Roving Thoughts archives

A thought on Concrete Revolutio and its exploration of heroism (and My Hero Academia's too)

I rambled a bit about this on Twitter, but I want to put this down in a more durable (and slightly longer form). So:

@thatcks: An obvious thesis: I think it matters for Concrete Revolutio that the usual Japanese phrase for 'hero' is apparently 'ally of justice'.

This is 'hero' in the sense of (super)hero, which is what the characters in Concrete Revolutio are. I don't know enough to know if Japanese has a single word that directly maps to this (English) concept, but according to this blog entry on ConRevo translations the Japanese phrase the show uses for this concept is seigi no mikata, which literally means 'ally of justice'.

Continuing from Twitter:

This puts a stronger spin on Concrete Revolutio's constant interrogation of what justice is (and what it means to be its ally).
Characters like Jiro care so much about justice because, well, when they think of themselves as heroes they're literally allies of justice.
If Jiro (or anyone) cannot see what justice is or where it lies, they cannot be the heroes that they want to be and imagine themselves as.

Let me rephrase that to be clearer. When ConRevo's characters think and worry about this, they're of course thinking in their native language, using their native terminology. So when Jiro thinks about being a hero, he literally thinking about being an 'ally of justice', since that's the term and phrase he uses for it. Naturally what you think of yourself as influences what you think about and what your concerns are, so the very term the characters use in ConRevo makes them worry about what justice is (and what it means to be an ally of it). A hero must be 'heroic', whatever that is, but in Western (super)hero works this need not have much to do with justice; however, an 'ally of justice' must be doing things that are on the side of justice, wherever that is. And if you wind up not being on the side of justice, your self-image can fall apart; after all, how can you call yourself an ally of justice any more?

This gives various characters in CR quite strong reasons to cling grimly to their own visions of what justice is, even when it disagrees with other people or leads them to absurd results. I imagine that it also drives characters to want simple, clear definitions that they can follow, instead of messy complicated ones that are very situational and unclear. If you can't see where justice is, how can you know what to do in order to be an ally of justice? Maybe if you act, you're actually working against justice and so being a villain.

This brings me to My Hero Academia and another set of tweets:

A thought: both Concrete Revolutio and My Hero Academia are kind of asking the same question but with totally different viewpoints on it.
And I think that the difference between ConRevo and MHA comes down to the term they use for what it is they're asking about.
In that both ConRevo and MHA are asking 'what is it that makes you a hero/how do you be a hero', but MHA uses 'hero' & CR 'ally of justice'.
So Concrete Revolutio interrogates what justice is, while My Hero Academia asks what is at the core of heroism (vs power & capability).

As far as I can remember from watching it, Boku no Hero Academia consistently used the English 'hero' for what its characters are, not the Japanese 'seigi no mikata' (it even put 'hero' in its Japanese title). One of the clear themes in MHA is that Midoriya (and true heroes in general) are defined by their willingness to act even without the surety of power and conversely that power alone doesn't make you a hero (Bakugo is the poster child of this (also)). Midoriya is not a hero because he has power, he's a hero because he selflessly throws himself into situations to help others who need it (starting with his climactic moment in episode 2).

So, as I see it, both Concrete Revolutio and My Hero Academia have as a theme the question of 'what does it mean to be a hero', except that because they use different terms for it they wind up exploring the question from quite different directions. MHA uses the English 'hero' and winds up approaching it in a way that's very natural to Western audiences. Concrete Revolutio uses the Japanese 'ally of justice' and so winds up exploring the question of what justice is; is it adherence to a law, or to morality, or to the humanity of those you're helping, or what?

Why dropping Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress makes me oddly happy

Every so often I worry that I have no sense of taste in anime, or at least in action anime. After all I watch a lot of what is basically bland dreck (Haifuri this season, Luck & Logic last season, and the list goes on); to get me to not watch an action show, it usually has to be either unusually terribly made or unusually stuffed with obnoxious cliches (or both). I will really put up with a lot if you feed me a certain amount of tolerable action. I'll even be reasonably enthused about it.

Kabaneri is not the sort of action show that I drop. Far from being an unusually bad one, it's an unusually good one, well directed and well made. In the four episodes I saw it had high points that were well above what many shows I've watched achieve in their entire run in fight direction, art, sheer staging of scenes, and so on. Nor was it laden with the usual painful cliches of the broad action genre, and it even had only a few cardboard cutout stock characters from central casting.

(Kabaneri had some cliches but they're Araki cliches not genre cliches, if that makes sense. The charitable will call them themes.)

I dropped Kabaneri anyways because I didn't like it, despite it having everything everything that ought to have kept me watching. What that means is that I'm responding to something in action shows that's more than the obvious; I have some sort of taste for them that transcends basic technical qualities. Kabaneri is a quite competent action show and I've even been convinced that there's some depth in the writing, but I'm still not interested. It's simply not to my taste.

Which is why dropping Kabaneri makes me oddly happy. Dropping it because it's not to my taste means that I actually have some taste.

(This doesn't mean that I understand my sense of taste here. While I can point to nits around Kabaneri, I feel that they're only the surface of my reaction to it. I've forgiven more from worse shows and kept watching them, so there's something deep in Kabaneri that just turns me off it.)

Checking in on the Spring 2016 anime season 'midway' through

Once again it's time for a 'midway' (or much of the way through) update on my early impressions of the season. This one is kind of delayed, partly because many shows entered a holding pattern early and partly because I've been blathering away with episode impressions on Twitter. Or at least that's my excuse this time around.

Great:

• Concrete Revolutio: While CR is my favorite show this season, it's been frustratingly inconsistent, partly because it's had a significant number of one off episodes. Some episodes have been amazing, some of have been good, and some have banged thematic drums so hard it was almost deafening. Things have been developing, but I wish the whole season had the sense of forward momentum that the first season had.

• Kiznaiver: I started out wanting more science fiction stuff here, but not any more. Now these people and their interactions have hooked me and I'm happy to leave the whole Kizna system and so on as an excuse to have them bounce off each other. It's a delicate balance and I'm hoping the show can sustain it.

• Flying Witch: Pretty much every episode, this show demonstrates that it knows how to make quiet moments work. Sometimes they're absurd moments, sometimes magical ones, sometimes perfectly normal ones, but they all keep me engaged and enjoying the atmosphere. It's pretty surprising, but I'm really enjoying this and its laid back charm.

  (The show probably wouldn't work without the magic, at least for me.)

Good:

• Macross Delta: The show is solidly made, but only some of it really clicks with me. The other parts are clearly structurally necessary, but not engaging. The show can do good work, but I just wind up feeling distant from it. It doesn't help that I'm not really hooked on any of the characters for various reasons.

• Kuromukuro: This has wound up being a perfectly serviceable SF action show. I like those, and this has some decent character moments and other bits to add to its appeal. It is naturally somewhat less engaging when it drops the action in order to fiddle around with character development and hint at mysterious conspiracies and so on, as it has in a few episodes lately.

• Gakusen Toshi Asterisk: I still like the show and it's still good at all of its usual things, but the unrelenting sameness of the tournament arc has dragged it down and kind of made it a slog. Episode after episode had us in the same fight situation and the same fundamental setup, and it just didn't work.

Okay:

• Twin Star Exorcists: This has developed into a solid show with good character chemistry. It's not exceptional by any means (and it's not even up to Asterisk's normal levels), but it is nicely entertaining and I enjoy its unusual visual style and periodic deliberate absurdities. One thing that makes it work is that the interactions of the protagonists are refreshingly devoid of pretty much all of the romance/LN cliches; these are people who can talk to each other and who get over things.

• My Hero Academia aka Boku no Hero Academia: This is excellent fundamental material being dragged down significantly by a glacial pace. Episode after episode we get perhaps ten minutes of material that must be padded out to 24 minutes in various bad ways.

On the edge:

• Haifuri: This show has two flaws; it hasn't fully committed to any of the various things it's done, and it doesn't understand how to stage and direct interesting action sequences. It's just entertaining enough to keep me watching it while I drink a cup of coffee.

• Space Patrol Luluco: As Emily Rand has written about, the fanservice references have eaten the show lately. At this point I'm mostly watching because apparently there's a big Evangelion parody in the last episode. If the show ever really cared about the allusions it was apparently making in the first few episodes, it's stopped now.

Dropped:

• Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: After four episodes I still didn't really care about any of the characters and there were all sorts of things that irritated me about the show, so the end of the first arc seemed like a good place to get off this particular train. One of the primary irritations is that it was clear that the show ran primarily on 'rule of cool', yet wanted me to take it seriously. Sorry, show, you can't combine those two (or at least Kabaneri wasn't good enough to pull it off).

  (I'm actually peculiarly happy that I've dropped Kabaneri for reasons that don't fit in this entry.)

This is a pretty solid season so far. My top three shows are all great and I'm solidly enjoying most of the remaining shows (Haifuri is partly coasting on inertia, much like Luck & Logic last season).