アニ・ノート

I feel like I need to let go but just one more thing, as seen at AoD forums:

Speaking of which, it was pointed out to me that the first letter of the title of every episode, put in order, spell out the name of the OP “euphoric field” — except for the fact that that there are 13 letters not 12. So a 13th episode is virtually assured. The new ef video game comes out a few weeks after the final ef DVD comes out — what a perfect opporunity to release that OVA! Then you have the bit about how every episode contains a secret password you can enter on the website… Or how about how DVD 1 includes a 32-page manga by “Nagi Shindou”? Or how some of the lines in the show mirrored perfectly lines spoken in the prologue (to the word), except it was a different character saying them? This show is almost too well-planned… it’s sort of creepy…

Hmm. Someone quickly suggested that it may be a typo or a prank, like the non-existing significance of umbrella handles.

UPDATE: Animesuki people pointed out that ‘d’ is inside ep.12.

Nova writes:

The first two thirds of this episode concludes Renji’s story, though I’m not sure if a miracle actually happens to allow Chihiro to overcome her disability (since her representative chains DO break).

There wasn’t any miracle, but by learning to trust Renji completely, Chihiro can borrow his memory (to an extent she can access it with words — she cannot see what he remembers unless he suddenly develops a talent to sketch). Therefore, she only needs to keep thinking about him and their relationship and then she pretty much does not need a diary anymore. This is why chains broke. However, I certainly hope she will not become too careless, because after all accidents happen, and the diary has a certain useful rigidity. I can see Renji asking Chihiro to “recall” certain events simply because his own recollection is fuzzy.

At first I wanted to save this for a long post, but… Seen at DbD:

Remember when Simon first went into space and forcibly combined with Arc Gurren to form Arc Gurren Lagann and then broke space/time/this blog? If that were a 10 on the chill meter, Renji and Chihiro reconciling, with Chihiro literally and figuratively breaking free of her chains, is a 9. It would have been a 10 if we saw the sheep breaking free and running wild too.

Totally.

I linked some of this before, but I want to have a consolidated list in one place (I have a category, but it’s too diffuse).

Firstly, Omo’s is an RTWT, hard to quote concisely entry. He also has a tag.

Impz@THAT:

It’s really hard to find an anime that has so much impact in this season. […]

If there is something more beautiful in the romance of the two couples this year, please point it out to me. It’s been a while since I last cried at an anime, and the last anime that did was AIR.

I don’t find ef to be a mindless tear-jerker in the way AIR was (although I did not see much of AIR at all, in fact because I hate this kind of tear squeezing).

Kurogane:

ef started rather humbly and pretty unimpressively too, after the initial hype for it that I was exposed to. […] The turning point of ef for me was probably the start of Chihiro’s novel writing endeavors […] ef’s climax for me was Chihiro’s tearing of her diary pages from the time she met Renji until the day she tried to break up with him.

Another thing I would like to give credit to is SHAFT’s artistic style, while initially I disliked, but I soon loved it as it has been a real star by it’s own, as it managed to convey itself very well and also added to to overall fantasy-styled setting of ef, giving it a more fantastic feel.

Anime Diet:

And the use of Tenmon’s music: while Tenmon’s score was not as brilliant, in my opinion, as his work with Makoto Shinkai, it was still head and shoulders above most anything except by Yuki Kajiura or Yoko Kanno for this year’s work. More importantly, it was used in ways that almost always added to every scene in crucial ways. The only exceptions are the somewhat predictable soaring passages that occur when romantic resolution comes (a kiss, a hug, etc). That’s almost… Hollywood.

My favourite example was the BGM change when Hiro turned the timed phone call around. It was very overt. But hey, whatever works, I’ve got no complaints.

Aside from the overt artsiness of the beginning episodes, the voice actors were, frankly, poorly cast for people who are not already immune to the eroge/harem style of voice acting.

I thought they were pretty good, and I’ve got Hashi-hime on my side. Natsumi Yanase had left an especial impression.

Jason@DbD (also has a tag):

Just noticed that ef is in a statistical tie, rating-wise, as Gurren Lagann over at ANN as a “masterpiece.” Gainax put a lot more effort into Gurren Lagann than Shaft did with ef. Gainax wrote the story and provided better animation… I’m still of the feeling that ef succeeded in spite of Shaft []

Xebek:

One thing I do have to say about the show is that it was interesting to see the series, for the most part, have two separate stories going on. There are hundreds of series that have subplots or have side characters that get their own story and so on but I haven’t really seen a show like this before. For the most part the two stories that they had going were completely separate and had nothing to do with each other.

I thought that running two stories was detremental. In comments, Omo had a different angle:

I think the ultimate achievement of ef a tale of memories is bringing that visual novel flair and style to the anime format. That’s why we’ve never seen something like this before…

Concrete Badger:

It would have been hard for me to believe back when I started watching ef -a tale of memories that I would find it to be so profound, moving and extraordinary. During these twelve episodes I was baffled by the imagery and symbolism, only to gradually understand at least part of what the creators were trying to say; turning a dating sim/visual novel into one of the most powerful pieces of drama of 2007 amounts to the metaphorical act of making a diamond out of broken glass.

There’s more at the link.

Stripey:

I was one of those who was put off by the visual style that cluttered ep 1. Oh yes, I get it. They are meant to accentuate mood, emotions and the less tangible aspectsof the plot/interaction in an artistic, sometimes abstract manner etc etc. The problem was that it was overdone, to the point that it was self-indulgent and distracting. Thankfully, the intensity tapered off within episodes and a nice balance was struck between the story and symbolisms.

Heh. I think I can see a pattern in blog reactions now.

There was way more blogged: ED translation mismatch @Astrobunny’s, a self-proclaimed expert underwhelmed, and general buzz. I don’t think I can cover all of it, so this will do.

UPDATE: Woops, forgot about Jonathan, who was disappointed:

[ef] has earned itself a host of devoted fans with its clever, insightful writing and splendid retro artwork. Unfortunately it turns into a massive angst-fest. I’m usually pretty tolerant of angst, but I do have my limits. In this case the angst causes one of the main characters to do something truly horrible, an act so abusive that it ruined the series for me, in spite of the subsequent attempt to proceed to a happy ending.

Now that’s what I call a substantiated disagreement between intelligent people.

(Meta-update: Jonathan spelled out the argument later, and it’s probably the most thought-out entry on ef across all blogs.

UPDATE: C.C. Yoshi (very long).

UPDATE 2008/2/24: One more:

Also for a supposed sky-whoring anime, sola is majorly outwhored by ef in that respect.

There’s also a serious message.

UPDATE 2008/3/13: Evirus finaly caught up with the show:

Just a few brief final thoughts about ef: I liked the series, but clearly not as much as most people did. I never did fully warm up to most of the characters. However, I do appreciate that ef tried to do for moe blobs what Eva did for giant robots and their pilots.

That’s giving ef a lot of credit, don’t you think?

Jonathan bade his time long enough, marshalling his arguments in secret like Marshal Zhukov did for Operation Uranus. Now that he dropped the hammer on Chihiro, the effect is equally devastating [link].

There’s nothing left for me to debate, except to pick up the pieces and observe that in my experience the preoccupation with “professional help” is deeply unhealthy. By creating a comforting relief from the ouside, the specialist makes the illness more attractive and tends to draw the treated mind deeper into it. It is downright dangerous and worse, is imminently avoidable in most cases. If this applies to Chihiro is speculative, of course. She is after all completely fictional and thus malleable for the writer.

LATE UPDATE: Kurogane joins Jonathan:

… more especially when I was totally lead to think that Chihiro was going to commit suicide at that point.

This thought did not occur to me when I was watching for some reason, so my first instinct was to disagree with Jonathan. But like I said, it was a well framed response, and now we see Kuro doing the same interpretation.

Owen noticed a few minutes ago at IRC that sola and ef share the character designer.

Indeed, the resemblance is there, especially en-face, like Chihiro above. The main difference (and again, I only saw one episode and Astro says that the art improves) is that of implementation. Closeups were good; the hideous screenshot was of a knee-ups.

So, I don’t see any contradiction. Both designs were competent, but ef’s is a shade softer, and then SHAFT simply has done a good job.

Today, the top 10 categories are:

I have already started to throttle ef by combining entries and dropping anythig inessential. But it was too little, too late. I don’t see any series breaking ef’s supremacy any time soon, regretfuly.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty decent group. Might as well make it into a recommended list.

P.S. I did not mean to imply that ef was bad. What I regret is that I do not see anything so captivating and blogworthy on the horizon.

UPDATE: Aziz writes:

okay, I am torrenting ef. The repeated mention of it was like endless drops of water carving down the mountain into sand.

This is exactly what I was afraid of. At least have not promised to drop me off his feedlist in disgust… yet.

I’ve retagged this post into ef category.

Omo makes a remark in RIUVA’s comments:

2. Reading various bloggers’ reactions and comments on ef tells me one thing (and many others, but): people tend to either “get” the Chihiro story or the Miyako story. Very few people get both and how they really relate to each other. Fewer still get how they relate to each other before seeing the last episode. You are pretty much just in the Chihiro camp. I think this is the biggest failure of ef anime (especially given its role in the franchise), so it’s not really a fault of the people who don’t get it…. but to me it seems as plain as day.

He does not bother to explain to us plebes how the stories were connected or intended to be connected. Fortunately Kuro gives it a shot at #animeblogger:

<kur0gan3> not material enough?
<zaitcev> “Very few people get both and how they really relate to each other.”
<kur0gan3> he already said that the stories explore the opposing sides of the same theme.
<zaitcev> However, the main point of my critique was that the stories were insufficiently connected, and Omo is taking aim very squarely at it. [Omo does allow, however, that not having “it” explicit was “the biggest failure” — Author]
<kur0gan3> oh
<kur0gan3> insufficiently connected?
<kur0gan3> well
<kur0gan3> maybe not physically, but thematically, they are.
…
<kur0gan3> Hiro’s main theme is mainly “dreams”
<kur0gan3> he dreams of being a real manga-ka, but he’s held back by his relationship with Kei
<kur0gan3> more like, Kei’s nagging.
<zaitcev> ok.
<kur0gan3> what finally frees him is when he realizes his feelings for Miyako
<zaitcev> I think I never saw Chihiro dreaming. Maybe she cannot, because I heard REM sleep is what actually re-packs memories into long-term areas.
…
<zaitcev> So, ok. Dreams are the theme. How do they oppose Chihiro? And her theme is the direct memory and recall, probably.
<kur0gan3> well
<kur0gan3> i can put it in this way
<kur0gan3> both stories have “dreams” and “memories” as their themes, in Chihiro’s story, “memories” are the main, “dreams” are the supporting, vice versa in Miyako’s story.

Sounds pretty convincing. But then Omo himsef drops this hint:

Like how the two storylines explore opposite sides of the same theme, for example. // It’s no coincidence that Renji was doing a career survey.

We orz in front of your cranium, are you happy now? Happy enough to explain your reasoning?

In the end I marathoned the remainder of the damn thing in two days, since I leave for Tokyo tomorrow and I didn’t want to leave Hourglass of Summer hanging. God that was long. The amazing part, by the way, is how the OVA lasts for 2 episodes only. I have to admit I’m curious how they managed to compress it.

Overall, I had some good fun, but it wasn’t substantial enough entertainment. For those who went there, I think the best parts were at the end, when Ai and Kaho let their jealosy to get better of them. Also, Takeshi was awesome, many times (I penciled “Takeshi is awesome” 4 times in various places). I wonder if he gets Kaho on the Ai path. That’d be cool. In any case, visual novels do not seem like anything I’m interested in, but I had to try to be sure.

Oh, and almost forgot. One thing I had in mind starting this trip was Omo’s comment:

I think the ultimate achievement of ef is bringing that visual novel flair and style to the anime format. That’s why we’ve never seen something like this before…

Sadly, I lost it. Somewhere in the beginning, when I got over the discomfort with the medium and found the right mental framework (”audiobook manga on DVD”), I thought that I was beginning to see what he meant, but now the feeling has dissipated. Should’ve operationalized it back then.

Now he’s done it:

5) If you have any physical manifestations of illness/weakness (like an eyepatch), I hate you

This is war.

P.S. Does that include eyeglasses?