Roving Thoughts: Recent Entries

Brief impressions of the anime of the Spring 2013 season

As before this is my early impressions of the spring's crop of new shows, or at least the small number of them that I've bothered to watch. This time around I've been unusually selective about the shows that I've tried out, so I've rejected any number of things sight unseen based purely on premise descriptions and so on. This may have caused me to miss gems but I haven't really seen any sign of that so far.

(In particular there's a number of action and adventure series that I might normally have auditioned but that I'm actively skipping due to bad reports.)

Hits (so far):

• Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2012): A well produced incarnation of one of the classic stories of the genre. It's high time I watched some version of this classic and this is by all accounts a good one. I'm quite enjoying it after two episodes and I expect to keep on going.

  (Yes, I know, episodes have been out on Blu-ray for some time. I'm counting it as part of this season because it starting to air now is a large part of what's prompted me to start watching it. I was hoping that one of the regular subtitling groups would take the airing as their cue to give it a go-over, but apparently not.)

• Suisei no Gargantia: The adventures of a castaway soldier and his very powerful, nicely deadpan mecha in a somewhat silly world. I don't have much to say about this besides that it's interesting and amusing. The male protagonist is no Sagara Sousuke but he'll do.

• Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince: This is managing to be both goofy and serious at the same time without fumbling things. The goofiness predominates, which is one reason I find it fun to watch; the show is frequently painting with a relatively broad brush. As takes on the 'war is hell and so is what people do in it' genre go, I think this approach is much more interesting than the grim Gundam one.

• To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S: My mixed feelings about the first season of Railgun came roaring back when I saw the first episode of this, but I remain determinedly optimistic. It'll probably be worthwhile on the whole once the dust settles. Apart from that I don't really have anything to say; it's Railgun. I did rather enjoy the second episode and I kind of wish they'd started the show with it rather than spend almost all of the first one reintroducing us to the important characters (as if we could have forgotten them).

  (See NovaJinx on the Railgun cycle, because he's right about it.)

• Valvrave the Liberator: After two episodes this is a glorious, epic trainwreck that's utterly impossible to take seriously. Of course it could be serious about itself and become boring, but hope springs eternal.

  (Now I kind of understand people's feelings for Code Geass, which was apparently also this kind of epic crazy trainwreck.)

On the edge:

• Hataraku Maou-sama!: The comedy doesn't work for me but the plot that's developed at the end of the second episode is just holding my interest for now. With that said this may not last long.

  (I know, I'm an episode behind right now. This may be a bad sign.)

Miss:

• Devil Survivor 2 The Animation: My first draft of these impressions contained what was in retrospect a bunch of excuses for this show to explain why I was still watching it. If I have to make excuses for a show, it's not good and I should admit it to myself (even if I did watch three episodes sort of in hope).

  One of the several strikes against it is that it is trying too hard to have a steampunk Evangelion feel. The result is more bemusing than the creators probably intended.

Sadly a miss:

• Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san: This is probably a fine comedy but sadly and as usual I didn't find it really funny. It makes me smile every so often and it's watchable, but without laughs it's not really compelling. For what it's worth it strikes me as well executed and well paced; if its humour clicks with you, I suspect that you'll enjoy it a fair bit.

  (I actually feel a bit frustrated that I'm not laughing at Muromi's rapid-fire humour. I'd like to be enjoying it.)

Not for me:

• Aku no Hana: I am completely and utterly uninterested in the story, no matter how impressive or well executed it is.

• Shingeki no Kyojin: Everything I've heard says that it's bleak, bloody, grim, and so on. I've decided that I'm simply not interested in that sort of thing right now, regardless of how good it is or how much it might be my kind of thing with less blood and bleakness.

Just no:

• Haiyore! Nyaruko-san W: I eventually found the first season to be (boringly) ordinary so I'm not getting sucked into the second season.

• Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Bride: Just no, because sometimes I'm smart enough to not get caught in the same trap twice.

Other shows probably fall into the 'I read bad things about them' category mentioned above.

(This specifically includes Karneval, Mushibugyou, Crime Edge, Red Data Girl, and Arata Kangatari. As always, I may wind up checking out some or all of them out later due to future good reports, boredom with the shows I'm watching, or both.)

Some words on Shin Sekai Yori's Squealer

It turns out that I have more to say about Shin Sekai Yori than I've already written. Today is some things about Squealer (aka Yakomaru).

(There are spoilers here for SSY's final arc.)

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Looking back at the Winter 2013 anime season

It's time (and past time) for another look back at another season, following up on my early impressions and my midway views. In fact this is kind of a retrospective on two seasons, since so many of the Fall 2012 shows continued into this season; as such I'm splitting into two parts, one for a handful of this season's shows and the other for the big four heavyweights from last season.

For this season, in order:

• Sasami-san@Ganbaranai: This was the clear success of the season for me, delivering entertainment and surprise turns right up to the final episode. I quite enjoyed it, including all its references to Japanese mythology and vague randomness.

• Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo: This delivered exactly the popcorn entertainment that I wanted from it. I've got nothing to say about it that I didn't cover in my midway views.

• Yama no Susume: What this show really is is another 'cute girls doing cute things' show, just with a different framing premise and a certain amount of geekery about mountaineering equipment. I misled myself about its real nature based on the early episodes and then felt let down by the later ones (which is not the show's fault). On the whole it was okay but I'm left with no more than vague feelings of affection for it.

  (If I'd known at the start what I know now, I'm not certain that I'd have watched it at all. If you're going to, it's probably best watched all in one batch.)

• Vividred Operation: There are shows that are actively bad and then there are shows that are just empty somehow. VO is the latter; it goes through the motions but nothing ever really engaged. Despite what I wrote in my midway views, I watched all of it for no clear reason (perhaps partly stubbornness). For more, see Evirus's lovely summary of the show in his season wrapup (he is more charitable than I am).

  Given VO's excessive levels of fanservice and general emptiness, I think that people should give it a miss. If you want to watch something with this level of twitch-inducing fanservice, my understanding is that Strike Witches is actually much more interesting and emotionally involving. See also my early impressions.

In the end I tacitly dropped Hakkenden Touhou Hakken Ibun because I just felt no particular urge to watch any more. This is less a commentary on the show than a commentary on me; my understanding is that it was actually decently good, and it's getting a second season later on.

The fall shows, in order:

• Shin Sekai Yori: I wrote about it at some length but the short version is that I love it and think it's a great show. It is the best show from both this season and last season and it had the best ending. See also my Fall 2012 retrospective.

• Girls und Panzer: The delayed last two episodes totally delivered on the promise of the first ten episodes. They were a satisfying and exciting sports action capstone on an excellent and fun show. All I can possibly really say is PANZER VOR!

• Psycho-Pass: The show is far from perfect (for a start, it's far too much in love with violence to women) but after a terrible start it managed to turn itself into a pretty good show by dint of trying hard and having Akane. I've already written a bunch of words on Sibyl and on the ending so I don't have anything else to say here.

• Zetsuen no Tempest: This was an excellent show pretty much from start to end, almost without a fumble or a misstep (the bait and switch at the end of the second last episode costs it style points). It lacks the power (and the brutality) of Psycho-Pass, which is why I'm reluctantly ranking it below PP; I suspect that people will remember and talk about PP much longer than they will ZnT.

  (One problem for ZnT is that Aika is clearly the best character and she's dead for the entire show. Not that the other characters are bad, several of them are great, but they can't measure up to Aika.)

If I look only at the Winter 2013 shows, this was a good but not great season. If I throw in the four powerhouses that started in the fall, this is a stunningly excellent season, one that I have no complaints about at all.

Some words on Shin Sekai Yori

My overall summary of Shin Sekai Yori is that it's an ambitious show of an ambitious story that succeeded at delivering on both (although as an ambitious show and story there are bits that people feel didn't work). As a whole the show is a powerful, affecting work with a wide emotional range and a lot of things to think about. My personal view is that the show is very well directed and animated and that its periodic experiments don't take away from that, but I'm not a stickler for traditional animation.

(Shin Sekai Yori also had a great ending episode, one of the best that I've seen. It was surprising, powerful, and well directed all throughout, with pieces that people were quoting and alluding to from the moment it aired.)

I can summarize my overall views this way: if Shin Sekai Yori is not at the top of my 'best N in 2013' list, I'll be very happy because I'll have seen something even better than it in the rest of this year.

Liked: very much.
Rewatch: Possibly. This is one of the rare shows where I can imagine myself enjoying it a second time around.

(There are spoilers from now on.)

One of the things that the show excelled at was taking people doing horrible things and showing us why they had to do them. Pretty much everyone in the show is trapped in situations with no easy or good answers. The result is that, as I wrote on Twitter (spoilers in that conversation), a lot of people in SSY deserve death to some degree and don't to some degree. There are no shining heroes, just people doing the best that they can in a terrible situation. To me this made the characters feel more like people than, well, the protagonists of an anime. Call it a feeling of realism.

One part of this realism is that Saki and Satoru never particularly overcame the fundamental prejudices of their society, even when they were slapped in the face about them. Here I'm thinking particularly about their attitudes towards the bakenezumi (aka the queerats). Even Saki never really treats them as equals or fully people; to me this is particularly striking in what she unhesitatingly and more or less casually asks of Kiromaru in the last episode. Although other people may read the situation differently, to me Saki acted as if she was entitled to Kiromaru's sacrifice.

(I tweeted a version of this thought: 1, 2, 3.)

One of the things I believe about the setting is that Cantus users are dying out over the long term because of what they're doing to their own population level (this may be good news). While their raw birthrate is probably at or above their replacement rate, the problem is that they kill a significant number of their children in childhood. There's no sign that they make up for this with either unusually large families or unusually long lives; if anything, things seem to tilt the other way. I can't remember many mentions of (surviving) siblings in the whole show and the primary cast all seem to be single children.

(In Saki's case it's a plot point that her older sister didn't surive and that this put a great deal of stress on her parents; they didn't seem inclined to have a third child under pretty much any circumstances. My best evidence for people's lives not being unusually long is that Saki initially guessed that the elderly-looking Tomiko was 62.)

Other people have said more about Shin Sekai Yori and done it more coherently than I. See, for example, shibireru darou on episodes 24 and 25 and their roundup. The Cart Driver has a somewhat different take because Inushinde sees more flaws in the show than I do (the flaws may be there, but if so they didn't bother me next to everything else the show was doing).

(I've written less about Shin Sekai Yori than I have about Psycho-Pass because SSY is a better and clearer show.)

Update: I wound up with some more things to say about Squealer, which I put in ShinSekaiYoriSquealer.

Some rambling thoughts on Psycho-Pass and its ending

Almost from the start Psycho-Pass was clearly a show where the ending was pretty crucial and a bad ending would be a real problem for the show as a whole. Did Psycho-Pass come through in the end? My view is yes, although there are people who disagree. On the whole I consider the last episode a good ending although not a great one; to put it one way it was a well done and periodically exciting presentation of the last act of a play that we had all seen coming. There were no big surprises, no last minute shocks, simply well delivered story beats that we had already been (mostly) expecting.

(I'm now about to get into spoiler territory.)

The surface story of Psycho-Pass is the hunt for Makishima; apart from the first episode (which mostly serves as an introduction to the setting and the characters) the entire storyline is driven by his actions and revolves around them. But that's not really what the show's about and I think that how people feel about the ending (and thus the show) will depend on what they think the real story of Psycho-Pass is and that in turn depends on one's view of Sibyl. One view is that Sibyl is an inherently evil system and that the show should be about overthrowing it; this makes the ending at least a depressing one since the system survives and indeed co-opts Akane despite her knowing its terrible secrets. But I don't feel that way about Sibyl. Instead I've come around to seeing Psycho-Pass as fundamentally Akane's character arc, the story of Akane really growing up, maturing, and making her own decisions. This view makes the ending a powerful conclusion to the series because we see Akane come full circle to be a competent character and confident leader.

(I'll be honest; I'm biased towards this view partly because it makes the ending make sense.)

Having said that I don't know what the show really feels about Sibyl by the end. Is it evil but necessary? Flawed but necessary? There's certainly a lot of argument (tacit and explicit) in the latter parts of the show that Sibyl is now a necessity and society will fall apart without it. Also, part of my confusion is that the show and I clearly have rather different opinions on how horrifying the truth of Sibyl's deep secret is.

(This is serious spoiler territory now; I'm about to be explicit.)

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My view of Psycho-Pass's Sibyl System

(There are spoilers here.)

The Sibyl System is at the heart of Psycho-Pass and so I think that how people view it will be at the heart of how they react to the ending of the show. Because of this I want to write up my thoughts.

There is no question that the Sibyl System is flawed; the show goes out of its way to show us that in the first episode. Nor is there any question that it's tacitly oppressive; again, the show makes that clear with things like pervasive surveillance, mandatory treatment if your psycho-pass becomes cloudy, and potential imprisonment if the (flawed) system thinks that you've become merely potentially dangerous. One character has lived his entire life from childhood onwards as what is basically a non-person prisoner simply because the Sibyl System thought he was too much of a latent criminal.

But this brings us to the big question: is the Sibyl System an actively evil thing, something built and operated with malign intent or as a conscious tool for oppression? My view is that it is not.

I feel that Sibyl is fundamentally benevolent and well intentioned. Its flaws are not the result of active evil but (mostly) from being built with imperfect and limited technology; these make it both simplistic and overly rigid and thus inherently flawed. While the system is dishonest about how well Sibyl works and its limitations (and exactly how it works), this stems from good intentions. And generally Sibyl actually works. For the most part it delivers on what it claims to and does so without abuse, and as a result it's welcomed by people. You can argue about whether or not this is wise of them, but to the extent that Sibyl reduces people's free will it's not because Sibyl takes free will from people but because people voluntarily relinquish their free will to something that will do their thinking for them.

(You can argue that some of Sibyl's goals are inherently bad, eg that even if it had certainty that someone would commit crimes in the future they should not be imprisoned now.)

We never see Sibyl make a clear false positive diagnosis of (dangerous) criminality; its bad judgements of that (starting in the first episode) are always rational and driven by clearly limited and rigid views (eg 'too much stress makes people dangerous'). I maintain that we also never see strong evidence that Sibyl is corrupt and is being used to enrich and empower particular people.

(Yes, Sibyl covertly holds important and powerful positions. But there is no evidence that these positions are being abused for personal or group gain; instead, they are simply being used as part of making the whole Sibyl system work.)

To me this makes Psycho-Pass a much more interesting show than if Sibyl was a clear tool for evil and oppression. As it is you can have a real disagreement over whether Sibyl is a good thing and whether its benefits are worth its drawbacks.

(It also gives the show a different perspective, less about outside oppression and more about what people voluntarily do to themselves both individually and as a society.)

A comment on Katanagatari's ending

(Warning: there are indirect spoilers here for the endings of both Katanagatari and Haibane Renmei.)

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Checking in on the Winter 2013 anime season 'midway' through

It's time for the traditional look back at my early impressions of this season. I've delayed this long enough that it's not really 'midway' any more, at least in time. Partly this is because I've been only watching shows slowly myself for various reasons.

This is in order:

• Sasami-san@Ganbaranai: This is the clear hit of the season for me. It's nothing like I was expecting at the start and as far as I'm concerned this is a good thing. (I like good surprises.)

  (Episode 8 has an unfortunate drastic drop in animation quality but episode 9 recovered.)

• Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo: This is full throttle, no excuses popcorn entertainment. I'm watching this to cheer as villains get beaten up and amusing things happen, and it's delivering those with no pretenses of any depth.

• Yama no Susume: This needs more focus on the characters doing interesting things instead of mountaineering gear. I feel a degree of affection for it and I like it when I bother to watch, but I don't feel any particular push to watch more most of the time.

• Hakkenden Touhou Hakken Ibun: While I'm still watching this I feel ambivalent about it. Some aspects are nice (especially some of the secondary characters) but other bits of it are alternately annoyingly predictable or just stuff that I'm not interested in. I've recently been watching this only in bursts of several episodes at once; I may well not watch any more.

  (I just looked this up and it's apparently only scheduled for 13 episodes, which means that there's no chance of it having a real conclusion. I think my motivation to watch more just took a major nosedive.)

• Vividred Operation: The longer this runs, the more soulless it feels and the less interested I feel in watching more; it very much lacks some sort of vital spark of life. If I was smart I would drop this and use my time for other things; as it stands I still haven't bothered to watch the latest episode. Part of the problem is that the show still hasn't made me really care about any of the characters (cf).

Dropped:

• Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman: In the end I just felt unmotivated to watch the third episode. I think that part of the problem is that the setup just feels too much like a kid's cartoon.

  (I may well be missing something good here, but lack of motivation is lack of motivation.)

• Senran Kagura: I dropped this almost immediately after my initial impressions post as too empty and boring, among other things, and then managed to forget about it so much that I left it out of the first version of this entry.

De facto suspended:

• Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo (#15): In the end I lost most of my interest and motivation for this when it turned into a love triangle. Actually, I think I'm going to admit things and call this dropped outright.

• Robotics;Notes (#12): Too slow and not focusing on things that interested me. In theory I might try to marathon a bunch of episodes at once to see if I like it better that way.

In (other) series carried over from last season, Shin Sekai Yori, Zetsuen no Tempest, and Psycho-Pass are all still being excellent. They rank ahead of everything from this season except perhaps Sasami-san. If it was not for them, this season would be basically a desert for me.

(I'm not convinced that that would have been a bad thing; if the season had been a total bust I might have dug into Chihayafuru and/or AKB0048, or even some other old shows that I have vaguely queued up.)

Updated: I forgot Senran Kagura. Now fixed.

The best N anime that I saw in 2012

This is much like last year's best N, namely what I consider to be the best or the most enjoyable N anime that I saw in calendar 2012 (regardless of when they were made or released). This is much more delayed than usual for various reasons, including that nothing that finished in calendar 2012 really set me on fire the way shows have in past years. I was also trying to make up my mind about how to handle the strong crop of fall 2012 shows that haven't finished yet. In the end I've decided to declare unfinished shows ineligible at least for 2012.

(This is a real pity as it takes out a number of strong shows, one of them (Girls und Panzer) only because they didn't manage to get two episodes finished in time to air them as scheduled.)

More or less in order, at least at the start:

• Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita: Subtle and clever but also in your face obvious, biting yet with a heart, Jinrui is not really an accessible show but I love it anyways because in the end it made me think. I've written lots more that I'm not going to try to repeat.

• Wasurenagumo: This is a short bit of very well executed cute horror with a disturbing ending that only gets worse the more you think about it. If you squint at this carefully you can see a classical tragedy underneath. It has absolutely no blood and is by far the better for it.

• Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna: Ambitious, different, and not entirely successful but still a journey that was worth it; it helps that its high points were excellent. In the end it gave us the only answer to 'who is Mine Fujiko' that was really possible. (See also.)

• K: It's difficult for me to condense the appeal of K down to a few words. In the end I think I like it so much because it hits the mark so well and so often in its short run, and it makes everything fit together without feeling artificial. It's the rare show that is exactly the right length.

  I wrote a bunch more words about it in my fall retrospective.

• Giant Robo: This is a deserved classic that has a lot going for it. I think it's good and well worth your time, but in the end it didn't entirely click for me; I found myself questioning things about it that I shouldn't have been if it had fully swallowed me up in its magic. Perhaps I am too old and too cynical to really appreciate it.

Shows that I consider good but not memorable over the long term:

• Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror: A nice movie in the general Ghibli line of 'kid has encounter with the supernatural'; you should not be put off by the use of basic 3-D rendering.

• Hotarubi no Mori e: Touching and bittersweet. I think it's just the right length for its story.

• Ano Natsu de Matteru: I enjoyed watching this and it's a worthy successor or sequel (depending on your views) to the old Onegai series. But I have no urge to rewatch either them or this.

• Campione!: I think that this is better than it was generally given credit for; it had several interesting novel aspects and things that we rarely see. But it was not so novel and so well executed as to lift it out of the 'good but not memorable' class. (See also.)

• Moretsu Pirates: This was enjoyable and good but in the end there it didn't have enough substance to make it really memorable. That it didn't really come to any sort of conclusion didn't really help. (See also and also.)

• Aquarion EVOL: Gonzo and crazy in the best way and it has an epic troll in episode 23. But everything else is a bit lacking, which means that it has no actual depth; the entire point is the crazyness. This may be worth watching once but I don't think there's anything there for a second visit. (See also.)

• Dantalian no Shoka OVA: As time goes by it becomes clearer and clearer that Dantalian has wormed its way into my heart somehow; I have an unreasonable affection for it and wish I could see more. Seeing this OVA tugged at my heartstrings and left me as wistful as I expected.

I wish that I could put Dog Days' into this list with a clear conscience, but I can't because nothing happened in it. I'm not so enamoured of the setting and characters that I was really happy to have watched thirteen episodes of nothing much.

Things that were enjoyable fun and that I want to throw into this entry for various reasons without saying very much about:

• Moyashimon Returns: This isn't as memorable as the original series but that's not because this isn't good, it's because the original series was so relatively crazy.

• The Princess and the Pilot: A good adventure movie with a bunch of interesting flying.

• Hoshi o Ou Kodomo: Movies are spectacles in a way that TV anime is often not. This doesn't have a really deep and complex story, but it does things well.

Although I saw A Letter to Momo this year I don't think it's good enough to make this list.

(I find it a bit hard to figure out where to place movies in this sort of end of year list. Movies are almost invariably much better made and more interesting than four or five episodes of TV anime, so how do I really evaluate their merits properly?)

In the end I completed 28 series and movies this year. To my surprise this is only slightly less than the 30 from last year; before I actually got these numbers I thought that my watching was way down. I do think that I watched more movies this year than usual (if I'm counting right, six).

Something I never made up my mind about with Initial D

When I was watching Initial D, one of the things I was never able to make up my mind about was whether Takumi's story was fundamentally egalitarian or fundamentally conservative. Explaining this is going to require both some words and some minor spoilers (nothing more than you'd get by reading the Wikipedia page, though).

Initial D is certainly very egalitarian on the surface. Takumi is a (street racing) outsider in an unimpressive car and he beats a whole series of established street racers driving much better cars. Takumi does this by being an excellent driver (and in the initial races by being utterly familiar with his home mountain), but he got his driving skills and local knowledge through literally years of incessant daily practice. Takumi is better because he has worked harder, whether his opponents realize this or not, and a better driver in a good enough car will smoke a not as good driver in a hot car.

(A number of Takumi's early opponents get fairly emotional about what they feel is a total upset to the natural order. How can this nobody in a dinky car be beating them? They're renowned street racers, they have the right car, how come they're not winning?)

But as the series goes on we discover that Bunta (Takumi's father) was himself an infamous street racer when he was Takumi's age. As this comes up in the story, we also have any number of people saying that of course Takumi is good, he's 'Crazy' Bunta's son. Blood will tell, after all. If you've been watching anime for long you've seen this theme before; 'blood will tell' is a fairly major trope (mostly in shonen fighting shows, I think). If we believe 'blood will tell' then Takumi was destined for greatness from the start and someone who practiced as much as Takumi but did not have his blood would always be his inferior. This is fundamentally conservative, not egalitarian; it says that Takumi is innately one of the nobility of street racing, forever beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Depending on where you look at it and what you pay attention to, the anime story goes both ways. As I mentioned, I never was able to make up my mind about what it really was at its heart.

(Of course I am thinking too much about this.)