Yes, they all have their respective plane on their backs.
No, I really don’t get the jokes either. You have to be an aviation buff, I think.
One thing I notice about reading manga and watching anime is just how odd the portrayal of women can be. Not always sexist, or skeevy, but just odd. A girl can be a robot twelve inches or so tall, or can be physically attached to a guys arm like a hand puppet (not as bad as it sounds…i think?) It’s something we don’t see much in Western literature, even fantasy. Good or bad, I’ll let you decide.
Danny Choo, who writes a great blog called “Culture Japan,” had his own face cloned and put on a storm trooper doll, and the result is uncanny. It cost him around $1300, and the result is a doll that looks so lifelike, you’d be forgiven to think he’s hoaxing us.
It’s also not particularly expensive technology either. A lot of DSLR cameras, a good-quality 3-D printer, and you can make your very own mini eldritch abomination to haunt your dreams, and possibly steal your soul. Ugh, I’ll be right back, after I toss away all my Puppetmaster DVDs.
If I had to pick two of my favorite anime, they would be My Neighbor Totoro and Haibane Renmei. Totoro is a sweet story about two young children meeting the cuddly god of the forest, and Haibane is about a girl waking up without memories in a walled town. Both are beautifully made works of animation with a spirit unlike other anime, and both have something I didn’t really think about until a few days ago.
Not a single television, computer, or phone screen is present in either of them.
Totoro’s reason is that it’s set in 1958. Haibane doesn’t set a date, but its technology apart from the wind towers seems akin to something 1980 or less, but with no sign of televisions. Totoro has all of one phone, a rotary dial one which is probably the only one in the village. Haibane has no electronic technology that I can recall whatsoever; all the technology is mechanical. Both have severely limited contact with the outside world, to where they are plot points. When the children in Totoro play, they do so outside, and not an Ipod or game system can be found. The Haibane don’t even have heat in some of the rooms in Old Home, and even the books in the town’s library have no mention of the outside world.
It’s hard at time to realize just how much screens have dominated our lives in barely thirty years. Around when I was under ten, in the late seventies to early eighties, many things we took for granted were severely reduced or non-existent. You had a single console TV that used an antenna to pull in maybe five or six TV stations. Even the ones pulled in were often marred by noise or static. There were no specialized channels, either; a young child then wanting to watch television after school would be watching things like Bowling for Dollars rather than Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. Same with evening television; you watched programs mostly catering to adults, with the occasional special for kids.
Even more amazing is that television actually stopped beyond a certain point. Stations would sign off for the day at around 11 P.M.-2 A.M. and run a test pattern until dawn or later. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t watch it all the time. VCRs wouldn’t be introduced until later, and neither would basic cable. In real life, what this meant was children mostly relied on books, toys, and the great outdoors to occupy themselves, and adults were limited in the amount of electronic entertainment they could consume.
While both computers and cell phones were beginning around then, I’d argue it really wasn’t till 2000 or so that both became real fixtures in people’s lives. Screens were slowly becoming more and more predominant, but you could still resist them. Magazines did well alongside Geocities web pages, and watching movies meant a trip to the theater or the video store. Cell phones were still a toy of the rich and lacked even the basic features prepaid phones have today. It was a different world.
The reason why I go into this is that I think I like both so much because they have balance. The library in Haibane is precious precisely because it isn’t a screen with all the world’s knowledge in it. Because screens aren’t so omnipresent and cheap in Totoro, the children can have pleasure just in playing and enjoying a spooky house and a lush, green woods. We live in a world where you can buy a disc with ten movies on it for five dollars, where people give away their novels for free, and where I can always be connected to people and information with a device costing under two hundred dollars. This has changed us, and not always in good ways.
Screens educate us, but they also numb us. Art in small doses inspires, but in large doses can make us inured to wonder. There’s a scene in Kiki’s Delivery Service where the artist Ursula invites her over to cheer her up. Problem is, Ursula lives a long way off from town. Ironically, the long journey makes the moment where Kiki finds the painting about her the more poignant, compared to if Ursula just pulled out an Ipad in town and showed her a GIF. I hate this cliche, but the journey to the destination is also important, and a coin lost can seem more valuable than ten in hand.
I guess that’s why I love both Totoro and Haibane so much. The lack of screens, and the importance of the journey make what could be trite very meaningful. An Ipod, or easy access to cell phones and GPS would kill both as stories, and the connections the characters make are meaningful because they aren’t instantaneous, or easy to do or maintain. I have more reasons why I like both, and I plan to explore them in later posts. But the slow life that isn’t always moderated by screens and is bounded by limits makes for a strangely compelling world. Maybe a medicine to always-on 24-7 modern life.
With all the endless sequels and revitalizing of old properties that Disney does, the fact that neither Disney or Square releases a single movie from it is bewildering. Kingdom Hearts has languished for quite some time now; Kingdom Hearts 3 will probably never see release on the PS3, and all we get are portable remixes for the DS or 3DS. You know that if they announced a movie, we’d all go pre-order tickets if just to see Cloud and Aeris again.
2. Phantasy Star Online
The Phantasy Star series is probably the third member of the trinity of classic RPGS; Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Phantasy Star. PSO updated the classic RPGs with such style and grace, while creating the first online console Diablo-style RPG. It did so that despite endless problems with the game, people play and love it still. I literally had characters deleted due to bugs, and still kept leveling.
It puzzles me that we have yet to see any anime from it. For contrast, we saw an OAV from the lesser known (but still as awesome) Panzer Dragoon games, but this? Not a one.
3. Rune Factory
This series is one of the overlooked gems of the RPG world. It took the farming elements of Harvest Moon (which in itself is an incredibly influential series) and added fantasy and RPG elements. Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny is probably one of the better RPGS of this generation.
I’m surprised that what is a very shoujo-friendly premise has never really seen realization into anime. You’d have the potential for a wonderful, heartwarming slice-of-life story.
4. Mega Man Legends
It’s literally an anime already.
No, seriously, if you had to pick a single video game that embodied what anime could be, Megaman Legends two is it. This series has been unjustly neglected, and the cancellation of three for the 3ds annoyed a lot of fans. This series though gave a rich story to what had been a flat hero, and two in particular went the extra mile.
You all know you also want to see Tron Bonne animated too.
5. Sky Gunner
Okay, I’m breaking the definition of series here. I admit it. It borrows a little from Tail Concerto (all of the main characters have tails, although it isn’t apparent in the intro) but also from Castle in the Sky and Kiki’s Delivery Service. The game is hard to control, and suffers from the limits of the PS2 engine, but it has some honestly amazing sequences in it that beg to be made into anime.
One of the things that gets me about Christian Spec Fiction is that it’s very much concerned about being safe. We don’t show things like magic, unless it’s certain safe types of it: telepathy, empathy, superheroic powers, magic items like sword, orbs, or shields, and a few categories otherwise. There’s also restrictions on certain kinds of content, whether its realistically depicting violent or sexual acts, or even discussing them. Generally the idea behind this is to be safe, and provide wholesome entertainment. I remember one discussion where a well-meaning blogger held up Harry Potter as a good standard.
Thing is, Harry Potter was written for kids.
We have sort of a weird double-standard here. Apparently, we can’t include certain situations because they will unduly influence adult minds. To a point, I can accept this; many people don’t want to see graphic sex or violence due to direct sin-causing issues, or because it tends to sicken people. But it goes beyond this to the refusal to discuss or talk about certain situations.
Magic is the big one. We are adults. What goes on in a book is fictional. If the main character is a crystal mage, this doesn’t mean immediately after reading we are going to go out, buy some crystals, and start replicating what is in the book. Kids may do this, but even then, they are kids; what they do is called playing, and the time when it is a danger is when they play with things they shouldn’t, like guns. But we aren’t kids, we are adults.
We can handle mature themes.
We can handle fictional magic, sexuality, and violence to a point.
We don’t need to be talked down to or protected.
It can lead to unintentional irony. The fiction in a Christian bookstore can be sanitized, while then you can go and read Foxe’s book of Martyrs, or the account of a missionary overseas, and be conflicted with serious violence, cruelty to man, and other things. You can turn on the news, or read about say Kermit Gosnell and the account of what he did, and deal with far worse. And sometimes, it seems we even hold two different standards, one for the world, and one for Christian art. Oh, magic is okay if Harry Potter uses it, but heaven forbid it seeps into Christian fiction in anything but a sanitized form.
I do think that if you want to write for kids, write for them. None of these arguments matter for works directed explicitly at children. But it seems many times the sanitizing effect of Christian spec-fic treats the reader like a child, and assumes that he doesn’t know the difference between reality and fantasy, or has such weak character that he can be influenced by a mild fictional depiction or treatment of certain issues. This has created spec-fic which always feels restrained and never really deals with issues of substance. Being safe, avoiding any sign of controversy, and unwilling to confront real issues makes for a genre that hollowed out inside.
If you write for adults, it’s unfair to force them to accept a level of safety that is seemingly designed for kids. It makes for bad fiction. I can like an appreciate children’s novels, but to read “adult” ones that feel the same way is not a formula for a happy reader.
2 stars out of five. The pluses and minuses add up to make an average, if long mecha anime. Hope you like plot twists.
Kouichi is a teen that is bullied, and often sullen due to resenting being powerless. One day, fate drops in on him in the form of a massive mech called the Linebarrel, and a naked girl named Emi. Literally; he dies from the impact, and is ressurected as the pilot of the mecha. But what happens when you give a lot of power to a bullied teen with delusions of being a hero? Not good things at first. The plot goes in crazy directions from there.
This is a hard show to like. Kouichi actually subverts being the usual mecha hero at first; he is delusional, drunk with power, and throws tantrums with dangerous effect. He’s not that strong himself; the Linebarrel is better than other mechs, but still can be beaten by skill rather than raw power. It comes to an interesting head at about the fifth episode, and then you get everyone on a beach being attacked by a giant octopus.
Linebarrels of Iron has the worst mood swings of a series I have ever seen.
It can be serious, and comic even in the same episode. Right after a dramatic scene, you have the twins who pilot one of the mechs trying to gain popularity for the Juda corporation by a bad comedy show or karaoke. It doesn’t work so well because it makes you feel unbalanced; serious arcs broken up by humor don’t really work well in this series because the focus is realistic, and the comedy is wacky.
There’s also the plot twists. There’s a lot of them over the twenty-four episode series, and it seems like every three episodes some new dimension of the plot is revealed. If you stick to the end of the series, they actually get tied up well and are explained better than you’d think. The actions of the main villain for example really only become understandable at the end, and even something as odd as the trollish nature of Juda’s CEO becomes a decent plot point. But I was getting fatigued by the end of the series, with all the love triangles, silly things, explanations, and heroic death and rebirths. Also, there was far too much repetition. How many times can the Deceive be shot down, and how long will Kouichi get his butt kicked or refuse to train himself and get better?
The animation is of meh quality. Characters are animated in a mediocre style, and mechs are the typical cel-shaded computer graphics you see in most series these days. Mech design is mediocre too, and feels like they borrowed more than innovated. They aren’t ugly, and it gets better late in the season, but average is being generous.
Other pluses include being cheap and long ($14.99 for 24 episodes and two OVAs on sale if you can find it), having two extra OVA episodes which are pretty funny, and having a decent cast of characters.
For Christians, I’d put it at R. A decent amount of obscured and unobscured nudity, some blood and severed limbs, and high levels of fanservice at times. The main character isn’t really likable, but the main focus of the story is not being apathetic and having a strong desire to be worthy of the power to choose you are given. It’s tough to sit through it past the Kouichi being a total jerk parts for that to sink in, though.
I’d rank it as average because it’s not that bad overall. But it’s a long series, and I’m not sure whether or not you want to devote the time to something that’s pretty mediocre when all things are added together. If you are the kind of person who liked Solty Rei or UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie, you could probably enjoy this. Or if you are on a budget and want a cheap mecha anime, this can work; mecha anime seems to be underrepresented in sub $20 anime dvds. I doubt though that I’d want to watch this twice.
No, seriously, it’s a story about Donyatsu, a kitty-shaped intelligent donut, as he wakes up in a world full of dead humans, predatory mice, and other donut animals. I kid you not.
There are times when it’s a bit gross, as the manga likes to have the occasional poop joke once in awhile. The artwork of the empty world though is detailed and haunting, and the cats come across as gentler versions of survivors. They even regrow if eaten, and soon an assortment of cats and other food animals are gathered together simply for companionship, and answers about what happened to all the humans? You wouldn’t think a silly premise would be so compelling, but it is.
