Patapata Hikousen no Bouken

First of all, I would like to say that this is my first review. I may not answer all of your questions, but I will try.

I found Patapata Hikousen no Bouken to be a very enjoyable anime. The characters swept me off my feet right from the start, and the story was just as good. This would be a good show to watch with the family; adults can find several hints at the ending that would be missed by children, and there is little swearing, and no nudity.

Story: 9/10
The plot had many twists and turns that made each episode interesting in its ... own way. Most of the twists were minor, not really necessary, but they were excellent opportunities to showcase character development, which was done beautifully. The one problem I have with the plot is that I was able to guess who the evil mastermind was by episode three, although I had to wait twenty episodes to confirm my suspicions.

Characters: 10/10
The characters were what really made this show shine. I even shed a few tears over their pain, which I don't normally do. Every character displays depth, and most develop as the series progresses. Certainly all of the main characters do. Even the aforementioned evil mastermind changes, perhaps more than some. It is also possible to feel sympathy for the evil mastermind, once they have been unveiled. I found that difficult, but I can see how it would be possible. Most of the characters also have a backstory, which makes them more realistic.

Art: 7/10
This is an older style anime, which is perfect for the time period, but that isn't my preferred style. The scenery is amazing, but the characters look a little young for their ages.

Sound: 8/10
Overall, I liked the music, but I have to admit that nothing really stood out to me. On the other hand, I found nothing that repulsed me either, so this gets a high rating. One note on the theme song: While the music is the same, the pictures do change, and are mostly clips from the show.

Overall: 10/10
This show hooked me from the very beginning, and kept me entertained the entire way. It made me laugh out loud, cry like a toddler, and left me wishing for a sequel. I could have watched another three dozen episodes about the characters. This one gets top marks.

At its baseline, Patapata Hikousen no Bouken (Secret of the Cerulean Sand) is a solid action adventure. In terms of spirit it is in the same vein as the Ghibli movies, Beast Player Erin, and Serei no Moribito in that the protagonists are defined primarily by authenticity and purity of heart and the atmosphere feels wholesome. In terms of plot structure it is similar to Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water and Future Boy Conan in that you have children going on adventures around the world in which conflicts are not created from their combat ability but various nonviolent set pieces (until the later half). ...

I define a solid action adventure by two primary metrics: 1) having tension, creative set pieces, and varied, interesting locations in the action-adventures 2) having a cast you want to follow along. Provided that the action adventure does not devote its resources to doing much else, a lack of thematic substance, rich characterization, or character development is not much of a problem. If you start getting bored of the action adventures, then the problem is not necessarily a lack of substance but rather the style wasn't good enough--- the action wasn't new and inspired for each episode, there isn't enough tension for you to keep watching, and the characters aren't interesting enough make you want to see them.

Patapata meets both of these metrics. First of all, it does a good job setting up the stakes for the action-adventure by spending three episodes setting up the background of both the hero and the villain so that both of them have personal reasons for doing what they do. I wanted to follow Jane on her adventure because I sympathized with her enough to want to see her attain her goal. The villain in the latter half comes off as a stereotypical power hungry warmonger like you'd see in anti-war Ghibli movies, but is saved from being a cliche because they spent three episodes detailing his childhood and it is Freudian.

While the long term tension is there, there is also tension in the individual episodes. Though some of the early episodes have comparatively tame conflicts that might leave viewers bored, the episodes with more serious stakes become more frequent as the show progressed until a 6-7 episode stretch with engaging life or death struggles. In addition, this method of doing things was best, as it allowed the show to gradually increase the threat level, especially since the protagonist is a teenage girl with no combat abilities. They showed Jane learning to solve smaller problems before being able to tackle bigger ones, which was also a good way to make the child protagonist active in a way that didn't feel contrived or disproportionate to the stakes involved. Moreover, these smaller problems showcase Jane's moral character, whereas thrusting her into the conflict would make her feel much more like a shell of a character designed to keep the action moving.

This ties into the variation of the set pieces as well, as there is a good balance between the slice of life episodes and the action-oriented episodes. The setting also changes every two episodes or so and the designs of the scifi ships and locations are unique enough to flavor the adventures.

As for having a cast you want to follow along, most of the time this is done by having entertaining individual personalities and great character chemistry so that no matter what the characters do or where they go they can make the scene interesting just by their presence. In this case the character personalities are plain, but they are authentic and easy to root for, owing to the overall tone of the show and the setup of the characters (which was previously mentioned). Though Jane is the archetypal pure hearted Ghibli girl that can do no wrong on the surface, the show gives a thoughtful explanation of where her sympathy for other people and her love of flying comes from. It should also be noted that characters like Jane and Erin from Beast Player Erin are not goody-two shoes characters in the same sense as shounen/shoujo characters with big hearts but ditzy personalities because the latter don't have authenticity.

This leads to the issue of the supposed childishness and heavy handedness of the series which I've seen most other people complain about. We've all seen the villains who do horrible things only to get turned to the other side by the protagonist who believes that there is good in everyone. In this show it is true that all those on the side of the good guys are portrayed as pure hearted, well intentioned people. It is also true that there are instances where Jane chooses to trust people that seem to mean harm to her only for them to turn out to be good people after all. Given the surrounding intangibles, I choose to believe that this is more of a case of her being able to read people well, not that she's blindly being idealistic and that the show is supporting the idea that everyone is redeemable. There is evidence in the show to support this as well. The first clue was when she trusts Barsac enough to accompany him, but she senses that he's withholding information so she lies about her identity. Second, there are two incidences where she's confronted by evidence that a person she once trusted is suspicious, and in those instances she puts her faith in people aside and opts to take precautions to defend herself. Outside of Jane, Barsac is shown to trust Jane to accompany them on a top secret mission because he reads her to be trustworthy. Furthermore, the show actually avoids redeeming any of the main villains, so no 180 turns.

That is the extent to which I can understand where complains of childishness and heavy handedness come from. While the tone and direction of the show suggests that is geared towards children, it is sufficiently balanced and not nearly sugary enough to interfere with my immersion in the characters and the stakes. This is in contrast to something like Beast Player Erin, where the comic relief characters, repetition of flashbacks, low stakes, nurturing environment, and singing tipped the show towards being too sweet and undermined its dramatic tension. It is better than Nadia in this regard as well, as the tone of Nadia took me out of the story with its flat humor (especially the ecchi humor) and its three cartoonish villain characters as well as a complete lack of authenticity (trademark of Anno). Furthermore, this is not childish in the same way that something like Anne of Green Gables is, where the stakes are limited to a kid's life in the country side. People die here.

Another complaint is that per the childish nature of the show, the plot is predictable and cliche. The plot is predictable insofar as it follows a journey through different places in search of some macguffin and you know the protagonists have plot armor. It is cliche in the sense that the macguffin can be exploited by a shady organization to unlock weapons of mass destruction and the pure hearted girl is the one to stop them. I would argue that though you know the overall layout of the plot, the show still crafts sufficient engagement because the specifics of the HOW things happen throughout the journey are unexpected and it still does a good job at establishing threat. For example, in one episode where the protagonists must face bandits terrorizing a village, the episode does not start with them hearing about the bandits and deciding to help. The episode starts with a tense scene where village defenders are overrun by the technologically superior bandits, with one of the bandits grabbing the female leader by her hair and dragging her on his vehicle. That part is not childish. This establishes the threat so that even though the viewer knows the good guys are going to win somehow, but you still want to watch them do it. Another reason people may find this show predictable is because the villain reveal was obvious. But I don't think that was every intended to be much of a reveal or twist given the setup of the first three episodes. The same goes for the villains being obvious to spot. The show intentionally makes it clear who are the villains because this creates dramatic irony in which the audience knows something the characters don't, and suspense derives from waiting for the characters to figure it out before they get into trouble.

So that's my case for why this show functions well as an action adventure and why its supposed childishness and predictability don't interfere much with that function.

Now I will explain what elevates the show for me personally and in the process further dispel claims that it is childish, cliche, and heavy handed. Skip ahead to the end to avoid what you might find to be overanalyzing pretentiousness. SPOILERS AHEAD

I previously talked about how I interpreted Jane's morality. This is not the type of morality that strictly separates good from evil and advocates for blind kindness towards everyone. The show directly states that machines are neutral and whether they are good and bad are dependent on the people that use them. What viewers might not get is how this applies to broader themes in the show if interpreted a bit more loosely. Jane and her brother are both idealistic inventors who believe in the best of people, don't harbor hatred or ego, and are stubborn in their ambitions. Along her journey, sure Jane comes across many good hearted people that she correctly trusts, but she also comes across instances where she faces the possibility of people betraying her and she has to act accordingly. Her idealistic attitude applies to her attitude towards flying machines, which she perceives to be inherently good for their ability to make things easier for people. Her brother is the same way, as he believed that his inventions were used to make a utopia and unlike Jane, was successfully tricked by someone else into contributing towards evil means. They both share the same flaws of idealism and being overly trusting. Now, loss of youthful idealism and innocence is not some groundbreaking theme and is quite common.

What elevates the understanding of this idea beyond what I normally see in media is William Buxton's story. All his hatred and evil deeds stemmed from a childhood grudge against the Buxton family for interfering with his mother's sole love for him. He wanted to be the sole recipient of his mother's love, and when his mother died he associated the trauma of her death with the anger he felt for the Buxton family, amplifying these negative emotions. These emotional scars from an early age lead him down a path to create a supposed utopia where he had full control, and further to create a super weapon to dominate the rest of the world, all so he can be the center of everyone's allegiance. He treats Jane similarly, wanting to keep her to himself by keeping her in a cage, so much so that he had a child substitute for Jane while she was gone. People to him are little more than possessions. This is in line with the possessive, jealous thinking that he had as a child. It's a type of thinking based on absolutes, based on maximizing something that is technically positive--- his mother's love for him. He could not cope with anything less than his mother's absolute devotion to him, such that you can describe this pattern of thinking as idealistic. So all three Buxton family members were idealistic in that they held onto something good so tightly that they did not allow room for anything they perceived to be negative.

You might be thinking that George and Jane Buxton are nowhere close to the monster that is William, but despite what it seems those two do have flaws, and those flaws are rooted in dealing with absolutes (move over, Sith lords). Of course you can say that George was excused from any blame because he was being misled by William, and the specifics of what he did in Neo City were not elaborated on, but given the greater themes in the rest of the show and his personality type, there is enough room to suggest that his own mindset made him easier prey. George may have been fooled but it takes two to make a fool. George's utopian ideals and blind trust in William made him more susceptible to promises of a perfect world and he tended to hole himself up in his laboratory without diverting his energy away from his scientific pursuits to learn about the outside world.

As for Jane, despite what it seems, she did not remain the same throughout the journey as is common for her archetype. In fact, her arc not only dealt with the loss of youthful idealism but an inability to cope with loss by letting go. Just like William, she had trouble letting go of her mother and her entire journey was in search of George, who was presumed dead. When given the opportunity to escape in the last episode, she jumped from the escaping ship back to the sinking ship to try to rescue her brother, and still had to be forced into the escape pod afterwards because she didn't want to leave her two brothers. However, the escape pod was kept from leaving because its rope got tangled. At that point William, who just before tried to use a superweapon to rule the world and keep the world for himself, saw that Jane's life was in danger and had to make a decision. He chose to stop thinking about himself for once and cut the rope. In that moment, he let go of his anger and hatred, as well as his desire to have the world and Jane to himself, allowing the escape pod to unfurl its wings and fly. Jane, in the pod, had to watch her brothers die with the ship as she flew away high in the sky. For 25 episodes, Jane wanted to make flying machines to help people and because as a child she was told that her mother was in the sky, so flying was a ways to get close to her dead mother. Now, flying takes on a whole new meaning--- freedom from past pain, attachment to dead loved ones, and attachment to one's own ideals. This holds true for both William and Jane, and you can say George was also freed himself from the guilt of helping William by helping to correct his mistakes. In addition, the father, Edward Buxton, is shown recovering from illness induced by his grief at the end of the show.

So how do idealism, good and evil, flying machines, and dealing with grief relate? The pervading spirit is that of neutrality, of zen. There is a balance of good and evil, of positive and negative, of ying and yang. You have to be reasonable and moderate. Utopias and benevolent flying machines don't exist. Not everyone in the world is pure hearted. Not everyone who is pure hearted contributes to pure good. Not everyone who is evil is lacking in love but rather the perceived lack of love was what led to the evil. Not everyone you love can stay with you forever. The cerulean sand can be used for great good or great evil depending on the light that shines on it. The genius of an inventor can be used for great good or great evil as well. The death of a loved one can lead one down on a path of compassion or a path of destruction. To hold onto one end of the extreme and try to conform the world to that vision is to not just to be too idealistic but more importantly, it shows a lack of balance, a lack of understanding, and a lack of restraint. To abandon attachment to extremes and accept this mix of good and bad is to free yourself so you can fly. All of this was not preached by the show but rather embedded in it. If you don't want to look it's not there but if you want to look it's there, so if all this sounds like pretentious talk to you, you can ignore it and just enjoy the show in a straightforward way.

Each of the individual themes I mentioned have been tackled in anime before, but few have done with this combination of naturality, authenticity, and cohesiveness. Dennou Coil and Fantastic Children were not able to satisfactorily pull off the theme of letting go of loved ones--- Dennou Coil because the last few episodes dealing with grief were disconnected from the rest of the show and Fantastic Children because its contrived background story made for poor buildup.

ENDSPOILERS

In summary, Patapata succeeds because it is a fun action adventure that ties its themes together in such a way that one theme amplifies the other.

Now for some quick personal opinions on art and music:

Art: Aesthetically speaking, the designs are balanced--- though the show is made for kids the designs have enough hardness to them, unlike many kids shows and all moe shows that are too soft in design.

Music: There is a prominent theme that sounds quite good called Dream to the Sky. They overuse the theme but it's good enough that I don't mind. The ED themes sound like they were made by the Backstreet Boys. Though the OP and ED's are no slouch themselves, I do wish the OP and ED were lifted from Nadia which is otherwise inferior in every category (that's me being mad that Nadia is so popular while this show falls into obscurity).