An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Anime Reviews

One in the Chamber – Danganronpa Spoiler Review

Death games are often difficult to get just right. There’s a real tension in how much you develop characters that must ultimately be killed, in how desperate the plight is, how you manage the danger for main characters that the audience knows ultimately have to survive, and so on. It’s a careful balancing act of sympathy and threat, of gore and hope. If it’s done well, it can be amazing. Mirai Nikki is an experience, a compound cat-and-mouse game that’s (on the whole) a joy. If it really fails, though, it can be an absolutely abysmal viewing experience. Magical Girl Raising Project, for instance, doesn’t know how to spend its time or when and where to actually build characters, and is a failed show largely because of how it didn’t manage the Death Game aspect.

In a sense, writing for a Death Game is more of, well, game design than it is ‘traditional’ writing. Or, if not more, that’s at least a skill it draws on. While I’m by no means as much a game designer as I am a writer, it is at least a lesser area of my expertise. There are many schools of game design, focused on different aspects, and not all of them are relevant. Competitive balance, for instance, doesn’t really come into play so much when you’ve got a script. What does is how to create a fulfilling “gameplay loop” and design a good player experience. Because, when you get down to it, the structure of a death game show is, by nature, a “gameplay loop” for the death game in the fiction. Assume the story’s main character is the “player” and work around that. Mirai Nikki has a good loop: Yuki is menaced by a diary bearer and has to kill or be killed with his current target, ending that scenario and initiating a bridge to the next. The formula gets shaken up here and there, but that is what the show comes back to. Magical Girl Raising Project teases what could have been an interesting loop (get candies-elimination) but never really gets you feeling it, as there’s only one iteration between when the consequences are made clear and when it’s never used again and Snow White never really has to “play”.

You’d think this would be a real asset for Danganronpa. This is, after all, a Death Game show based on a video game, so in theory they should have addressed the game design elements of a good Death Game in the source material, making it extremely easy to transport over to the anime, right?

Well… I do think the core understanding of the ‘gameplay’ elements may have saved the show, because it’s got a lot of problems all the same.

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Who The Hell Do You Think I Am? – Gurren Lagann Spoiler Review

Now, here’s a show I’ve alluded to before – the whirlwind of illogical, enjoyable energy known as Gurren Lagann. Part of me wants to just jump right in, because it’s that kind of show, but given the contexts I’ve brought it up in before, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least address something of the production history.

You see, Gurren Lagann (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann if you prefer) is, technically, a Gainax anime. But to an extent that’s like saying the studio behind Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was Topcraft. Which it was. But Nausicaa is largely considered a Ghibli film because much of the talent that worked on it went on to become Studio Ghibli. Similarly, while Gurren Lagann was created under the auspice of Gainax, it is in some respects Trigger anime #0. Much like you can see many of the themes that would be endemic in Ghibli’s work (particularly Hayao Miyazaki’s) in Nausicaa, it’s easy to see that loads of Trigger’s favorite tropes and styles were first developed here in Gurren Lagann.

So, if at some point in this review, I mention how an element is very much like Trigger, or even call Gurren Lagann a Trigger show, know that I am fully aware that it technically belongs to Gainax, and am speaking more to the fact that many of the people we think of as Trigger were here too.

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Not Enough – The Price of Smiles Spoiler Review

On a distant planet, in the mecha-riding future, a princess ascends her country’s throne in a time of crisis, having to take the reins and defend her people against an invading empire while, perhaps, a greater threat to the survival of all looms just out of sight. Along the way, though bitter losses are incurred, we also learn that the Imperial aggressors and the noble defenders may not be so different, ultimately seeing that they’re all just human, flawed and largely trying to do what’s best for them and theirs.

This sounds like it could be really good. It’s reminiscent of shows, books, and games: to me, most pointedly Valkyria Chronicles or Fire Emblem. It’s a timeless framework that can be endlessly revitalized by putting new flesh on those old bones, and at least has the potential to reach a high level of quality. Potential, mind you, not guarantee. The Price of Smiles stands as a testament to the fact that even if you use good ingredients, you still need skill and effort to get a pleasing result.

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A Tribute to Tokusatsu – SSSS Gridman Spoiler Review

“Tokusatsu” is a Japanese term for effects-heavy live action film-making. Most often, it’s associated strongly with a very particular few styles. Flashy costumes, suitmation monsters, and very often a cheesy but beloved kind of attitude. Tokusatsu outings include the classic Godzilla films, which have always been favorites of mine despite not really being within the normal scope of this blog, as well as TV shows such as Super Sentai (known in the west for its stock footage being used to create Power Rangers), Kamen Rider, and the ‘Ultra Series’ franchise spawned by the original Ultraman. The Ultra Series in particular is kind of the distillation of Tokusatsu sub-genres, featuring transforming heroes and kaiju (giant monsters) doing battle.

Why do I bring this up? Because SSSS Gridman is Trigger’s mecha-flavored love letter to all things Tokusatsu, and the Ultra Series in particular (seeing as it’s called out by name), and it is at least as insane as you would expect from that.

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Mechs & Magic – The Vision of Escaflowne Spoiler Review

Escaflowne is an… interesting production. It’s a sprawling story spawned out of the lawless pre-2000s zeitgeist that didn’t require shows to inhabit particular genre boxes quite as insistently as you usually see in more modern works. It’s kind of a fantasy epic, technically Isekai, at least as Mecha as Full Metal Panic, sometimes a shoujo romance, and held together with sutures of psychological drama and alternate history. Whew!

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Fictional Countries, Real Robots – Full Metal Panic (Season 1) Spoiler Review

It’s March, and that means I’m once again going to take a dive into the Mecha genre. Now, I’ve looked at Mecha shows before, both in and out of March, but the Mecha shows I reviewed last time have something in common: they’re all more “Super Robot” shows.

For those who may be unaware, the Mecha genre often makes a distinction between different shows. “Super Robot” shows are ones where the Mecha (scientific explanation or not) is more of a fantastic element. They’re big, powerful, sometimes questionably machines, and defy or ignore what we think we know about physics. Little time or effort is taken to make the mechas “realistic” or believable; instead, it’s more about what’s cool. Not every Super Robot show is bright Shonen (after all, Evangelion and all its tortured, psychological offspring are still Super Robot) but many are.

In contrast, a “Real Robot” show presents mechas more as real (if futuristic) war machines. They often still get a couple technical hand-waves to explain how and why humanoid robots are the tanks or battleships of their setting, but they still try to build their robots out of nuts and bolts and make you believe that you’re dealing with a machine that humans could build and that the viewer could understand. As such the shows themselves tend to be about (relatively) realistic warefare, rather than punching out giant monsters.

This isn’t to say that Super Robot shows can’t have engineering or treat their mechas as machines, or Real Robot shows can’t have supernatural elements; it’s a spectrum, not a sharp divide. But, by in large, those are the poles.

When it comes to Mecha, Super Robot shows are more my wheelhouse, but I wanted to look at at least one Real Robot show for Mecha March this year, and thus I’m leading off with the most down-to-Earth Mecha show this side of Robotics;Notes, Full Metal Panic.

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Worst-kept Secrets – Actually, I Am Spoiler Review

It seems to have been something of a theme this month to take on the idea of the hazy middle ground between “Harem” and “Romance” – two concepts that are deeply related (given that they both imply significant focus on romantic relationships) but that are very different in expectations. It happened somewhat for Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions and it happened more pointedly for Chivalry of a Failed Knight and it is all over Actually, I Am.

I debated, in a big way, whether or not this show should be considered a Harem show. After all, I pointed out when trying to pick apart the tropes of the lazy stock Harem outing in Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs that lazy shows often have a clear “favorite” among the Harem. What I feel is the distinction, though, is that while there can be clear favorites, there’s not ‘supposed’ to be a clear winner, at least not until the thing is (mostly) over. And that is the crux of the question.

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Battle School Romance, No Harem Required – Chivalry of a Failed Knight Spoiler Review.

So, last September I took a swing at the “Battle School” genre, which I feel like needs more acknowledgment as being its own thing with its own conventions, the same way as Isekai gets (though probably with similar tones of criticism). These shows have tight formulas and a lot of genre expectations. One of those expectations is that Battle School shows are, almost without exception, Harem shows. They follow a male lead with some unique circumstances, and he inevitably attracts several interesting women who become the main components of his social circle and ultimately develop feelings for him. And, in proper Harem fashion, the lead guy will, even if he has some preference, pretty much never settle on or pick one of the girls to form a relationship with.

Viewer expectations are an interesting beast. It can be good to subvert them at times, but you have to take care in how you do it, because there’s also an unspoken contract with viewers that if you present a certain way, you provide certain elements, and refusing to honor the implicit contract can generate backlash, even against material that’s actually good.

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An Arranged Marriage Romance? – The World is Still Beautiful Spoiler Review

Fantasy is often a romanticized genre. I would say that, more than other genres that go beyond the world we know, stories that delve into period-esque worlds with magic and adventure tend to be ones where you also get idealized love stories. I’m not sure why this is, but I do think that you expect fantasy romance plots to be more sweeping and melodramatic than, say, science fiction. Very rarely do period matters like arranged marriages or unions for the good of the nation rather than ‘true’ love come into play.

The World is Still Beautiful, though, thumbs its nose at the idea that this is what is or must be done, to an extent trying to do for affairs of state and political marriage what Spice and Wolf would do for economics, making a topic that would be conventionally found dry and making it central and interesting through clever storytelling and good emotions

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School-aged Madness – Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions Spoiler Review

Before I can really do this review, I feel like I need to explain Chuunibyou (or ‘Chuuni’) for anyone who might happen to be unaware of the topic. The term can be translated roughly as “Second year of middle school syndrome”. Despite that, no explanation I’ve heard has ever indicated that it’s really pathological. Rather, Chuunibyou involves a youngster who, for some reason or another, takes up a theatrical persona and lives it. You declare yourself the Dark Lord, cackle maniacally, and even though you know it’s not real, you act at all times as though it were real because doing any less would spoil the ‘game’. Sometimes it’s a coping mechanism, other times it just makes someone feel better to stand out in a world that otherwise desires conformity of you.

It’s a phenomenon that, despite the name, is far from being limited to Japan. I… may have had my own brush with the experience when I was in middle school, long before I knew it had a name or was a cultural phenomenon in another country. And I do think that informs my reaction to the show; if you were Chuuni yourself, whether you knew that was a thing or what it was, you’re probably going to have a stronger response here than if you weren’t. That said, let’s dig in.

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