March 5th, 2021
reviews from czxcj
Kuzo no Honkai
But, therein lies the problem. It is very easy to write of powerful emotions – and hard to write about an escape from them. To write about powerful emotions, all you have to do is to invoke emotional extremes. War is an emotional extreme. Backstabbing and adultery are emotional extremes. First love is an emotional extreme. Because they are so extreme – there are bound to be people who find them ‘real as hell’ – because we remember our extremes the clearest, while forgetting that our life is built from these extremes and a thousand other smaller thoughts. A writer with more restraint always finds a way to be gentler, subtler, and more analytical in their treatment of a theme. You can look to Woody Allen’s Manhattan – for example – where all these passions and emotions play a part in the work, but it also serves to expand upon the theme of a single person’s idealization of his own life. His idealization of a city and of romantic ambitions. The story he is trapped in and cannot escape from.
To that extent, Kuzu no Honkai is better as a whirlpool for you to be trapped in. It’s a wave of emotion that just keeps on coming, and it uses all the power of Shoujo romantic art to maximize on the force. But, I think a good story has to show you the waves, and then provide you with a shore to stand on – to look at the sun.
*
Kotonoha no Niwa
A Dialogue Between Nature and Man
It was at this point that Nature promptly collapsed into a pile and was swiftly blown away by the newest next level Turbo Leafblower (now with a digital share function to share your latest leafblowing exploits with your friends). Afterwards came the era of Postmodernism Part 2 "where's your metanarrative now Modernist losers!" which saw a great flowering of bishoujo games and further rooted Man's ability to to escape the travails of the flesh by staring at pretty pictures. Eventually they ran out of cute girls standing in sunflower fields so they had to make do with hot office ladies sitting by sparkly pretty ponds. Makoto Shinkai went on to make his next film, with even prettier pictures, which promptly caused the collapse of the wave-function and all that esoteric Qualia stuff. After the entire universe restarted, the next iteration of 'Nature' was thus Shinkai-ified, populated by beings who could not do anything other than stick to their base functions because they were continuously stunned by how bloody awesome the trees looked to be able to develop conscious intellect. Soon enough there had to evolve a species that was actually so apathetic that they couldn't be bothered a rat's ass about staring at pretty trees. They were a very narcissistic species that thought that they were better than the other species because the rest of them were mostly mute, from being too Shinkai-ified, and did stupid things in the same ecological patterns (these guys they called 'animals'). The narcissistic species went on to make cars, and reinvent the electric guitar, and remake electronic simulations of social interaction, called 'dating sims', because they couldn't be bothered to commit to the real thing. Thus the cycle came full circle.
*
Ao Haru Ride
The greatest sin of animation is a lack of imagination and movement. Movies can get off being slow and dictated by a stonish reality. Books can get off being prosaic and preachy. If you want to be preachy in animation the world must move with your words. That's why Bakemonogatari works. Animation is the bastion to save one from the horror vacui. It is Borges' Total Library or the world of Tlon. Miyazaki acknowledged that the primary drive of animation was dreams. People must not forget that its a medium where anything is possible.
*
Byousoku 5 Centimeter
Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father,
Your mother, your sister, or your brother?
I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends?
Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country?
I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty?
I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold?
I hate it as you hate God.
Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
I love the clouds the clouds that pass up there
Up there the wonderful clouds!”
If I were, like Shonagon again, to compose a list of “Hateful things”, then I would first and foremost place “the sky lacking the romanticism of rain, sunsets, sunrises or cloudy days” when all the clouds look like bloated gaudy woolly sheep in a sea of disgustingly monotonous light blue.
If I were, then, asked the question: “Of all the various aspects and abilities of animation, what is the foremost and distinct aspect that encapsulates all of your love for this medium, all of its splendor, all of its divinity?” I would then direct such an inquisitive soul towards the tapestry of the sky and reply: “Its generosity towards the dreamer”.
For what does the dreamer think when he looks at the sky? He perceives Nature’s stinginess in feeding him beauty only in thimbles. He fills his heads with the most luxurious and brilliant of sunsets and then looks at his watch and realizes that it is hours till sunset and hours again to the sunrise. Furthermore the dreamer is swamped with such stifling modernity that all buildings and grand skyscrapers, all offices and hallways, have lost their sparkle (the sparkle of man and his ingenuity of creation).
Generosity, then, is to create a world where every cloud has its flair, every sky its virtue, and every building its sparkle. Generosity is to create a world where the sun is so finely directed that, rather than being an unbearable heat upon the idle walker, it makes everything alive in such viscous gleams that one cannot help but think this world was made of painted Venetian glass.
To dulled eyes Shinkai’s 5cm per second is a love story. To the dreamer it is a catalogue of dreams: most frequently dreams of the sky.
*
Chihayafuru
Chihayafuru is good, astoundingly and courageously good. There is crying almost every episode and yet it still remains utterly utterly good. It has an abundance of Shoujo romanticism yet it is good. The characters are good. The moments are good. The fights are good. The battles fought are good. The entirety of the show I cherish in my heart. Every episode I cherish. Every single interaction I cherish. The jokes, even though not necessarily of highest standard, I cherish. This show I cherish and cherish again. When it comes to this show I have no choice but to be giddy with love and to fight for its reputation. I shall have to fight for Chihayafuru to be placed not just among the best sports animes but as the best sports anime. I shall fight because it is my utter love that drives me, as a writer and an aesthete, to edify what my love consists of; perhaps in the process to teach others how words heavy with love can weigh with significance and how expressing love is the pinnacle of all and every language. Even though my tongue is tied and tangled up in a million knots by love and already I feel the schoolgirl giddiness that comes with trying to describe why exactly I love I must still fight for my love. ‘Fight’ is appropriate because in the end Chihayafuru is all about fighting; fighting and victory in the name of love. I must love like a girl and fight like a man.
*
Aku no Hana
Of course, all this is like simple Anarchist theory. You can read more about these sorts of theories of human freedom in things like the works Situationist International and the movie My Dinner with Andre. What I see Aku no Hana as is a portrait, a representation of the burden (and it is a huge burden) and yet simultaneous beauty of leading the lifestyle of sin Baudelaire and Rimbaud once led. Nakamura isn’t just a sadistic BDSM queen; she’s a representation of that lifestyle, a symbol. Takao submits to her because the sheer thrill of their exploits is a form of exaltation. Likewise, I was drawn towards the glimpse of that lifestyle, two people doing things I could never have done and looking so unbelievably joyous in their carnage.
Normally I classify works under two forms. One is a work that is a beautiful illusion, a work of fiction that is perfect in every way for escapism and sentiment, drawing out simple emotions. Things like melodramas and thrillers and comedies fall under this territory. Then there are those that have glimpses of direct, real lived experience within them, those works that can give you bits and pieces of life. These are the works that will enrapture your soul and depress you because they capture just a mere iota of a full experience that you know is currently out of your reach or force you to confront a dire reality. Things like Welcome to the NHK, Subarashii Sekai (by Inio Asano), Synecdoche New York, All About Lily Chou Chou, Fight Club (to a small extent, it’s more of a thriller).
But, therein lies the problem. It is very easy to write of powerful emotions – and hard to write about an escape from them. To write about powerful emotions, all you have to do is to invoke emotional extremes. War is an emotional extreme. Backstabbing and adultery are emotional extremes. First love is an emotional extreme. Because they are so extreme – there are bound to be people who find them ‘real as hell’ – because we remember our extremes the clearest, while forgetting that our life is built from these extremes and a thousand other smaller thoughts. A writer with more restraint always finds a way to be gentler, subtler, and more analytical in their treatment of a theme. You can look to Woody Allen’s Manhattan – for example – where all these passions and emotions play a part in the work, but it also serves to expand upon the theme of a single person’s idealization of his own life. His idealization of a city and of romantic ambitions. The story he is trapped in and cannot escape from.
To that extent, Kuzu no Honkai is better as a whirlpool for you to be trapped in. It’s a wave of emotion that just keeps on coming, and it uses all the power of Shoujo romantic art to maximize on the force. But, I think a good story has to show you the waves, and then provide you with a shore to stand on – to look at the sun.
*
Kotonoha no Niwa
A Dialogue Between Nature and Man
It was at this point that Nature promptly collapsed into a pile and was swiftly blown away by the newest next level Turbo Leafblower (now with a digital share function to share your latest leafblowing exploits with your friends). Afterwards came the era of Postmodernism Part 2 "where's your metanarrative now Modernist losers!" which saw a great flowering of bishoujo games and further rooted Man's ability to to escape the travails of the flesh by staring at pretty pictures. Eventually they ran out of cute girls standing in sunflower fields so they had to make do with hot office ladies sitting by sparkly pretty ponds. Makoto Shinkai went on to make his next film, with even prettier pictures, which promptly caused the collapse of the wave-function and all that esoteric Qualia stuff. After the entire universe restarted, the next iteration of 'Nature' was thus Shinkai-ified, populated by beings who could not do anything other than stick to their base functions because they were continuously stunned by how bloody awesome the trees looked to be able to develop conscious intellect. Soon enough there had to evolve a species that was actually so apathetic that they couldn't be bothered a rat's ass about staring at pretty trees. They were a very narcissistic species that thought that they were better than the other species because the rest of them were mostly mute, from being too Shinkai-ified, and did stupid things in the same ecological patterns (these guys they called 'animals'). The narcissistic species went on to make cars, and reinvent the electric guitar, and remake electronic simulations of social interaction, called 'dating sims', because they couldn't be bothered to commit to the real thing. Thus the cycle came full circle.
*
Ao Haru Ride
The greatest sin of animation is a lack of imagination and movement. Movies can get off being slow and dictated by a stonish reality. Books can get off being prosaic and preachy. If you want to be preachy in animation the world must move with your words. That's why Bakemonogatari works. Animation is the bastion to save one from the horror vacui. It is Borges' Total Library or the world of Tlon. Miyazaki acknowledged that the primary drive of animation was dreams. People must not forget that its a medium where anything is possible.
*
Byousoku 5 Centimeter
Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father,
Your mother, your sister, or your brother?
I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends?
Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country?
I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty?
I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold?
I hate it as you hate God.
Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
I love the clouds the clouds that pass up there
Up there the wonderful clouds!”
If I were, like Shonagon again, to compose a list of “Hateful things”, then I would first and foremost place “the sky lacking the romanticism of rain, sunsets, sunrises or cloudy days” when all the clouds look like bloated gaudy woolly sheep in a sea of disgustingly monotonous light blue.
If I were, then, asked the question: “Of all the various aspects and abilities of animation, what is the foremost and distinct aspect that encapsulates all of your love for this medium, all of its splendor, all of its divinity?” I would then direct such an inquisitive soul towards the tapestry of the sky and reply: “Its generosity towards the dreamer”.
For what does the dreamer think when he looks at the sky? He perceives Nature’s stinginess in feeding him beauty only in thimbles. He fills his heads with the most luxurious and brilliant of sunsets and then looks at his watch and realizes that it is hours till sunset and hours again to the sunrise. Furthermore the dreamer is swamped with such stifling modernity that all buildings and grand skyscrapers, all offices and hallways, have lost their sparkle (the sparkle of man and his ingenuity of creation).
Generosity, then, is to create a world where every cloud has its flair, every sky its virtue, and every building its sparkle. Generosity is to create a world where the sun is so finely directed that, rather than being an unbearable heat upon the idle walker, it makes everything alive in such viscous gleams that one cannot help but think this world was made of painted Venetian glass.
To dulled eyes Shinkai’s 5cm per second is a love story. To the dreamer it is a catalogue of dreams: most frequently dreams of the sky.
*
Chihayafuru
Chihayafuru is good, astoundingly and courageously good. There is crying almost every episode and yet it still remains utterly utterly good. It has an abundance of Shoujo romanticism yet it is good. The characters are good. The moments are good. The fights are good. The battles fought are good. The entirety of the show I cherish in my heart. Every episode I cherish. Every single interaction I cherish. The jokes, even though not necessarily of highest standard, I cherish. This show I cherish and cherish again. When it comes to this show I have no choice but to be giddy with love and to fight for its reputation. I shall have to fight for Chihayafuru to be placed not just among the best sports animes but as the best sports anime. I shall fight because it is my utter love that drives me, as a writer and an aesthete, to edify what my love consists of; perhaps in the process to teach others how words heavy with love can weigh with significance and how expressing love is the pinnacle of all and every language. Even though my tongue is tied and tangled up in a million knots by love and already I feel the schoolgirl giddiness that comes with trying to describe why exactly I love I must still fight for my love. ‘Fight’ is appropriate because in the end Chihayafuru is all about fighting; fighting and victory in the name of love. I must love like a girl and fight like a man.
*
Aku no Hana
Of course, all this is like simple Anarchist theory. You can read more about these sorts of theories of human freedom in things like the works Situationist International and the movie My Dinner with Andre. What I see Aku no Hana as is a portrait, a representation of the burden (and it is a huge burden) and yet simultaneous beauty of leading the lifestyle of sin Baudelaire and Rimbaud once led. Nakamura isn’t just a sadistic BDSM queen; she’s a representation of that lifestyle, a symbol. Takao submits to her because the sheer thrill of their exploits is a form of exaltation. Likewise, I was drawn towards the glimpse of that lifestyle, two people doing things I could never have done and looking so unbelievably joyous in their carnage.
Normally I classify works under two forms. One is a work that is a beautiful illusion, a work of fiction that is perfect in every way for escapism and sentiment, drawing out simple emotions. Things like melodramas and thrillers and comedies fall under this territory. Then there are those that have glimpses of direct, real lived experience within them, those works that can give you bits and pieces of life. These are the works that will enrapture your soul and depress you because they capture just a mere iota of a full experience that you know is currently out of your reach or force you to confront a dire reality. Things like Welcome to the NHK, Subarashii Sekai (by Inio Asano), Synecdoche New York, All About Lily Chou Chou, Fight Club (to a small extent, it’s more of a thriller).
Posted by saki88 | Mar 5, 2021 3:40 AM | 0 comments
March 22nd, 2016
Swoooning
Anime Relations: Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso
because im swooning over czxcjx's reviews, i found this wonderful piece from one of the posted notes.
Before one can delve into a dream, one must earn the right to it. Dreams aren’t born of simple substances, but, as Freud theorized, are embellished cruelties, embellished torments given a riddle form in the medium of the dream. To have a dream of nostalgia, of beauty, and of the simple stirrings of love, is to have in one’s heart a heavy longing caused by repressed torment, that can only be released by painting it over with such a pure vision of love that one is bound to ooooh and aaaawww at it.
Beauty is beauty but Beauty is only validated by having cruelty to bring it to light. No easy cruelty is the way that the writer has to live by. By choosing to write he’s already dealing with a cruel subject. Art is born out of an instinct to assassinate the material world, and to raise the soul as pillar upon which all is to stand. The dirty unclean soul manifest in all our bodies. This radiant blemished beast.
In order to write, one cannot dance around in pure dreams. One must drag down cruelty into form. To simultaneously aim at killing the world, in all its entirety, by being one’s own Demiurge, while simultaneously telling the truth; to spin the lie that tells the truth. That’s the lie stronger than the lie told in April.
here is part of the review from juungi for the anime
Your Lie in April fashions itself to be a stand-out romance series that reminds us that while some relationships may be transient and brief, some people will come into our lives at just the right time for just long enough to touch us in a way we never thought possible.
Before one can delve into a dream, one must earn the right to it. Dreams aren’t born of simple substances, but, as Freud theorized, are embellished cruelties, embellished torments given a riddle form in the medium of the dream. To have a dream of nostalgia, of beauty, and of the simple stirrings of love, is to have in one’s heart a heavy longing caused by repressed torment, that can only be released by painting it over with such a pure vision of love that one is bound to ooooh and aaaawww at it.
Beauty is beauty but Beauty is only validated by having cruelty to bring it to light. No easy cruelty is the way that the writer has to live by. By choosing to write he’s already dealing with a cruel subject. Art is born out of an instinct to assassinate the material world, and to raise the soul as pillar upon which all is to stand. The dirty unclean soul manifest in all our bodies. This radiant blemished beast.
In order to write, one cannot dance around in pure dreams. One must drag down cruelty into form. To simultaneously aim at killing the world, in all its entirety, by being one’s own Demiurge, while simultaneously telling the truth; to spin the lie that tells the truth. That’s the lie stronger than the lie told in April.
here is part of the review from juungi for the anime
Your Lie in April fashions itself to be a stand-out romance series that reminds us that while some relationships may be transient and brief, some people will come into our lives at just the right time for just long enough to touch us in a way we never thought possible.
Posted by saki88 | Mar 22, 2016 1:31 AM | 0 comments
March 19th, 2016
consumed and snapped
Anime Relations: Chihayafuru
for weeks that ive watched the anime and manga Chihayafuru, i should not just say im hooked, but rather i am consumed whole.
every chapter, every page of the chapters devours me whole.
it leaves a deep wound in my heart that can only be healed with tears from my eyes.
i know im not the only one feeling sad and empathy towards the characters, especially towards Taichi.
though Chihaya is the lead character in the story, i can see a lot of things going on for Taichi's character.
the things he do for himself, the team and most importantly for Chihaya do not go beyond his abilities and capacity as a high school student. it was just the right amount of understanding, patience, kindness, but at the same time, with a hint of despair and hatred towards himself.
I understand how big was Arata's impact to Chihaya's life, especially in setting a dream for herself instead of a dream for her sister. She did work hard to reach where she is now, but only then did she realized that Taichi was one of the foundations that made her continuously enjoy and love caruta.
Arata as away for years and only Taichi was there. Taichi.... Taichi.... from first year to their third year, he was there. until he snapped and decided to quit the club.
*19/03/16
every chapter, every page of the chapters devours me whole.
it leaves a deep wound in my heart that can only be healed with tears from my eyes.
i know im not the only one feeling sad and empathy towards the characters, especially towards Taichi.
though Chihaya is the lead character in the story, i can see a lot of things going on for Taichi's character.
the things he do for himself, the team and most importantly for Chihaya do not go beyond his abilities and capacity as a high school student. it was just the right amount of understanding, patience, kindness, but at the same time, with a hint of despair and hatred towards himself.
I understand how big was Arata's impact to Chihaya's life, especially in setting a dream for herself instead of a dream for her sister. She did work hard to reach where she is now, but only then did she realized that Taichi was one of the foundations that made her continuously enjoy and love caruta.
Arata as away for years and only Taichi was there. Taichi.... Taichi.... from first year to their third year, he was there. until he snapped and decided to quit the club.
*19/03/16
Posted by saki88 | Mar 19, 2016 2:18 AM | 0 comments
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