3 posts tagged “japan”
Something about the exclusive geek boy in me loves watching anime series that are in current run on Japanese TV. Strangely enough, I don't know the method of current runs in Japan. I heard somewhere that very few people in Japan have cable TV subscriptions. Does this mean that most people watch anime on broadcast TV? That seems so... pedestrian. Broadcast TV in Canada was always the poor kid's TV. Kids without cable TV got stuck watching nature shows on CBC or soap operas on CTV. Poor kids without cable TV would never get anime.... but then again, I believe it was 4pm post-elementary school CBC that gave me StarBlazers, which poor kids in Japan would have called Spaceship Yamamoto. And if it wasn't for that show, I would not have known that Japan had the coolest cartoons. Sorry about the dis, broadcast TV, I took you for granted.
This series, Darker Than Black, is on it's 16th episode, which is probably the end of first season. It's been an OK run but keeps on making me think about a comment that gKent made where it doesn't seem to live up to it's potential. He was talking about a post-apoca comic series that had a great background that it unfortunately left to supporting materials at the end of the comics. DTB has a great, if albeit familiar premise, of an event that damages Tokyo (called the Hellgate) and leaves some people in the world as powerful psychic/magic beings called Contractors. The Contractors, called so because they are forced to follow usually inane practices (such as eating cigarettes) after they use their powers, are controlled by various government and independant agencies for political or enigmatic purposes. With the Hellgate (and south american Heavensgate), the Contractors and their supporting "mediums" of Dolls (mostly empty psychics used as tools) and the utterly dangerous, out of control Contractors called Moratorium (sometimes I think the Japanese script writers just toss in words they like the sound of) you would think the stories could be robust, exciting and thrilling. Not so much.
It's a decent anime but not great. Chinese Contractor (makes him sound like a contruction worker) Hei (seen above) works with a couple of supporting team members: Yin -- a Doll used for tracking, Huang -- a norm usually complaining or shooting someone and Mao, the Contractor turned cat. What their purpose is and who exactly they work for is pretty shadowy and I wouldn't be surprised if it just isn't in the story bible... they are left purposely ambiguous. We know they kill other, usually murderous, Contractors and that Hei has a softspot for Dolls, which are usually considered nothing more than empty shells to be used. The fact that many form lives for themselves, or once had lives before the Gates, is of no importance to the angencies using Contractors and Dolls. We know that there was a south american war which was dominated by Contractors but not much else. So without the exploring of the world we are given, the stories are left to the melancholy of being an unemotional (though he fakes it pretty well) Contractor by night and exchange student by day, somehow getting his secret identity mixed up in all sorts of trouble.
I want more. I want to see more stories focus on the Hellgate, it's appearance and the impact it has on the world. Why is Tokyo putting a massive wall around it? What affect does it have on day to day citizens? Are there any japanese governmental Contractors? Are there any Contractors out there that are not power mad loons? Did the stars actually go away or has the planet been put into a bubble with artificial stars mapping the Contractors on a one to one basis? Soooo many questions that are left to the side so they can do a side story about a cut-rate detective ala Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop). If it wants to explore the angst of being a Doll, then explain the Dolls better not leaving everything to the viewers to come up with. Do more stories about the PANDORA institute on the edge of the Hellgate, as it explores what is going on in there. I LOVE the idea of the point of view of support staff working to keep things clean and going for the scientists.
So, I will keep on watching but not sure for how long.
We recently cancelled cable TV, to save some money, and hopefully eliminate some of the "staring at nothing" time wasting. It's amazing how much time you can spend just clicking between channels and not actually watching a show. Once thing about DLing what you are going to watch is the focus you end up with, no commercials and no channel to flick away to. And I love the fact I can have access to first run TV that is normally not available in Canada.
No, none of this is on the up and and up and if some agency sees fit, I have paved my path to incarceration. But I hope the enlightened types will see that I am also promoting that which I enjoy and think is worthy of talking about. I pay for (most) movies and still consider the theatre experience as the best way to see a flick. As for TV, it's about time that dinosaur changed it's ways.
What's going on? Mitch Yost (bruce greenwood, canadian staple actor) is a surfer, some well known god to surf fans, who dropped out due to a knee injury and has probably been nursing belligerence ever since. He has a druggie son, who was also a surfing god but probably lost it to the needle, a hot ex-wife (rebecca de mornay) and a possible second-coming grandson, and i mean more than the second coming of surfing. John, our namesake, seems autistic but gifted as he shows up, sprouts odd sayings (which everyone just accepts in stride, of course) and performs minor miracles. Why is he here? Is he responsible for the coincidental gathering that closes the episode? What is up with that floaty trick? Tonight's episode (should be out there by now) will tell some more.
Paprika is the latest anime movie from Satoshi Kon, possibly the only anime creator I am willing to remember the name of. He did Millenium Actress, Perfect Blue and my favourite (non-superhero, alien or magical) anime Tokyo Godfathers. He also did the mindfuck series, Paranoia Agent, which made my head ache. This movie borrows the incredible psychadelia from the series but actually has a tighter plot than most of Kon's mindfucks. It may be due to the plot being based on a novel. But I cannot help but feel like it was lacking, without the rubbing of the brow at the end.
What was going on? Atsuko Chiba is a psychologist working on a dream therapy device called the DC Mini which interfaces with their dream viewing computer. Simply said, the devices are stolen and are being used to manipulate the dream states of the public. This leads to dreams leaking out into reality with nasty consequences. The namesake is Dr. Chiba's alternate dream form, a lighthearted fearless redhead vs the doctor's serious, sober dark haired nature. Paprika is assisted by a police detective, who he was working with to explore his own issues via dreams, and they have to fight the dream states of not only the "terrorist" (anime loves to banter that phrase around) but the public dragged into the world of dreams.
It was just so fucking colourful !! The dream states were completely weird and disturbing but with a connectivity that you could understand. Backgrounds were as intricate in the real world as they were in dreamstate lending itself to the damage that could be caused. If you had boring dreams, I doubt you could be as dangerous. What I enjoyed the most is that the post-dreamwar world was truly damaged, not just "only in their heads." You could see re-construction going on as the movie ended which led to me wonder what the spin was on the big hole at the center of the city.
Ergo Proxy, from viewing the first episode, was going to be about a Dark Urban Future styled city full of moody people and anthropomorphic robots. A virus of self-awareness is running about in the robots and Re-L (Or Real or Rel or Lil, depending on the anglocized japanese translation) is a police force investigator (or blade runner if you like the moody visual connections) involved in the cogito virus case. So you have a cool city in a bubble that encourages consumption, has robot companions, some which are purely human looking but most are not, immigrants trying to become Citizens and a history of destruction that makes life outside the bubble hazardous. And to add to it, a murder spree is going on involving a massive humanoid monster that may have escaped from one of the city's labs. It's the perfect plot for me. Add to it the hot gothic investigator and it hooked me right away.
Too bad it did the typical anime thing and took a tangent into obscurity and confusion and surrealism.
Anime has an esteem problem based on the fact that most of it is made for adolescents and involves interacting, usually in an immature or even disturbingly kinky, with the gender of your choice. Other genres are space fantasy or combat fantasy and let us not forget the tentacle porn. But some of it wants to rise above that and tackle philosophy. GitS handled that well studying man's interactions with machines and the state between using prostheses and becoming the machine. They both shared the idea of machines becoming men.
But Proxy started delving into a storyline that added more questions than any it answered. It's almost as if the original storyline, such as the one that was outlined by Dai Sato when interviewed about the project and quoted here was abandoned or dropped entirely. We ended up with a long journey, not bad unto itself but it did so little to add to the storyline or character development and kept on dropping in massively confusing obfuscated side stories or one-shot episodes. Unlike GitS that did the incredibly obscure episodes but they DID connect to the storyline, there were episodes that just added questions and they were never answered. I don't think the authors had any clue where they were going with the story or may have been in a Hollywood like situation where the path they wanted was overshadowed by corp heads. Who knows, I sure didn't.
Even so I did enjoy it as a series. There were animation styles chosen that I enjoyed immensely and characters that I cared about, even the bitchy hot investigator and the whiny immigrant boy. The cute robot girl constantly made me giggle. I just wish the creator's original dark city storyline and journey of the robots had been used.
