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In the near-future, the Japanese space program is rebuilding itself from the ashes of the crash of its first rocket. The deeply disillusioned have split off from the project, bitter and guilty, but there are several involved who still desperately want to go into space--even after something so horrific. And they are the ones who bear the backlash from people who think the original project was already an exercise in hubris, for which innocent people paid with their bodies. And, to their credit, hubris certainly rotted out the original project. The Lion accident, and the eventual reveal of layers of bureaucratic incompetence, are clearly inspired ... by the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle catastrophes. So is the desire to continue exploring despite the losses.

The setup for the story sounds formulaic to the point of prohibiting any sort of tension: the ultimate underdog becoming the best through sheer force of will. She has a Past. People are out to sabotage her. She's tiny and not particularly innately talented in any way. But this story never feels stale or contrived.
What is so amazing about Asumi is her perseverance. I don't mean in that every-once-in-a-while mega challenge. Asumi succeeds beyond anybody's expectations because she ekes out the same grueling routine, every day, for years on end, without payoff. That is what perseverance really means. It's easy to pull yourself together every now and again, for the big moments. It's amazing to get up every day and push yourself through the same boring, taxing tasks. I am strongly reminded of Tamora Pierce's handling of Alanna, the little girl who would be a knight, throughout the Song of the Lioness series. While Alanna and Asumi have radically different personalities, they are both stubborn and determined, and have to work for their achievements. They're both tiny women working toward a goal that requires considerable physical strength and endurance. And the stories are honest in admitting that they start out at a disadvantage, and that they will have to work hard to even meet expectations. But Alanna and Asumi bust their asses above, and beyond, what is needed to be average--they become exceptional. The best. And most people would not even put in the extra effort just needed to catch up, let alone be the best. Hell, their achievements would be exceptional even if they started on a level playing field. But they didn't. And that's all the more amazing. And women, or members of any minority group, have to be better-than-average to just be perceived as average or barely worthy--and this is also in areas in which women have no average inherent disadvantage, i.e. anything not involving brute strength.

We also see a world in which there are far more fully competent applicants for a position than spots, a scenario that should seem entirely familiar as of late, and witness an administration's attempt at choosing who is most 'worthy' for the position with arbitrary brutality. The logic goes: the person who wants it most will go through the most hell to get it, and therefore deserves it, 'it' in this case a place as an astronaut.

Though I would not venture to call current Japan, and therefore near-future Japan, feminist, Twin Spica is one of the most gender-egalitarian works I have seen in a while. Tokyo Space School has just as many female students as male. And, it is a feminine-feminist story. Asumi is many of the things that society deems feminine, and, therefore, a sign of weakness--cooperative, humble, affectionate, soft-spoken, shy, prone to liking cute things and fluttery blouses and wispy skirts. She indicates a desire to teach elementary school students. And none of this ever seems discordant with her ambition.

This is a true example of magical realism, pulled off with a deft subtlety few would have the nerves to keep. There is a ghost companion-mentor and a visit to the River Styx, but it runs under the surface of a world rooted in hard science fiction. The indignities and realities of astronaut training are part of that world. It has the paper stars pastel aesthetic of a storybook, and I suspect that is why it sold so poorly in the US. Most customers probably thought it was some waffy moe bullshit. It couldn't be further from, and as an atmosphere-setting technique, the art style works very well. I don't know if I could count characters dying of the coughing-up-blood disease with the romantasized aesthetic of consumption as a form of magical realism. The story makes it clear it is not tuberculosis, though it is disquietingly plausible that by that near-future point a totally drug-resistant strain would develop, if our current rate of antibiotic abuse and lack of interest in basic research continues. It's a nebulously-described genetic disorder that makes people artfully cough up crimson during times of stress or exertion, as a visual representation of the refusal to stop in the face of ruinous odds. But, refusal to stop in the face of ruinous odds is a recurring motif in this story.

I was sad to hear Vertical had to take the English version out of print due to abysmal sales. Many casual browsers of the manga selection are being denied the chance to stumble on a real gem. I speculate, again, that people completely misjudged the nature of the work based on the art style and the covers. Given the glut of moe crap the past few years, I suppose I can understand that. But, Vertical is releasing the English version in ebook format, so it is still accessible in a way that supports the publisher. I most highly recommend it.

This is the story of three men named Adolf. It is a story with the grand sweep of myth, something that seems to rise from the unconsciousness, as told through a Japanese observer. At the opening of this story, in the early 1930's, it was a popular given name. Two Adolfs lived in Kobe, as part of the German expat community: one the son of a Jewish baker, and one the son of a Nazi diplomat. The coincidences interweaving their lives are so profound they should seem contrived, but they play out organically in the cadence of tragedy.

This is more painful to read the second ... (third, etc) time. The suspense is still there, but it is tinged with the tragedy of inevitability. That, I hold, is a hallmark of truly great storytelling. It is compelling no matter how many times you read it, and you realize different things each time you do. The dramatic irony that comes of the reader knowing history is brilliantly rendered. This is a masterwork of literature, skillfully plotted, driven by a vague sense of futility. And I am struck, each time, by the clarity of perspective with which Tezuka writes. It is a stunningly anti-war work, ruthlessly critical of the Japanese military state and the Nazi regime, but the atrocities of each country are laid bare. They are all guilty of unimaginable violence. The Manchurian campaign is to this day glossed over in Japanese textbooks (America is no less guilty of this sort of censorship of its history), but discussed openly in the story. The American firebombing of Kobe (recall most Japanese buildings were woodframe at this time) was an attack of equal cruelty as the Blitz and the atomic bombings. The Pearl Harbor ships were essentially dragged out as bait, the seamen left to die. The Russian army raped and pillaged Berlin with impunity, taking revenge, as is so often the case in war, on those who had no control over the situation from the beginning, many of whom were just quietly trying to survive. The Jews were ruthlessly persecuted by the Nazis, but then persecuted the Palestinians with equal ruthlessness, and the Palestinians responded equally heartlessly against Israeli citizens.

I am taken by the honesty with which Tezuka portrays a person's awareness of his own malleability, foreshadowed by a young Adolf Kaufmann not wanting to go to a Hitler Youth school, because he knows it will brainwash him to hate Jews--even though his best friend is Jewish. Even knowing this, he does indeed become a Nazi ideologue. This is one of the most stunning aspects of the story, not often explored honestly in literature, anymore. Usually, we assume awareness of the effect ideology will have on us is portrayed as sufficient to prevent its effects. It is so often not so.

Sexism and racism aside (of which there is plenty in his works), Tezuka was a man leagues ahead of his time and place. I ask the reader to keep this in mind with any of his works, and I am glad they were reproduced accurately. If we censor the casual prejudices of brilliant writers in hindsight, to make their works more palatable to contemporary audiences, we erase a record of how pervasive these prejudices actually were, to be entrenched even in people who truly believed in egalitarianism. It still took courage to write this stuff, even as late as the 1980's. As recently as this year, Miyazaki Hayao was catching heat for anti-imperialist themes in his latest movie, which takes place during the war. That's 2013.

I find it interesting Tezuka implies Hitler was a man who abstained from all forms of stimulants, as shown in a brief dinner scene. The pop culture version I had always heard here in the US was that he was a vegetarian, but a meth addict in his later years. I do not know if that was the Japanese version of Hitler that existed in the public mind back in the 80's. Maybe Tezuka was illustrating his hypocrisy.

Overall, I most highly recommend Message to Adolf, even if you don't normally read manga or comics at all. It is just a damn good story, and an illustration of the potential of graphic novels to portray stories of equal nuance and power as prose.

It is a brilliant stroke to tell a story about transience through immortal cyborgs. Maybe many Westerners would even find that counterintuitive, because transience--more specifically, mono no aware, the nuances of which I will not belabor here, but if you are not familiar, look it up, it's a treat--is a particularly Japanese literary theme, and most Western works focus only on the rapid change the future brings. But there is a constant in that, change and transience, and though we have the saying "the only constant in life is change", I don't think Americans have come to understand that paradox fully. It's given token observance ... in some speculative fiction, usually in passing dialogue, but nowhere in Western media have I seen the constant side of transience explored with a fraction of the depth given in YokoKai.

This is a world where few things are explained. In that way, it reminds me of Haibane Renmei. Mysteries are left open, and the characters come to open-ended conclusions about everything. There is no closure, and no loose ends are tied together. In this sense, YokoKai defies a cardinal rule of Western storytelling. And yet, it works beautifully. The mystery lends to the gorgeous atmosphere, and the gentle sense of wonder. The artwork is stunning, simple yet powerful pen-hatching.

This is a story about humanity, though sparse and pervaded by nature. An unelaborated ecological disaster has cleaved the human population, sea levels rise and carve out new landscapes. Life is simpler in this story, slow. This is, as Alpha says, the twilight of human existence. Humans will pass from this world, and the world will continue on without it. Yet, the world has been changed by the presence of humans, aside from the disaster--plants resemble human technology, and humans have left behind robots, sentient beings who will survive beyond the twilight. There is a gentle optimism in this, a strange constant in a story pervaded by mono no aware, an awareness of transience. But this is transience backed by the constant of nature, and of evolution. It is sentience that is sacred. Robots are treated no differently from humans, for they are human in that most important way. And sentience, the ability to reflect, has marked the world, leaving psychic residue that manifests as shadows, such as the plants.

The multi-task, multimedia-saturated generation must find it hard to imagine such a simple and slow life. The only technology seen in the manga is moderately old or unobtrusive--motor scooters, cameras, coffee makers. The characters communicate by snail mail. Nary a cell phone or mention of the internet, or even television, is seen. Alpha spends entire days doing nothing but painting the shop, riding about on her moped to take photographs, or fixing up an old well. Such a slow pace, unencumbered by entertainment, must seem like the setting for a profoundly boring life. I admit, though I can sit and daydream far longer than most of my peers, I usually want to be doing something cerebral, like reading, or playing a video game. I don't know if this is mostly because of my desire for 'efficiency' (like sitting around leisurely is a waste of precious time) or my scattershot Gen-Y attention span. I admit I have that urge to sit in front of my laptop far more than I should, as do all of my friends--you should see some gatherings, where everybody is in front of a screen--even though I know reading blogs is just as unproductive as sitting around daydreaming. But there is that illusion of productivity, when we sit in front of technology. Then again, plant me in a library, and I'll be entertained from opening to closing. Is reading a physical book any more inherently good, though?

This is also a world of work-life balance. The overworked Japan of today is gone. People work as much as they need to, with ample leisure time. Alpha frequently leaves her cafe for days at a time, and often receives only one guest per few days. And they can sustain this lifestyle because there is zero commercialism--they work for money to purchase what they need. No keeping up with the neighbors. No consumerist lifestyle. Sure, they live in simplicity, but they're happy. They have the basic creature comforts--nay, luxuries, like air conditioning and running water--but that is all they need. We could all take a lesson from this, given our hyper-commercialized and overworked lives. These people shy not from good, hard work, but they work to achieve a goal, not to spin their wheels, or produce more beyond what is needed for the sake of an edge. There is no blind cycle of consumption. And I have found hard work with a purpose is far more cleaning, and fulfilling, than work half as hard with no purpose.

Inherent in seeing the beauty in YokoKai will be the fact that some people will accuse of thinking too hard about all this crap. On its face, this is a manga about nothing, just mundane details of daily life, making coffee, re-building a cafe, riding into town on a motor scooter. That is a deeply Japanese aspect of the work, showing beauty through the mundane without further elaboration. It's left for the reader to decipher. I can't think of any American works even remotely in the mainstream (or sub-mainstream) that have such slow pacing. In pacing, it's decidedly un-American, un-Western. Quite literally nothing happens for long stretches of story arc. Finding meaning in it must seem to many as though one is trying too hard, or is being pretentious. And being accused of being pretentious is almost worse than being accused of being a hipster. I really think only a Westerner with zero exposure to Eastern works could think that.

Let us look at the concrete details. It is a story about cyborgs, the dying human race, and a world after an ecological disaster we caused. How many stories encompass these themes? And yet, YokoKai is utterly fresh, new, and brilliant. I do not say this lightly. Perhaps because I've had such extensive exposure to brilliant interpretations of the ways technology and life will intersect in the future, I've become vastly harder to impress. A lot of mainstream American science fiction has nothing of interest to offer me. See, for example, Avatar, which explores nothing new in science fiction, and explores it far less deftly than many earlier works.

I think some people interpret my cynical criticism of such movies as just that--the hallmark of a critical, cynical, and jaded person. I've been accused of 'looking for things' to gripe about. But I fancy that it is a sign of a life more deeply contemplated and exposed to superior, stunning art. I don't think this makes me inherently better than anybody else, but I do resent being accused of faux-jadedness, jadedness for the sake of being cool. I can be quite the enthusiastic appreciator of beauty.

I think the accusation of 'looking for things' to gripe about, be offended by, etc (itself a classic derailing tactic) occurs when somebody with a deep, extensive understanding of a subject (either through exposure, like art or ally activism, or through living it, as in the case of a member of an underprivileged group itself) is quick to see things others either miss entirely or see as entirely novel. There is a level of expertise common in the accused. Not that there aren't cynical, unhappy people who do find fault with everything, but activists and scholars deeply resent being lumped into that juvenile camp. And because it's an accusation hinting at juvenile nihilism or blind rebellion, the derailing tactic doubles as a discrediting tactic. That nihilism is the flip-side of hipster irony, liking kitschy things because of their perceived lack of value, but in appreciating irony you have to acknowledge there is something inherently inferior or unlikable about the subject in the first place.

Anyway.

Overall, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a real treat. It's grand, sweet, and breathtakingly beautiful in its simplicity, yet brilliantly imagined. It features a world that unfolds organically for us to discover, and leaves us with a sense of open wonder. It makes me want to drive a moped down an open country road, just for the thrill of being.

I have learned to be skeptical of OVAs derived from manga. More often than not they are simplistic and do no justice to the source material. I am glad to say that Black Jack is an acceptation to that. While each story is a stand-alone with an entirely new supporting cast, humanity and depth is given to the characters and their circumstances with only forty-five minutes to tell their story. This is impressive, and I am glad for it. Black Jack and Pinoco stay true to character while showing a shockingly human adaptability and capacity for fault. This has always been one of my favorite ... aspects of the Black Jack franchise. I am glad it did not change.

While these stories are stylistically departed from the original Tezuka manga, they retain a powerful and simple charm. Instead of Tezuka's club-foot pseudo-Gumbyish body types, the characters are drawn in realistic anatomical detail, which I personally like given that the more recent anime adaptations return to Tezuka's art style. This is a dark, gritty world for Black Jack, and many of the visual elements from the movie remain--nearly retro-futuristic technology combined with urban decay. Japanese culture is also deeply entrenched in those cases that do occur in Japan--the final OVA with its mermaid story comes to mind. It is faithful to the juxtaposition of modern technology and Shinto animism still present in Japan.

For better and worse, the animation is highly derivative of its time (mid 90's)--it is high-quality hand-drawn cels, but I would have told the director to lay off the dramatic triple-takes and action lines. It gets maudlin fast.

The political issues are also painfully contemporary. A thinly-disguised (and I do mean *thinly*; the damn flag is the same, Niagara Falls is on the Northern border) United States invades a country under pretenses of correcting a corrupt government when all it wants is oil rights. (Note that this was pre-Iraq, but post Desert Storm). The President speaks of a God-given duty to spread justice throughout the world in the form of forceful policing. Chemical weapons and radiation left from the world wars cause devastating diseases. Biological warfare, something less prevalent in Tezuka's manga, takes a center stage.

I can recommend this to those unfamiliar with the Black Jack franchise given that they are stand-alone stories with little integration into the manga storyline. However, this is not my favorite anime adaptation of the doctor's adventures, despite my love for the pseudo-realistic style given to the character designs. Everything else this OVA does well, the 2004 adaptation does just as well or better, and given how well-done this OVA is, that is truly saying something. Knowledge of the background is helpful but not necessary to understand what is going on.

I've been spending a lot of time with Dr. Black Jack lately, so it is impossible for me to review this movie of its own merits and not compare it ruthlessly to the other adaptations that have been made. There is something I have always loved about Black Jack--he is such a well-developed character that he has the depth of simplicity, and yet, is genuinely far more complicated than he seems. This is a huge oxymoron, but it makes sense if you think about it. There is nothing *contrived* about him, and for such a dynamic, dark character, that is an accomplishment worthy of mention. ... Thankfully, Black Jack says true to Tezuka-sensei's character insofar as conception is concerned.

The art style and overall aesthetic of the movie is *strongly* reminiscent of the movie adaptation of X, except this is overall a better movie. X made the mistake of trying to condense a long, complex story into an hour and a half. Black Jack wisely shied away from that mistake and focused instead on one story--a mega-episode, if you will, with a higher production value and, as is often the case with movies vs. TV shows, higher stakes.

That being said, the movie lacks some of the simple, powerful charm of Tezuka's manga stories, or even their portrayal in the recent TV series adaptation. This movie isn't intended to be charming--it is dark, gritty, sprawling, and blunt. Black Jack wears a trenchcoat instead of a cape (albeit with his arms out of the sleeves so it flutters like a cape), and he meshes himself in a world that is both sterile and industrial, a sprawling mass of tubing and electronics that could almost be considered retro-futuristic, even given that the anime is contemporary to 1996. The visuals are lush and gorgeous, and, again, like X the movie, are intricately-faceted and often ethereal. Both movies are able to make blood splatter look hauntingly elegant. This is the sort of aesthetic I love, so I'm admittedly biased, but it does what it does *well*, and that is what counts.

My biggest complaint with the movie is that conceptually it does not cover any new ground. We have the Big, Bad Pharmaceutical Corporation performing unethical experiments on uninformed humans, and the movie bashes us over the head with the consequences of trying to transcend humanity, reminding us that there is no such thing as a free lunch and all successes come at a cost. Instead of selling your soul to the devil, you have to sell your soul to the Giant, Faceless Multinational Corporation. The concept that a child growing up in a brutally-competitive, unaccepting, cold environment makes a screwed-up adult hellbent on success AT ALL COSTS (hi, Japan; I think this was aimed at you) is not new either. Granted, this is all the stuff epics are made of, and there is a reason the same themes keep resurfacing in fiction--they are relevant--but compared to Tezuka's creative, quirky way of delivering the same universal messages, this seems weak. I had already guessed pretty much everything that was going to happen two minutes into the movie.

All things considered, though, within the framework of a wider context this is a solid movie title, and there is the potential for those with little understanding of the Black Jack canon to enjoy themselves. It's not very deep and it's not very groundbreaking, but hey, the worst disasters and mistakes are often echoes of the same old refrains we've heard throughout human history. Maybe that is part of the point. Or maybe I'm reading too damn much into this movie.

It's seven minutes of Pinoco fanservice a'la the Pikachu shorts that played before the Pokemon movies. Lots of cute, lots of formula, lots of gags, negligible substance. Really of zero interest to anybody who is not already a Black Jack fan.

This is truly a stand-alone work in terms of originality. ABe did not self-censor and allowed the full weight of his intuition and dreams to direct his hand, and the result is a beautiful, ethereal, archetypal world fully-realized and yet deep enough to retain mystery. The show does not explain everything, even the most important aspects of Gile, and that feels okay. We can see in this fantastic world what is in our innermost hearts, and our intuition fills in so many of the gaps. Few stories manage to do this so well.

The story manages to blend soft, yet interesting, aspects of slice-of-life with haunting ... and bittersweet themes such as suicide, sacrifice, and redemption. This hints of something intimate from within ABe's innermost heart, something he himself has experienced--and in that rawness, there is a universal quality. Many people in fandom have experienced profound loneliness and depression in a manner that seems to echo throughout the story. Many of us have felt useless, hopelessly misunderstood, and lonely. This is a story of comfort.

True to ABe's style, the artwork for this title is utterly fantastic. The setting is stunning in its beauty, European-style architecture amid emerald-green fields and rust-mottled windmills, harmonized with East Asian-style shrines, festivals, and esoteric memorabilia. The characters' names come from Japanese words for concepts, and the world's writing is in Japanese, so it is by no means divorced from its source country, nor does ABe try. The result is not in the least jarring: if anything, it is merely another aspect of integration, something soft and beautiful and lush. And the clouds--the weather phenomena simply looks fantastic.

If you cannot stand anime with a slow, idyllic pace, or you simply must have action, giant robots, and political intrigue, this is not the show for you. Likewise, if you cannot stand symbolic, dreamlike storylines in which not everything is explained explicitly, this will drive you mad. Otherwise, I highly recommend taking a trip into Gile. It will be greatly worth your time.

If you slept through high school history, and you know who you are, your appreciation of the depth of this movie will be greatly enhanced by reviewing the following things: Treaty of Versailles, Weimar Republic, rise of the Nazi party (including history in the 1920's), the Manhattan Project, the Thule Society (yes, it's real), Shambala (yes, it's real), Nazi occultism, and, if you somehow missed it, the Holocaust. Japan's opinion of nuclear weapons should be obvious to anybody with a basic grasp of the history of World War II. They're never portrayed as a Good Thing in Japanese media, and frankly, I can't blame them. ... They represent the end-all be-all of total destruction and horrific weaponry, a symbol of the Apocalypse. This race-memory seems embedded in Ed and Al from the moment they hear the term "Uranium bomb", even though they live in pre-1945 parallel-universe Germany. This entanglement with world history is prevalent throughout the movie, and while sometimes a little heavy-handed, it's good.

Sometimes I have to wonder if "Conqueror of Shambala" is being deeper than I should give it credit for, but given the stunning depth and quality of storytelling displayed in the TV series, I am inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. I was shocked and dismayed at the behavior and petty idealism of one of my favorite characters from the TV series as portrayed in Weimar Germany (I'll give you a hint: his daughter just turned three), as he was one of the most accepting, intelligent, and gentle people in the series, but we are a product of our circumstances, and as a modern-day American I feel I have no right to stand in judgment of those who were members of the National Socialist Worker's Party in the 1920's. It started out sounding like a true people's revolution, and Adolf Hitler was a true charismatic leader. I just would have expected better of you, Hughes, especially when you outspokenly buy into myths about every race but the Aryan. I pray he came to his senses before Kristallnacht or later became a defector. I guess the upcoming new series will tell.

I guess that was the biggest problem I had with the movie. I felt as though it would be more in-character for Hughes to be an anti-Nazi activist, but our idealizations often do not match with reality. And this brings me to the theme pervading the movie: people destroy so much that they do have searching for idealizations that do not exist. L'arc~en~Ciel expressed it best in the ending theme: "we're letting go of something we never had". Whether it's the mythical land of Shambala, a country for the German people, a scapegoat, Equivalent Exchange, Mustang's ideals of reforming the military, etc, each of the characters faces the realization that he or she must live with the reality life has given, even when it's not pretty, and even when it's heartbreaking.

I find it interesting that Lior and Munich were linked through the parallel universes; both cities were devastated and eagerly looking for a prophet to come and save them and restore them to former glory. This is the destructive side of idealization; people make themselves vulnerable to being used by charismatic leaders. They make themselves gullible. They make themselves terrifying in their devotion to that ideal, even if it means destroying things they see as interfering with their ideal world. Sometimes those things are a scapegoat. You see where this is going. Etc.

I guess this is my very roundabout way of saying that this was a stellar movie, all things considered. It hit me square in the chest and made me tear up, and it ties up many of the loose ends left by the end of the TV series. Roy Mustang is back with a vengeance ready to kick ass, and I hope that he and Hawkeye finally get together. My heart almost broke for Winry. She has become an even stronger, smarter, and more resourceful girl--no, woman--than she was in the TV series. Alphonse is still painfully naive, and, returning to an underlying theme, his idealism and naivity come to bite him in the ass hard toward the end of the movie. Edward has become a little calmer, a little wiser, and a little more distant, but ultimately he is still the same hot-headed, stubborn boy--no, man--that he was in the TV series. The artwork is supurb, rich and realistic, and the music is sweeping.

Though the movie was written to be able to be viewed as a stand-alone, it's enjoyable on a quantum level beyond if you have seen the entirety of the TV series. And, if you plan on seeing the TV series EVER, the movie will spoil it utterly. I cannot recommend it enough to FMA fans. It's bittersweet, strange, and painful, but ultimately, a solid ending to the saga.

I guess my professional bias shows when the medical aspect of the show that bothers me most is the fact that researchers kept seeing viruses under a light microscope, and that these viruses were the same size as--or larger than--red blood cells. Maybe the term that was translated as "virus" can be used for multiple micro-organisms, because the B.O.P. looks more like an ameoboid or other eukaryotic organism, but that is neither here nor there. It's Black Jack, for fuck's sake; while it is more accurate than most medical dramas out there, it's still anime.

Nit-picking aside, I'm a sucker for medical dramas, and I have ... this long-standing affair with Dr. Black Jack. I was afraid post-Tezuka's death the franchise would start to suck, but this show proved that BJ has not lost his edge, no pun intended. Though I can't help giggling every time somebody calls him "B.J." with a thick Japanese accent. You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means. But I digress.

This is one hell of a fun show. The pacing is tight, the action is good, and the characters are clear without being overbearing. There are equal parts action and science and character development. It is nice to see Black Jack's past further clarified, though I have to wonder what Tezuka would have thought of the way the writers dealt with his accident and his childhood. I, for one, enjoyed it, but I am not the original creator. The storyline is more linear and integrated than the original manga, but the overall effect is not in the least jarring. One could view it as a very long movie or story within Black Jack's saga. You have mysterious organizations, greedy bastards, assassins, deadly viruses, secrets, lies, conflicted characters with dark pasts, and all the good stuff.

Oh, and I love that America's answer to everything in most Japanese shows is "nuke it 'till it glows". Lulz.

I highly recommend this show. It's even a good starting point for those who are just getting into Black Jack, though a *little* background would be helpful. I call it the "Japanese Dr. House" when I'm trying to explain it in under a sentence, though Black Jack is significantly less of an ass than House is, but that is neither here nor there. In both shows you have a doctor of unparalleled brilliance being called upon to save those deemed un-savable. The recommendation strength goes up considerably if you are a sucker for medical mysteries.

So, this is what I gather happened during that half hour:

Our hero, Matsui, is a doe-eyed, innocent uke who looks just like a brunette Shirou Kamui from X. While waiting for his friend Yoshino to get them sodas after watching this guy who looks like Tamahome from Fushigi Yuugi swim, said guy, henceforth Yuuji, accosts Matsui on the bench and takes him to a bar where some guys throw money in after betting on a high school swim match. Matsui is stupid enough to drink and smoke what they give him, and he eventually leaves. Good for him. Whatever. The typical long-haired tech and this ... other guy have sex. It's really awkward, slow-cell sex with Godawful piano-pr0n music in the background. All the stereotypes are there--sort of like animating somebody's straight-into-the-comment-box Livejournal yaoi drabble. Gasping and biting of knuckles and all that jazz. Wee-hoo.

Meanwhile, Yuuji's grandfather tells him he needs to take over his corporate dynasty, and Yuuji angsts over feeling like a fish in a trap, hence the title. So, the way he takes care of these feelings is to get his friends to help him to accost Matsui during a thunderstorm and rape him beneath him a gazebo. It's the same slow-cell, pr0n-piano, gasping-uke wilting-flower bullshit as the first sex scene, except even more stereotypical and less is going on. Matsui is left lying naked beneath the gazebo afterward. Kay.

Apparently this rape was some serious magical soul-affirming buttsecks, because Yuuji tells his friends, one of whom is a hothead voiced by Takehito Koyasu, he's "done" hanging out with them, and leaves. Takehito's character tries to beat him up. Meanwhile, outside, Long Haired Tech Boy admits his feelings to Yuuji, and when Yuuji does not respond in kind, LHTB screams at Yuuji never knew how to love anybody, and tries to attack him with a knife. LHTB's boyfriend stops him and punches Yuuji. I wish that was for the rape, but apparently it's for not knowing how to love, or some shit. Kay.

So, uh, fast-forward a bit, and Matsui and Yoshino are in high school. Matsui goes to join the swimming club to meet up with his rapist, and the very last scene of the entire show, as it freezes to colored-pencil still, is Yuuji walking toward Matsui, apparently feeling the same soul-changing love they both felt as Matsui was beaten and thrown to the ground and raped by Yuuji. End scene.

And I'm left staring at my computer screen, wondering if what I just thought happened did happen.

This is another example of bad yaoi cliches taken to an extreme. Granted, it's difficult to avoid when you come across a show/manga marketed on the sole virtue alone that holy shit, the main characters are gay for each other. I hate the "I don't know how to show love, so I'll rape you, but it will change me" storyline. Were Matsui a girl, that would never be tolerated as acceptable. Yuuji would be in prison, as he damn well deserves to be. I don't see why it should be any different just because he's a boy, as much the walking stereotype of an uke as he may be. That strikes me as extremely sexist. I don't see why in yaoi this is suddenly an acceptable way of dealing with one's emotions. It's not. It's rape. It's a hideous crime.

Hell, this doesn't even have the excuse of having a bad plot because it's porn. There really IS no porn. You see naked men hugging and hear the gasping and the cells jerk a little. It's lame. It's laughable.

While not quite as blatantly stupid and "What the fuck" inspiring as Bronze/Zetsuai 1989, this is pretty far up there on the scale of sheer idiocy. The artwork isn't so bad for a 90's title, and the art style is nostalgic, but beyond that, there are no redeeming qualities to this show. By the end of the show I don't care about any of the characters in the slightest, and can see them as nothing more than bad celluloid stereotypes. Matsui is wide-eyed, innocent, and eager to please, whereas Yuuji is tall, dark, brooding, silent, angsting, and totally out-of-touch with his feelings.

If you have half an hour to utterly blow, maybe this is worth it. Maybe. It's not nearly as lulz-worthy as some other titles out there. This is just stupid and rather insulting to the intelligence of the audience.