アニ・ノート

Seen at Subculture:

This OVA takes place some time before the major school festival in the anime series. Oh, how I missed all of the Manabi girls. Being the slice of life fan I am, Manabi Straight has been one of my favorite anime since its airing earlier this year.

It probably could stand reminding that Manabi Straight is not a “slice of life”: it is driven by a strong plot. However, the OVA is. It’s the only filler episode in the series, basically.

The border is somewhat fuzzy. For example, Kamichu has a story too, only it hides most of the time and lets slice-of-life to come to the forefront (e.g. ep.12 in DVD count). Therefore, Kamichu is slice-of-life or primarily slice-of-life. But Manabi isn’t.

The review of “Freedom” in The Space Review seems to me an excercise in reviewing the obscure: the year-old OVA got 33 votes at ANN. Once again anime outsiders amaze with their unconventional ways to select the material. Previously, Dwane reviewed Cowboy Bebop and PlanetES, which was understandable for an industry ‘zine (especially the later). Freedom does not seem to fall into the same bracket of greatness though.

I think if Dwane really wants to do service to the busy space professionals, he should review Rocket Girls instead. It’s the best dramatization of the realistic space as exists today (PlanetES deals with relatively distant future). The way a private company in Rocket Girls makes a business out of on-orbit satellite repair would make any alt.space-r’s head swoon (Although… If SpaceX makes launch costs to fall, there will be a move away from the “battleship” comsats of today, and then SSAs business model would unravel. Also, SSA’s equipment cannot reach GEO where all the satellites worth repairing are located. That’s a major realism problem, which would be interesting someone like Dwane to detect (or not).)

I’m just back from a Bunraku, or a traditional puppet theater, performance in UC Berkeley. Promoter, Peter Grilli, mentioned in the pre-performance lecture that Bunraku started in 1650s as an art for the masses, as opposed to then pre-existing theater for highly educated, and turned into art for the elite now. The obvious extension is to imagine highly educated elitist otaku of 2350 who gather at select performances to watch a remake of Evangelion.

The performance itself was moving. Of course, typically for the Japanese, as Ana-sempai observed, the basic plot is that people fall in love and then they die (exactly like RahXephon and 08th MS Team). If the viewer is willing to play along, it is easy to abstract the puppeteers and get swept into the show, just like one abstracts plane space or a mobile suit.

Unfortunately, picture-taking was prohibited.

Here’s something seen at Towards our Memories, written by a guest-blogger “SDS”. Since ToM is not an ad-supported blog, I’m going to quote the gist of it:

There’s a hypothesis going around that each arc of the recently-finished Gurren-Lagann pertains to an era or decade of giant robot animation. I subscribe to this belief in a rather loose manner, seeing as how actual time tends to bleed and blur the borders and that people don’t all of a sudden decide to start thinking differently when a 9 becomes a 0, but the basic layout is this.

Episodes 1-8: The 70s, the original super robot era. (Mazinger Z, Getter Robo)
Episodes 9-15: The 80s, when things got more serious, when characters became deeper. (Gundam, Macross)
Episodes 17-22: The 90s, when perception was changed, things brought into question. (Evangelion)

If this is the case, then the current decade is the basis behind episodes 23-27. However, with nothing for Gainax to “reference” they can only instead try to give their own message, teach their own lesson, show their own influence.

Actually, there’s more at the source, feel free to check it out. I’ll just add that I had no idea that people took their thinking so far. It’s weird, yet not completely hallucinatory.

The raw of Manabi OVA hit Tokyo Toshokan yesterday, and it occured to me that, thanks to Amazon.co.jp, I saw it before raw watchers did. Money well spent (I include the tuition for Japanese classes here too, so it was more than just $50).

I looked at Aoi and Mutsuki (the sequel) in order to recalibrate my scale. I thought that I bitched too much about insignificant details of jawlines too much recently, and I needed a look at bad anime.

It was surprisingly watcheable. The story was trash and I dropped it 15 minutes in, but as far as anime goes, there’s something to be said for simplicity. And it still does not look americanized (although these days imitations are multiplying…).

The 08th MS Team turned out quite epic in the end; pretty much Shingu and Stellvia level of epic.

Norris is my favourite character. He lived well and died well, and is a good role model. I’d love to be Norris when I grow up. Ginyas though… gives us engineers a bad name really. Bad creators, no cookie. The main couple managed well, although Shiro was sort of simple. Aina masterfuly navigated her conflicting interests. The way love makes a woman stronger was played to perfection too. An inspired and powerful performance on merits, but somehow didn’t grab me personally.

The biggest issue with the show is that it takes 5 episodes out of 11 to line things up, starts moving in ep.6, and only gets into awesome in the second half.

Liked: Yes
Rewatch: No

P.S. Oh, yes, the mecha question. Now that I think about it, there was some mecha in the show too. I seem to recall some in Vandread as well, and heck, it was far more magical there.

Seen at AD2225 today:

I remember watching Figure 17. That’s 12 episodes at 40 minutes each. I was blown away at the depth of it. (I also had no idea that they were 40 minutes a pop when I started. I was thinking to myself, “Wow. They managed to fit so much into such a short time.” Then I looked at a clock.)

I’m so glad someone else fell into the same trap, I’m not lonely anymore.

According to a post at BasuGasuBakuHaku, 9rules decided to unravel.

Tangentially, Hung touches upon the spontaneous discussions in blogs. Although he shows good examples, I think he’s a bit optimistic. We are not well connected yet. Sometimes I think that I’m the master quoter and linker (at least of AB). Most people do not blog to react to bloggage elsewhere; most of the material consists of the classic episode blogging, editorials, and reaction to outside news. It’s not necesserily a bad thing, orginal content rules. But the discussion tends to happen in comments for some reason, and I do not have a sense if Anglo-anime-blogosphere evolves toward blog-to-blog discussion. Maybe it’s something Impz can measure for his thesis.

UPDATE 2007/11/10: Here’s an example of what 9rules was:

The fact that it ended on a ballot together with Kos and Slashdot tells us that 9rules was positioned purposefuly as “community” from the start, and people behind it had connections to win the name recognition among those in the know. The fact that it lost so badly tells us that its creators had no idea what they were doing.

The Manabi Straight Special is a pure filler episode, wedged into the continuity somewhere between ep.6 and ep.7. I had a tiny hope that it would be some kind of a follow-up episode or a reunion, but alas, it did not happen. In the same time, over-sexualization a-la Kamichu ep.6 did not happen either. We just get a bunch of pretty pictures (there’s a ton of pan-over-still, too).

Since there’s no any great story such as in the main show, the Special underscores animation issues. The biggest one for me is that character designs in Manabi are not made to scale up. They are vectored in a computer, and the same model is used for all zoom levels. Therefore, close-ups tend to suffer. To illustrate, small and medium zoom shots vary from pretty decent to outright gorgeous:

Chest-up shots are so-so. Below, Mei is probably one of the better ones, because she has eyebrows. The gradient hair, pioneered by Manabi is in full force. Also, there’s a little overpaint on her right jaw (I think a dilligent animator tried to compensate):

However, this Momo really received a bad treatment. She came out completely flat-faced:

Notably, the main show is generally better with working around the design. Here’s an example of Mikan from ep.5. The incomplete confining line on her jaw was a very nice touch, although some kind of two-tone shade would be welcome too. The cheek color serves to break the large flat area.

And of course it gets pretty good above the nose level… Which is where real close-ups tend to concentrate.

I don’t regret getting the DVD, but on the other hand it could be much more if only the creators wanted. I do not recommend getting it unless you’re already a die-hard fan. The main show is highly recommended instead.