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First Steps in Anime
In the last year or so, we’ve been exploring the vast world of anime and manga. Some of the clichés about the limited subject matter of Japanese animations are true: I’m always pleased to encounter a series that doesn’t feature a giant robot. And some are false: you’re not going to stumble across violent porn unless you go looking for it. Dear old David, who runs the White Horse Bookshop in Faringdon (well worth a visit), was aghast when I ordered The Anime Companion for Caroline. ‘Is that the sort of thing she likes?!’ he murmured. I’ve yet to ask exactly what sort of mental picture I conjured up, but he now waves at me in a kind of rakish way.
A series like The Excel Saga, Japan’s version of The Goodies, where each episode is a parody of something and everyone can be blown up and be cartoon whole again next week, is an amazingly swift way to learn about the details of Japanese culture. The installment that parodies American animation (our heroine goes to America and ends up in a ghetto full of ridiculously sweary heavily armed macho kids) is a revelation in itself. Ranma ½, another crazy comedy, about a boy who’s cursed to turn into a girl when he gets wet, is also genuinely funny, especially in the episodes featuring Ranma’s deadly martial arts enemy, who would wreak terrible revenge on him, if only he didn’t have such a terrible sense of direction. We see him going across town via a range of mountains and the Tokyo Tower.
We’ve learnt that slow pans across tables loaded with gorgeous food are very popular, a detail of a country that experienced famine in living memory that I guess might be invisible and normal to the Japanese themselves. We’ve learnt that High School is the entire heroic world for Japan even more than for America. We’ve learnt that Japanese pulp storytellers treat Christianity with the same jolly lack of knowledge with which Western pulp storytellers approach Australian Aborigine belief.
We know Nekokoneko is a sweet little kitten sitting on top of a cat.
We know nothing.
I get the feeling that a lot of the best work is in shojo: stories for girls. Evangelion, the much-loved classic of shonen, stories for boys, swiftly becomes a deeply pretentious non-adventure about… okay, I know they’re not giant robots, but if it looks like a giant robot and acts like a giant robot… A lot of shows for all the family don’t really engage with adult interests in the same way that the best Western pulp does, because modern anime sprang out of nostalgia for those funny old shows from a Seventies childhood that had, erm, giant robots in them.
So what do I think genuinely works for an adult audience?
Azumanga Daioh, which means ‘Azu’s Comic Strip for Daioh Magazine’, but is also a pun which I don’t understand, is a class act. It’s about a group of Japanese schoolgirls… no, wait a second! It’s about the friendships and running jokes amongst a very recognisable bunch of Japanese schoolgirls. It shies away from ‘fan service’ (that is, deliberate jiggling) in favour of stories about exam pressure, sports and the impossibility of dieting. Their teacher, Miss Yukari, is amoral, cynical and teenage in a very true young teacher way. The gang are pleased, for instance, to discover that they’ve all been moved up a class together, only to realise it’s so Yukari doesn’t have to remember any new names. The original manga, uniquely in my experience, is in the form of four panel newspaper style strips, so the jokes are wry and laid-back. Best of all, Azumanga has a weirdly heroic dimension as Sakaki-San, the most sporty and admirably cool of the girls, spends all her school life trying to pet the same cat and always being bitten by it. That wraps up in a very moving way at the end of her school days (because each anime spans a school year) in a way that Charlie Brown never managed when it came to kicking that football.
Rurouni Kenshin is a boy’s anime with a lot of girl interest. It concerns the titular Kenshin, a warrior who wanders Japan in the historical era immediately after the civil war that forced Japan to encounter modernity and the rest of the world. He used to be bloodthirsty, now, like Shane, the world’s got too civilised for him and he only wants peace. He displays the ideal of male temper: always smiling in a calm, unperturbed way, but certain of his values, and willing, only if pushed to absolute necessity, to create high speed swordplay havoc in defence of the innocent. With a blunt sword, because he won’t kill anymore. He’s calm, that is, apart from when his new landlady, the lovely and fierce Kaoru, gets annoyed at his cool and starts throwing things. Then, and this is where a whole visual vocabulary comes into play, he might become a little animated toddler with bulging eyes. Because in anime and manga your emotions govern the way you’re depicted. Most of the time, Kenshin is drawn in lovingly realistic swoonsome detail. But when he’s being an innocent old-world klutz, ma’am, his physical shape becomes silly to match that. It takes only a moment to completely get it, because it’s a very intuitive thing: ‘I was so embarrassed, I felt that big!’ Kenshin’s serial adventures are genuine historical drama with very sweet leads and a sense of moral courage.
But my absolute favourite, as we speak, is Fruits Basket. It’s a very simple idea: an orphan girl meets the family of a guy she knows at school. There are thirteen of them, distant cousins, brothers and sisters, and they’re all cursed: each of them becomes, under stress, one of the animals from the Chinese zodiac. Not only that, their characters are apt for their signs, so the Rabbit is kind and a bit annoying, the Snake is a grandiosely flamboyant omnisexual, etc.. Our heroine’s kindness and positive attitude are set against problems between them that seem cosmically fixed. She’s helping to bring the Rat and the Cat closer together, but aren’t they always going to hate each other? There’s gentle comedy, but there really are no adventures. This is an endlessly interesting exploration of pure character interaction, and the writer of the manga, Natsuki Takaya, is a genius. It’s utterly addictive, because it gets you deeply involved very quickly. The art style, all frozen moments of thought and emotional turning points that take up whole pages with a single expression, is absolutely expressive.
It’s also a good demonstration of another weird cultural detail: it’s almost required for Japanese schoolboys and girls to have same-sex crushes. Sakaki-San is worshipped by the ever-trembling Kaorin, and at least two of the zodiac males have been involved with other men. But as soon as they’re adults, a vast homophobia rushes in and puts an end to all that.
Of course, rather than any of the above, the best way to sample the absolute height of Japanese animation is probably to watch any of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, like Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, or the best movie of all time (well, up there with One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing), My Neighbour Totoro. But I’ve already gone on too long.
I humbly await recommendations and pointers from those with more experience in this matter than I.
A series like The Excel Saga, Japan’s version of The Goodies, where each episode is a parody of something and everyone can be blown up and be cartoon whole again next week, is an amazingly swift way to learn about the details of Japanese culture. The installment that parodies American animation (our heroine goes to America and ends up in a ghetto full of ridiculously sweary heavily armed macho kids) is a revelation in itself. Ranma ½, another crazy comedy, about a boy who’s cursed to turn into a girl when he gets wet, is also genuinely funny, especially in the episodes featuring Ranma’s deadly martial arts enemy, who would wreak terrible revenge on him, if only he didn’t have such a terrible sense of direction. We see him going across town via a range of mountains and the Tokyo Tower.
We’ve learnt that slow pans across tables loaded with gorgeous food are very popular, a detail of a country that experienced famine in living memory that I guess might be invisible and normal to the Japanese themselves. We’ve learnt that High School is the entire heroic world for Japan even more than for America. We’ve learnt that Japanese pulp storytellers treat Christianity with the same jolly lack of knowledge with which Western pulp storytellers approach Australian Aborigine belief.
We know Nekokoneko is a sweet little kitten sitting on top of a cat.
We know nothing.
I get the feeling that a lot of the best work is in shojo: stories for girls. Evangelion, the much-loved classic of shonen, stories for boys, swiftly becomes a deeply pretentious non-adventure about… okay, I know they’re not giant robots, but if it looks like a giant robot and acts like a giant robot… A lot of shows for all the family don’t really engage with adult interests in the same way that the best Western pulp does, because modern anime sprang out of nostalgia for those funny old shows from a Seventies childhood that had, erm, giant robots in them.
So what do I think genuinely works for an adult audience?
Azumanga Daioh, which means ‘Azu’s Comic Strip for Daioh Magazine’, but is also a pun which I don’t understand, is a class act. It’s about a group of Japanese schoolgirls… no, wait a second! It’s about the friendships and running jokes amongst a very recognisable bunch of Japanese schoolgirls. It shies away from ‘fan service’ (that is, deliberate jiggling) in favour of stories about exam pressure, sports and the impossibility of dieting. Their teacher, Miss Yukari, is amoral, cynical and teenage in a very true young teacher way. The gang are pleased, for instance, to discover that they’ve all been moved up a class together, only to realise it’s so Yukari doesn’t have to remember any new names. The original manga, uniquely in my experience, is in the form of four panel newspaper style strips, so the jokes are wry and laid-back. Best of all, Azumanga has a weirdly heroic dimension as Sakaki-San, the most sporty and admirably cool of the girls, spends all her school life trying to pet the same cat and always being bitten by it. That wraps up in a very moving way at the end of her school days (because each anime spans a school year) in a way that Charlie Brown never managed when it came to kicking that football.
Rurouni Kenshin is a boy’s anime with a lot of girl interest. It concerns the titular Kenshin, a warrior who wanders Japan in the historical era immediately after the civil war that forced Japan to encounter modernity and the rest of the world. He used to be bloodthirsty, now, like Shane, the world’s got too civilised for him and he only wants peace. He displays the ideal of male temper: always smiling in a calm, unperturbed way, but certain of his values, and willing, only if pushed to absolute necessity, to create high speed swordplay havoc in defence of the innocent. With a blunt sword, because he won’t kill anymore. He’s calm, that is, apart from when his new landlady, the lovely and fierce Kaoru, gets annoyed at his cool and starts throwing things. Then, and this is where a whole visual vocabulary comes into play, he might become a little animated toddler with bulging eyes. Because in anime and manga your emotions govern the way you’re depicted. Most of the time, Kenshin is drawn in lovingly realistic swoonsome detail. But when he’s being an innocent old-world klutz, ma’am, his physical shape becomes silly to match that. It takes only a moment to completely get it, because it’s a very intuitive thing: ‘I was so embarrassed, I felt that big!’ Kenshin’s serial adventures are genuine historical drama with very sweet leads and a sense of moral courage.
But my absolute favourite, as we speak, is Fruits Basket. It’s a very simple idea: an orphan girl meets the family of a guy she knows at school. There are thirteen of them, distant cousins, brothers and sisters, and they’re all cursed: each of them becomes, under stress, one of the animals from the Chinese zodiac. Not only that, their characters are apt for their signs, so the Rabbit is kind and a bit annoying, the Snake is a grandiosely flamboyant omnisexual, etc.. Our heroine’s kindness and positive attitude are set against problems between them that seem cosmically fixed. She’s helping to bring the Rat and the Cat closer together, but aren’t they always going to hate each other? There’s gentle comedy, but there really are no adventures. This is an endlessly interesting exploration of pure character interaction, and the writer of the manga, Natsuki Takaya, is a genius. It’s utterly addictive, because it gets you deeply involved very quickly. The art style, all frozen moments of thought and emotional turning points that take up whole pages with a single expression, is absolutely expressive.
It’s also a good demonstration of another weird cultural detail: it’s almost required for Japanese schoolboys and girls to have same-sex crushes. Sakaki-San is worshipped by the ever-trembling Kaorin, and at least two of the zodiac males have been involved with other men. But as soon as they’re adults, a vast homophobia rushes in and puts an end to all that.
Of course, rather than any of the above, the best way to sample the absolute height of Japanese animation is probably to watch any of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, like Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, or the best movie of all time (well, up there with One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing), My Neighbour Totoro. But I’ve already gone on too long.
I humbly await recommendations and pointers from those with more experience in this matter than I.
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If you like the FB manga, you might be interested in Kare Kano, aka His And Hers Circumstances. A very involved high school romance manga with hidden depths.
And if you liked Excel Saga, there is, of course, Puni Puni Poemy. But that really verges on porn. Hysterical porn, but still porn. :)
Sakaki-san!!!!!
Some rambling recommendations for you from the magical state of Texas:
Mai-Hime: Mai-Hime starts out as a fairly standard magical girls show, but gradually deepens and darkens until it becomes an all out war around the theme 'How far will you go to protect the one you love'? (DO NOT READ THE MANGA, IT IS AWFUL, BUT THE ANIME IS GOOD.)
Maison Ikkoku: This is an old one, but it's basically a love triangle story in which a young would-be college student (a ronin, who flunked his entrance exams the first time around) comes to fall in love with his apartment manager, a young widow. It includes a love triangle, various whacky hijinks with the other residents, college fun, and a lot of humor.
The EARLY Gundam series: Stardust Memories, War in the Pocket, etc, before the Franchise became too insane. Very good sci-fi/political/war stories with giant robots.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Another old one, but good one, dealing with a massive war between space empires.
Gankutsuou: This is a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, but set in a space faring future. It is BRILLIANT, taking the best ideas of the book and cutting the worst ones, combined with amazing visuals and very good pacing.
Cowboy Bebop: Outerspace Noir, staring four doomed bounty hunters and their dog.
School Rumble: School Rumble is a high school adventures / romance / action manga and anime. It is slow to get started, but gradually develops a very interesting cast and has many on-going plotlines. And it's very funny.
Dokkoida: Extremely funny in a laid-back sort of way. Earth human male with no life blunders into being chosen to field test a very silly looking battlesuit. Various galactic supervillains are sent to live undercover on Earth by the same company and stage attacks which can test the suit's capabilities. The hero and the villains all live in the same apartment building with knowing everyone else in the building is ALSO a superperson. Very funny.
Revolutionary Girl Utena: A surreal high school drama / action / romance story which deconstructs all the cliches of teen romances for women. In some ways, a very bitter anime, and definitely one that requires a lot of thought.
--John Biles the Anonymous
Ah, I've read the first volume of Kare Kano, and really liked it, but I'm told the anime is the Evangelion guy doing rom com, which rather puts me off. Thank you, John, for that huge list. But what did I say about giant robots? Or battlesuits, they're included too. I'll definitely give Maison Ikkoku a try. I've seen the Cowboy Bebop movie, and while I liked the style and the gorgeous animation, oh, and hey, that magnificent jazz soundtrack, I thought the plot was kind of third hand. That's another problem in anime, too many creators thinking pastiche and homage is good enough.
Yes, please avoid the Kare Kano anime. The manga artist hates it. :) I still recommend the manga, which has nothing to do with Gainax at all.
Trigun is worth watching. Gets it's humour from the same place as Kenshin - super cool hero who is a complete klutz at times.
Haibane Renmei - it's very slow paced, concerning creatures that look like angels living among humans. However the animation is amazing and never seems to go too slow.
Samurai Deeper Kyo - comparable to Kenshin in it's setting and tone. Except the hero who starts out as a nice innocent, slightly pervy, guy turns out to have a split personality and his other side is Demon Eyes Kyo. Magic and monsters are the enemies, not samurais.
I guess I should make clear at this point for those that don't know- I'm Paul's wife. *g*
Now... It's really my fault that we got into this stuff at all, having been fascinated by the reviews of Evangelion that I saw in SFX back in the day, and then having managed to get hooked on AMVs (anime music videos). That gave me a kind of portal into a lot of series, and helped in which I choose to watch, and which I choose to watch and then show to Paul. *g*
I've also watched and enjoyed (much of) Escaflowne, RahXephon, Trigun (which is next on the list to throw Paul's way once we've finished Furuba), Patlabor, and two of the three Urusei Yatsura OVAs. Definitely want to get my hands on Cowboy Bebop as soon as humanly possible, and I've heard tons of good things about Last Exile.
I've got to say though, I often find myself wanting to see some of the older stuff (Starblazers, for example, or most of the things that were parodied in Excel. *g*), but have no idea where to even begin looking for it. Ebay's no help with things of this age, and your average video shop employee just looks at me blankly when I mention Seventies anime. I can't even find the original Patlabor series to buy, which is rather frustrating. Don't suppose anyone's got any ideas where to find this kind of stuff? :)
We also took advantage of buying "The Works"' two anime boxsets, which include usually the first five or so episodes of a number of different series, or one of the series' OVAs. So this means we've got the first few episodes of Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Renmei and a number of other series, which should be good. Not bad for £15 apiece, and totally legal! Hurrah!
And Paul... please get over your giant robot phobia long enough to watch RahXephon. I promise it's better than Eva. I'll do the housework and everything. Pretty please with a cherry on top?
;)
I'm hugely ill-read in this, but I did used to have a bootleg video of Akira, dubbed by the same people who did the (English-language) voices for Dogtanian.
Truly, there is little more joyous.
Oh, though I hear Otomo has made a film about the Crystal Palace which I'm very keen to see...
Ah, welcome to the world of anime. We have such sights to show you.
Good call on taking up Evangelion and Escaflowne early on. You should have a look at the Cowboy Bebop series - it hangs together much better than the movie - and I've really enjoyed Last Exile. Here are few more reccomendations: Robot Carnival, Wings of Honneamise, Giant Robo, Blue Submarine No.6 and Nadesico.
Ah yes, you must watch Akira and Otomo's new film Steamboy - which is the one with the crystal palace.
And I would have said RahXephon except for Paul's giant robot phobia, on the other hand I'm still not too sure what it all means, and even buying the movie didn't clear a lot up.
Loads of good recommendations there, and I've got Caroline doing the housework, so good news all round. Steamboy does indeed look gorgeous. Hmm, another giant robot show that doesn't quite make sense? Why does the world need so many of those?
Yes, I agree, good Japanese cartoons aimed at adults (by which I mean 'rather than fourteen year olds', not 'porn') are hard to find.
In the film line, the best I've seen is Perfect Blue, which I can only describe as kind of an animated Stoppard-meets-Hitchcock. The same writer/director/artist/something (I don't quite understand how the process works over there) has done a TV series called Paranoia Agent, which I have seen the first four episodes of and is quite good (basically a loosely-connected anthology series revolving around themes of 'duplicity', and not just in a simplistic way of meaning 'lying'). Also he's done a new film I want to see called Millennium Actress.
Hm, what else? Miyazaki's early stuff, especially Flying Island Laputa, is much better than his later when hegoes a bit weird and starts drawing pretty stuff without mch consideration to sense or plot: you can sort of see this happen halfway through Princess Mononoke! Though his most recent, Howl's Moving Castle, is a bit better, probably because he's working from source material.
Think that's about it -- the rest I've seen either tend to have cute robots/animals/bleagh in them and be aimed at fourteen-year-olds, or have more underwear than plot (I can only assume that the cameraman for Naajica Blitz Tactics could afford a mini-tripod but not a full-height one, and that's why all the shots are framed from almost-floor-level looking up at the short-skirted characters).
Oh, no, actually, one other one that's good if, and only if, you've ever played a roleplaying game: Slayers. A fantasy parody type thing. The ones I saw were pretty funny, though I suspect that that vein of humour might get mined out fairly fast.
You echo a lot of my own thoughts, SK. I've seen Perfect Blue, and while I thought it was an admirable attempt, I thought the plot really didn't hold together well enough for the sort of movie it wanted to be. But the attempt was admirable, I think.
Interesting to see that you are experimenting in anime - I've been coming to the conclusion that I will have to catch up on it soon just to understand what so many of my friends have been on about for what seems like ages now. It's certainly become culturally current in the last couple of years in a way that it hasn't before.
Nice to have you onboard, Matt. Choose your first anime carefully to avoid disappointment.
Choosing your first anime carefully is vital, but I did it the other wrong way. I saw Akira first, and later Princess Mononoke. Most of what I've seen since then has paled in comparison (with some notable exceptions - most of which have been mentioned here)
I must say, I'm not hugely keen on Akira. Maybe it's because the style of animation has dated so quickly, or maybe it's because, again, this is what I'm hard to please about, the plot doesn't really hang together as tightly as it should.
If you can spare the time and cash you would do well to check out the Akira books. I still see them in my local Waterstones.
The film only covers the plot of the first couple and then kinda skips to the end. It's an admirable effort in abbreviation, but as you say, it doesn't hang together perfectly.
I may well do. The film rather put me off.
A bit late, but oh well-
Try Millenium Actress which sk mentioned above, it's out on DVD in the UK right now, and is an extraordinay piece of work. Plotwise- two filmmakers secure an interview with a legendarily reclusive actress, who begins to tell them her life story. It's moving, funny and clever, providing you can keep up with the sudden style shifts.
Also, Caroline asked about the original Patlabor series- it was never released in the UK, only in the US and is very different in tone from the movies- more lighthearted and less philosophising. Lots of fun, but it is starting to show its age.
That sounds good, thanks. Caroline has now taken a look at Patlabor, and likes it.
There is now The Anime Companion 2 if you want to return to the bookshop.
Ooh, ta for that!