アニ・ノート

The Hashi-hime is the definitive seyuu blog in the anglosphere and HH Hashi plays to her strengths in the feature on ef. Fascinating.

She didn’t say anything bad about Natsumi Yanase, which was a big relief for me.

It would be cool if these interviews were added to R1 DVD extras. RahXephon had some of that (it’s an ADV release back from days when ADV was good; oddly enough, extras were retained for the thinpack).

UPDATE: Evirus finds Chihiro’s voice “incredibly annoying”. Sad, but not unexpected.

In ep.8 they finally explained what the pesistent imagery of ruins was.

It means “ruins of the past” (I forgot what it was originally, but I thought it was an ok translation. Not that I would know anything.). But did they seriously expect anyone to figure it out? In case of Chihiro I thought that the trains have stopped arriving at the station at the time of her accident and the piles of garbage we just, you know, naturally occuring. I guess in ef there’s nothing naturally occuring — except in-jokes and references.

I already complained about the references in ef, but obviously the creators aren’t listening. Here’s one of the more blatant ones from ep.8:

For those not in the know it’s a reference to Clannad, a show which is currently on the air! I mean, seriously. At least wait until it becomes a classic or something.

Another thing the creators like to throw at us is a strange eyecatch. Some of them seem merely unrelated:

Others are confounding:

I saw even one completely inappropriate:

Perhaps it’s a ploy to make viewers to watch the end of the episode (I skipped a number of these oddities by quitting early).

UPDATE 2008/03/16: Here’s another one:

God. No comment.

Concrete Badger comes out with a premature summary (on the heels of a recent episodic post).

He is taking a risk by making pronouncements about series which haven’t completed yet. He thinks he knows who pairs whom, but there can always be a NICE BOAT. Miyako at one point mentioned that she can only spend little time with Hiro, and I thought she’s hinting a terminal illness, perhaps. I did not get back and work out the precise translation because I’m pretty set on getting DVDs anyway, so I was going to save that for the future. If she rolls over in the last episode, it’s going to rehash things.

Badger also comes down on the other side of the main divide from me: he’s watching for the Miyako and Hiro, whereas I mostly ignore what the dumb trio is doing (or is it a quad now with Kosaka).

This is going to spoil a lot, but this what efbloggers have to do. I found myself saving URLs for later, and it’s a good thing most people mark the episode in the summary. So, Moe-moe writes:

With the sudden breakdown of Chihiro last episode, I was certainly surprised at her speedy recovery throughout this episode. She seemed to go from the hysterical girl 4 years ago and throwing her diary at Renji, to somehow falling in love with him again in what seems to be the span of a day. Is that what Chihiro does every single day when she wakes up? I find it rather hard to believe how she can somehow remain the same type of character that she is if she went from being confused and frustrated to being the calm and cheerful girl that we have seen in the earlier episodes. I can only imagine how much she actually has to read in her diary just to remember all the things from a certain point of time to now.

This is not how I saw it. I do not claim that my understanding is any better, in fact it’s probably worse, but here goes.

Chihiro took about a week or two to come to her senses, with every meeting counting a day or more. However, it was very clear that due to random circumstances of the moment she awakens, her personality differs every time somewhat (this is, in a way, the scenario of Mahoraba). It seems to me, however, that she then molds it subsequently by letting herself forget things. A person can retain up to seven things in short-term memory, so Chihiro has complete control over them.

This process may be related to one other detail: I’m quite certain that she spins things in the diary. It came up first during all the pre-reset kissing and confession hubbub, when she obviousy has read what did not really happen (ironically, I do not remember the detail itself, because I failed to note it down). It also happened after the reset and more explicitly. At that time she completely handwaved it on the spot. Honestly, I started to worry that Himura tampers with the diary.

Regardless if she does this on purpose, she exhibits a certain flexibility in what she remembers. Renjii is very lucky she does not choose to remember nasty things.

This 10s clip makes me uncomfortable for some reason (seen at ef-memo.com):

Maybe it’s because Geneon are threatening to take the precious fantasy and turn it into a vulgar teenage porn.

Also, their Kei seems shockingly sturdy.

My softcover edition of “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” has the following at the page 122:

So I went through the entire plant. I have a very bad memory, but when I work intensively I have a good short-term memory, and so I could remember all kinds of crazy things like the building 90-207, vat number so-and-so, and so forth.

It looks that I was wrong when I wrote that she can retain seven things. The seven things limit deals with items in the immediate attention, but evidently the short-term memory goes further than that. By definition it’s maintained by agitated neurons, and a brain has billions of those.

Chihiro actually sneaks in a small expose on the topic somewhere around ep.4, when she explains her techniques of retention to Renji. I thought it was a little unrealistic, but perhaps not so much.

Seen at Omo’s today:

Not long ago I finished the last episode of ef - a tale of memories. It’s by far the most impressive anime of 2007. Sadly that’s just my impression and not a lasting opinion tested with time, but it was hard to deny that ef was a gimmick intended to impress. Much like Zetsubo Sensei and Hidamari Sketch, ef is the product of SHAFT, the same studio and pretty close to the same production team.

I’m so envious of raw watchers. Currently I’m batching the last 3 episodes of ef to marathon it. But I’m pleased to know that ef’s ending went well with Michaelhim. Honestly, it was a concern (which is not gone completely yet, SDB loved ending of Vandread, I hated it, but I’m “cautiously optimistic”). Also:

In the case of Seirei no Moribito, it was honestly pre-licensed as the flagship show kicking off Production IG’s 10th anniversary (IG is already one badass animation studio in Japan, not to mention the show is based on an acclaimed novel series to as well). In the case for Dennou Coil, it’s a primetime NHK project with 8 years in the making and a lot of anticipation (and no hype!). It bugs the hell out of me simply because I see what’s so good about those two shows, yet neither manages to make me care about them very much; yet I can’t stop talking about crappy shows like these SHAFT offerings [ef, SZS, and Hidamari].

Indeed. And an ouch for Dennou Coil. I think I’ll complete it one day, maybe, when it’s on Netflix.

FRIDGE UPDATE: I think we can add Rocket Girls to the coveted list of crappy shows of 2007 which beat the pants of flagship productions as far as interesting their viewers. It’s the most fun and exciting show, where ef is most moving and touching. And it wasn’t made by SHAFT, so being interesting is not some special SHAFT magic. BTW, Omo knew about it.

To sum it up, ef certainly was inspirational, and ended very well.

Among the anime I saw, ef seems to fall into the unique class together with Haibane Renmei. Unfortunately, I think it does not measure up, and this is why:

• ef overdoes on the imagery. It does not hurt the story, but it hurts viewers. The bulk of the imagery was poorly integrated: it only served to illustrate, or even to wink at the audience. In contrast, halo and wings of haibane were perfectly integrated (e.g. the holy donut). I’m quite convinced that a lot of this excess was only done to save money on animation.
• The split between the two clusters of characters hurts a lot. Switching between them makes the series to aquire a patchwork feel of Lucky Star. And certainly it was avoidable, just let Renji and Hiro to meet once, talk their respective issues. I blame the creators who were unable to break with the game heritage.

I can make more bogus analogies, for example Renji is Chihiro’s Rakka in the finale, although fortunately in this case I think he’d do what was necessary even if Chihiro didn’t call him by name. But that’s just the mind idling. I’m sure we’ll see more comparisons in the blogs, each more ridiculous than the one before. For now I’m comfortable with my classification of ef as Haibane-type, only not as powerful. It’s still very unique and interesting.

Liked: YES
Rewatch: Yes

P.S. The ep.10 redeemed the triangle of retards in my eyes at least somewhat. And I appreciate how men of the show get a grip (albeit helped with a good punch in the face or a miracle (tangentially, I had an experience of a paper airplane getting stuck in a raising thermal)).

In comments at Omo’s, DMdm sez:

ef has going for it more than just skilled use of technical pens and photoshop. As Link says, it’s taken a pretty tired genre — bishoujo game adaptations, a genre that has never produced anything particularly good — and produced a powerful set of stories braided together to form different views of a single theme. It’s a bit like the way Nadesico used the powered-suit genre to look at different aspects of memory (personal, cultural (fan nostalgia) and societal (history)).

We’ve talked a lot about the visual trademarks Shaft has brought to this work, but, as Jeff said a while ago, that could just be lipstick on a pig. I think what makes the visuals work is the way the story is being put together: three intertwining stories, each reflecting on the others, each taking words from the others and using them in completely different ways (sometimes with almost opposite meanings (at least momentarily — a lot of that may get resolved in the wrap up that I haven’t seen)).

The above was merely smart, but then he just goes into intellectual Super-Sayan mode:

Sort of as a continuation on my Gedo Senki remarks, I’d like to think that directors are looking at ef and learning lessons. But no one seems to have learned much from Nadesico, so I’m not too confident in that respect. I suspect we’ll see a lot of text thrown at the screen artlessly, glowing characters, and weird color palettes, without the story (and interplay of stories) that ef has employed so well. […]

Man I laughed so hard. It’s a good thing that my phlegm is flowing freely now and the cough does not hurt as much anymore.

I am, however, unhappy that I have to rescan ancient blog entires to get these nuggets of wit and wisdom. I only ran into the above because I collated a link collection for ef. This man really should get himself a blog and not make me rescan random blog entries… oh, wait.

UPDATE: BTW, it’s a different “dm” from DarkMirage (thanks Sanri for the reminder).