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- BirthdayDec 4, 1988
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Jul 21, 2021
A very unexpected addition to the anime tradition where adolescence is represented through literal body transformation and guided by innermost urges and desires of the flesh, but this time turning into... a very actual critique of the politics of hate via biblical apocalypse?
Fear & desire turn into hate for the outgroup, and Anime, as a genre, keeps surprising me by being one of the artforms more directly engaged with the world's climate during the resurgence of the extreme right.
That being said, about the series: great animation, and it takes such a dark turn during the end stretch that it gets downright nightmarish, including
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a couple of the more disturbing deaths in the genre. Very horny & profoundly hopeless. Kind of wish I could've spent more time at the end of the world, though.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 25, 2020
I came into Carole & Tuesday cold, being interested in it for Shinichiro Watanabe only. Two girls forming a duo and pursuing dreams of music? Sure, why not. I expected a lot of what it is actually here, but was caught off guard by a LOT more, because Carole & Tuesday takes some very weird turns. Just for starters, I usually don't begin an anime expecting Steve Bannon to show the fuck up.
The first half of the series, I was very engaged by what I felt was the overall theme of the show: the technologic advance of society changing the way we engage with the
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world, specially it's influence in the creation of art. There's a heavy emphasis on how Carole and Tuesday write without the use of AI, and I was actually pretty curious to where this was heading -- mostly because the series didn't imply that the AI songs where neither bad nor soulless. Rather, I felt that the series was making a point to find the humanity behind the advance of technology, as a way to get advancing forward without losing ourselves. This was particularly interesting to me in regard to Angela: as she slowly is copied into an AI, she finds that the music the computers are writing are actually expressing the feelings that she herself is unable to. I was really into this strange story about how a girl finds herself through technological assimilation, but there was not where the series was going.
Halfway through the series -- after some American Idol episodes, stalker plots, and movie-making shenanigans -- we start to get into the politics of it all. What was, at first, a series of doppelgangers of artists, singers, producers and all, turns also into a series of political characters who actually pivot the series completely. After this, I feel like the theme of the series becomes something else altogether. Jumping off from the well-established understating that what the AI in here does is a reproduction of the emotional response of the people -- and this is why it is so successful at writing pop songs --, the series put this AI to use in a populist politics scenario. And we get it all: the Steve Bannon asshole manipulating the candidate into more extreme and racist attacks on immigrants from Earth while following a mass response from the electorate. Although this all happens as a kind of third narrative arc -- the first being Carole and Tuesday journey and the second Angela's arc --, it seems as the most important thematic one.
I feel that the point Carole & Tuesday is making is that music is the opposite of political populism. Music is mass emotion being captured as a way of getting together, of uniting people in a intimate and humane matter, while Populism is mass emotion used to bring forth anger, fear, discrimination and so on, in a very intense divisive way. This is a very weird point to make, sure, but also surprisingly timely? I actually have not seen that many series engaging with this real contemporary discussions at these depths (the political dispute over the emotional response of the masses), much less expected an anime to go out of his way and make these points. Is it a strong point? Somewhat: the real world is infinitely more complex, for one. We have hate much more ingrained in our history. It seems unbelievable naive to believe a song can chance the world. That being said, there's such a pure (and justified) love for a perfect pop song's power that I find very difficult to deny it without feeling like the biggest and most asshole of the cynics. A single song may not be that powerful, but any music lover can vow that a perfect song does go a long way.
Loose thoughts:
- I think the series is pretty messy overall, but this kind of works in a roundabout way. A lot of storylines seem incomplete, but as the series gets where is going, the messiness feel a little lived in, in a sort of snapshot way. It could be a lot tighter, but the objective of a world of people getting affected by their music does get achieved somewhat.
- Watanabe does some of the best comedy. IDEA, the lying, beer-fueled robot, made me spent literally the last 7 minutes of the episodes laughing out loud. Such and unbelievably stupid joke that hits me so, so well.
- Imagine getting so famous that you, as an anime director, write that you need some songs and them Thundercat or Denzel Curry sing them? This must be fun.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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May 8, 2019
Arriving at Mob Psycho 100 after One Punch Man made me mistake what Mob Psycho 100 was doing -- and what it was. One Punch Man is a parody, and the similarities between the two -- what we could call ONE's style as an author -- led me to believe that Mob Psycho 100 was one also, when it actually isn't.
This could be a pointless introduction to a review (mostly because this is the second season and I couldn't be mistaken about it for so long), but it is actually something that is very original about Mob Psycho 100. ONE's way of building Mob Psycho
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100 is the same he used to built One Punch Man. Parody doesn't need the same construction as straightforward manga as it is using a series of well-established archetypes as a launching pad to the story. This allows for the story to very elemental,as what's important are the gags and the weird designs, and how those interact in regard to our expectations of what a story should be and where it should go.
Mob Psycho 100 does exactly this: the bowl-haired timid bland protagonist whose actually infinitely powered, the suited regular con-man pretending to be special, the muscled Body Improvement club members, the big haired weirdo, the scarred villains, and so on. This sets up a narrative that is perfect for comedy -- which it does brilliantly, by the way --, and them subverts it with honest drama and action.
It's honestly amazing how ONE goes about this construction: is as masterful as it appears completely incapable and amateurish. It's so ingenuous how most of those characters are presented as bizarre stock characters and then fleshed out from out of the jokes to straight characters. It's such a refreshing, backwards way of telling a story. And of course, it helps that it is a great story: a Bildungsroman about the growth of a timid boy into a clear minded powerful being, surrounded by a great supporting cast, told through sensible and honest drama with hints of slice-of-life, kick-ass action scenes, and hilarious comedy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 11, 2018
A very straight forward story, traditional to its core, down to the kid sidekick and the troubled master. It achieves resonance in the world it builds in the background: a country implied to be consumed in an ongoing war, that has left in it's wake a culture of violence, as well as broken people -- literally, in several instances, full of missing limbs -- and a broken culture -- a messy history, a marginalized society, a generation of people without a past.
Joe is not only in the center, he encapsulates this world, as someone who has only one thing going for him: the fight.
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He doesn't fight for glory nor riches, neither to prove his worth: he fight because this is all that is left. He doesn't seem particularly oppressed by this world (although being a victim of it, but so are all the other characters), there isn't even a great villain. Even though there is drama surrounding the fights, the climax is very simple: even as we reach to a better future, there is only the present. And Joe grabs at it like a desperate dog, thrashing and barking to prove that he's alive. 'Megalo Box' feels like a primal howl of life's affirmation, which gets to be unexpectedly emotional for a story that builds up to a perfect final punch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 16, 2018
I feel like Darling in the FranXX was badly read, and although I don't feel particularly strong to it (the score is very barely an 8), what the anime actually ended up doing is lost inside what was expected it should do, and also in how derivative it was in regard to what it was perceived as its influences.
(This review contains spoilers)
There's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut in his Paris Review interview that explains what is so frustrating about Darling in the FranXX's story: "If a lover in a story wins his true love, that’s the end of the tale, even if World War III
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is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers." Vonnegut is saying this pejoratively, about how a love story consumes is context and renders the surroundings void. It's how he explains why he doesn't writes love stories. Darling in the FranXX is a love story.
But to tell this story, it was created a whole universe with an extensive background of cosmic proportions, of ancient advanced races in a million years old war: but this war doesn't concern us. Humans are somewhat neutral (morally, at least) victims of this war, appearing through evolution in the wrong planet, and then used by the big evil alien devouring space conscience as pawns in this conflict. This use happens through cloning, control and overall emotional abuse of teenagers, created and trained to sacrifice themselves to their monarch or god but actually alien overlord. A big part of the cruelty of APE's control of their lives is the negation of their emotions, and the wiping of their memories.
So, this actually impacts the themes of the anime in several ways:
1) Structurally, the episodes of the anime are dedicated to the relationship of the characters in a greater proportion than the cosmic arc that appears at the end. Most of this cosmic backstory is actually told via two intensively expositive episodes. I don't feel like this is neither rushed nor bad, but actually an expression of the show's intent (being a love story).
2) The anime touches on several classic anime philosophic tropes: what it means to be human (or monster), what are the characters place inside those societies, and so on. Those are answered with a single word: Love. Is this a good answer? Probably not. But it is an answer.
3) Love is actually what differentiates humanity in this conflict between VIRM and the klaxosaurus. For one, love is the answer to VIRM's proposition of incorporation, and a life of tranquility in a spacial consciousness -- instead of losing oneself in a big, amorphous consciousness, we connect with each other through love, achieving an oneness that is actually stronger, and more fulfilling, than VIRM's alternative. This is the one-winged bird metaphor that opens and guides the series. Second, klaxosaurus answer to VIRM's invasion was to abdicate of individuality and transform its population into either magma-energy, or giant war machines in wait for the next phase of the war. What is significant between those two approaches is that they're both about power. What is different in humanity's approach is that it very much isn't.
4) This leads us to the end stretch: Zero Two goes to fight the VIRM out of love for Hiro. It's not particularly to save the world, not particularly out of a sense of duty. Hiro joins her out of love, so that she doesn't suffers alone, out of the promise to love her and be with her. There is no need to defeat the VIRM for their fight isn't about power, but about protecting humanity's life choice. And this they do. The end is about rebuilding life: life beginning out of love (i.e. babies), negating the exploration of other species (stopping the use of magma-energy). Meta-textually, is about retreating from a sci-fi future to a simple, old and organic one, leaving the big robots to gather moss and devoting themselves to agriculture and so forth. Is also, and very paramount, about living without the fear of death (which is what APE used to enslave humanity to begin with), which is also a very important point of japanese philosophy.
5) And Zero Two and Hiro's love is so strong that, even as they sacrifice everything to save the world (and to be together), their souls spend centuries voyaging through the universe, until they find each other again, now as a part of a humanity that their love has saved. But now Zero Two can love in peace, without the pain of feeling like a monster, and they both without having to be war heroes. They are allowed to achieve what the anime posits as the climax of humanity's way of life: Love.
I don't think those points answer if this is a good anime (I think it is, somewhat), but I wrote mostly as a way to defend that, for an anime that is so defined by its influences, I feel like its originality is actually being lost in the static created by those influences, and it deserves, at least, a fair shot.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 9, 2018
An exemplary case of how a minor work can actually be a major work. Minor in the sense of the scope of the story, of course: there's barely any confrontation; the hardest emotions are probably those arising from the preoccupation with not doing enough, or not knowing how to deal with a cold. But japanese culture is very much about amplifying the minor into revealing the major: there's something very Ozu-ish about the (Tokyo) Story here, from the egotistical family discussing how to pass on a bothersome family member, to the greatest epiphany being a character sudden discovery of its empathy.
At the beginning of the
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episodes there's a little scene, often loose from the arc of the episode, that is animated differently, like we're accessing the past in a snippet of quotidian nostalgia, as if those are the moments we -- maybe mysteriously -- will forever remember: a certain look on your kid's face, or her best friend pulling a teeth in the supermarket. And the whole anime is very mysterious: why does Daikichi takes the kid in? Where does this comes from? I don't think is particularly clear, but at the end this question kind of does get answered: life is about having pleasure in others, and how this pleasure can be as intense as the one we have only for ourselves. Our plans don't really matter, life also just kind of happens to us. And we can choose to be open to it.
Loose thoughts:
- My chest got so FULL during this, I felt like hugging and kissing my children. My cat ended up suffering this fate.
- There's an enormous generosity to the characters here. Even those who would often get judged by their actions are kindly forgiven, as the anime is very clear that their lives are also difficult in their own way, from the glimpses we get into it.
- Rin's character should be persecuted as the most blatant propaganda for children ever! I think Kouki's character is there solely to discourage people, "think twice, you may get a Kouki instead of a Rin..."
- Where's the rest of this fucking anime, I need news on these characters as they get older! Does Rin turns into a mangaka? Do Daikichi and Yukari get together? Do Rin and Kouki end up a couple?? So much to know!!
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 12, 2018
This one snuck up on me. I'm attracted to comedic slice-of-life for their airy quality, the way that, given time to breathe, a simple story can be elevated and achieve a kind of true, everyday beauty. This frees the characters to be better fleshed out as their development is the focus of the story, rather than the focus being on building a more classically structured narrative, where the characters are judged by their usefulness in the grand scheme of the series as well as on their personality. But there is no grand scheme in (slice-of-) life.
Ouran does all of those things. The series is one
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of several superficial pleasures -- and by superficial I mean luxurious, extravagant pleasures: not only the richness in display, but the operatic/theatrical aesthetic, with a focus on the glow of... well, everything. It has the essential-to-the-genre scope of silly adventures, the travels and themes-of-the-week and pastiches & homages to different genres -- and does every single one of them gloriously.
But where it excels, where the series actually got to me, was the unexpected tragedy of these characters. Those adventures -- better put: the Host Club as a whole -- are slowly revealed, as the background and history of those characters are shown, as doomed escapism. These are characters who are prisoners of their own birth, boys born of wealthy and traditional families that give them no space to decide over their own lives -- and, also for this, they have an underlying darkness, an edge that keeps showing its face under their well-mannered and charming exterior. There is a subtle but constant exploration of how unhappy they were until the forming of the club, and an even subtler implication that this unhappiness has its roots in the social obligations imposed by Japan's society, and their status therein (...which kind of makes this a little about those poor, millionaire kids, but I think that's forgivable, since their aloofness to the lives of the commoners is one of the biggest sources of dramatic tension and humor). This subtext, of course, turns into text in the home stretch.
Of course, the series isn't (mostly) dramatic. Quite the contrary: there's a huge generosity to the characters that inhabit the school, the characters of the week whose involvement with the group helps them find true love, access their true feelings, or just to feel better about themselves. It's also very, very funny. But more than anything - and also better than anything - Ouran is this complicated, slow burning, love story: one, (kind of left alone to simmer) about how a devious twin seems to find his own self through love; and, two, how the revelation of Suou's tragedy (when he finally has a past/history) affects a series-long uninterested Fujioka.
Fujioka is a great lead, her lack of interest in everything etc, but also her almost supernatural understanding of the people's feelings (she's got to be some kind of empath) is consistently charming. She can go from whatever-she's-there-too to perfect-thing-at-the-perfect-time, and this is one of the greatest strengths of the series -- which makes things more perfect when something that is hidden from her, and the only thing she seemed incapable to access via her keen observation, comes to light, and gives the series, finally, its romantic apex. And, even better, this forces all the characters to revolt against their condition and achieve some instance of freedom, in an all-out operatic ending
Loose thoughts:
- Monkeys throwing banana peels as an unstoppable force of chaos.
- Mori's very telling heritage of servitude to Hani's family.
- The implications of the ending promised such a great next arch! Which leads to my biggest complaint:
- Somehow this isn't a thousand episodes long?? THIS IS A TRAVESTY!! (Haha get it? Like Fujioka's dad? I'll show myself out)
MVP: The chotic-er-than-monkeys-throwing-banana-peels twins. Mostly for their really original relationship, which might be my favorite thing in the whole series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 5, 2018
"We are all running from life, and we can't save ourselves. But we can save each-other": The Anime
Welcome to the NHK is, primarily, a character drama, building the psychological/emotional landscape of a single character, Sato. We are submerged in the way he thinks and processes the world, via mostly his fantasies: how he gets lost in it, and the ways they are always existing as a digression - a life happening inside one's mind, leaving the real world behind. This is a very extreme exploration of the concept, as it extends even to self-fantasy: how one views its own identity, and, most interestedly, how the
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image we have of ourselves is a kind of extreme realism that is also fantastic, and not what people see of us at all. It captures a way-of-being of the introverted, timid, super-ego driving that I identify myself with very deeply.
Sato's self fantasies lead him to a fabrication of his reality. It's interesting how his lies start to involve his friends and his family -- mostly because it ties to his paranoia about conspiracy: he himself is the agent of one, designed to obfuscate the truth of his own life. So, of course he is paranoid. Rightly so. The conspiracies in the series are an overall critique of, well, everything: the alienating effect of media, self-doubt, insecurity, fear of getting hurt, as well as the structures of society (and the oppressive quality of those social structures) etc. The great dynamic of the series is how those things diverge ourselves from a life of possible happiness, i.e. how we can conciliate our individual selves with an outside of ourselves/social life.
This is why this is an anime of broken people, unhappy in a intimate, core level. We get a series of lost souls searching for meaning, which can be a cult or a pyramid scheme, or any other series of life-consuming vices. But there's only two virtuous answers the anime gives: 1) the necessity of money for food and shelter forcing one to find a job and going outside, and 2) how we can actually help one another and, with this, help ourselves. Which is why the last episodes, putting the spotlight on Misako and revealing that there was a second, parallel story happening at the same time, are so brilliant. We are all waiting to be saved.
If we stop running and decide to live, there's a life waiting for us.
Loose thoughts:
- The Buffalo '66 poster in Sato's room is the most unexpected reference I think I ever saw in a anime. Makes complete sense, of course, as both are movies about how a fake relationship turns to a real one and ends up saving the lost people in them. But still. Completely out of left field.
- The most amazing subversion of the "beach episode", at the same time absurdly dark and hilarious and staring one of the sharpest, funniest, from sad-to-laughing cuts EVER.
- There's some completely unexpected nude scenes in this. I mean, not the smooth doll bodies that are usual, but ~real nudity. Can they do this? Is this normal? I don't believe I actually blushed at drawn nakedness, but it came out of nowhere!!
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 19, 2017
One of my favorite things about Japan is that it's culture seem to be the last resort against cynicism: the only country where giving your best is really a value in itself, not only as a justification, but as the foundation of a whole culture, a kind of shared social pathos. There is no backlash to doing so, no social interference, no evil antagonist sabotaging your every move, no one ridiculing your attempt: there's a weird purity in this.
But there's also Gi(a)rlish Number -- which is actually my introduction to japanese cynicism, I guess. The making of a shitty light novel adaptation, anchored by two
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over-confident incompetent characters that want to do everything but their best.
The series is build on this great dynamic: those characters (Chitose, a newbie seiyuu, and Kuzu-P, the irresponsible producer) inhabiting a traditional japanese universe where everybody has the responsibility to do their best, while they get by on blind enthusiasm and recklessness alone. There's no pleasure in doing a good work, no honor in achieving something - there's only selfishness, the search for notoriety and popularity. And the strangest thing is: I mean this in the most endearing way possible.
The greatest strength of the series is how this cynicism spices what is at its heart a very straight-forward slice of life. The anime builds great characters and explores their emotional landscape with great care - the drama is very simple, but in a clear, delicate way: those are characters with rich interior lives, that arrived at this work by different means, approaching life in their particular way. All of them a little broken, a little disheartened -- all of them with some kind of cynicism for the profession, not perfectly build to it. And we got to follow them coming to terms with this life, learning the value of doing a great job, opening up to people you like, and being proud to try their best (Aha! Earnestness wins again! Thank you, Japan!).
(I mean, everybody but Kuzu-P. He is mostly helpless. That the only romance of the series is his love for a hostess that doesn't really care that much for him is one of the best little things the anime does.)
Also, very beautiful art.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 22, 2017
As a pro-wrestling fan, I started watching for Okada and Tanahashi's appearances - not even knowing there would be so much more, with a lot of the NJPW roster showing up, and even some non-japanese ones.
I stayed because, in the first episode, Tiger Mask trained by fighting and eating a bear. There's also semi-naked mountain climbing. With bare hands. In the freezing cold. There's a room for training full of old school robots, because of course it has. There's a mysterious evil corporation bent on conquering the world of pro-wrestling, and a fair, preternaturally gifted protagonist looking to avenge his master - and a long
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lost friend on the same tortuous journey, but he's stoic, got long hair and wears a black mask, so he's cooler. It would be my favorite anime if I was growing up, now I find it so cheesy - but cheese is also the best food, so that's fine.
Shonen anime is a great medium for a pro-wrestling history as both are build around big, outrageous characters (I love Tanahashi having trouble securing his identity behind a mask because his personality is just too big), impossible stunts and muscle-bound physiques. In both mediums, the fights are part of the dramaturgy, a form of narrative and also how connections are made: respect for a fighter turning to friendship, or a rivality deepening. Every in-ring confrontation is when Tiger Mask W is at its best.
The stop-start nature of a wrestling match, with emphasis on facial expression and psychology/narrative, lends itself well to this more economic (i.e. cheaper) animation style. The fights are really fun, but the upscalling of the animation at Tiger Mask's great first fight with Yellow Devil, for instance, or during the War Games episodes, shows the heights this could achieve with a more dedicated focus on the occasional seriousness of the emotions, and how real are the risks of really great wrestling and storytelling.
Loose thoughts:
- There's a tendency, in wrestling related work, to be 'realistic'. I really like that the whole story here is in kayfabe: the fights, the relationships, everything is real. (Which of course it would be. It's anime. But it is really rare.)
- Being in keyfabe, Tiger Mask's heel turn packs a pretty strong emotional punch, having a corruptive effect on his fans and friends. Rather than a change of character (as in real pro-wrestling), it's a big change of trust. It also works as critique of revenge as a source of action.
- Pro-wrestling is used as a spectacle capable of reinvigorating public and civil spaces, something that has at its (visceral and violent) heart a populist power. A modern day coliseum.
- There's a blood feud started over Makabe's favorite sweets, with Kenny Omega heelish eating a strawberry, his face full of sugar.
- An Undertaker-like Terminator as the big boss of a Hell in a Hole (which is a crazy fight gimmick which would be amazing live - without all the death, I mean).
- Naito is just the best.
- What's with the homage to Kota Ibushi at the end? Is it because he was the real-life Tiger Mask W? Or just there is a huge group of Ibushi marks in the production? But also, I mean, who isn't a Ibushi mark?
- The very end makes me excited for a joshi anime now!
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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