No one cares about anyone else’s life’s story, but I was reminded recently that I never closed off this blog properly, so I might as well do it now. Here’s what happened over the past few years:

• 2008: Memories of Eternity was founded (mid-high school for me).
• 2009: Joined twitter and made my first internet friends. Hooray.
• 2010: University starts; I simultaneously got good enough to run a proper blog and ran out of time to do so.
• 2011: Started traveling for cons; turned AX into an annual tradition; joined The Nihon Review and redirected focus there.
• 2012: Rejoined anime fandom after a two-year IRL hiatus; tried to start blogging again; met a twitter girl and started an eroge TL group.
• 2013: Stopped Paused translation for a bit; started dating said girl; ???
• 2014 (?!): Applying for school in the US; probably west coast, probably for game design or film, either an MFA or college certification.

So I guess I’ve been here for a while. The internet is fun. Anime blogging was the beginning of my online existence so it’ll always be somewhat special to me. I’m still on twitter and probably always will be. It’s hard to say if I’ll get the chance to blog again, but if I do, it’ll be elsewhere. My main domain will contain all the relevant details, anyhow.

Thanks for reading my ramblings, whoever’s out there. See you online.

~eternal
おわり

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The teacher, Nana, orders Rikka to improve her grades by threatening to disband the club if she fails the test. After the usual pool-cleaning antics, Yuuta and Rikka score poorly on the test only to realize that the class average is just below theirs. The episode ends with a hint of romance between the main protagonists.

Though lacking the gorgeous combat animation that KyoAni spoiled us with for the last two weeks, this episode maintains the expected mix of comedy and cute. As with K-ON, Chuunikoi shines when it comes to comic timing. The dynamic of an unenthused male protagonist playing the tsukkomi to a group of oddballs isn’t new to KyoAni, but the punchlines—be it Yuuta’s one-liners to highlight absurdity or more visual jokes like Dekomori and the magic circle—have the 4panel timing that amuses on a gut level rather than an intellectual one. The lack of originality hasn’t lowered my opinion, even if the jokes are only funny once. Despite not being a fan of slapstick, the comedy in Chuunikoi works wonders because it holds your attention while the wider narrative of the episode unfolds (as opposed to being the main point of the episode in and of itself).

It’s still tempting to say that the show is only relevant because of its visuals, but let’s not forget that “visuals” extends far beyond budget. The attention to detail and colouring in the post header and this shot is obviously impressive, but I was more drawn to the handheld camera used when Rikka pulls out the gun in her room. The camera wobbles slightly in imitation of the handheld shots used during tense moments in crime and action flicks. Likewise, the close-ups during the gag with Touka imitate the similar drama cliché. The gags and direction cooperate to provide simultaneous punchlines: one narrative (why did Rikka pull out a gun? That’s ridiculous!) and one aesthetic (why is this show pretending that this is a tense moment? That’s ridiculous!).

Speaking of attention to detail, I liked the sound effects on Rikka’s out-of-focus ahoge in this shot. Yuuta’s expression catches the viewer’s eyes immediately, but the shot lingers, and as there’s not much else to think about, attention drifts toward the cartoonish sound effects of the bouncing hair. It’s these subtleties that make the show ten times more amusing than your everyday romcom LN adaptation.

The (almost) midway point of the series is as good a place as any to develop the inevitable romance. I can’t say I’m too excited for it, but that’s largely because I’m not fond of light novel romances in the first place—the feelings don’t have a strong enough motivation, and Yuuta hasn’t struck me as more than a (still entertaining) descendent of Kyon. Rikka is, of course, adorable, but I’m here more for the zaniness than the attempt at romance. Perhaps I’ll warm up to the idea if Rikka’s backstory turns out to be more than the expected half-hearted sympathy bait.

~eternal
つづく

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Post tags: chu2koi, Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!, Episodic, Kyoto Animation

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I’m surprised at the number of people who don’t like Hyouka when the primary complaint about it is exactly what makes it special. The first few episodes make it clear that it’s an unconventional mystery series–a light mystery, you might say, aimed towards the light novel audience. But what struck me about the show right away, and what a lot of people seem to hate about it, is that it deliberately ignores mystery’s partner: suspense.

Mystery Without Murder

The mystery genre is, for lack of a better word, grimdark. Murder and mystery go hand in hand; the most mysterious of all mysteries are the ones that involve crime, fear, a genuine threat to the cast and to society as a whole. Of course, this is only one of many possible settings, as Umineko demonstrated. I won’t spoil it here, but for those who aren’t familiar with the story, Umineko no Naku Koro ni begins as an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery and ends with mystery acting as a metaphor to illustrate the game’s broader themes.

Mysteries in Hyouka are logic puzzles. They’re abstract in the sense that they’re meaningless–solving the mystery does not result in the capture of a criminal. Chitanda’s catchphrase summarizes it succinctly: these mysteries are about curiosity! Hyouka rephrases the oddities we observe in day-to-day life as mysteries to be solved with the same kind of deductive logic we’ve come to expect from mystery fiction. It’s like observing the neighbours from the living room window and inventing motives for their actions–the reasoning might not be correct, but as long as it flows logically, it serves its purpose (which, usually, is to kill time). Remember how Umineko‘s battles are fought, by searching for possible (not plausible) explanations for crimes? It’s the same idea.

My point is that, rather than inventing new logic traps or adding layers of meta, Hyouka diverges from baseline mysteries by focusing on the heart of what a mystery is. Mysteries are logic puzzles at their core; suspense and drama are only common traits that tend to accompany them. The identity of a culture festival prankster can be a more elaborate mystery than the identity of a murderer.

Truth is Irrelevant

Yet people always say: why should I care about mysteries if nothing is at stake? My answer is that the beauty of mysteries is in the puzzle forming and solving, the use of logic to reason through a sea of possibilities and find one that, in true Schrödinger’s Cat fashion, might or might not be true. Truth is less important than the process of writing and reading, building the labyrinth and having someone else navigate it. That’s part of why–Chitanda’s neck aside–episode 20 was so beautiful: it had Oreki play the role of the writer rather than the reader. He constructed a simple mystery for Satoshi and Mayaka to solve, and he counted on them deducing the solution the same way he would.

That said, a more compelling example lies in Chitanda’s refusal to accept solutions that turn a “character” into a criminal or villain. Truth, again, is unimportant–this curiosity and the mysteries it creates is about the desire to stop and smell the roses, to learn what strangers think and feel, even when you’re not forced to. There is no room for negativity in her worldview. So long as it’s possible–unlikely, perhaps, but possible–for a mystery to be explained without there being a criminal, Chitanda’s curiosity will choose that explanation as the only one. I could cite Umineko again if you’re wondering where you’ve heard this before.

Watashi, Kininarimasu!

Chitanda’s catchphrase is self-explanatory but I want to talk a bit about it because it ties nicely into the rest of the show. If Hyouka views mysteries as puzzles rather a suspense tool, it makes sense that curiosity lies at its heart. Oreki, of course, is the opposite of curious–his character is defined by his refusal to stop and smell the roses and his belief that extraneous things like everyday mysteries aren’t worth thinking about. If you take a few steps back from Hyouka‘s setting in the context of mystery and look at its themes and characters, you essentially have a story about an incurious person who learns to appreciate the little things in life through his knack for solving puzzles.

Chitanda wonders why a stranger who always takes one path to school suddenly takes another, but she can’t explain it; Oreki doesn’t care, but if he thinks about it, he can probably figure it out. Gradually, Oreki starts to care about details like this that his brain normally would have filtered out, resulting in a less “gray” life, to use the show’s terminology. Hyouka stresses curiosity and the desire to solve mysteries rather than the ability to do so. Having a brain like Holmes is a wonderful thing, but as the show’s second OP video eloquently reminds us, Oreki’s life is bland until it is given life by the colour of Chitanda’s worldview that slowly but surely rubs off on him.

So no, Hyouka‘s defiance of suspense-based mystery is not a gimmick. It serves a thematic purpose and it provides context for one of this year’s most endearing almost-romances. It’s a good show.

~eternal
つづく

© eternal for Memories of Eternity, 2012. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hyouka, Kyoto Animation, Umineko no Naku Koro ni

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I don’t know much about 5pb even with their Wikipedia page open in front of me. Steins;Gate is a collaboration with Nitro+ but it was written by one of 5pb’s staff, dodging Gen Urobochi’s sadistic pen keyboard. (For better or worse, one might argue, but one Fate/Zero per year is enough for me).  Like its quirkily-named predecessor by the same writer, Steins;Gate is both a horror and a mystery, and also sort of a science adventure thingy. The second arc is pretty cool: the girls’ stories intersect in surprising ways, there are real twists, and the ending is all kinds of romantic. But the anime really shines in its first cours as superb pacing and foreshadowing create more tension than I’ve felt from Nitro+’s horror works.

The series stands out because it’s about microwavable bananas, not timeline-hopping–or at least that’s how it presents itself, given the oddly slow pacing of the first arc. You’d think this would be a problem, but instead of overloading the viewer with exposition (thematic or plot), it creates tension through mystery. The characters don’t work in a top-secret lab; they solve mysteries the way we would, with the same kind of lackadaisical sense of priorities. The lightheartedness builds tension by letting the viewer wonder in their own time whether the magnitude of Okarin’s actions is greater than it seems. It’s doubly effective because there are only a few reminders that the proverbial shit will inevitably get real.

It’s thanks to this slow pacing that little hints become essential. The text message death threat that Okarin receives in the grocery store is one of the most horrifying moments I’ve seen in anime in recent years. Had the series begun with serial killings and supernatural murder and whatnot, it would be no surprise–”it’s a Nitro+ game, of course there will be death; why worry when the protagonist has plot armour?” But the everyday bickering and Daru’s incessant use of internet slang and Mayushii’s cosplay ramblings disarm you. The gravity of the situation doesn’t hit until it’s too late (which is probably how it felt from Okarin’s point of view, when you think about it).

That’s why Mayushii’s first death becomes such an iconic moment. It’s not the “inevitable” death we expect from a horror game; it’s the death we forgot was coming. The show does a good job of throwing you in Okarin’s shoes with the repetition of the frozen hourglass image and Mayushii’s (painfully innocent) statement that her watch stopped working. You follow him through the transition from comedy to horror, witnessing those same acts until they become unchangable, futile. Suddenly his talk about mad scientists and conspiracies is no laughing matter. Remember the kid with the train? Like Haruhi’s Endless Eight, the repetition of minor, unchangeable details drives home the overarching point that fate is real and that it is terrifying.

It’s easy for stories to be gruesome, but fear from disgust is different. Sometimes it’s the more relateable fears that affect us–fear that we might have gone too far, that our actions might have had unintended, irreparable consequences, that the future is carved in stone. It’s this fear that turns Steins;Gate‘s prelude from a slow-paced mystery into an engrossing and terrifying one.

~ eternal
つづく

© eternal for Memories of Eternity, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 5pb, Gen Urobochi, Naotaka Hayashi, Nitro+, Steins;Gate

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Shira Oka is an original English dating sim that you might have heard of. It’s notable, sort of–the OP has real animation in it–but it otherwise flew under the radar in anime fandom (the indie game crowd might be different). The game is charming where it counts and flawed in forgivable ways. Flaws are flaws, though, and “charming” is as close to emotionally affecting as it gets.

Let’s back up for a bit. Essentially, dating sims are meant to be immersive. While never entirely realistic, much of the fun comes from challenging a seemingly real world and working your way up the social ladder to win the heart of your chosen girl. “Too light winning may make the prize light”; even simulated love is no fun when it falls into your lap.

Shira Oka scores well here, and it’s challenging in a believable way. The game unfolds through an ostensibly believable development of the main character’s stats rather than through complicated branches based on decision points. The player is given choices to develop different aspects of Protag’s social abilities (intelligence for schoolwork, athletics for attractiveness, etc. etc.), opening different options based on character stats. They call it Second Chances for a reason, by the way: you’ll have to New Game+ once or twice to get a good end. But it doesn’t feel like level grinding. The early in-game months are unpredictable and you’re more likely to get caught up in the story than to stop and ponder which part of the common route you’re in.

The key here is that what I call the skeleton of the game–the inner mechanics that move the story along–remains invisible for a very long time. I imagine this is the goal of most dating sim devs. By not directly telling the player what impact taking a rest on the weekend or raising their intelligence stat will have, you encourage them to play the game as they would real life, exploring options on their own. Shira Oka succeeds in creating a playground of sorts in which you can experiment with your life and observe the consequences. There’s rarely a distinct, obvious set of decisions to make to win a specific girl’s heart. Nothing is as simple as meeting the bookworm in the library three days in a row to unlock her route.

Yes, you will want her to be your waifu, and no, you won’t get her on your first playthrough.

So the gameplay is good and immersive and all that. The more pressing concern with Shira Oka is its story.

Or at least that depends on the type of story you’re looking for. It matches the tone of the game and the word that I used in the beginning: charming. The overall plot would make for a fun late 90s/early 2000s harem romcom anime with drama sprinkled here and there.

Trouble only emerges at the end of each route when the game starts to take itself seriously. Crazy Ken Akamatsu-style transitions between zaniness and fantasy drama are abound, and they clash with the relative realism of the game’s trunk. What’s worse is that the crazy (and I mean crazy) twists aren’t all comedic or self-aware. It’s fun, but it’s too silly to be dramatic and the twists are too dark to work as a goofy postmodern romcom.

By crazy I do mean crazy.

The writing isn’t bad. It’s effective, though not particularly moving. It operates well with the fantastic design of the game in that dialogue is rarely transparent and the characters don’t betray their feelings in too obvious a way. Even the less subtle lines are endearing; words slip here and there, revealing feelings coyly rather than blatantly. On the technical side, the game is held back by its lack of a good “skip previously read” option but there’s probably a good reason why they couldn’t implement it like in normal visual novels. I really, really hope there’s a good reason.

So the game is okay-but-not-great and it’s nearly impossible to play every route because of the poor dialogue skipping, but where does that leave us? The plot isn’t my cup of tea and I honestly think it undermines the realism of the “trunk” of the story, but the characters make an impression. Add that to the well-crafted design of the game that forces you to think when you’re on a date and you get something more than a solid attempt. It all comes down to how long it takes the player to uncover the structure and break their suspension of disbelief.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

© eternal for Memories of Eternity, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dating Sim, Okashi Studios, Shira Oka, Visual Novel

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Director Satoshi Kon is known for his illusions; there’s even a book about it. But he’s also known as the Hitchcock of anime given his work in the psychological drama genre, which is only partly true, not unlike comparisons between Miyazaki and Walt Disney. Paprika is a tricky film because the mind-bending plot and use of (basically) multiple personalities begets comparisons to Perfect Blue, but its tone is altogether different. It’s the antithesis to Kon’s first movie and a reminder that his illusions aren’t as haunting as Paranoia Agent and Perfect Blue urge us to assume. What’s more, there’s an undercurrent of metafiction in the director’s final film and I get the feeling that it can be described in terms other than illusion vs. reality and dream world vs. waking world.

(There may be spoilers for everything).

I won’t dwell on Kon’s status as an illusionist because most of that is self-evident. Rather, Paprika works because of its playful illusions. It’s a child’s dream, not a nightmare. We see this in Paprika’s prancing through the streets in the intro, in the absurdity of the dream parade’s dialogue. It’s the opposite of Perfect Blue’s dreams and illusions, in which Mima’s deteriorating mental state is expressed with jarring cuts that confuse chronology. Perfect Blue goes as far as to feign a plot twist painting Mima as a mental patient whose dream world is her idol persona, and whose reality is the rape scene she acts in the movie. The film consciously tries to disorient the viewer with false twists and misleading edits.

But I think the key difference between the two films is not only Paprika’s playfulness but its optimism. Perfect Blue’s split personalities reveal a beautiful dream disguising an ugly reality. This juxtaposition is terrifying, as seen in shots like this. Paprika’s equivalent is two sides of the same coin, two personalities that complement one another. The villain isn’t defeated until Atsuko and her dream persona Paprika fuse together. The alternate self is accepted, not rejected. Dreams aren’t all that bad in Paprika–they’re brighter, more colourful, more creative than reality. The parade is disconcerting, I suppose, but only for its weirdness. It’s not half as haunting as the twisted illusions of Paranoia Agent and Magnetic Rose. And let’s not forget that the DC Mini is a tool of psychotherapy: dreams are viewed as a window to the heart, not false realities to be feared and shunned.

(As an aside, it’s interesting that the main villain’s initial motives are to protect nature from science–the exact opposite of most sci-fi villains. I don’t think it counts as genre subversion but it’s certainly an optimistic view of the role of technology in society).

The movie begins in the circus with the work of a magician; an illusionist.

But these are surface observations. I noticed something a bit more interesting, though it doesn’t fit neatly into a thesis: Kon seems to deliberately connect illusion with fiction (or media in the case of Paranoia Agent). Despite the assumption that illusions = dreams, most of Perfect Blue’s false realities are from the fictive movie that Mima acts in. (Mima’s public image as an idol is also comparable to a work of fiction).

Paprika uses dreams as a major plot device, yes, but Konakawa’s arc–one of the film’s main arcs–is based entirely on movies. This wouldn’t be notable on its own, but the fact is that the movie opens with Konakawa’s dream, showcasing the common genres of cinema, and Paprika gliding gracefully through screens and billboards, melding fiction and reality. The very first illusion we’re treated to is not the twisted dream of the psychologically unsound; it is the illusion of cinema, of fiction, of actors playing their role (and we see these illusions before learning about the setting and characters). Paprika even views Konakawa’s dream in a cinema. The billboards of the intro are all bright and inviting and not at all dystopian. Illusions in the film aren’t only the subconscious explorations of dreams; they’re movies, ads, media we engage with. And that’s not a bad thing.

Oddly, I don’t think Paprika is explicitly about anything, although themes can be easily assigned. But moviemaking is a running motif, and it’s given the honour of gracing the film’s closing scene in which Konakawa buys a ticket to Kon’s yet-to-be-released flick. This is less surprising when you remember that Millennium Actress is (apparently) largely a tribute to cinema as well (I have yet to rewatch it). I don’t think there’s an explicit thematic purpose to Kon’s metafiction, but it’s there, and he seems to enjoy connecting the fantasy of dreams with the fantasy of fiction.

Paprika slips playfully between fiction and reality, screens/billboards and the 3d realm. And…

…She changes outfits depending on the nature of her adventure, almost as if to fit different movie genres.

So Kon is certainly an illusionist, but he doesn’t work exclusively with dreams and psychosis and horror. His illusions branch off to not only new genres (Millenium Actress’s romance) but also to new forms of illusion: movies, idols, mascots in the media. He suggests that we consume illusions in our daily lives, and, in Paprika at least, those illusions can be an exquisite accompaniment to reality. Paprika sums it up in the end:

Paprika: Light and dark. Reality and dreams. Life and death. Man and…?
Konakawa/Shima: Woman?
Paprika: Then you add the missing spice.
Konakawa/Shima: Paprika?
Paprika: Bingo.

Binaries aren’t to be feared. They aren’t about right and wrong, truth and lie. Add a little spice for balance and you can keep a superhuman from destroying Tokyo. Everything in moderation.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

© eternal for Memories of Eternity, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Movie, Paprika, Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon

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Honey and Clover fans would be familiar with the ubiquitous Ferris Wheel and weathervane symbols from the anime adaptation, but there are several less explicit symbols that aren’t telegraphed in the OP/ED videos. I noticed while reading the manga that the sweet osmanthus–apparently a common flower in East Asia–features prominently in Yamada’s narration. (The flower’s orange colour and Ayumi’s hair colour is probably a coincidence, but it’s a fun coincidence at any rate).

I’ll start with a quote:

The faint scent of sweet osmanthus outside and the orange lights glowing inside… up through last year, Mayama was around somewhere among those lights. I’d make up errands just so I could pass by places he might be to get a glimpse of him, even for just a moment, or to hear his voice… (vol 3)

That’s Ayumi’s recollection of the Hamabi school festival when both her and Mayama were still students. The sweet osmanthus are also mentioned in passing elsewhere in the series, subtly reminding the reader of this declaration of her hopelessness.

This little window into Ayumi’s heart summarizes her relationship with Mayama. A sense of longing permeates her speech (though to be fair, this feeling applies to most of the series). What’s more notable for her character is that nowhere in the line is there any mention of hope. Wishing to be with him and to receive his feelings always takes a back seat to simply being in his presence, to “catch a glimpse” for just one moment. It’s one of many instances in which Umino uses icons and symbols to represent intangible feelings. Ayumi’s statement of feelings is magnified by its association with a sensory memory: the scent of the flowers. Much like in real life, memories become vivid as scattered sensory experiences, not as a chronological series of events.

When a similar line pops up again in volume 8, it carries a different meaning. At first the school festival memory was used to establish Yamada’s hopeless longing and to create sympathy–but now, with the confession long past and Mayama growing closer to Rika, it instead feels nostalgic. The same memory is seen in a new light.

“I love sweet osmanthus”–a teary smile much like Takemoto’s at the end of the series, an acknowledgement that it was all worthwhile.

So the scent of the osmanthus is brought up first to show us how hopelessly in love Ayumi is, and it returns in the end to remind us of how strong her love once was. Heartbreakingly poetic, as always. It’s fitting that the next chapter begins with Yamada cleaning her shoes to get rid of the sand from her trip to Tottori with Nomiya, remarking on how it stays with her. Of course sand would stay with her, and of course the memory would too. One story ends, and another begins. A lot is said with short lines of introspection.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

© eternal for Memories of Eternity, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chica Umino, Honey and Clover, Manga

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I’ve always maintained that tone and atmosphere can trump plot given the right author’s touch. This was more or less the case for Chica Umino‘s first manga series, Honey and Clover, which successfully finds the middle ground between subjective narration and a show-don’t-tell approach to character development. It’s an odd but effective style that results in characters that range from translucent to opaque depending on the time of day.

Her follow-up series, March Comes in like a Lion, hereby referred to as Sangatsu no Lion or 3gatsu, is similar. Its plot is a departure from Umino’s previous manga: it follows the life of a teenage Shogi pro who also happens to be an orphan (or the other way around as the story quickly implies). Unexpectedly, the plot is roughly the same as every other slice-of-life or coming-of-age anime, featuring lonely protagonists interacting with an upbeat cast to discover a less lonely world.

Yet 3gatsu differs stylistically: like H&C, it throws in ambiguous, metaphoric, sometimes maudlin pieces of subjective narration to punctuate key moments. Since both stories are fundamentally based on the mundane occurrences of everyday life, the difference between a key plot point and a trip to the zoo is often only made through those essential lines of narration that provide a brief window into the characters’ hearts. No one comes out and says “I’m happy” or “I feel terrible.” Instead we get more poetic phrasings of metaphors that summarize broader ideas–stuff like “the bridge in my town felt long when I first moved here, but it grew shorter as I made friends,” or “Christmas reminds me of the smell of antiseptic from staying with my Mom as she worked as a nurse.” It’s not a special literary device by any means but Umino makes particularly good use of it.

A plot synopsis would lead you to believe that 3gatsu is about Rei’s life as a young Shogi player but the orphan angle is played very hard and very early. As it turns out, the three sisters who unofficially adopt-slash-care-for Rei were also orphaned, and the Obon festival in the first volume draws attention to the rather large hole in their hearts. A shadow looms over the cast. Much like Honey and Clover‘s bittersweet longing for that which can never be, 3gatsu is characterized by a similar sense of distance or emptiness. Rei resembles an exaggerated version of Takemoto before his soul-searching journey, albeit wounded in a much more fundamental way. Even more interesting is the fact that the story seems ambiguous as to how optimistic and idealistic it wants to be. Rei clashes with the question of why he–or anyone for that matter–would want to dedicate their lives to the grueling, competitive world of pro Shogi, but there are no hints that suggest a shounen-esque ending versus a more bittersweet, Fate/stay night Heavens Feel route conclusion.

Sangatsu no Lion is good, at any rate. It probably won’t reach me in the same way that H&C does since I’m naturally weak to love stories, but it’s obvious from the start that it’s dripping with Chica Umino’s melancholic, subjective style. The story is beautifully told from that point of view and I have confidence that she’s capable of reaching further with the themes than the first two volumes suggest. The only factor to lament is the lack of translations.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

© eternal for Memories of Eternity, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chica Umino, Honey and Clover, Manga, Sangatsu no Lion

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There’s a silly webcomic by a guy named Andrew Hussie that you might’ve seen if you spend much time around /co/ or Tumblr. (I don’t, but I’ve heard complaints). It’s called Homestuck and it’s a fascinatingly meta take on RPGs and youth. Though famous more for its formal gimmicks and odd sense of humour, there’s a deliberateness in the structure that points to certain themes. The comic operates well as parody for parody’s sake, but spend tens of hours reading through it and you’ll start to see more. If you’re willing to brave minor spoilers, read on.

First, a summary: Homestuck is about a group of teenaged internet friends playing a video game to save the world. But this isn’t the Matrix–reality and fiction don’t coexist. Logging into the game triggers a downpour of asteroids that destroys the Earth’s population just before the protagonists can escape. Yes, they escape into the game. Their goal is to “beat” the game and find a way to revive their planet.

Interestingly, the game doesn’t become the equivalent of reality. The characters are aware that it’s a game (and that it’s bizarrely structured like a tabletop RPG campaign). The game is still a set of rules, filled with its own ridiculous abstractions: the early chapters dwell on confusing inventory systems and an arbitrary level hierarchy. These gaming abstractions aren’t merely parody material for the reader to laugh at–they’re material for the characters to laugh at. The item synthesis system lets the cast create everything from jetpacks to a Bill Cosby laptop. We know that a Bill Cosby laptop is a ridiculous/awesome idea. So do they. We are watching people play a game.

So the comic’s postmodern knowingness works out for comedic purposes, but as the pages upon pages of IM chat logs build up (this is how the characters communicate), it’s hard not to wonder if there’s method to the madness. Hints are dropped: John, the first of the four heroes, rambles about his emotionally distant father’s obsession with clown dolls. The man keeps buying them as gifts, John says, thinking he likes them, when in reality they’re ugly and stupid. It’s all just a prank to make him writhe in embarrassment as he’s forced to recall his childhood fascinations. It is later mentioned offhandedly that perhaps Dad is buying presents for his child simply to bridge the gap between father and son.

What makes this suggestion a revelation rather than common sense is the fact that silliness is the standard in Homestuck. The reader is forced to suspend their disbelief within the first five minutes and ends up taking the silliness at face value. Create an elaborate plot to sneak outside and check the mail in search of your brand new game; crawl past your alcoholic mother’s wizard statues that she surely only bought to passive-aggressively irritate you since she knows you hate wizards. It’s funny when you read it, but there are moments when characters offer logical explanations for the chaos. Maybe it’s not just a prank, they realize, thinking back on their parents’ irrational actions. Maybe they see it that way because that’s what they believe.

The comic is ongoing so a central theme hasn’t solidified yet, but the coming-of-age thread continues. Each hero’s adventure begins by fusing household items and miscellaneous organisms to create spirit guides to help them on their quest. John ends up with his dead grandmother (fused with a clown plushie, if I recall correctly); Dave gets his older brother-slash-mentor and Rose gets her deceased cat/best friend. This is important. The spirit guides aren’t arbitrarily assigned: the were friends and mentors in real life. The premise of the game is to use the minerals gained from defeating monsters to build the hero’s house vertically until they can reach a portal in the sky. Every character begins at home–homestuck. The world is gone but your house is still there because it matters to you. Your friends are geographically out of reach–each of you ends up in a different in-game world–but you communicate through IM, just like you did in real life. There are unresolved tensions: John’s Dad’s study, the only part of the house invisible on the mini-map, symbolic of his fatherly elusiveness and mystery. Each character is introduced with a paragraph summarizing their interests based on objects lying around their room. It is not some fantasy RPG abstraction that defines the characters, but rather the posters in their rooms and objects in their houses. Need I say it? Just like real life.

[Paper-Flux]

It reminds me of Harry Potter and a longish article from The New Yorker that basically says that fantasy doesn’t have to take place in a foreign world. Often, especially in young adult stories like Harry Potter, fantasy is a mirror of reality. It’s not the intricacies of the lore and Latin spell incantations that turned the book into an icon–it’s the way Hogwarts mirrors school life. The authoritarian teachers and late-night pranks are exaggerated, of course, but at the end of the day they’re familiar to all of us. The farther I got into Homestuck, the more I felt that it was much the same. Here’s a vague approximation of a quote that pops up somewhere deep in the series: It’s hard being a kid. It’s hard and no one understands. A single sentence in a story of Tsukihime‘s length, yet it sticks. It’s echoed in a later arc when it is revealed that the game is deliberately designed to be played by children entering puberty. Romance is supposed to bubble up and mess with team unity. It’s no coincidence that the cast wrestles with the troubles of youth while trying to save the world.

(Umineko comparisons would be made if it weren’t for spoilers for both series. In a nutshell, both stories have characters playing the role of the reader and analyzing the “real” story for us. In Homestuck’s case, the characters provide meta commentary on their game. It raises the reader’s awareness that everything is deliberate and structured, perhaps for thematic ends.)

So what exactly is this game and why was it made this way? We don’t know yet, but I’ll stick to my theory that it’s a grand, hilarious, brilliantly hyperbolic coming-of-age tale. The whole idea of life being like a tabletop RPG is driven home by the countless allusions, and the few lines of thematic development stick out like a sore thumb (in a good way). This really isn’t The Matrix. It’s middle school life told as a game.

And while this post is more explanatory than evaluative, I should mention that the comic is actually good. What really makes it work in comparison to your average magical girl/YA fantasy coming-of-age narrative is the amount of fun it has with itself. The characters grow on you while you’re busy laughing. The whole story does.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Hey.

This is a heads-up that I’m going to try anime blogging again. There are a lot of things that I don’t like about the blogosphere, but there are still some great blogs that are worth following and I think I can gain something from this endeavour. Hopefully you can gain something from reading. Unfortunately, this will be a slowblog–post ideas are easy to come by but I don’t watch enough anime to fuel weekly posts. My post rate is likely to eventually drop to once per month.

Regardless, anime blogging was an important hobby for me in high school. Now that I’m older and know a thing or two about writing and movies and lit criticism, I want to see if I can do this properly. Enjoy the site.

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Braid is a romance game, sorta. Yes, it’s about nuclear war or whatever, but most of it is a love story, like it or not. I heard that Ico is like this too. Christine Love’s games are ostensibly romance games, and Digital feels more like a Western indie game than a VN. The central theme might differ (even in Japanese VNs it often does), but the basic setup and development often relies heavily on romance. That’s what I mean by romance game: the same way I loosely classify Fallout as a sci-fi “war” game even if it’s explicitly anti-war. Broadly speaking, it’s a game that deals with modern/near future combat, war, the art of war, the dangers of war, etc. Yes, you could argue that the real theme is of society’s fragility or the innate human yearning for anarchy a la Lord of the Flies, the same way the real theme of Clannad is broader than a feel-good high school love story, but the setting and gameplay obvious screams war.

Anyway, romance as a theme, setting, or structure is not something that should be unique to visual novels. The realization that there’s an entire genre that dominates other mediums yet doesn’t exist in games is nothing short of exciting. Imagine what creators can do with this. I know I’ll try my hand at it, at least. Yeah, games rely more heavily on interaction, conflict, and a clearly-defined reward system than other mediums, but that doesn’t exclude romance in any way. Let’s be creative! Don’t assume it won’t work just because no one’s doing it. How do you think the To Heart devs felt?

(tl;dr: rather than thinking of romance as the incidental form of visual novels and cramming other story elements in it like F/sn, I’m starting to think of it as the central genre or theme in itself which could then be applied to other forms).

In all seriousness, though, Snake’s cardboard box is a good symbol of what I like about the franchise, and it’s a reminder that I don’t like it for what I thought I’d like it for. I’m not sure what serious fans and critics say, but gamers in general seem to praise the MGS franchise for its story. It took me a few games to realize that this just doesn’t work given that its story is a joke. Not a joke in the parody sense, but in the genuinely bad sense.

But bad is the wrong word to use. Is James Bond bad? The storylines are impossible to take seriously but few would call them bad. It’s hard to even call it postmodern knowingness–MGS and Bond seem to work without the self-consciousness of Quentin Tarantino flicks. Yet this is a story that unironically builds armies of shounen anime-style nanomachine-enhanced superhumans against a backdrop of nuclear war and serious business; how is it anything but terrible? (On a related note, is Pussy Galore really a sillier name than Liquid Snake or Fatman? Only slightly.)

It’s style that makes it good, anyway. Metal Gear Solid is excessively stylized and it always has been. The cutscenes, the over-the-top villains, and the mechs launching nukes complement the tongue-in-cheek cardboard box escapades and Psycho Mantis meta gimmicks. The franchise rarely feels ironic and never feels sarcastic, yet the straightforwardness of its drama comes across as sincere rather than contrived. The nanomachines jokes about the fourth game are legitimate; it’s entirely reasonable to not take desus ex machina pseudo-science seriously. Yet the game isn’t really about the war economy, or at least it doesn’t feel like it is: it’s about two old men beating the crap out of each other on top of a boat in the middle of the ocean as the sun sets (with gorgeous graphics and non-realist character designs). MGS has style and it has it in spades.

So maybe it is comparable to the likes of Kill Bill. (Let’s not forget that Kojima is a film buff). Unironic and melodramatic on the outside, yes, but it becomes evident very quickly that stylized action eclipses whatever themes the story might be trying to unsubtly unveil.

The odd part is that once you get caught up in the action (and by action I mean cutscenes), the story grows on you. The plot is concluded awkwardly but it’s exciting to follow from game to game, and it’s interesting to observe the often radically different themes expressed in each entry despite their connected plots. But my point is that you don’t play MGS for its probing examination of the endurance of the human spirit in times of strife, or at least I don’t–I play it for mechs launching nukes. In a medium where most stories aimed at teens or adults end up clumsy, pulpy, melodramatic, and far too serious, it’s refreshing to see one that has fun with itself without turning into parody or satire. Oh, and it’s also awesome.

Harvest Moon is an interesting title. On one hand, it represents a long-running, solid entry in the realm of simulation games that aim to turn tedious tasks into something interesting. Tasks such as, well, living. Or working, or building a city, or in this case, farming. On the other hand, it appears to be entrenched in a way of thinking that doesn’t mesh well with today’s ideals of immersion and suspension of disbelief.

By their nature, simulation games require suspension of disbelief. Moreso than with any other genre, they must immerse the player and tread lightly around their consciousness to maintain the illusion that living a second life as a farmer is something worth investing a few tens of hours into. It’s the only way to make reality interesting. Without this degree of immersion, games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing are just single-player RPGs with a bizarre premise.

And that’s exactly the feeling I got from Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, an old GBA game that I forgot I had bought. The first few hours are promising: like the rest of its ilk, Mineral Town gives you more tasks than time, forcing a sense of urgency onto the player. It’s exciting. Like finding the airship in classic JRPGs, the world expands around you, revealing seemingly infinite possibilities. Tediousness isn’t an issue, surprisingly (or at least it’s less of an issue than other more pressing problems). While the game does get repetitive after the first couple of seasons, the feeling that you’re a poor farmer years away from your lifelong goal persists. There’s much to do and no time to do it, so you toil away. It sounds harsh, but the concept of accomplishing tasks to unlock new tasks forms the basis of RPGs in general. People like filling bars.

The issue is that the game is soulless, for lack of a better word. Interaction with the townsfolk is kept to a minimum, NPCs repeat the same dialogue day after day, town festivals are nothing but boring minigames, and time passes without giving the player anything to reflect about. I knew I had to drop the game when I finished the first year and was greeted with nothing but the same waking-up animation that introduced every other day. There was no indication that a year had passed, no opportunity to talk with the locals at New Years’ festival and reminisce about your experiences. You got some free flour, I think, but that’s it.

In other words, Harvest Moon follows more in the tradition of RPGs than simulation games and dating sims. This was probably intentional but I’m disappointed nonetheless. I can see why some people would want to play a “collect-’em-all” Pokemon or Animal Crossing style RPG with a fresh coat of paint but this comes at the loss of great potential. The franchise could be interesting if it stressed its simulation aspects, creating dialogue branches and an affection system that requires more than daily gifts, but at present it’s no different from any other game about leveling up to buy a new sword which you’ll use to kill enemies and level up again.

That statement isn’t as hyperbolic as it sounds. The game deliberately blurs the line between illusion and reality. After seeing Alma in the hallucination enough times you’ll probably develop a feel for what’s real and what isn’t. Maybe you’ll stop shooting at her every time she appears. Then you draw near the end of the game and get assailed by a group of flying ghosts. It’s okay, no biggie–after all, you’re imagining things. Alma is trying to creep you out, and if your suspension of disbelief fails, you’ll recognize that the developers aren’t doing much more than repeating tired horror movie tricks.

Or so it seems. The difference becomes evident when you fire a few shots at the ghosts and return to reality to find yourself firing at a wall with an empty clip. Worse yet: the moment of realization when you miss a ghost or two and return to reality to find your health half depleted.

In F.E.A.R., illusion is reality. Much like the stories that have been told about psychological disorders, the fears in one’s mind are as real as any. They can warp you, cause you to do unspeakable things (the game tries this angle at least once), and ultimately kill you. When you die in the Matrix, you die in real life.

This might have been a thematic point on the staff’s part to emphasize the theme of fear of the unknown. Even if it wasn’t, though, it accomplishes its purpose as a gameplay mechanic. You might make the mistake of feeling safe within the hallucinations because your flashlight and slow-mo are disabled, implying that they serve as an interactive cut-scene rather than part of the game. F.E.A.R. makes good use of this assumption. It accomplishes one of the main goals of all horror fiction: enforcing the feeling that you’re never safe, that certain things are beyond your control. You can run, but you can’t hide.