit of ganbaru, to try one’s hardest. However K-On! isn’t every other anime, and perhaps embodies a more modern, honest take of Japanese culture. The light music club seems to take great pleasure in doing all it can to not play music; spending their after school time lazily drinking tea and eating cakes instead. In its’ second season, comparisons are constantly drawn to the hardworking and musically talented jazz club and the lackadaisical light music club.

But, like Azusa, the earnest and solitary underclassmen of the light music club, even though I knew the light music club would never play the Budoukan as they so boldly proclaimed I still kept watching. I watched as their Budoukan dream was quickly forgotten, and as the seasons seemed to tumble into one another all too quickly. Shouldn’t they start practicing now? I’d ask myself. Do they even remember what they said, on the club’s inception? I pondered. The question I was really asking, of course, is whether they’d ever make their dreams into a goal.

We had glimpses of the dream, of course. The music video hallucinations during performances. The girls playing at a live house in the OVA. Yui, jubillant in front of a row of roman candles, pretending to be the rock star they foolhardily aimed towards. It was as if the Budoukan was always right around the corner, always one more big push on the girls’ part away. If they’d just practice more, or focus on writing better lyrics, the ball would start rolling down the hill, and before we knew it, we’d be there.

And then, quickly as it all started, the girls were in their last semester of their last year of high school. Somewhere along the line, the girls had traded their dream of the Budoukan for college exams, and music video dreams for imaginings of their future careers. Suddenly, everyone was graduating, and high school was nothing but a collection of photographs.

And though K-On! was definitely the moe-moe show of cute girls doing cute things that I expected it to be, it definitely wasn’t shitty, and I was sadder than I thought I’d be when it was all over. The girls dreaming of Budoukan wasn’t anormal: who hasn’t dreamed of becoming a rock star, or an astronaut, or a president. What’s abnormal would have been if they’d actually succeded. Ultimately lots of someones need to become the quiet office workers in normal companies dotting the globe, the housewives, and the secretaries. Not everyone is suited for the road to the top, but even the most average of us dreams of the path.

This season, I’ve found myself in the fun position of having two of my favourite manga series adapted into anime. We already know how things went with Flowers of Evil, but there’s still the case of Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) to consider. Produced at Wit Studio and directed by Tetsurō Araki (of Death Note and Kurozuka, amongst others,) it’s the adaptation I was hoping for back in 2011. So, is it any good? Going by this first episode: hell yes.

After you’ve seen a couple of Araki’s anime, you’ll know what you’re going to get: a bombastic emphasis on action and a sweeping, melodramatic sense of theatre. In other words, he’s great at directing the external, adrenaline-fuelled stuff. I just hope he doesn’t lay it on too thick. In The Lord of the Rings films, director Peter Jackson would often emphasize the horror facing his heroes by slowly panning over the crying faces of children and old ladies, which is very much a blatant “this is some serious shit, guys” trick to pull. It feels too obviously manipulative, and there were signs of that here, too: when the scouting legion returns from a failed mission, there’s a lot of very loud crying. You could always put this down to me being English and all stiff-upper-lip about things. I just find these public displays of emotion to be quite distasteful.

That complaint aside, though, this is pretty much exactly how I wanted the anime for Attack on Titan to turn out. The first few glimpses we get of the 3D maneuver gear are exhilarating and pretty much alone justify its existence: we get to see the scouting legion in action, running through a forest on their horses and coming across a lumbering Titan. The sheer fluidity of their movement as they move from branch to branch, using their gear to swing and pounce, is so beautifully done. You will realise then, at that exact moment, that this series is going to be a keeper.

There’s so much more to Attack on Titan than just action, though, even if it’s as beautiful drawn as that. I’ve already written so much about the manga that I’m at risk of repeating myself here, but at its core this is a story of overcoming life’s greatest obstacles. Put another way, I have this question. By kicking a hole in the wall, are the Titans destroying, or liberating, mankind? Indeed, theirs is a world full of grotesque horror. You couldn’t blame anyone for just wanting to stay safe, but would you be happy living like that? With nothing new to see or do? In its own, clever way, Attack on Titan is set-up as social commentary. A comment by Celeste on a previous post seems particularly apt in this regard: Japan is an island surrounded by walls of water, struggling with high rates of unemployment and suicide.

The city in Attack on Titan may well be a comment on Japan, but it can be applied to any modern, peaceful place where people are able to live such sheltered, uneventful lives. At what point, if ever, do you decide to leave your old ways behind to discover something new? Eren doesn’t have to join the Scouting Legion, but he wants to see the world beyond the walls. There’s a great risk involved in doing that, but unless you try, what’s the point in living?

As an interesting aside, both Flowers of Evil and Attack on Titan are serialised within the same magazine, Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, and the ending card for this first episode of Attack on Titan is an image of (the extremely cool) Mikasa drawn by Flowers of Evil mangaka Shūzō Oshimi. It boggles the brain to think how cool that little fact is, a bit like when I found out Hideaki Anno and Kunihiko Ikuhara hang out together and talk shit about anime fans. Yes, I’m a nerd.

Before you decide to watch Flowers of Evil (Aku no Hana,) please ask yourself these questions: do I purely want bishounen, or bishoujo, characters in my anime? Am I always looking for attractive characters? Should anime always look the same? If you’ve answered in the affirmative to any of these questions, forget about Flowers of Evil and watch something else. The sheer amount of invective aimed at its first episode is evidence enough that many aren’t able to see this series as anything other than ugly. I didn’t realise there was an objective example of ugliness, but apparently, Flowers of Evil is it. Thanks, anime fans.

I wrote about the manga last year, and since then, it’s become one of my favourites. To say Flowers of Evil is full of antipathy would be an understatement. This is a story that takes the idea of a Haruhi-like dynamic between a boy and a girl and twists it beyond all recognition. What if Haruhi were a psychopath? Well, now you get to find out. This is why Flowers of Evil seemed so exciting to me at first. Putting aside the visuals for a moment, I knew it would scare away a lot of anime fans anyway because it attacks the very things they hold dear.

Kasuga idolises Saeki. She is the unattainable, perfect goddess. He fantasizes about her, but stops short of any attempt to communicate because that would ruin the fantasy. I mean, what if Saeki isn’t as perfect as she seems? Like your favourite character is to you, she’s just an image to him. This isn’t any way to see or treat a real person, though, and it’s a lesson that Kasuga’s set to learn the hard way. He’s broken, and the manga’s drawn in a way to hide that fact, like we’re reading some typical harem romcom, but it’s all just surface, a slow acting poison. There was never anything pretty about Flowers of Evil in the first place.

This is where the anime changes things. Director Hiroshi Nagahama’s weapon of choice isn’t poison, but an axe. By rotoscoping characters, he’s completely destroyed the layer of superficiality that the manga labours under and delves straight into the dark soul of Flowers of Evil. For many, this is unforgivable, but for me, it’s more just revealing of the seemingly widespread disdain anime fans have for facing anything that removes their blanket of unreality, where certain times and places like the rose-coloured high-school setting are magically protected within a bubble of nostalgia and innocence. Quite frankly, fuck that shit.

From the haunting music design to the stark feeling of loneliness as Kasuga retreats into his world of books, Nagahama absolutely nails this anime to the wall. Rotoscoping was a brave choice and develops a surreal aesthetic that exists somewhere in the intersection between documentary and anime. It’s definitely weird, and like nothing I’ve seen before. The way the episode ends is particularly stunning, with its quick-cuts between the flower of evil’s opening eye, Kasuga’s desperate facial expression and the bleeding in of the ending theme, a song as weird and compelling and interesting as the rest of the episode proves to be.

And so it begins. The moment the flower bloomed, thousands of words began spewing back and forth, and for what it’s worth, I haven’t been this excited by an anime series in a long time.

One wouldn’t think it to look at them, but Shin Sekai Yori and Psycho-Pass were like two peas in a pod. Both deal in dystopian futures, social commentary and rebellion, both attempt to obfuscate their commentary by presenting it through morally-questionable speakers, and both refuse to end with everything neatly resolved. Suffice to say, I really enjoyed both series, but I’ve already had my say on Shin Sekai Yori. Now it’s time to write about Psycho-Pass, too.

One of the more controversial elements of the finale of Shin Sekai Yori is how it humanises the queerrat Squealer. After we’ve seen the world through his eyes, everything becomes a whole lot grayer, and in feeling that moral conflict, we’re able to understand just how broken that world truly was. Psycho-Pass’ antagonist, Makishima, is much more of a traditional villain, an arrogant serial killer without a shred of conscience. Even still, he has a point. The loss of freedom in Psycho-Pass is palpable, there’s no denying that, but the series’ perspective is intentionally conflicted. Our protagonists are the Enforcers of the State, criminal investigators under the control of an artificial intelligence called Sibyl. It has delivered a better way of life, but at some cost.

Apparently Psycho-Pass was inspired by Equilibrium, an action film with a similar story and a typically redemptive moral arc, but there’s no such thing in Psycho-Pass. The only guy attempting revolt is Makishima, the bloodthirsty psychopath. This is what I meant by conflicted, our Enforcers are protecting the broken government, while the serial killer is trying to defeat it. Who’s right? With the way Shin Sekai Yori delivers Squealer’s end, it’s intended to be devastating. When his arms are forced out in that Christ-like pose, it’s hard not to feel that something is terribly wrong, but when Makishima adopts a similar pose, it’s hard to feel anything at all. His cause is just, but he’s a despicable person. Like how Sibyl has developed a comfortable standard of living, but only through limiting an individual’s freedom of choice. There’s no easy answers here.

Kōgami is the one guy that we’re tempted to think is a hero. He abandons his life as an Enforcer and strikes out on his own, but when he’s finally holding a gun to Makishima’s head, he can’t help but pull the trigger. He escaped the system to kill someone. It’s like a slap in the face to anyone still clinging to the hope that Psycho-Pass could’ve had a hopeful ending. No-one is left uncompromised. Everyone is deeply wounded. Tsunemori is the closest it comes to having a moral compass, but even she’s forced to concede that, despite her loathing of it, Sibyl is a necessary evil needed to maintain order, at least for the time being. Is it right for a story to end like this? I doubt we’re truly supposed to like or empathise with any of these characters, but there’s more to fiction than just base empathy.

In terms of challenging the viewer and forcing us to question our own moral stance, it proves a fascinating experience, but for a series that seems to be about instigating change, the sad thing is that nothing has changed by its end. Weirdly, it isn’t a depressing watch. It doesn’t wallow in despair. This is the world, and it simply moves on with the status quo. Again, is that right? Or good? It’s realistic, I guess, and serves to warn us that our freedom is as precious as it is easily lost, and lost, at that, as a consequence of trying to do some good, like stamping out crime.

Recent months have been a treat, with weeks of rich, fascinating anime to consider and enjoy, but now Shin Sekai Yori and Psycho-Pass are over, I’m left wondering if these two were mere flukes, or perhaps mark the beginning of a new trend in anime of regularly producing mature, serious science fiction? I live in hope.

My favorite aspect of Fractale is the world in which it’s set. It includes an augmented reality system and neural network that allows people to communicate with each other through 3D avatars called droppels. The droppels let people avoid unpleasantries like leaving the house. This fosters a sense of isolation in the main character, Clain, who lives alone in a small cottage in what looks like the Irish countryside. Clain rejects the pervasive technology of his world in favor of technology from the past. His isolation is interrupted by a visit from a mysterious girl who involves him in his world’s larger struggle of pro-technology religious fundamentalists versus anti-technology rebels.

Clain’s parents’ avatars. Proving once again that parents just don’t understand.

This background is explained in the first episode and provides a good foundation for the series, one that ultimately the writers didn’t build on successfully. Clain’s unhappiness with the virtual world is one shared by many people today. His struggle provided an opportunity for the show to comment on the negative impact of people’s obsession with technology, including its tendency to lead people to withdraw from the physical world. For example, the show could have explored the proper balance between maintaining physical interactions and at the same time not turning into a Luddite. This isn’t a brand new subject by any means. Even Dentyne Gum saw fit to make a commercial about how people should reject digital interactions and “Make Face Time”. Still, even if this issue doesn’t break completely new ground, having some meaningful ideological struggle to relate to would have been welcome.

Instead of providing some commentary on the struggle, the show focuses on the physical battle between the factions, playing it out in gunfights between the rebels and the religious fundamentalists. When the characters do talk to each other about whether the world’s system should be abandoned or embraced, they do so in general terms and incomplete terms. Even after the fighting ends, and some final decision seems imminent the ideological dilemma is left unresolved.

The show’s lack of a meaningful social commentary left its unoriginal story exposed. One of the reasons that people eagerly anticipated Fractale was that it wasn’t adapted from an existing manga, giving the creators a great deal of flexibility of where they wanted to take the story. It appears they opted to follow the path of Last Exile. The story and characters bears remarkable similarities to the characters and story in Last Exile. Both shows have 1) a teenage male hero (Clain and Claus respectively) who joins the crew of 2) an older male (Sunda and Alex Row) that leads his comrades in a fight against 3) an evil female tyrant (Moeran and Delphine). In Last Exile this plot worked because Alex Row and the crew of the Sylvanna were interesting characters in their own right and carried the show forward. Here, Clain and his friends’ don’t have as well-developed personalities, perhaps because the show only ran for 11 episodes. This made it difficult for the show to remain interesting given that the plot followed a well-traveled path.

The visuals, including the ships, looked great

Luckily, the show learned one positive lesson from Last Exile, that a beautifully animated show makes for happier viewers. Say what you will about the characters or the plot, the animation looks great. The beginning of the show takes place in an idyllic Celtic landscape of quaint cottages and fields of grass. The character’s visual designs, particularly the designs of the droppels, are whimsical and cartoon-like. The battle scenes, though short, don’t drop in quality even when things speed up. The animation quality can’t rescue the show on its own, but it surely makes the show easier to watch.

Fractale never fulfilled initial expectations and I’d have a hard time recommending it to anyone. Maybe if you haven’t seen Last Exile the plot will seem fresh and interesting. And if you like beautiful animation Fractale won’t be a disappointment. Still, if you haven’t seen Last Exile, you’d be better just seeing that rather than seeing Fractale.