As such, I humbly present these following, short impressions of his 5 films, written and screen-capped after I (re)watched them all last week.

Magnetic Rose (1995)

Satoshi Kon didn’t direct Magnetic Rose, but it’s widely seen as the moment he came to prominence as a film-maker. Credited only as the script-writer, it is, none-the-less, a precursor of what was to come. It begins with a band of ragtag garbage-men following up on a mayday call from a (deep) space station. They explore it, looking for survivors, but a strange malevolence slowly envelops them; ghostly images haunt the long, dark corridors and a flash-light captures the fleeting glimpse of a child falling from the ceiling and through the floor.

Like many of Kon‘s later films, then, this is an intense and disturbing experience; not superficially, but in a way that’s fundamentally, psychologically disturbing. Tearing down any semblance of composure within these two (relatively normal) men, it tricks them and drags them into hell, but a beautifully drawn hell, at least, designed with an eye for the kind of decadent, overblown architecture not seen since the height of European aristocracy.

Perfect Blue (1998)

In Perfect Blue, Kon‘s directorial debut, we follow Mima, a Japanese (pop) idol turned wannabe actress. It begins with her performing with her idol band, “CHAM!”, for the last time, in-front of an (almost totally adult-male) hardcore rabble. Her music career didn’t turn out how she wanted, but she’s desperate to have a try at acting now instead. Her old fans, of course, aren’t exactly happy with her new choice of career, and slowly, her mind begins to unravel, torn between the pressures of her new job and paranoia over being stalked, she begins to suffer with insomnia and increasingly becomes unable to separate dreams from reality.

Harrowing is a good way to describe Perfect Blue, horrifying is another. With every passing scene, Kon peels away yet another layer of the heroine’s sanity. Towards the end, her trauma’s so intense that it’s almost too troubling to behold. Whilst not a particularly gory film, it’s as unnerving as any made before or since.

Millennium Actress (2001)

Millennium Actress is probably Satoshi Kon’s most beloved film. Gone is the violence and abrasiveness of Perfect Blue, replaced with a joyful sense of romance. Our heroine, Chiyoko, is an actress in the twilight of her life, reminiscing about her long career in the Japanese film industry.

Kon tells her story through the many roles she’s played, transitioning from far-flung science fiction to period drama, from space suits to kimonos, her real life interwoven with scenes from her films, expressing a kind of symbolic catharsis where every memory is coded with double meaning; abstract, full of colour and action, but also underpinned with a deeper subtext. Chiyoko has spent her adult life chasing a man she met only once and her search for him is the common thread tying together the rest of the film; years and years fly by, but she never gives up, always chasing her dream of meeting him again. Her love is timeless, even though her body is not.

One feels Kon’s enthusiasm in every scene of Millennium Actress; his nostalgia for the art of cinema urging Chiyoko ever onwards.

Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

One tends to enjoy the craft of Kon‘s films, but in Tokyo Godfathers, one finds him content to tell a much simpler story. Set in the rarely seen murky back-streets of Japan’s famous capital just as Christmas is reaching crescendo, the story of Tokyo Godfathers follows three homeless people who stumble upon a newly born baby abandoned in a rubbish dump and set about personally returning it to its mother.

The three homeless people are the heavy-drinking Gin, the drag queen Hana and the runaway teenage-girl Miyuki, and the banter these three share represents the warm, beating heart of the film. The drag queen Hana, especially, steals every scene he’s in; the most eccentric of the trio, but also the most responsible, he’s funny and strange but also protective and caring, like any good mother!

What’s so refreshing about Tokyo Godfathers is how well-meaning it is. All of Kon’s films up until now have expressed a heavy and melancholy feeling, but this is more content to portray the simple, human beauty of family and friendship. Gin, Hana and Miyuki may be homeless, but they are not unhappy, because they have each other. There’s a couple of very hard and thought provoking moments, but it’s ultimately optimistic, even fairy tale esque. It’s just a lovely film.

Paprika (2006)

It’s fitting that in the very last scene of the last film directed by Satoshi Kon, a man buys a ticket to the movies, because if there’s one thing that comes across in all of his works (especially in Paprika’s case,) it’s that he dearly loved the big screen.

Paprika is, by far and away, his most visually creative effort, but also lacks the empathetic, personal focus that so lit up his previous works. Recalling the conclusion to his TV series Paranoia Agent, it’s apocalyptic in scale as the worlds of dream and reality begin to merge, creating an unstoppable marching parade of laughing refrigerators and giant toys (imagine Toy Story gone mad,) but between the many weird and wonderful sights to behold, the characters just lack a spark of something. It’s all so lovingly crafted, but beneath the appealing veneer of dreams, one finds mostly large, empty expanses of apathy.

In the end…

It’s easy to lament Satoshi Kon‘s passing as a huge blow to an industry not exactly overloaded with proven (theatrical) talent, but one must also consider the legacy he left behind. He blazed a trail by making films that were serious, funny, thought provoking and melancholy, but that were also anime. People often complained that his films would be better off as live action, but his chosen medium was animation and that’s what he ultimately came represent; nothing less than the daring potential anime still has to offer. As such, he was a badge of honour for many, and I think that’s why the community was so visibly torn up by his death. Kon was not merely a talented artist, but also a symbol of anime’s bright new future. A future that, I’m sure, survives in the hearts of those inspired by the man. It’s down to them now to pick up his mantle.

For what it’s worth, I really had fun going back and watching these films again. Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress are the ones I liked best and the ones I’d most like to revisit time and again, but all of the above were great in their own ways. He never made a bad film and obviously still had many left in him, but rather than lament a future that’s now lost forever, let’s celebrate the anime he was able to create.

So, how does this show overcome its predictable plot? Personally, I really enjoyed watching Giant Killing because it showcases the most exciting parts of each soccer game while at the same time making me want to root for ETU. Less is more when it came to the games in this show, the animators understood that if I wanted to watch a 90 minute game, I would just turn on the real thing. The show focuses on the juicy parts of each game: the goals and the moments where the momentum shifts.

Former star player turned manager. Sure sounds like the Mighty Ducks...

What the show still needs to do in order to impress me is to develop each team member on ETU. To start with, the show needs to differentiate the players on the team. Out of the 18 people on the team, only about 5 are distinct enough for me to know who they are. The show also disappointed me when they portrayed one of the opposing players as borderline insane. That tactic works well for enemies in most anime but just isn’t believable in the context of professional football.

This guy looks like he should be setting houses on fire rather than playing football…

Even with its problems, I am still drawn to this show’s theme which I think goes beyond merely winning a sport’s game. The main lesson of this anime is that each person has a giant killing inside them, an ability to take on the best and come out on top. Maybe I’m biased by the recent World Cup, but it just seems like a really great time to watch a football anime.

I meant to write this post a while back, but never go around to it. Somehow, it’s been a very long, and a little bit of a crazy summer. Without many noticing, the 10th anniversary of a certain anime came and went in late April. You probably know it by one of it’s many names – FLCL; Furi Kuri; Fooly Cooly. I love FLCL. I’ve watched it so many times over the last decade that I’ve lost track.

I’m not sure where to start talking about FLCL. Every time I watch it, it seems to reveal something new to me. My first watch was at age 13: a year after I had gotten into anime; a year after its first airing in 2000. I had just started making websites for fun; a few fledgling anime sites. On my travels around the internet, I encountered a site dedicated to an anime called FLCL. I was intrigued: there was a company out there, 5 years before the anime ‘craze’ would hit North America, releasing DVDs in Japan subtitled, and in proper english, no less! Without knowing much more, knew I had to see it for myself, if just for purposes of supporting such a company. And so, FLCL became one of the first 10 anime I watched. Since then, I’ve rewatched it often. On occasion, I’ve felt compelled to watch during certain (looking back, key) moments in my life. Sometimes I wonder if the ripple effect of watching something so highly regarded so early in my time as a fan still influences my tastes now.

It’s often described as an anime about adolescence, but that’s a blanket statement. Naota is twelve years old, on the brink of his teenage years; experiencing his last summer as an elementary school student and child. Adolescence, moreover, is a topic so multivariate that it can’t be captured by any one series, let alone a 6-episode OVA. FLCL is about the cusps; about limits. Ninamori pretends to be mature for the entire series in regards to her parents; only to overreact towards her classmates in relation to the play. Mamimi spends the entire series on the edge of ‘overflowing’. Even Canti spends the series at a limit of a different kind, unable to live to his full potential, continually searching for minute pieces of red metal to become whole again. Naota himself is at the brink of adulthood; and acts sour due to the extreme constraints placed on him by virture of being a child.

All of the characters break through this, and it manifests in both physical and emotional ways: Ninamori cuts her hair and “cries her eyes out” to her parents. Mamimi stops lamenting the town she hates and leaves, camera in hand. Canti dons a halo and wings, jumping off a building to become closer to what he was. And Naota, in love with Haruko, fully becomes the object of her desire: Atomsk, the Pirate King.

In the end, though, none of these efforts are enough. For all her crying, we never know what happens to Ninamori’s parents; either way the decision was never hers to begin with. Mamimi seems to have met with some success in photography, Naota considerably less in wooing Haruko. Ten years later, and the scene is now infamous: a boy holding a Rickenbacker guitar, amidst concrete and a sand-colored sky. The show’s final moments see Naota in a middle school uniform, black and somber. Ninamori’s comment at this moment is apt: it doesn’t suit him at all. His body is still a child’s; his pants are too long. Summer is over. They’re all only halfway there, but ‘there’ isn’t a destination so much as it is a moving target, much like Atomsk is for Haruko.

So here’s to the last 10 years, FLCL. I’m glad you were made.

It’s always been a series I’ve held close to my heart, but all those years of awful filler, compounded by the slow start to Shippuuden, nearly killed it for me. I’ve never actually dropped it, but suffice to say, I had it on-hold for well over a year. I just wanted Naruto to be good again; for the story to start moving; to feel again the sense of momentum that it generated all those years ago, so many of its highest points burnt into my memory, too often replayed to ever be forgotten.

Even still, I began doubting my feelings. Was Naruto really as good as I remember it being? Or was I just naïve back then? Perhaps I’m just seeing the series now for what it always was?

Like a marriage gone sour, then, I came back to Shippuuden in July, cap in hand and ready to try again. The old magic could return, I thought, and it was awkward at first, reacquainting myself with my old flame, but things were different this time around. I was more patient, more forgiving and more willing to wait for things to click. And click they did, my friends.

Up until now, for me, Shippuuden felt like it was in stasis. I don’t read the manga, so I don’t have that to fall back on; as far as I’m concerned, Sasuke left for Orochimaru’s lair in 2005, which means I’ve been waiting 5 long years (and god knows how many episodes) for the plot to start moving forwards again. Of course, much has happened in Shippuuden since 2005, but let’s face it; most of it has been an inconsequential, if enjoyable, sideshow. The haters won’t like to admit this, but Sasuke’s long been the guy that makes things happen in Naruto’s story and the notable lack of momentum in Shippuuden can only be attributed to him being squirreled away for years on end, following Orochimaru’s random orders. That is, of course, until he kills Orochimaru and goes hunting for his older brother, Itachi.

So much has changed in just these 30 episodes (season 6, episodes 113 to 143) of Shippuuden. Kakashi Gaiden and Jiraiya’s battle with Pain were excellent, but Sasuke’s face-off against Itachi will, I hope, become the defining moment in the series, the point from which it forges ahead, the plot revitalised; a new direction found. Where it goes from here, I’m pleased to say, I have no idea; Sasuke no longer obsessed with killing Itachi; Naruto no longer obsessed with saving him from Orochimaru. Everything has changed now, and I’m glad.

I’m glad, too, that Naruto is again this iconic and exciting, crafting these moments of pure and utter catharsis on such a huge, action-packed stage. Itachi’s staggered walk towards Sasuke, the way his blood trickles down Sasuke’s face, the blood mingling with the rain, their exhausted expressions, the relative subtly of the utterly destroyed landscape around them, that Sasuke cracks a smile just after his brother’s final, silent words; this is what I waited 5 years for, and it was worth it. This is the Naruto I remember.

Before I start, a preamble: One Piece is a great anime. Ever since our little agreement a month back I’ve been tackling the series, from 229 onwards at a pace of about 3 or so episodes a day. Unlike the other One Piece addict around here, however, I must admit the plot and characters aren’t the focus of the experience for me. Rather, I was interested in how One Piece transitioned from manga to anime, particularly in light of some of the other Shounen Jump adaptations that came out in the neighboring years.

Thankfully, it was a clean transition. One Piece embraces everything Oda tried to communicate in the manga, and amplifies it. Frankly, in One Piece Eiichiro Oda presents us with a dizzying clash of cultures, influences, and nuances from all the world over. One Piece plays out like an child’s toy chest; cowboys next to spacemen next to dinosaurs, and everything in between. Oda takes dissimilar elements – the idea of a detachable shadow from Peter Pan, paired with trope-worthy vampires and zombies – and mashes them together at random. The result is a true children’s anime: completely illogical, highly amusing, and flat-out imaginative. Where the anime begins to shine brighter than the manga, however, is in doing what animation does best: motion, sound and colour.

Try as Eiichiro Oda might, there are only so many ways to express sound on paper. Sound effects in manga, and the visual language which has developed around them are a poor substitute for real sound. Likewise, hatching and other means of leading the eye pale in comparison to real motion. Much as I love art, and lovely as the One Piece manga is, I can’t imagine the above scene (from the Enies Lobby arc) being better in the manga. The intonation of Luffy’s (awesome!!) robot sounds, as well as the quality of the motion help tell the story in a way that the manga just can’t.

One Piece is undoubtedly the best Jump adaptation I’ve seen: unlike Bleach and even Naruto, both of which seemed to stumble pathetically through their filler episodes, One Piece embraces the opportunity they provide, transporting the viewers at the drop of a hat to the quirky land of Jipangu, where our Straw Hats are mysteriously townsfolk in a Edo-period village, or to the world of Chopper Man, where Chopper is a caped hero, and Usopp a villainous (if easily pushed around) troublemaker! Rather than being an unbearable experience like most filler in shounen anime, these short stints in another universe are entirely entertaining. Moreover, they utilize one of One Piece’s greatest strengths: the sheer madness of One Piece’s real plot allows for transgressions such as these. The fillers are spirited, and done with love. A fan couldn’t ask for more.

To call One Piece chaotic would be an understatement. It’s indulgent, and silly, and it doesn’t stop to explain itself. It feels as if Toei’s animators were making up the style as they went – the result is something highly evolved, but never solid, much like Eiichiro Oda’s art. As opposed to merely transcribing the manga, the anime invigorates it, and in doing so, multiplies the sense of joy and wonder present in its source.

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu is a name that suggests parody, but this new fantasy series is surprisingly serious, with magic, monsters and adventure. 4 episodes in, it’s difficult to see whether or not it’ll follow through with its potential, but at least the characters are interesting. I picked this up because it’s referred to as Berserk-lite elsewhere and, indeed, it has a very Griffith esque destined-to-go-wrong personality in the smooth-talking, crazy ambitious Sion Astal. I’m holding out for some fascinating character arcs in the future, but it could fast devolve into light-hearted, generic monster-slashing too. Patience is the key, I guess.

DenYuuDen could still go either way, but I’m more confident in Shiki, and for the record, I’m more in love with noitaminA right now than ever before. House of Five Leaves was a slow-burner that finished very strongly, while The Tatami Galaxy is likely to go down as my favourite new anime of 2010. I’m lamenting not having said much about either series, but take it from me (non-gender specific) guys, if you’re twenty-something (not that age is particularly important,) watch them both and be reassured that the soul of anime is alive still in the hearts of some.

Shiki, then. I’ve seen only the first episode so far(!), but the direction was assured enough, the characters eccentric enough and the art strange enough, to dispel any fears that noitaminA done goofed. I’m looking forward to seeing more.

That just leaves Giant Killing, which may look woefully budget, but has a lot of heart. I love football (of the soccer variety) and it’s nice to finally see it well-represented in anime. 26 episodes will be no-where near enough to provide a properly satisfying conclusion to Tatsumi-sensei’s journey with ETU, but right now I’m just gripped by the tension of each game and crossing my fingers that everything goes well for the team (and it would be really nice if Sera finally scores a goal, too!)

I’m wondering whether I should bother with Highschool of the Dead, or not? It looks like fun, I guess? It just seems really predictable as well. I’m definitely going to check out Occult Academy at some point, and, just last night, I made an impulsive, three episode foray into Madhouse‘s prison drama Rainbow, which was well worth it, but not a show I’d recommend to the faint of heart!

Of course, your opinions on these (and other) current anime are always welcome.

What is the ending of Cowboy Bebop trying to say? It feels like such a waste. Spike doesn’t have face Vicious, he could just stay with Faye and Jet, leave Mars and fly away, but he doesn’t.

No matter how many times it’s replayed, there will always be that choice hanging over Spike in the end, but then, isn’t that why Cowboy Bebop‘s still so fascinating? Consider Faye Valentine.

Having lost much of her memory to amnesia, she spends basically the whole series piecing together elements of her childhood, her old friends, her family; her old life, basically. She’s able to ignore reality right up until the end because she’s clinging to the dream that someone, somewhere, is waiting for her, with a warm home and arms wide open. Eventually, her dream is shattered, but as sad as that is, her life is, from that point onwards, all about moving forwards and facing reality.

Freed from the same invisible threads that so bind Spike, her realisation comes too late in the day to save him from his inevitable fate, but thinking about her life from that point onwards, one can at least rest assured that her eyes are finally open.

She knows how futile and stupid Spike’s reasons are for leaving, but also knows that she’s powerless to stop him from going (repeatedly firing her gun into the air is a symbol of that frustration and impotence.) Absolutely no-one can stop Spike at this point from being drawn back; just as she found herself running down that old road in search of the truth, the allure of the past by now is just too strong for him to resist.

How a person deals with that allure or attachment to things long since passed is telling of a person’s potential to thrive in the future. In other words, can you put the past behind you and move on? It’s what director Shinichirō Watanabe is trying to acknowledge by ending the series with a tag-line that reads “You’re gonna carry that weight.”

No-one lives a perfectly happy life, yet every day we’re faced by choosing either to live by striving for a better tomorrow, or to retreat by lamenting yesterday. At the end of Cowboy Bebop, Spike’s eyes are trained on yesterday, but Faye’s on tomorrow. It makes for an ostensibly cool finale, yet the more one thinks about it, the more it feels like such a pointless, tragic waste. Life is for living, after all! Spike should’ve stayed with his friends, on the Bebop!

Occult Academy, you’ve made a fan out of me.

It becomes clear in episode 5 of Occult Academy that fledgling director Tomohiko Ito owes much to his time under Mamoru Hosoda. This is by no means a bad thing – for me, it just took the series from good to great. While all the Anime no Chikara series have been visually strong, episode 5 steps things up with a short, surreal journey to the afterlife.

But this isn’t the afterlife often seen. It’s glittering colors and foreign landscapes, sprinkled with bubbles, a dream come true. Though the rest of the series is saturated and beautifully done, it’s also eminently realistic. From its first episode, it was clear that Occult Academy was a cut above. It was quick-witted, well-paced and (like all Anime no Chikara projects) well-animated. But it dares to be different. It dares to be more than a gag anime; as the quietly-developed plot continues to bubble forth. Maya’s growing concern with the state of the school’s activities is palpable as they send Kozue, a classmate, to the afterlife via bringing her to a near-death state. Despite the plot creeping in, Tomohiko Ito manages to keep the humor and drama relatively well-balanced. If Occult Academy is his first gig as a series director, I’d love to see him 5 years from now, when he smooths the edges in his style.

The episode concludes with our bespectaled Kozue only partially returning to life: a part of her is stuck on the other side, searching for her glasses. Following episode 4′s somewhat deadly (and smelly) encounter with moths, the campus activities are slowly straying from harmless to dangerous. In addition to the beauty of this episode, Ito is continually building layer after layer of something more sobering; what it is remains to be seen.

If Anime no Chikara will be remembered for anything, it will be for giving the chance to outlandish premises like Senkou no Night Raid, and to directors like Ito. At the moment, I have nothing but praise for the man: he saw a chance to flex his directorial muscles, threw caution to the wind and went for it. The result is an absolute treat to watch.

Let’s take this Dai Sato discussion for another spin, shall we?

The above image is from the film My Beautiful Girl Mari. It was released in 2001, and is being distributed in the US by ADV films. Moreover, you can stream it for free courtesy of the Anime News Network. It centers around a dream the protagonist has, as a young boy, while staring at a cat’s eye marble. The film is atomospheric, intense, visually pleasing in the extreme and experimental.

If you didn’t notice already, it’s also Korean.

He even accused people in the anime industry of refusing to teach Asian subcontractors special skills or how to craft stories because that would undermine the position of Japan in the production of anime. Non-Japanese are reduced to cheap mechanical labor, and aren’t invested in the work at all. Sato identified this as a major underlying problem with anime today. — Quote from the article in question.

If we’re to believe Sato’s argument, there shouldn’t be any Korean animation. The only animation occurring outside of Japan (aside from Disney and the West, but we’ll get to that later) should be in the studios Japanese animators outsource to. So how is it that My Beautiful Girl Mari, let alone something like the almost too gross to sit through Aachi & Ssipak exist?

What Sato fails to realize is the greater socio-economic implication of outsourcing: the transfer of skills. In continually outsoucring their inbetweening and background art work to Korean studios like DR MOVIE and their Chinese counterparts, they’ve indirectly taught them the art of animation, in the Japanese style. Where did this “Japanese style” come from? From the times when it was cheap to outsource to Japan, and Disney did it, in the same way that Japan is doing it to Korea and China currently. Put in some skill, throw in a different environment, and leave to ferment for long enough, and creative output will inevitably arise. Anime as we know it is a reverberation of outsourcing.

What Sato is predicting isn’t the end of the anime industry, just the end of Japan’s dominance over it. It’s been around two decades since DR MOVIE and its contemporaries in Korea were established, and well over that since the Macross outsourcing that earned Sato’s ire occurred. And only in the last ten years are we seeing original, imaginative Korean animation. Creative people are everywhere, irreverent of political or economic concerns. And, when given the skills, they will create. My Beautiful Girl Mari has some rough edges, but it also has heart, and a willingness to experiment that seem hard to come by in Japan lately. It’s only a matter of time until Korea finds the stories it wants to tell via animation, and the way they want to do it, and then they’ll set off to impress the world.

And so the question arises: is My Beautiful Girl Mari “anime”? Does “anime” belong to Japan alone? I tumblr’ed about this a while back, but things like Avatar: The Last Airbender, while being American in its origins, is undoubtedly inspired by, and draws from the anime tradition, both in its visual and narrative execution.

Sato’s concern is right, and merited. With countries like Korea, and American-born anime like Avatar are increasingly coming onto the market, what does Japan have to offer? When, despite the angry whinging of  hardcore fans (and undoubtedly, Japanese executives), when things like Avatar are referred to by non-fans as “anime”, what does that leave Japan with? What about the Animatrix? Or before that, Disney’s 1982 The Last Unicorn, animated in Japan by what would become Studio Ghibli? People like Michael Arias, director of Tekkonkinkreet and elephant-in-the-room foreigner? Does it still count as anime if it’s directed by a white man, even if they’re in Japan?

Anime is changing, and it’s doing it in two ways: the kuukei-kei, or airy/atmospheric (the term lines up best with “slice of life”) anime which seems to be getting more air time is a representation of a commoditization of anime. After nearly 50 years, they’ve found the formula that works. And there’s nothing wrong with that – anime is a business too. It’s also becoming more experimental, however. It’s just that said experimentation may not be occurring inside Japan. For every Tatami Galaxy made in Japan, there’s at least one My Beautiful Girl Mari. As Sato says, “Anime has become a “super establishment system,” where nothing can be changed.” That doesn’t mean they’ll be no creativity within anime, it’s just that the term anime either needs to expand beyond the boarders of Japan, or that creativity in animation will find a home in other countries, and Japan, like America, will be left to produce bad cartoons ad infinitum, until something like Avatar comes along, years later, to liven things up again. The future of anime is brighter than Sato prophecizes, but it may not be anime as we know it.

Sato‘s complaints hone in on two separate areas, the first of which concerns how the production of anime is being increasingly out-sourced to cheap labour in neighbouring Asian countries, but more fascinating to me are his latter comments on the quality of story-telling in anime (or, indeed, the lack there-of.)

“Sato was upset with the lack of respect for stories in Japan. He pointed out that “Ergo Proxy,” for which he wrote the story, had DVD box sets around the world, but not in Japan. He also said that many anime fans dismissed “Eureka Seven” as a “Neon Genesis Evangelion” clone without even watching it. The story, setting and characters are totally different, but snap judgments were made based on images of a mysterious blue-haired girl with red eyes piloting a giant robot (both Ayanami Rei and Eureka fit the description). He wondered how much anime fans really are interested in close readings to generate information…” — Quote from the article in question.

Going into this, one should frame Sato‘s comments in the context that his two creations, Eureka Seven and Ergo Proxy, failed to capture large audiences in Japan; note that he compares Eureka Seven to Evangelion, as that is telling of the high hopes he had for it. As such, when he admits that “guys like him get no work,” one should keep in mind that Sato has already had chances to create anime in the past and is probably feeling a little bitter about those experiences. People are not going to keep throwing money at him, but that’s not to say it isn’t being put to good use elsewhere. Studio Bones produced a very (good) Eureka Seven-esque series in Xam’d: Lost Memories in 2008, while Ergo Proxy‘s animation studio, Manglobe, have animated both House of Five Leaves and Michiko to Hatchin in recent years, both of which are idiosyncratic and, well…, artistic and interesting.

It’s not my intention to discredit Sato‘s comments (I’m a big fan of almost everything he’s ever worked on,) but when he’s quoted as saying something like “anime will die out in Japan in a few decades,” it’s important to question any potential biases in his arguments. I’d love to know if he still watches anime? And, if so, what he made of The Tatami Galaxy and Durarara!!? (Questions likely to go unanswered.) He points to “atmosphere type” (kuuki-kei) anime (with K-On! specifically mentioned, as it so often is) as being the problem, but there’s no acknowledgement of the “difficult-type” (muzukashii-kei) work being done elsewhere.

Anyway, does he have a point? A cursory glance at this summer’s selection hardly inspires one’s confidence in the future of anime, but then, the summer and winter seasons have always seemed a waste land in comparison to the fertile crop of autumn and spring. Comparing anime from ten years ago to now reveals a very clear shift towards cute, slice of life escapism, but more of a concern for me is the continuing decline of the male role-model, the lack of which is a telling sign that something’s a little off, and, indeed, tells of an unhealthy lack of diversity in anime right now.

Will the people inspired to create the anime of tomorrow want to create another K-ON? Or another Cowboy Bebop? The former, I suspect, is what many young Japanese animators would kop to, and that’s what worries me most of all. When I look at these seasonal charts, I’m not looking for girls that look cute, but rather, for characters that look cool. I don’t want cute images to idolise; I want characters that inspire me with their actions. Holland, Renton and Eureka inspired me in Eureka Seven; Jet, Spike, Faye and Ed (plus Ein) inspired me in Cowboy Bebop. It will be the death of anime, for me, personally, when people like Dai Sato can’t get any work, but I’m still enjoying anime enough right now to know we’ve not hit rock bottom just yet.

What do you think?