Mythos' Anime Discussions

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Genshiken vs. Genshiken Nidaime: Old vs New. My nostalgic ramblings and how changing views in Otaku culture show a great future.

Every now and then, the anime industry loves to poke fun at itself. Sometimes, this self-awareness from the industry is like Watamote (the real name is way too long to type), where it makes us uncomfortable with how accurate it is to our own awkward lives, basking in our memories of awkward situations and episodes, completely departing from realism to the chagrin of those around us. However, other times, the industry uses a softer approach, taking our wonderful memories of reveling in our nerd culture and both poking fun and celebrating their importance to us. Genshiken and Genshiken Nidaime are anime of this latter approach. Genshiken or, as it’s subtext defines it, The Study of Modern Visual Culture is a manga/anime about a college club of the same name and their experiences loving, hating, and discussing all of the merits of otaku culture. The series takes all of the games, anime, manga, etc. that we know (as well as some fakes ones it invented so wonderfully that they were spun off as their own anime) and takes pride in using their likeness for comedic and celebratory effect. In fact, a surprising thing from this series is that it doesn’t just parody other anime, games, manga, etc. with alternative names or other ways to get around copyright. For most references, the series straight up calls out the names of the anime and shows actual gameplay of certain games. Genshiken was always very upfront about what it referenced and used each name or character from a different series as a badge of honor, showing how the creators, like their readers, were also otaku of a high pedigree.

The creators knew what to do artistically to parody games, series, etc. and more importantly, the people who enjoy them. Recently, when I looked through the volumes I have up on my shelf, I had forgotten how interesting the art style is. Each character looks very different and no two have the same body type. Certain characters are skinny with nerdy glasses, like Madarame, but you also have more heavyset and quiet characters like Kugayama. Their bodies, faces, style of eyes, and dress all vary and show a diverse group of female and male otaku individuals, as well as non-otakus who actually had some fashion sense like Kasukabe. This is something I’ve come to appreciate as for many more modern anime, certain similar styles seem to ring true throughout a lot of popular shows. Many studios have their own art style and characteristics that prevail through all of their shows and many popular shows start looking very similar with trends in the anime industry asking for more “edgy” or more “moe” material across the board. Genshiken even parodies the idea of industry trends with its own fictional show Kujibiki Unbalance!, which has an entirely different art style than Genshiken that directly parodies a popular style of the time of its release, with big doe eyes and squishy faces adorned by shiny, clichéd anime hair for all of its characters. I appreciated this parody and Genshiken’s own uniqueness in the face of popular trends, something that Trigger and a few other studios like to carry on in their own works.

It was also a personal series for me. As I read Genshiken, it was one of the first times that I started to understand my love of anime and other Japanese cultural exports. I starting reading the Genshiken manga in high school, around the same time that I finally moved out of my introductory stages of Dragon Ball and Pokemon from my childhood to more mature series like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, and Getbackers. Inside of the pages of those volumes I found a group of like-minded individuals, commenting on the anime of the time and enjoying their nerdiness for the things they love. It was a great experience and the characters were hilarious, each one an archetype for a certain type of otaku many people may know. One character, Ohno, was all about cosplay, whether it was dressing up or forcing others to do the same. Another, Kousaka, was a hardcore gamer that would be so into a game his eyes would just stop moving. There were characters who loved Gundam and model building as well as some who loved to draw and make their own fan creations. And yes, there were many who enjoyed the more adult aspects of otaku culture, with plenty of discussion and jokes surrounding the character’s tastes in hentai, games, and doujinshi and the adult doujin market at large. There was even Kasukabe, who brought the perspective of someone from the outside looking in at these otaku and having a hard time understanding any of these people or why they loved things they did. Each character brought something to the table and each one evolved with the story and their changing interests, becoming well-rounded as the series went on. It was a great adventure and a wonderful introduction into a deeper world of otaku culture for me. When I read my last chapter and put the book down, I thought that it was an end to a chapter of my own life. The series meant a lot to me as it followed me through my years of high school and during my times of escapism from some harder times in my personal life.

To my surprise, I apparently was not the only one that read the manga. Even though I had never heard of anyone else buying and enjoying this series at the time, an anime was adapted and made its way over to my side of the Pacific, though it varied in quality and was passed around to several different studios to work on. Even though it was rough at times, and some of the studios made weird decisions on how to adapt it, it was wonderful to hear the voices of these characters as well as see how the anime incredibly got past the copyright censor just like the manga did, calling out each different series, game, and manga for parody and celebration. (I recommend giving it a look. Just please, please ignore the dub and stick to the sub. The English voice cast is almost 4Kids bad.) After the series wrapped up with two seasons and an OVA in between, I thought that this would be the end of a great story. But oh how I was wonderfully wrong when I found out not just a few months ago that in 2009, the story continued with a second series and even a new anime that came out last year (2013 of this writing). How I missed something for so many years that would have had me celebrating in the streets, I have no idea. As I’m still reading through the manga, this next part is mostly a discussion on the anime.

Genshiken Nidaime picks up from where the series left off, previously, with many of the characters graduated from college and off working on their careers, leaving the younger members in charge. Ohno, Oguie, and lovable, but possibly autistic, Kuchiki are left to try and recruit more members. Unlike previous attempts (which were squashed by Kuchiki’s absurd but hilarious outbreaks) this one succeeds with several members joining and all but one of them female. This plot point becomes the end all differing factor between Genshiken and Genshiken Nidaime, with all major differences stemming from this one decision by the creators. While the concept is the same, Nidaime is a parody of more modern anime and modern anime fans. So with that, they chose to have an almost all female cast. I felt while watching through the show that this was intentional for two reasons. One is for the obvious love of shows with all female casts now. In a similar vein to harems and “moe” shows, this show has a female cast that allows Genshiken to both parody and appeal to the people who enjoy shows from the harem and “cute girls doing cute things” variety. However, I also felt that given the respect toward the female characters and the variety of female cast members, this was also a decision to highlight a changing trend in otaku in which girls are also getting much more into the scene, if not over the same shows. Representation seemed to be very much on the writer’s mind while making this new series and becomes integral to the plot later on with a certain character.

Nidaime’s plot revolves around continuing a few of the unresolved bits from the original series, with Madarame coming to terms with his feelings of loneliness, being stuck in a rut with his job, and his crush over Kasukabe, as well as Ogiue attempting to become a more professional mangaka and leading the new Genshiken. The interesting thing is while these plots develop and help shape the story, they slowly become the “b” story to a new development in the story that is one of the most progressive things I’ve seen come from an anime/manga. While Ogiue and Madarame seem to hog the spotlight for several chapters throughout the new series, a new character, Hato, slowly becomes the protagonist that we see all of the events unfold through. Because of this, the audience is thrust into empathizing and understanding through a character that one doesn’t typical see treated well in a series: A transvestite.

While this aspect of Hato’s character may seem odd, the story actual explains the crossdressing aspect well. So much so, that I’d say that, instead of having a trap character around for jokes, the writer decided to do something much more progressive that leads to a much better story. Due to emotional scars and a problem with identity, Hato decided to join a primarily female Genshiken group as a girl in order to better fit in until he is rather humorously found out within the first meeting. Throughout the story, we get hints and small explanations to how this character’s psyche works and why they do all of the things that are so different from everyone else. Amazingly in the story, the characters, aside from a few jokes here and there, are incredibly supportive of Hato, with even the most conservative of the group eventually accepting this person and recognizing him as their friend. The cast even goes so far as to use pronouns pretty damn well when Hato is around or when they’re just talking about him to help Hato identify with which gender he’s sporting. This was not something I expected from this series and its treatment of a situation that is usually derisively regarded absolutely surprised me. Hato becomes the major focus from which we learn everything and because of this, we learn more and more about Hato and the struggles of someone who enjoys living as another gender, leading to apparently interesting discussions on the Internet about the transvestism and possibly transgender aspects of this character (seriously, some people have done some extensive analysis of this).

While this is a serious change from the first series, and there are so many changes in style, feel, and general plot, Genshiken Nidaime never gives up its roots or what made the original such a blast to enjoy. The characters are still explored and grow as the series continues, the humor is still spot on, and the references are so unapologetically in your face that I still don’t know how they got around copyright. I’m serious, they legit played five seconds of Bakemonogatari on the TV in the clubroom during one of the first few episodes. Like, that shit was basically just ripped and photoshopped right on there. They didn’t change a damn thing. I have no idea how they didn’t get sued. Not to mention they made so many references to Bakemonogatari that entire episode that I was laughing so hard.

Back to point, Genshiken Nidaime took what made the old series good and updated it with better art and animation (while keeping the same style), better story elements, and even funnier jokes. All of this drizzled with hundreds of references and comedic call outs of anime and manga series of the time. As much as I am nostalgic over the original series, I absolutely love the direction of the new series and the amount of care they took to updating the old, but keeping the heart of it intact. I wouldn’t say Nidaime was a perfect anime. Far from it, the anime tends to suffer from the often known problem of adapting a large series into thirteen episodes, causing problems with pacing and balancing the story against a large cast of characters all needing development. However, I greatly enjoyed everything else about the show, particularly the jokes and wonderful characters. Also, the manga (so far as I’ve read) gets through the problems of pacing and character development just fine. I recommend giving Nidaime a watch and definitely a read. Even if you haven’t seen the original, I feel Nidaime stands well on its own, but only more so if you feel adventurous enough to read through the original series. Partially taking off the rose colored glasses for second, neither series is groundbreaking nor would I define them as outstanding works, but they’re just the right amount of self-aware, satirical, and humor-filled exploit mixed with interesting characters and a fun time to have made me laugh, and thoroughly enjoy myself. I loved the series both back in high school when I read Genshiken for the first time and now, with Nidaime bringing me back to the same wonderfully geeky place filled with hilarious and heartfelt otaku.

Research and Inspiration for this Discussion:

Review of Nidaime by Miguel Douglas -

http://www.isugoi.com/genshiken-nidaime-review/

Review of Genshiken Nidaime by a Modern Josei -
http://modernjosei.tumblr.com/post/63340565446/genshiken-nidaime-genshiken-second-generation

Discussion on Hato’s possible sexuality -

http://transetheralbrimwylf.tumblr.com/post/57350005501/so-here-is-my-super-long-post-titled-hato-chan

And of course, wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genshiken

For Fun:

A small list of about a fourth of the references in Genshiken Nidaime -

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=15288&page=22

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

My Favorite Hilarious Troll Moves I’ve Seen in Anime

All right, so Madoka was a serious and depressing topic last time, so I thought I’d go with a pick-me-up for this next discussion. So! Let’s talk about my favorite hilarious troll moves I’ve seen from anime. Now these are just my five favorite trolls that I wanted to point out, and I’m limited by what I’ve seen, so I won’t make this a list of “The Top Five of All Anime” or anything that conceited. Also, another limitation on this list is that I’m only including what I consider as funny trolling in anime, i.e. playing a joke on the audience for a bit of fun, rather than for a sudden plot twist in the story that changes everything, or a scene that is a big middle finger to the fans such as Sword Art Online S1 and its main antagonist’s final spiel. (Also, I’m looking at you, OreImo. The lesson here is if you wanna write a story, but your publisher doesn’t want it written the way you want, get a new publisher.) As such, I’m also excluding any major plot twists from anime that greatly influence the story, such as Madoka: The Rebellion Story or other twist endings that change everything in general. These are all great, but they deserve their own discussion since the anime industry really loves to take a left turn towards the end of their series, whether they need to or not. Since this isn’t including any major plot twists that dramatically change a series, this discussion will actually be relatively major spoiler free, but we will be going over material that’s in the middle to end of some anime so SPOILER ALERT if you care about minor spoilers for a series. Now, let’s get this crazy hootenanny, shindig started!

Kill la Kill - The “Recap” episode

Trigger never likes to do anything the way the other guys decide to make it. As a studio, they’ve yet to have an execution of an anime series that I’ve seen done anywhere else, and each project of theirs is definitely unique. When it comes to Kill la Kill, if you haven’t seen my previous article on it, this is no different. Everything happens at a blazingly fast speed, with ridiculous cuts and humor splattered across the screen. So when they did their recap episode, this was no different.

Many anime have a recap episode in the middle of a series or after a lot of things go down in order to bring people back up to speed. For those who watch a series week by week, instead of stumbling upon the series or waiting to watch one after it’s ended, this means that you can wait a week for a new episode just to find out it’s a rehash of everything you’ve already seen. For longer series, sometimes this is necessary, but it’s understandable that people may not hold recap episodes in their top ten most gratifying things they’ve waited a week for. However, Kill la Kill never likes to slow down. So for their recap episode, we have Senketsu, the sentient sailor uniform, explain that this week they’ll be doing a recap, stating that it’s been a long time coming and many probably suspected they’d be doing one. And with that introduction out of the way... We’re suddenly assaulted audibly and visually as Senketsu takes on the entire series’ plot up to this point in under two minutes. It’s an insane barrage of constantly changing images and information shot at you like a machine gun, all with a backing track of several different fast-paced classical songs, such as the William Tell Overture and Offenbach’s Infernal Gallop, being blasted at the viewers’ ears as fifteen episodes are gone through within just over a minute and forty seconds. With Senketsu and the music finally reaching a climax, we’re left breathless as Senketsu laughs to himself and states that in Kill la Kill even the recap is done so fast as to only take up the intro of the episode. And with that out of the way, the show launches immediately back into where it left off just a week ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8jVqCKt4ZI

The crazy two minutes of recap in all its glory (Obviously spoilers if you haven’t seen the show):

This joke is actually a wonderful troll in that it catches the audience off-guard, but benefits the viewer by getting everything out of the way so the series can move on, which in the case of Kill la Kill’s breakneck pacing, is probably for the best. Even though I caught this during a marathon of the series, it still left me laughing as it was another twenty-three minutes I initially thought I’d have to wade through before pleasantly being treating to another full episode minus an initial two minutes of absolute confusion. In a series that throws laughs and tears at you (sometimes at the same time) like mashed potatoes in a food fight, it was a perfect way to do what would have otherwise been a dull twenty-three minutes of rehashed material. It was hilarious, and if you managed to keep up with the barrage of a recap, was a great way to catch the audience up, but not slow down an incredibly fast-paced show.

Love Live! Season Two - µ’s doesn’t get into the competition

This is another fun one. As a quick spoiler-mild summary of the series, Love Live! is an anime from Sunrise Studio about a group of nine girls who start a high school idol club as the group µ’s in order to bring more interest to their school and keep it from closing down. Along the way, they face other idol groups, typical high school emotional situations, and failure, but persevere and manage to gain popularity and a close-knit friendship with each other. In the second season, the girls decide to enter an idol competition of all the major high school idol groups called Love Live! (go figure) and try to make it big. During the first preliminary, the girls perform their hearts out, but get incredibly nervous about how well they did in comparison to all the other groups. The morning of the results, the girls gather in their club room and discuss how each one is dealing with their nervousness as one of the girls, Hanayo, checks the Love Live website to see if they made it. One scroll after another, the idol groups appear until… µ’s didn’t make it. The whole group freaks out, with some on the verge of tears. After all of their hard work, they failed. The group screams, then suddenly- “And that’s how my dream went!” says Honoka, retelling her dream from the night before. With that sudden scene change, Honoka and the others are back in the clubroom, nervous and waiting to see if they made it past the preliminaries just like a few minutes ago. We see the same scene (sans the telling of the dream) with the same characters being nervous in the same way. Finally, they scroll through the list and… the last one to make it is µ’s, but not without plenty of anxiety that Honoka’s dream was foretelling the future.

The best part about this scene is that Sunrise Studio did everything to make it seem like µ’s was actually not going to make it. This series had previously pulled a few heart-wrenching stunts like this before, but without the joke end. There was no little clue to say it was a dream, and the scene played out exactly as if that was the end of their try at the competition. The scene change to the real world was also so sudden that it hits like a speeding car into a brick wall when it happens. And to top it all off, Sunrise re-did the same exact five minutes after coming back from the dream in the same exact manner with no difference at all, just to make the audience nervous that µ’s really wasn’t going to make it again. Was it necessary? No, but it added humor to an otherwise serious scene and after the fact, it was damn funny watching the characters’ reactions the second time around as they had just gone through the same ordeal as the audience.

Hyouka - Oreki Makes a Move… Or, Wait. What?

As a warning, this scene acts as an epilogue to the series and involves the protagonist, Oreki, and his major crush, Chitanda, so this one’s a bit of a spoiler if you care about the last few lines of the anime, but otherwise, doesn’t directly relate to any major plot points in the series and also doesn’t spoil anything else that wasn’t already shown fifty times over. Speaking of being shown fifty times over, in case you haven’t seen this beautiful series about solving mysteries, what we’ll be talking about is the constant adorable subplot of these two characters, Oreki and Chitanda, crushing hard towards each other throughout the series and how they refuse to act upon their feelings. Twenty-two episodes of crushing from afar, awkward silences, and adorable moments later, we find these two no closer to popping the question of dating. Until now.

Aren’t they just the most adorable couple of idiots in denial?

The last episode of this anime is entirely set up to allow these two characters to bond and become closer as they go together to visit Chitanda’s family and the festival her family puts on each year, as well as work together to keep the festival from failing. Afterwards, Oreki and Chitanda are walking home from said celebration. Both are discussing everything that happened and Chitanda’s role as the daughter of a very important and prestigious farming family. Chitanda mentions how she’ll have to take up a leading role in her family and how her two choices she sees for herself are going into science to learn how to create better crops, or going into business to increase yields and avoid bankruptcy. Chitanda states that she feels she’d be terrible at running a business and has decided to go into science. There’s a pause between them, and then Chitanda suddenly stops as they are walking and says to Oreki that the place they’re walking so peacefully through, is not the prettiest or the most promising, but she wanted Oreki to see it, bravely letting her emotions shine through a bit. Oreki stops as well, thinks for a second, and says “By the way... About the business side that you gave up on... How about I take care of that for you?” alluding to marrying her in order to support her in her pursuit. She gasps as the cherry blossoms from the tree nearby fall down around them, highlighting the scene as time seems to have stopped between these two. Suddenly, one of blossoms covers the camera and we’re taken back in time not ten seconds ago. Chitanda asks why Oreki said “By the way…” to her and paused without saying anything else. Oreki suddenly blushes and says never mind, mumbling to Chitanda about how it’s getting cold. She smiles as she realizes at least partially his feelings towards her and the series ends with cherry blossoms highlighting the moment for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ-N--S_FVo
The ending lines starting at Oreki saying “By the way…” Sorry, I couldn’t find one with subtitles.

The best part about this moment is how it initially catches the viewer off-guard, but still perfectly fits the anime. In many segments throughout the series, we see Oreki’s thoughts through very imaginative segments of imagery, such as when Chitanda comes very close to him and Oreki’s heart skips a beat. He suddenly sees Chitanda’s hair bloom beautiful green and white flowers and grow to wrap all around him, connecting them. Oreki blushes hard and tries not to let his emotions show, but then we’re suddenly transported back to reality, where Oreki is just standing there blushing at Chitanda as she quizzically stares at him with a smile. There are also moments when the objects in the background change to show different emotions Oreki feels. One great example is when a clock in a coffee shop is completely normal, but after the camera changes to show Chitanda say something potentially misleading to Oreki, we switch back to Oreki and the clock’s pendulum is now a heart. These segments are wonderful to look at, but so sparse throughout the show that each time they occur, they come as a pleasant surprise that highlights the small subplot of trying to get these two together.

However, from the start of the series, the show seems to push these two together at a pace slower than a snail’s first baby steps. In doing this, by the end of it, I found myself on edge, desperately hoping against hope that they’d at least acknowledge that they both liked each other. Then suddenly, out of the blue, in the last scene of the last episode Oreki jumps ahead a few steps and goes right to marriage? My jaw made a small crater in the floor as I watched this. I still feel a bruise on the bottom of my chin. Then, we suddenly have that cherry blossom go in front of the camera and ruin the entire moment, with Oreki really just blushing as he can’t seem to get the right words out. I remember yelling at the screen, “Oh, you fucker!” But then suddenly Chitanda smiles, acknowledging at least partially how Oreki feels.

It’s a wonderful scene and a great last highlight to a series that houses a beautiful, innocent relationship between two characters. I really love Hyouka for portraying several different loves stories very intelligently, not just the one mentioned above. I also absolutely love the mysteries the group solves throughout the show. While many are deeply inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dame Agatha Christie, each one is entirely unique and massively clever on how they work as well as how they’re solved. It’s an ingenious series and I highly recommend it if you have the time.

Katanagatari - The Fight with Hakuhei Sabi

This one had me in stitches because there was no way to see it coming. In Katanagatari, Shichika Yasuri, a swordsmen who practices fighting without swords, and Togame, a brilliant woman and self-proclaimed “master strategist”, are on a quest to find and secure twelve evil blades with immense power. The problem is each blade has its own individual wielding them, and not a single owner is less than a master in fighting. Each episode of the series follows one month of finding, negotiating and/or fighting, and then taking the blades from each of their owners, ending in one full year of an epic story that borrows heavily from Japanese folklore in artistic style and theming, but throws in modern influences to create a very unique and interesting package. In fact, many things about this show, such as the characters and philosophies, are incredibly unique and the show surprisingly does a great job of blending off-beat humor into the mix of this epic tale. This show can be incredibly funny and the “fight” against the master swordsmen Hakuhei Sabi is one of the funniest moments of them all.

Throughout the first few episodes of the series, Hakuhei Sabi is shown to exhibit an amazing fighting prowess and his blade seems to be shaping up as one of the hardest to achieve by our protagonists Shichika and Togame. The third episode of the series ended dramatically and alluded in its preview of the next episode to finally getting to this epic fight, team Shichika/Togame against Hakuhei, with dramatic action and crazy moves flashing across the screen to tantalize the audience for the next episode. One month of scheduled release later (or in the case of my marathon of the series, one bathroom break later), we head into the fourth episode with massive anticipation. The episode starts with Togame receiving a letter of challenge from Hakuhei for their fight and her complaining about the old-fashioned style he deals with challenging them. With her left eye changing color to reflect a mind immediately scheming, we head into the intro song. After the opening credits, we come back to our two protagonists as they discuss the coming battle. After a little joking around, they’ve made their plans, and we change scenes to a group of ninjas that had been seen in a previous episode planning to assassinate Shichika’s sister in order to provoke him. From this point on, the rest of the episode is from the perspective of these ninjas as they attack and fail to eliminate their opponent in what turns into something straight out of a horror movie.

This is where the joke comes in. The episode takes so much time on this side story that by the time we come back to our two protagonists, they’ve already had the battle and are relaxing and patting each other on the back on how well they did against their incredibly tough opponent. After building up to this battle for an accumulation of four episodes, roughly almost four hours of content, all we get is an after battle scene where they talk about this climactic fight in a play-by-play like you’d expect sportscasters to after just witnessing the best game of the season. Phrases like, “Did you see that…” and “I can’t believe what happened when you…” and “Remember when he…” are continuously thrown out for ten minutes as these two triumphant heroes chow down on an after-battle snack. The icing on this troll cake is that the characters talk about how they’ve bonded even more now through all of the actions we’ve just missed, as they look out at the completely decimated island that was their battlefield just across the waters, showing very obviously how what the audience missed was apparently the most intense scene of the entire series thus far.

The whole idea of purposefully misleading the audience by having a preview that shows nothing of what actually happens is hilarious and on top of this, having the anime poke fun at the audience by having an entire scene dedicated to explaining what they missed out on had me both fuming and laughing at the same time. This series is clever and never likes to repeat the same exact joke, unless it’s a punchline that they can farm for pure hilarity gold, so it never did a scene like this again. It came and went like a random guy that pushes you over and laughs at your fall while jumping off the bridge to his hidey hole. In other words, a typical troll. And while your normal troll has crazy hair, plastic skin, and haunts my childhood memories of playing with toys (along with furbies), this troll is one that I love. I love this show for all of its clever plot, unique and interesting characters, and never-ending ridiculous jokes.

Monogatari Series: Second Season - Medusa Arc’s Prediction of the End

This is my all-time favorite troll I’ve ever seen in an anime. I may be biased here. For one, I absolutely love this anime. For another, this one was really clever, but so absurd that it took me way off-guard. Without spoiling too much of this beautiful story, at the end of the Medusa arc of episodes, one of the main characters of the show falls into insanity after attaining godhood and attacks the main character Araragi. Senjougahara, the girlfriend of Araragi and all around clever bad-ass, strikes a deal with our insane friend to spare her and her love’s lives until after graduation from high school. However, secretly it’s to give Senjougahara enough time to come up with a plan to save them. Not knowing this, our mad god finds the idea of waiting until an arbitrary time, such as high school graduation, to murder someone simply hilarious and allows it. Not promising to do no harm but just letting them live through any injury their crazy godliness inflicts upon them. After this, Insane in the godly Membrane, who narrated the entirety of this arc of the series from their perspective, talks directly to the audience one last time and states how instead of the typical epilogue at the end of each arc of this show, she’ll give a trailer for the end of the season, with the play-by-play of a fierce and horrible end to the series. Every character will be there and a lot of blood will be spilled as well as a few poetic deaths for several of the main cast. Finally, we see nutty god deposit our protagonist's body in a box for this god to seemingly forever have as a trophy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baCgF7_RIlI
For those that don’t mind major spoilers of the final scene of the Medusa arc, here’s what I’m talking about:

While the mad god is twisting the scene to fit how he/she feels it’ll end, everything does seem to lead up to a bloody and horrible final battle like this trailer states, with everyone planning for an ultimate fight for survival against a mad god. But here is where it gets good. The show leaves us with a cliffhanger, as the arc after this gives us a little reprieve via a side story, heightening the tension the audience feels by not getting to the end already. Afterwords, we get a complete jump to another character altogether who decides to take matters into their own hands to save our wonderful cast of characters. Without spoiling the end of the season, everything comes to a head with time running out until… We get nothing. Nothing at all at least as far as our crazy deity’s prediction goes. The final “battle” suddenly doesn’t involve anything that was foretold from on high. The scene goes from a nerve-racking situation to absolutely laughable in the best way possible with an all-out airing of dirty laundry and not a single character smitten as the embarrassed mad god can’t even keep their emotions in check, let alone kill someone. It’s hilarious, and shows how a person achieving the powers of a god is still just a person at heart, no matter how far apart from humanity they seemed. The mad god is defeated in an absurd way and all is saved so this wonderful story doesn’t end well before it needs to. This paragraph will not do this scene justice as I didn’t want to spoil the punchline for those who haven’t watched the show, but I implore you to see it as this anime does a wonderful job of writing some of the cleverest twists and endings I’ve seen, and this scene left me in stitches, forcing me to pause the video so I could try and stop laughing before continuing the show.

And these are my favorite funny troll moves I’ve seen done in anime. Once again, this is a list unique to me and only represents which ones I thought were the best. It also is a bit of a nitpicked list as I tried to avoid troll moves I thought were too much of a spoiler for a series or were too dark to be considered funny. That said, I feel these are really great and all come from great shows. If you haven’t seen any of these shows, I highly recommend them as they all have a lot of great and clever ideas to bring to the table. If you have any thoughts on these or can think of any you’ve seen that had you laughing, let me know!

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Revisionism and How Studio Shaft “Felt Like Destroying Something Moe”

Let’s talk about genre for a second. Now bear with me, I’ll get to the fascinating twists and the dark plot of Madoka Magica soon, but I want to get a little information across first. For film genres, or any art form for that matter, there are a few different stages that a genre goes through. Generally, it starts with an Experimental Stage, where the genre is starting out and the rules haven’t been made just yet. As an example, think of westerns before they all typically started having one man for good facing off in a high noon duel against the bad guy. After they finally establish what works, the Classical Stage begins, which is where all of the tropes and ideas of a genre generally come from. Eventually, people get tired of those tropes, though, and start the Parody Stage. For westerns, this was Blazing Saddles. This stage makes fun of the over-used tropes that start to appear within a genre. Finally, we get to one of my favorite stages of any genre: the Revisionist Stage.

If you don’t know what revisionism in media is, it’s when somebody wants to go back and completely rethink the genre, challenging the tropes and concepts, but still keeping the general ideas. Some of the greatest movies, such as Dances With Wolves and The Dark Knight, have come out of this stage, revitalizing a love for their respective genres. The Revisionist Stage both takes apart every trope and celebrates what makes these genres so great. This is where Puella Magi Madoka Magica comes in. Madoka Magica is the perfect example of revisionism within its genre. The entire point of this show is to take the magical girl genre of anime and turn it completely on its head (Or for those who already know the show, cut off its head). A SPOILER WARNING for anyone that hasn’t seen the show, as it’s basically impossible to discuss this without giving away major plot points. While I’d like to write each of these discussions with sparse spoilers, this time they’re simply too integral to this show and what it’s attempting to do for this genre. As such, there will be MASSIVE spoilers being discussed that for those that haven’t seen the series or care to, will spoil the entirety of the show. I also want to state that I will be ignoring the film The Rebellion Story, a sequel to the series, as that whole movie deserves a discussion on its own, particularly its incredibly controversial ending. With that stated, let’s get started.

I think it’s well known that Japan is one of the stranger cultures out there. Specifically for anime, there is a fascination with magical teen girls that’s become a small obsession within the industry. Early versions of this genre are shows like Sailor Moon, which most people on this side of the pacific know, and even earlier is Sally the Witch, which is considered the first magical girl anime. Hilariously enough, this strange concept for a genre owes a lot to America, as Sally the Witch was directly inspired by the Japanese dub of the show Bewitched that became popular amongst Japanese girls in the 1960s. The major ideas about this genre are the fact that preteen and teen girls obtain magical powers to fight for good and justice against evil, typically with a cute animal sidekick of some sorts, and there’s an indomitable feeling of hope and companionship among the other magical girls. Most shows nowadays also depict transformation scenes where the girls suddenly undress and have their fighting costumes magically adorned onto their bodies. Since most of these shows are for a younger audience, the girls involved luckily are never shown fully nude during these choreographed segments, though the transformation sequences tend to drag on longer than is comfortable. You can basically consider this the anime equivalent of the changing scenes in the 1950s Superman cartoon show. Just, you know, without the phone booth. And, uh, underage girls instead of The Man of Steel. Like I said, Japan is weird.

The interesting thing about this genre is that it hasn’t really changed terribly much over the years, other than a shift to also target a male audience besides the traditional young female viewers. We would see a parody every now and then, but there wasn’t anything around to revitalize the genre and challenge its tropes. Because of this, the genre stagnated for a while until our beloved Madoka Magica came out in January of 2011. Puella Magi Madoka Magica was created by Shaft and director/writer team Akiyuki Shinbo and Gen Urobuchi, a studio and writer/director team well-known for challenging norms and depicting darker worlds. The show is the brainchild of a simple idea: What would happen if you took a traditionally children-focused show and remade it for a mature adult audience?

Here is where things get interesting. Shaft specifically wanted to make everything not what it seems to be with this series. When advertising the show, the trailers and commercials depicted a happy magical girl anime, showing the life of Madoka and her friends as they accept help from a cute mysterious animal called Kyuubey, who gives them magical powers to fight evil. The series attempts to lull the audience into believing it’s a happy and innocent tromp through the fields of the magical girl genre (also known as mahou shoujo) with the first few episodes depicting just this, cutesy characters and an overall happy feeling. From the start, however, there’s always an underlying ominous vibe to everything that occurs, particularly spurred on by the camera work and background music. Here’s a quick synopsis of the first three episodes to show what I mean.

As the first few episodes unfold, we see Madoka pondering over a dark dream she had and can’t remember well, but still continues to enjoy her time with friends who make her laugh. Then, we meet the new student Homura. Whereas the typical new student is shy, Homura is cold and immediately takes charge of any scenario she is in. Madoka remembers her from her dark dream the night before and attempts to talk to her, but only ends up more confused as Homura tells her to stay the same if she values her life and all that she holds dear. As events move forward, Madoka and her best friend Sayaka rescue Kyuubey, a mysterious but adorable creature, from being killed by Homura. Suddenly, a strange evil power envelops and attacks them, but they’re saved by a girl named Mami. Mami thanks them for saving Kyuubey and tells them about what is going on. Mami is a magical girl and explains the existence of a hidden war against evil. Random suicides, murders, cults, and many negatives of the world are apparently brought on by witches, evil beings that prey on humans. While the magical girls stand for good, they don’t always work together or see eye-to-eye. Thus, Homura seems to be against Mami and Kyuubey. Madoka and Sayaka are fascinated by the idea of magical girls and decide to help Mami. The now recovered Kyuubey tells them that they can only become magical girls by making a contract with him, but as part of the contract, he will fulfill one wish for them. However, Sayaka and Madoka are warned to make sure it’s something important as they only have one. While contemplating this, the two go on different witch hunts with Mami, saving people, becoming closer with Mami as time goes on, and warming up to the idea of standing up for good by becoming magical girls. Until one witch hunt during episode three, where Sayaka becomes trapped and Madoka and Mami go to rescue her, finally becoming friends during their struggle. Mami, overjoyed by this, fights her way to the witch and Sayaka, finding power in friendship. As Sayaka and Madoka take cover, Mami battles and shoots the witch. Suddenly, it transforms into a huge monster and devours Mami’s head. She falls to the ground, dead.

The above final scene from the third episode was so shocking that when it aired in Japan, many viewers were horrified (There was even a new word that spawned online and spread outside of Madoka fans called Mamiru, meaning “To be guillotined like Mami” or “A horrible death”). From this point on, the veil is lifted and the show dramatically makes a turn for the dark (The ending song even changes from happy and fun, to a dark, hard rock song). We discover over the rest of the series a complete deconstruction of the genre and what it means to be a magical girl. Kyuubey is likened to a demon as we find his contracts trap the girls' souls into gems in order to give them power. The territorial disputes among the magical girls are spurred on by the fact that the only way to purify a soul gem and continue living is to use grief seeds dropped by fallen witches. We also see that every wish that is granted has a twist to it in a similar way to the mythological evil Djinn, causing pain to those who wish for it. In possibly the largest twist in the series, we also find that Kyuubey’s true name is Incubator and a magical girl is merely a fledgling form. As Kyuubey puts it:

“On this planet you call females who have yet to become adults, girls. It makes sense then that since you'll eventually become witches, you should be called Magical Girls.”

And so, the Kyuubey is out of the bag. Every magical girl is killing a matured form of their sisters and every little girl that Kyuubey has blessed with power will be consumed by hate to spread despair to humanity. And for what? What purpose would this whole elaborate scheme be for? For Kyuubey and his race of emotionless creatures, humans are merely food, and the emotions that they express are fuel for their power. And why young girls as the progenitors of this chaos? As they’re developing and going through puberty, they’re the most emotional of all humans and output immense amounts of emotional energy for the Kyuubeys, particularly their grief and despair.

These revelations start taking their toll on the main characters, who with the exception of Homura, barely knew the full extent of what they signed up for. And speaking of Homura, her story becomes the story of the entire series, as we see the reasons behind her actions and cold words show an even darker world. Homura’s power is to manipulate time and these girls that she’s distanced herself from were her friends, particularly Madoka. However, she’s watched possibly hundreds of times over all of her friends die, and every time she attempts to fix things, it gets worse, with each girl dying more violently than the last cycle through time. Certain scenes show the girls begging for death rather than to become a witch. She finally cannot take anymore, and decides she has to fix things from the outside looking in, forsaking friendship, but slowly as each death seems more and more unavoidable, her grief and despair start to take over. It’s only when Madoka steps in to attempt to fix things that Homura even considers that there is hope.

In doing all of this, this series answers every trope of the magical girl genre with a dark twist. Where there were cute girls saving the world, there are now children desperately trying to fight a forever stronger evil. Where there was a cute animal sidekick, there is now an emotionless devil in a stuffed animal skin that steals the souls of our main cast. And where there was optimism and an indomitable spirit of hope, we find evil and an inevitable fall into despair for all who become magical girls. Even the reasons for the girls to take up this mantle are seen as truly selfish rather than for a greater good. Mami did so to save her own life, Homura did so to be stronger, Sayaka did so to save the boy she loves so he could love her, and the list goes on. All of this contesting of tropes is further shown by the art style for the show. In traditional mahou shoujo, the animation is very moe, or cute and endearing. However, Madoka Magica only keeps this for the characters themselves. Every witch labyrinth that the characters find themselves in is unique and borrows several pages from Tim Burton’s favorite playbook, but multiplied tenfold, contrasting with the cutesy style of the characters and the picturesque, but typically dark cityscapes of the real world.

Every idea of the genre is challenged and reflected on, with the show asking why it’s always been this way. Shaft wanted us to reflect on the implications of these tropes, the reasons for these girls wanting to do good, as well as the realistic expectations of sending adolescent girls to fight evil and how they’d come to terms with the death, hate, and warped perspectives they’d face each day. This series is dark and unapologetic, showing us violence and darker themes. There may rarely be blood and not much that could be considered gore, but the implications of what’s happening (the suicides, decapitations, murders, and the deaths of the main cast) are still there, giving the show a psychological thriller aspect. As an example, this scene shows where the death of one of the members drives Mami to insanity and to start killing a few of the members of the group before they all turn into witches.

However, the show isn’t without its celebration of the genre. It deconstructs many things about magical girl anime, but in doing so, also attempts to pave the way for future entries. Puella Magi Madoka Magica may be an incredibly dark show, but its ending message is hope and love can conquer all, showing this with one final wish that breaks the rules of the game and finally ends the constant loop of death and despair. Not everyone comes out happy (or even alive for that matter), but good does conquer evil, even if it takes an immense amount of suffering to get there. We see twists and turns galore, but with an adherence to the very fundamental elements of the genre. There are still girls battling evil with magical powers, there is still a feeling that friendship conquers all, and there is still an idea that hope is not a useless thing, but is sometimes all you have. The goal then, seems to be not just to deconstruct, but also rebuild from basic groundwork what a mahou shoujo anime should be, outlining thoroughly what needs to change and what can be left unchallenged. It’s a beautiful show, in its art and animation, as well as its clever writing and amazing story. It’s a popular pick for many, but it’s one of my favorites specifically for everything it did within its genre and for being among the greats that will be thoroughly evaluated and celebrated for years to come.