Infinite Rainy Day

I consider myself a pretty accepting person. Sure, lots of stuff irks me, but for the most part I try my hardest to not eviscerate an idea that I don’t like. I like to keep an open-mind, as I recognize that it’s never as easy as pointing fingers. However, sometimes I have to put my foot down. Case in point?

I happen to loveFullmetal Alchemist, as do many other people. It’s a well-made Shonen show that transcends a lot of the tropes I don’t like about the genre, as well as a few that I probably wouldn’t think of off the top of my head. While not as big a fan as many, I happened to also enjoy Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and recognize it as a solid companion piece to the original series. Regardless, both adaptations of Hiromu Arakawa’s legendary Manga are pretty strong pieces, something to keep in mind for what I’m about to say:

So I recently stumbled upon an article on CBR.com, which you can read here, that revealed Alphonse Elric’s new look in the live-action adaptation of Arakawa’s Manga. For one, I wasn’t even aware that there was going to be a live-action adaptation, unless I’d completely forgotten because I was too busy blocking it out of my mind. And two, while the design looks accurate, I can’t help but wonder if it’s the most-inspired choice. This is because live-action and animation aren’t one-in-the-same, so what may look fine in one might not work in another. If you want proof of that, Captain America’s famous feather wings on his helmet were made decorative in the MCU movies.

But there’s a bigger issue here, and it’s one that I think needs addressing in order to understand why I’m not so fond of the idea of another adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist: we’ve already had two, and both were perfectly fine. The original was made when the Manga was in its early stages, and while it veered quite a bit from its source material in the second-half, it still functioned as a well-crafted series. The later iteration, which was made near the end of the Manga’s run, was more faithful, and while I have problems with it, it’s a well-crafted series. Both adaptations did what they set out to do well, so do we really need another one in live-action?

Honestly, this rings way too familiar as a Western filmgoer. See, Hollywood…has been out of ideas for ages. Good, original stories do exist, but they’re the exception and not the rule. For the most part, it seems like Hollywood’s increasingly content with remaking and/or readapting classic stories. Sometimes it pans out well, I actually liked both adaptations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but it usually comes off as another cash-in on a beloved property for a quick buck. And, not surprisingly, most of these “do-overs” are awful.

I’m especially concerned because, even taking into account that this is Japan and not Hollywood, Fullmetal Alchemist has already been adapted to anime twice. The first time was successful, and the second time was successful. Both adaptations have their die-hard fans, and both adaptations pretty much exhausted the material to its fullest. What can this live-action film do differently? I don’t know, and that’s part of the problem.

It’s not like it wouldn’t be cool to see a live-action treatment of a beloved Manga. I’m still waiting, for example, on my Hollywood adaptation of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, especially now that the Manga’s long-finished. Adapting a Manga into live-action isn’t, in theory, a bad idea, but only when there’s a fundamental need. What need is there for a live-action Fullmetal Alchemist? Y’know, other than to dig into a pre-dug well a third time? It reeks of creative bankruptcy.

Of course, then there’s this bit of information:

“Based on the popular manga series that ran in Japan for 27 volumes from 2001 to 2010, director Fumihiko Sori will tell the entire ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ tale in a single film.”

Is that a joke?! Because if it’s not, then it’s either really ambitious, really brash, or both. Fullmetal Alchemist isn’t a short Manga. It took Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood 64, 24-minute episodes to adapt the entire series, and this is with rushing the first 13 episodes and cutting out a good chunk of The Ishvalan War Arc. I can’t do the math off the top of my head, but there’s no way a single movie, let-alone a 3.5 hour one, can adapt everything. It took Peter Jackson three films to adapt the Lord of the Rings series, and combined they’re not even a fraction of the length of Hiromu Arakawa’s masterpiece!

I don’t get it: why make a movie? Why make it live-action? Why adapt the same material a third time? What can you possibly do differently? WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?!

I guess there’s no point in complaining about a film that’s scheduled to release in December of this year. And it’s not like I’d want this movie to fail, as I’d love to be proven wrong! But I probably won’t, and that saddens me. It especially saddens me because this is Fullmetal Alchemist, something that absolutely deserves better. I only wish that there was an actual reason to do this again, because I might have a valid reason to care and root for it.

Fullmetal Alchemist will debut in Japanese theatres on December 1st. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not it’ll be good, but here’s hoping!

Even in movies I like, there are occasionally times when it feels like they hit on a fantastic idea that goes to waste. Makoto Shinkai's first feature film, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, has a lot of that. As an expansion upon his basic craft and a decent story about three friends whose lives are separated by a mysterious tragedy, it's pretty solid. There is also an entire alternate post-WWII history, a massive tower that can recreate matter, and the concept of being connected to alternate dimensions through dreams. While these all have vital roles in the plot, they feel like tertiary events that are barely explored when each could make their own movie.

Picking up right where he left off with Voices of a Distant Star, Shinkai starts with a heavy dose of nostalgic middle school life with a twist. In this case, we have two boys and girl named Hiroki, Takuya, and Sayuri, respectively. They do the usual activities (As much as speed skating can be considered usual) and are looking forward to life in high school together. The significant difference is the boys join up with a military contractor to save money to build their own plane to fly to a massive tower on Hokkaido (Called Ezo here) that reaches past the heavens and is built by a Northern Japan/Soviet Union coalition.

Let's back up a bit.

In this alternate history, Japan was separated between a north side that supported Russia called the Union and a south side backed by America. This separation has brought a far higher concentration of military equipment to the nation and they are always on the verge of war. In this time, the Union has built a tower that can be seen from hundreds of miles. What is its purpose? While the older generation deems it a threat and a challenge, the younger generation sees it as a curiosity that's been a part of their entire lives and yet they know nothing about it. Demanding an explanation and making little pokes at the Union to provoke them, allied Japan is getting closer and closer to igniting a powder keg. Meanwhile, the tower's inventor, Ekusun Tsukinoe, is nowhere to be found.

The first half-hour is drenched in nostalgia. It's the kind of nostalgia that finds the sun going down as students clean up following their after-school activities to be one of the most serenely precious settings. It is within these rose-colored glasses where we find the trio hanging out, even in the midst of making missile guidance systems for the military contractors (Their boss is one of those gruff men who becomes exceptionally nice when you bring a girl around). The boys both secretly love Sayuri, but it seems Hiroki has the edge, as Takuya struggles to even have a basic conversation with her when they're not all together. But alas, the happy days of youth cannot be maintained (As symbolized by a literal thunder storm rolling into the background). Sayuri eventually drops into a mysterious coma and the two boys split off into separate high schools.

Three years later in the story and the movie becomes a huge info dump and gets way more intriguing at the same time (Though the middle school section does have its charms). Takuya has moved on to becoming an assistant physicist to experiments involving trading matter with alternate universes. In this world, they've discovered there are branching universes and sometimes we connect to them in our dreams. While the allied scientists are barely able to make a speck of alternate matter visible for a few seconds, the Union has the power to completely rewrite reality as shown by the tower completely erasing 2 kilometers around it Fortunately, the tower has been silent for years, giving South Japan an opportunity to catch up. The idea of multiple dimensions connected by dreams is a fantastic idea (And one I tried to make into my own novel around when this came out, just my luck), and they have the angle of making it a gigantic chess game for both sides to recreate this reality into the one where either side wins. That concept disappears almost the moment it's explained.

On the other side of the plot, Takuya's boss, Professor Tomizawa, has secretly acquired the still-asleep Hiroki as a part of his experiments. While he doesn't inform Takuya about this, a letter explaining where she is makes it to Hiroki, who's slogging through high school, but lives a mostly glum and isolated existence. A small fire is lit under him when he visits Hiroki's room before she was transferred and can still feel her presence. Meanwhile, Hiroki is all alone in a completely decimated world, only occasionally feeling some kind of life or getting a vision of a massive explosion.

There are so many more angles to this feature including and underground rebel group, but we'll stop there. What I'm getting at is this a ton of sprawling story for a 90-minute feature and it hardly has the time to scratch the surface or address most of it. As I've said, the alternate universe cold war arms race drops out of sight fairly quickly when it's suggested why everything at the tower stopped and most of the events circle back to acting as service to the three main characters. It's certainly tidy, but wow, it leaves a lot on the table as far as what the narrative could've explored.

Shinkai now has a core of about a dozen animators and the ability to outsource some of the non-key animation to other companies like Xebec rather than doing everything himself, but he still holds directing, producing, writing, editing, cinematography, and storyboarding duties. The character animation is far more consistent than Voices of a Distant Star, though there are still a couple talky scenes where it lingers on the physical surroundings with looping animation to keep lip flaps and facial expressions at a minimum. These moments bothered me much more when I first watched it than they do now and I can only pinpoint it to not expecting Shinkai's more deliberate pacing (This was the first work of his I watched) and the slowed movement stretched out the two spots in my mind to longer than they were. The scene at the restaurant is still too much plain exposition not presented in any interesting way.

With all of that said, what is impressive about Shinkai at this point is his mastery of mood and his ability to get an image to express exactly what he wants in his first feature-length movie. Say what you will about the first half hour being too clogged with nostalgia, it looks and feels exactly as it should. It's told as a flashback, so it understandably has the rougher edges faded and even high noon on a particularly hot Summer day feels like a work of art because the feelings attached resonated far more with the narrator than everything else. This contrasts with the more washed out scenery of the present where the most dynamic aspects are the military mechanisms and scientific instruments that are pushing the world closer to the brink astoundingly quickly. Hiroki's dream space is properly surreal and lonely. The use of clouds and the sky throughout all of it to properly anchor the feature visually is effective and looks breathtaking even if what they're expressing is a little too on-the-nose at times.

As a writer, Shinkai often has the weird issue of being too blatant and too subtle, often simultaneously. This oxymoron is in full play here as one can definitely pick up what he's putting down about the struggles of reaching maturity blown up to a potential world-erasing event, but you could watch this movie three or four times and miss vital information in regards to understanding the plot. The movie's biggest question, what the ultimate purpose of the giant tower is, doesn't have an obvious answer at first glance. Its the main question, and if you lost attention for a second in a seemingly small conversation, you missed the ultimate answer. Strangely, there are bits and pieces of subplots here and there that seem like they were dropped, but at the same time, don't. Professor Tomizawa has a moment late in the movie where it implies he had a similar childhood to the main characters with the boss at the weapons contractor facility. It's one of those ambiguous details that's nice for people dissecting the film to play with, but for me, it added nothing to the movie itself than trying to give some depth to a character skirting the edge of the plot.

The leads are all right as far as creating a sympathetic core. We get to know them enough to feel for their plights, though Hiroki is definitely "the girl." She gets the hobby of reading, but even a good amount of that is foreshadowing, as is her dialogue. CLEVER foreshadowing, I'll grant that, but there's little to her besides what happens to and around her. The boys also get a bit of artificial chemistry at times, including a speech where they say lines simultaneously in such a fashion that it could only come from a script in a movie. But the performers themselves give enough a vibe to get a good enough idea of who their roles are.

One thing I neglected in my last review was the music of Shinkai's own John Williams, Tenmon. This is going to sound like a backhanded compliment when it's really not, but his music sounds like the kind of soundtrack visual novels makers wish they had in their games. He makes solemn, wistful themes used plenty of times (And in this case, one theme is a plot point) that are sturdy enough to carry the entire work they're featured in. His music is very pretty, makes an effective ear worm, and is usually one of the best parts to a Shinkai flick. I really don't know what more to add than that.

The Place Promised in Our Early Days is a fairly good feature film debut. Despite a few early filmmaker hitches, the only real flaw is it perhaps had too much ambition, parking too many awesome concepts into a basic story that couldn't explore them all. You know, too much ambition isn't the worst thing in the world unless your budget's five bucks. I would like to see a movie that actually centers on jumping through multiple dimensions in people's dreams, though. As is, it's a good first movie and a steady improvement for a talented filmmaker. Next time you see me, we'll be talking Makoto Shinkai's potentially most divisive work, 5 Centimeters per Second. At least, from my experience, it is. The only united opinion is I've had people had people who both love AND hate the movie yell at me for being wrong, for whatever that's worth.

It's almost unimaginable that, less than 5 years ago, Fire Emblem was, for all intents and purposes, a niche series almost on the rocks-whilst beloved in its native Japan, it struggled to make it abroad until the mid-2000s, and even then remained a rarity on the shelves in the English-speaking world. Then came the critically acclaimed, blockbuster-scale Awakening, followed by the solid but un-adventurous Fates, both for the Nintendo 3DS, the franchise exploded in popularity, moving from niche strategy JRPG to Nintendo's fantasy mainstay. Now, on the coat-tails of Pikachu and Mario's adventures off the consoles and onto that new market leader of gaming, the smartphones, in the form of the spectacularly popular Pokémon Go, and the entertaining but overpriced Mario Run, comes this pocket-sized version of the franchise, in easy, (and extremely cute) bite-sized installments. But can this phone-based, quick-fire game equal its more complex console based brothers, or is this another case of an oversimplified adaption for shorter attention spans?

Key to a phone game is simplicity, and ease of playing-and here, Fire Emblem Heroes does what other Nintendo smartphone games have failed to do so far-give us an (admittedly bitesized) Fire Emblem game Pokemon Go and Super Mario Run may have been decent games but the shift between the phone game and the console or handheld game was too big-Fire Emblem Heroes perfectly downsizes the hex-based, turn-based formula, giving you a band of four warriors (rather than the usual small army of the average Fire Emblem game) to pit against the computer, or other player's four units. Here Intelligent Systems-the very same team that create every Fire Emblem (and the now sadly defunct sister "Wars") game- have outdone themselves-in all respects, Fire Emblem Heroes feels (and looks) like a Fire Emblem game. Battles are fought either at close range or at hand-to-hand, with the familiar "sword beats axe beats lance beats sword" triangle being bolstered by red, green, and blue magic, (red beats green beats blue beats red, by the way). So far, so typical Fire Emblem.
The game also has daily missions (in two difficulty settings) to compete in, the completion of which gifts you that mission's main character, arena mode, in which you fight others teams of four from around the world and can befriend fellow players, and a training mode which pits you against the computer in an effort to level your characters up and gain crystals which can be used either to further level characters up or to teach them new moves.

Where Heroes makes full use of its phone based, and free-to-play nature is in how you recruit units. In the typical games, units either join you naturally over the space of the game, as you rally your forces, or can be recruited from enemy or neutral forces. For Heroes, you recruit them entirely at random, paying five orbs-the game's main currency-to recruit a single unit, entirely at random and from across the huge cast of characters from Fire Emblem's present and past. This system in itself is surprisingly addictive; the possiblity of reuniting and taking to the battlefield with a much loved hero (or in the case of the characters from Awakening and Fates, your former husband or wife) has led some to breathtaking spending sprees on extra orbs-a lot of the time, as with all games of chance, you're left blinking at your new acquisition, muttering "and who the bloody hell are you?" For my part, I've managed to recruit two of my favourites-the ghoulish if well-meaning Henry from Awakeningand Roy, that much loved also-ran of Smash Bros fame, from Binding Blade, but am still in search of franchise figurehead, Lucina, originally from Awakening(one day...).

Surprisingly for a game largely sold upon its portability and the unique recruitment model, Heroes has a solid, if barebones story, which not only explains the concept behind this collision of Fire Emblem worlds, but indeed the recruitment method. Your character is dropped into a war between the devious Emblian Empire, commanded by glumly determined Princess Veronica, whose nation has the power to open and close portals to other dimensions (and thus other Fire Emblem games) and the righteous kingdom of Askr, whose prince and princess Alfonse and Sharena only have the power to open the portals and who act as your main allies. It soon turns out via some exposition from fan favourite Anna, that your character, the Summoner, has the power to produce heroes from seemingly nowhere via a gunlike artifact known as the Breidablik.

You and the kingdom of Askr set out to defeat the Emblian Empire, free the worlds of Fire Emblem from their influence and return the balance to its rightful place. As with the series in general, the difficulty curve is gradual, but the last few maps are suitably challenging, and, if you do complete the relatively short story mode, there are both hard and lunatic modes for those truly in need of a challenge. As with Fire Emblem in general, the writing is solid, occasionally a little overwrought but generally of a high quality-fortunately, after the debacle of Fates, there seems to be a tighter control on script.

Where the game, however, differs greatly, is in its visual style-as with, for example the popular sword boy-collect-em-all, Touken Ranbu, there is no one unified style of character design, but several, depending on the artist responsible for designing the Heroes version of that character. This crosses the gamut from highly exaggerated, and almost western-comic book style used for Fates'heroic Arthur, to a seinein look for Blazing Blade's Hector, and from wispy line to bold and polychromatic. Not only does this grant each character a (somewhat) unique visual style but it helps some of the less interesting designs stand out from the crowd they would otherwise blend into, but it allows a sense of a large, but still very diverse group-it's certainly remarkable that so many characters are relatively easily identifiable from each other; by far the best work is focused around the dozen or so main characters, including the quartet of newly designed character (Alfonse, Sharena, Veronica and the mysterious masked man who makes a few appearances), but also key franchise favourites such as Chrom, Robin, Lucina, Marx and so on.

Heroes adds to this artwork by using one of four images for your fighting hero in combat-a rest image, generally used when the character is introduced or summoned, but which also acts as a character portrait on the field, a combat animation, a combat critical animation, for when your hero uses their special, after four successive rounds of combat (either attacking or being attacked), usually accompanied by a cheesey, character appropriate quote and an "injured" image. These can differ, much as in the case of Touken Ranbu and girls-as-ships (or is it ships-as-girls?) game Kantai Collection, from a few cuts and bruises, and a few damaged bits of clothing to being half clothed-curiously, this doesn't seem to have a particular balance by gender, and as many boys as girls seem to be subject to some rather fanservicey damage.

As for the rest of the audio visual package, both the voice work and music are, as ever for a Nintendo product, of very high quality-the voice casts for the previous two 3DS games have returned, alongside those who have been previously voiced in, for example, Smash Bros-for a good number of characters, however, this is the first time they have been voiced. Uniformly, although most characters do not get more than a few lines of dialogue, all stock "ready for combat"-type lines, the voice work is good, even on returning or even very minor characters. The music is of good, if largely previously used quality-"Together We Ride" is used heavily, particularly during summoning new heroes-the only particularly notable addition being a somewhat amusing "sung" version of the Fire Emblem theme.

As an app, Heroes is generally of very high quality, especially compared to the often buggy Pokemon Go, a game that both guzzles battery (to the point that single-handledly, it seems to have caused a renaissance in portable power-packs) and remains worryingly glitchy, temperamental and often freezes or boots the player out. Heroes has crashed on me exactly once, at which point the game promptly resumed from the very point it had crashed, and is neither data-heavy nor battery intensive-having played it on a hour long bus journey nigh constantly, it barely used more than a few hundred KB and less than 5% of my phone's battery.

As with Pokémon Go, there is little impetus to spend money-whilst there are some extreme examples (the by now already legendary story of a man dropping $1000+ on the game in search of Hector, a lord from Fire Emblem The Blazing Blade, only to not receive the character through many hundreds of hero-summons is one), the game more than supports you, with two daily orbs and a third per day at weekends, whilst each completed mission gains you another orb, whilst the more recent, if infrequent "Launch Celebration" maps gift you 3 orbs on completion. In short, most of the time, the game is more than generous with its hero-summoning spoils.

Other items that can be bought with real-world currency simply do not exist-much like Go, where only coins can be bought, orbs can also be swapped for health, including useful "revive all" items and stamina (the gauge which determines how many battles you can fight before having to take a break, refills for which the game also gives you, and duelling swords, necessary to challenge other players in the arena (which the game also gives you for completing challenges or logging in every day as a bonus. Thus, compared to so many of these free to play, pay to win apps, Heroesneither forces not really attempts to make you part with any real-world money-for one real reason: it (at least partly) wants to make you like Fire Emblem's style of gameplay, and its characters enough to buy one or more of the games.

So, how doesFire Emblem Heroes hold up when compared to the series' handheld or console-based outings? Really damn well. Whilst some of the more advanced features (bonds between units and the ability for units to support each other) are missing and the battles are more small skirmishes than the full pitched battles of the main series, the game is otherwise a perfect, miniaturized version of Fire Emblem, with the game engine transferred perfectly to the iPhone and Android. Is it a replacement? Absolutly not, but that was never the intention-this appears to be both gateway for new fans, perhaps tiring of the slow and overly buggy Pokemon Go, or simply looking for a new game to play-certainly the game is very beginner friendly, even on harder difficulty modes-but it also seems to be a micro sized, and surprisingly addictive bit of fan-service-with a roster crossing over from the game's late 1980s origins to the present day, there's a chance to reconnect with heroes we've only played as on grubby badly translated roms or games with tiny print-runs. Much as Pokemon Go is, Fire Emblem Heroes is both introduction and re-introduction to a series, and a love letter to a franchise. It may be short, it may not be an overly hard game, but it sure is a well made and beautifully crafted one, especially for a franchise only now reaching mass appeal.

Oh Hollywood, how you never fail to disappoint me!

A while back, I wrote an article discussing the casting of Scarlett Johansson as Motoko Kusanagi in the live-action Ghost in the Shell. Recently, Johansson’s defence for playing the character came to fruition, prompting further response. Now, in a stunning move, the most-recent trailer has released, prompting even further response. Why? Have a watch:

Did…did they go full-4Kids with this? (Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.)

That’s right: Motoko Kusanagi is now Mira! Isn’t that great?

I’m being a little unfair; after all, changing names is a way of helping to differentiate ethnicities from one culture to another. It happened all the time with biblical texts (Jesus’s original name was Yehoshua,) and it’s also happened with movies (Samurai Seven VS The Magnificent Seven.) Sometimes it’s necessary, and good material should work regardless of culture. So using the name “Mira” makes sense.

The problem, however, is context. This isn’t a thought-out, conscientious choice on the part of the filmmakers and/or studio execs, because I can live with that. The name change feels almost reactionary to criticism, which’d be somewhat okay if Johansson weren’t cast as the main character. Because it’s still whitewashing, and that’s precisely the problem.

I should note that this isn’t exclusive to Ghost in the Shell. Remember Doctor Strange? Y’know, that trippy Marvel movie about a neurosurgeon who loses his dexterity in a car crash and becomes a sorcerer? I enjoyed that movie, as did many other people. But even in early production, there was a looming issue that plagued the film: the casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One. I get why it was done financially, China doesn’t like Tibet, and they re-wrote the character’s backstory to accommodate the change, but it still never felt right. It felt like a white character pretending to be an Asian character, which kept pulling me out of the experience.

Which is what this move feels like too: a white character pretending to be an Asian character. The film can rename the protagonist from Motoko to Mira, but that doesn’t solve anything, especially not this late in the game! It feels like a bandage solution to a deep wound, and one that wasn’t properly disinfected. It’s frustrating how dumb Hollywood executives think we are about this, and I’m not happy. And even if this movie had gone through last-minute reshoots to accommodate this change, as many films do, it’s too late to save this project.

Honestly, this is a good indication of how troubled the production of this film was: first it was in production hell for several years. Then it found a spotty director. Then Scarlett Johansson was cast as The Major. Then the trailers looked disappointing. Then Johansson made an off-colour remark that reeked of racism. And now the main character’s name has been changed to Mira. Oh, and it looks like a generic rip-off of the Jason Bourne and Total Recall movies, with a visual style reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell.

I dunno about you, but doesn’t this seem like a disaster from the get-go? I feel awful for saying that, since I want this film to succeed. I want Hollywood to finally get it right then it comes to adaptations of anime, as they’ve yet to crack the code. And it’s not even like this’ll be another Dragonball Evolution, as it at least has the aesthetic down. Much like the recent crop of video game movies, it’s trying to be as faithful as it can. So it’s even more frustrating that it’s still finding a way to fail.

But I guess this goes back to my underlying concern: Hollywood doesn’t get anime. It never tries unless there’s potential profit to be made, and even then it adapts the wrong aspects. It’s the classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, and that really sucks. It’s an additional shame because I’m worried about potential anime-to-Hollywood adaptations that could work, like Fullmetal Alchemist, Attack on Titan or, God forbid, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The former two would be perfect in the hands of a Peter Jackson/Guillermo del Toro-style director, as both fit their styles to a teat. Meanwhile, the latter would be a dream come true in the hands of a competent fantasy director, especially now that the Manga’s complete. That Ghost in the Shell looks to be a failure gives me no hope for these adaptations.

But perhaps it’s all well that Ghost in the Shell will fail. On one hand, even if it did everything well, fans would find something to complain about. It’d be trashed like no tomorrow, ripped apart by die-hard fans who’d refuse to acknowledge its existence. And the second anyone dares say something nice, the dissenters would decry treachery. So it wouldn’t win anyway.

On the other hand, perhaps there’s no longer a need for a live-action adaptation? Ghost in the Shell had a profound impact on Alex Proyas and The Wachowskis, such that both have cited it as an influence on Dark City and The Matrix respectively. That the original film has already been “readapted” twice by three different directors should be proof enough that, in a weird way, we don’t need Ghost in the Shell anymore. I know it’s a flimsy claim, but perhaps this film has already been readapted by Hollywood?

Maybe I’m being too optimistic. Or maybe I’m not. Either way, we’ll find out when Ghost in the Shell releases in a little bit. So cross your fingers, and perhaps toes, and pray. We’ll need all the help we can get.

It feels really weird to call 5 Centimeters Per Second a divisive movie. It's such a minor piece, only wishing to be about the distance between two people that threatens to ruin the life of one of them. I suppose that's the reason why there are so many mixed feelings here. It's here where Shinkai's bullcookie publicity as "the next Miyazaki" hit full saturation and probably where a great many people walked into his career and said, "This is it?" This is Shinkai stripped of most of his fantastical elements, leaving the core of people separated by time, space, emotion, or all three. These are the most resonant parts of his work and the most well executed, so I don't mind at all, but I imagine those who were attracted by the more grandiose sections of his oeuvre would beg to differ.

The story is broken up into 3 vignettes. The first one, "Cherry Blossom," features Takaki and Akari, two elementary school kids who are constantly transferring schools due to their parents' work. They meet in the library as sickly, lonely youth, and form a strong bond that gets them made fun of. Alas, Akari's parents transfer her to a school outside of Tokyo at the end of their elementary school, and the two are separated. They communicate through letters which are read while snippets of Takaki's school life unspools on screen. Eventually, Takaki is forced to transfer to a school even farther away from Akari, so he makes an effort to have one fond farewell by taking a long series of train rides to where Akari lives during an increasingly treacherous snowstorm.

In the second vignette "Cosmonaut," it fast-forwards to Takaki's new coastal high school from the perspective of Kanae, a rudderless girl who at is end of high school with no prospects and hasn't even been able to surf to take her mind off things for six months. Yet what she does know is she loves Takaki and the kindness he shows towards her, even when he ducks off to a hill and sends text messages to a mysterious person. Her parents are pushing her to decide what she wants to do with her life while her sister is the mediator. This is the most straightforward one, only giving the briefest glimpse to something beyond it with a few asides about a space launch that is traveling the Solar System as a metaphor for jumping into adulthood. The final short catches up with the leads in their adult lives and how their experiences have shaped them for better or worse. When it gets just enough of an idea of how they're doing, it ends cutting off a character in the middle of a monologue with musical montage from a Japanese one-hit wonder and the movie just ends. Not even joking.

At the start of my first Shinkai article, I made note to him having a massive blockbuster as akin to Terrence Malick conquering the world of public popularity, and while it was a surface-level comparison at the time, it's actually apt in some ways. "Cherry Blossom" itself seems like a visual tone poem to the world of average Tokyo high school life and later, the Japanese rail system done in those ways directors take the most mundane aspects of the world and make them glow. Even if you've seen cherry blossoms in almost every damn slice-of-life anime ever, it feels like you're looking at them for the first time. The same with train stations, snowstorms, and skyscrapers. Shinkai seems to dote on every lived-in corner and wants to show all of it (According to a couple people I know, the detail within the rail lines is amazingly accurate), which may lead some viewers checking their watches at ten minutes in. With a full production crew at last, it all looks above and beyond his previous works with a minimum of production shortcuts (There may have been one or two shots that lingered a bit too long).

The difference is Malick tends to let the original concept, its script, and its actors get away from him, and instead goes off on whatever visual tangent his muse takes him. Shinkai is far more composed and organized (Probably since he wrote the script himself). In "Cherry Blossom," the editing at the beginning is somewhat rapid with plenty of cutting between everything around Takaki's school life as he reads the letters from Akari. This shows the little bits of life Takaki is ignoring as he tries to keep up with the relationship most important to him. One of the few times they linger on him actually talking to other people is when he's wondering how far it is to where Akari's living. It's not judgmental about it and in fact, the second half of the segment is all about the huge emotional bursts that occur within these relationships, ending with the warmest one. The generic nature of the letter and their conversations do make me wonder if they were intentional either to make it more universal for the audience to relate or to underline the fact that even as they interact like they're the only two people in the world, they really don't know that much about each other. I have been in a long-distance relationship that's like the latter.

While the shorts are certainly understanding of where Takaki is coming from, it's also an empathy machine for others, as shown is "Cosmonaut." Kanae is someone who finds Takaki's general pleasantness a cruelty. That's generic fodder for melodrama like this season's middling romancer, Fuuka, but here, it feels genuine in the ways teenagers actually look past the other people in their lives for "something else." That said, "Cosmonaut" is my least-liked short. Romanticism is always a hard act to follow as the emotions are usually so unfiltered and the imagery eye grabbing. Kanae's story is fairly standard delivered with mostly realism (Though there are occasional sparks of visual flash) and tethered with a clunky metaphor about how exploring life outside of the Solar System is kind of like jumping into the adult world. It works. The revelations are simply predictable and don't connect as hard.

When I first watched the whole piece, I was speechless with how to react to the ending. It was like I was watching the movie taped on VHS and right when it got to the climax, it ran out of tape and the player stopped, going to MTV in the middle of a music video (I'm getting so old, half of you will be scratching your head at that comparison). Giving myself some distance and time, I went back again with the knowledge of the DVD supplementals that said the use of the Japanese one-hit-wonder at the end was supposed to trigger a nostalgic connection for the audience and that link was supposed to be the finale (Like using "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis for people like me. My age is showing so badly right now). The lyrics and the emotions triggered by the song are supposed to be the wrap up. I can see it, and I can also see the threads of conclusion. There's a good idea of where the characters are going and definitely the proper structure built to support how they got there. I just come from a writing background where I would rather spend ten more minutes with the characters and then bid them farewell than let a song finish their story. It doesn't need a bow or a happy ending, but this seems like the CliffsNotes version of the ending and a part of me will always be angry at it no matter how much I understand.

If it did have those extra ten minutes, I would consider 5 Centimeters Per Second a minor masterpiece. Shinkai is in total control of his art form here, telling exactly the story he wants to tell how he wants to tell it. From lyrical celebration of a long-distance relationship to the muted dread of being thrown to a world the lead isn't ready for, it's not exactly an epic meant to have its greatness shouted to the hills, but it is the best of Shinkai that he's shown so far mostly distilled away from the aspects of his early works that were problematic and distracting (Ever if they were the selling points). There's nice touches down to the clever use of the title as dialogue to show the change of characters through time. It is a quietly impressive film, showcasing Shinkai's strengths and minimizing his weakness. It is also heartwarming, heartbreaking, happy, melancholy, and a celebration of love that also mourns how it can be destructive if held onto too hard. As a second feature-length film for a director, that's pretty damn good.

However, I do understand those who would find it rather underwhelming. I especially understand if you watched it first with the dub. I swear Steven Foster went into the future and got an Amazon Echo so Alexa could recite all of Akari's letters. There is a difference between underplaying emotions and NOT PORTRAYING ANY AT ALL. The robotic readings completely take the viewer out of the scene and sours the movie for its opening seven minutes. People were going to bash it for being a small movie that unwinds at a relaxed pace anyway. This is putting it on a tee for them. This number rating is ALL for the sub.

As you may well know by now, I happen to be a frequent writer for Infinite Rainy Day. The reason for this is quite obvious, I’m an over-thinker and a rambler, but I occasionally wonder if that makes my readers think I’m getting a little stale. So I decided to try something different this time and go for a panel debate. I’m not sure if it’ll become a regular series, but it’s at least a fresh take on my writing style. Without further ado, I give you “Conversations with My Brain About Anime”!

The format is pretty simple: I pick a general topic in anime, then let both hemispheres of my brain “duke it out” in an open forum conversation that I “moderate”, occasionally sharing some thoughts to keep everything guided. After the topic has been exhausted to death, I’ll ask for both sides’ closing statements and leave the rest of the discussion open to you, the readers, to talk amongst yourselves. Today’s topic is smoking in anime: is there too much of it, and is it a real problem?

Left-brain’s opening statement:

I don’t like cigarettes as a concept. They’re dirty, smelly and overall unpleasant. Considering what goes into making commercialized cigarettes, all those toxic chemicals and gases that are best left for other purposes than inhaling into the lungs, it almost makes you wonder why they’re being made at all. It’s like the tobacco companies know that they’re selling poison to people, yet still don’t care. And that kinda sickens me.

So it also bothers me when I see smoking being portrayed in film and media of any kind, anime included. I’m not sure what’s so appealing about it: is it sexy? Does it make the character seem kinda cool? Is there an element of suaveness to it that I’m unaware of? What’s the deal?

I get it: life is full of stuff that I don’t condone on principle. I think alcohol is gross too, and drugs like crack and heroin are really uncomfortable to even look at. But cigarettes in particular seem to be the biggest turn-off simply because they’re not seen as being as fringe and ugly as those other, more serious drugs. They’re never outright shown as being non-glamourous in anime, and are even encouraged in some shows and films as part of an element of “normalcy”. Doesn’t that bother you? Because it kinda bothers me!

Right-brain’s opening statement:

Before I begin, I want to first point out that life isn’t always so ideal. People make decisions that I don’t agree with every single day; I, for example, abhor guns, yet I recognize that they exist and serve their function in a messed up world where people commit violent acts. Reality is scary, and I recognize that certain concepts are going to exist regardless of what I feel or think about them.

Smoking, particularly in anime, is no different. You’re right in that it’s often over-glamourized, I won’t challenge you on that at all, but to completely say that it’s never appropriate in anything is being flat-out dishonest. Because, like swearing and nudity, it sometimes is. There are times where not including it is actually being more dishonest than including it at all, sad as that may be. So it’s a catch-22 of evils, I suppose.

Does this mean that I like this reality? No. But even my favourite movie of all-time, Spirited Away, understands that people, well…people smoke sometimes. It’s not the best of habits, I’ll admit that, but unlike, say, heroin or crack, it doesn’t have a lot of the immediate side-effects of other drugs and is at least tolerable. I can be around people who smoke, as much as it might bother me smell-wise. I can’t be around people doing other drugs.

I’ve noticed that both of you have your own particular stances on whether or not smoking is a necessary evil in…well, let’s say anime for this particular situation. Would you say that it’s a by-product of how you perceive the world? And would you be judgemental of those who differ from it?

That’s a bit of a loaded question, isn’t it? I don’t necessarily judge people who smoke, nor would I openly stop watching an anime show or film that has characters engaging in the behaviour, but I definitely still think it’s a nasty habit. I remember when The Wind Rises first debuted in Japan, and the Japanese anti-smoking lobby heavily criticized the film for its frequent inclusion of casual smoking. There was even a scene where Jiro, the protagonist, openly smoked while holding his tuberculosis-ridden wife’s hand in bed. He even says that he shouldn’t be smoking next to her, yet does so anyway because she “doesn’t care”. If that’s the kind of attitude that’s being portrayed in a movie, then shouldn’t it be justly-criticized as sending out a bad message to people?

Hold on there, Left. You start by saying that you don’t necessarily judge people who smoke, only to then go on and judge people who smoke. Sure, it’s anime that you bring up, true, but that’s still judging. And besides, the reasoning for why Nahoko lets Jiro smoke next to her is obvious: because she recognizes that it helps him think, yet she doesn’t care if it hurts her because she’s already dying and is so in-love with him. You can argue that that’s stupid or silly, but I think that’s pretty telling of the kind of character that she really is in that film.

True, but that doesn’t mean that the film still isn’t guilty of setting a bad precedent with its excessive, casual smoking, is it not?

I guess so, although, given the time period that the film takes place in, one where the average person didn’t know smoking was bad for you as of yet, I don’t think it’s a “bad precedent” to have that scene included.

I’d like to ask you both a question: knowing that we know people in real-life who are heavy smokers/have been heavy smokers in the past, how would you say that anime depicting smoking would impact them if they watched it?

That’s tough. On one hand, I recognize that a smoking habit would be a tough one to break, and I’d feel instant sympathy. On the other hand, especially to those that had started smoking later on in life, wouldn’t that seem somewhat irrational? I know that may be somewhat unfair to say, but given how smoking culture, particularly in anime, is something that actually exists, it’d seem almost unfair to themselves to harm their bodies in that manner. And this is something that anime depicting casual smoking isn’t helping with at all.

Look at Cowboy Bebop, for example. It’s a classic series, yes, but it’s also a heavy smoking series too. Three of the four main characters are chain smokers, and that one episode where Jet tells Spike and Faye to smoke outside seems almost hypocritical considering that he’s never raised a fuss before or after. The fact that Jet suddenly turns into a self-righteous father-figure for his friend’s daughter almost clashes with his character in the rest of the show, even though it might be setting a good precedent for a character who’s clearly bothered by smoking. That’s the kind of weird, tonal whiplash that comes from embracing smoking culture.

Are you referring to “Boogie Woogie Feng Shui”, aka the worst episode in Cowboy Bebop? Because that episode has plenty of problems outside of that one scene where Jet tells Spike and Faye not to smoke in front of Meifa. But even still, while your complaint about the tonal whiplash of smoking culture is valid, I’m not entirely sure if real-life smokers would agree with you. To them, being told not to smoke in front of certain people is normal, and a lot of them are actually quite respectful of such requests. If anything, I’d argue that Spike and Faye acting so defensive when being asked to smoke outside is actually much more indicative of bad writing on that episode’s part than Jet’s behaviour, although I’m not sure if it's because I’m not a smoker. But I’m getting off-topic.

To answer the original question, I don’t know because, again, I don’t smoke. However, I can say that Cowboy Bebop isn’t remembered fondly simply because it endorses smoking. That three of the four main characters are chain smokers is merely a side-point and probably indicative of the fact that the issue of smoking being a problem is never once mentioned in the show. Honestly, a better example of tonal whiplash, although this is intentional, is November 11th being a chain smoker as his price for being a contractor in Darker Than Black. The fact that he even points out how toxic and disgusting the habit is, only to then engage in it himself, was enough to pull me out of the experience somewhat. That rings too true of real hypocrisy, even if the show’s aware of it.

I’m gonna hone-in on that last part for my next question: do you think self-awareness can ever be used to an advantage with anime and smoking culture?

Well, there was that one episode of Planetes where Fee Carmichael is experiencing nicotine withdrawal because she’s never able to get her smoke break due to terrorist intervention. She openly admits that she’s not proud of her smoking habit, yet still tries to anyway. As the episode plays out, we see her start to go crazy from temptation, until she finally crashes her escape pod into the Earth’s atmosphere for some alone time to smoke. The episode ends with everyone chastising her for being so reckless over cigarettes, while she’s busy puffing to her heart’s content. I’ve always read into that episode as being about the dangers of cold withdrawal from addictive substances, and while it definitely ends on a bit of a lame note, it’s actually quite powerful.

Another example would be going back to Darker Than Black. There’s a two-parter episode where Yin’s being hunted down by a pair of contractors because she’s worth something to them, and one of those contractors is an opera singer whose price for using her powers is shoving unlit cigarettes down her throat and puking them back up. She explains that she’d given up smoking when she found out she was pregnant, only to go back to it once her child was born. The tragedy was when her child found her cigarettes, choked on them and died, forcing her to give up on humanity and become a contractor. Again, like Fee’s withdrawal episode, it’s a powerful, cautionary tale about the dangers of addictive substances, in this case towards those you love.

To be honest, that two-parter was never really about the contractors, but more about Yin and how she became a doll. Her backstory was always going to be the best part of those episodes anyway, and a huge chunk of that is because of the montage sequence set to one of the best piano ballads I’ve ever heard in anime to-date. And quite frankly, for as tragic as that opera singer’s backstory was, it never quite hit me the way the show wanted it to because it was all narrated and rushed for time. It felt tacked-on and kinda silly too, and it didn’t need to be there. So cautionary or not, I never saw it as too impactful.

As for Fee’s addiction? You’re right, it was a strong episode about withdrawal. Perhaps a little too strong, if you ask me, as Fee basically went crazy in that episode. But I have to disagree on the ending, as I thought it was incredibly fitting and funny because it was so lame. Because that’s how addictions are sometimes, and I’m glad that Planetes took the time to address that. It felt real, essentially.

What are you implying by that last statement?

I’d rather not say, as it’s kinda personal.

I think that’s for the best. Next question: what, if anything, do you think can be done to combat smoking culture in anime, if at all?

Don't have shows and movies with smoking in them, to start?

I don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon, Left…

But seriously, I really don’t know. If smoking really is a part of life, then perhaps educating people on its dangers would be a good place to begin. If I recall correctly, Japanese society is really casual about its smoking, such that it’s not uncommon to see people doing it pretty much anywhere. That’s probably what was so alarming about The Wind Rises to health experts, as they knew that it’s such a problem to begin with. I guess I’d stick with education, but I’m not sure what else to say.

I’d add to that by seconding education, but also recommending personal responsibility. Smoking will happen regardless of what any of us have to say on the matter, and anime’s obviously gonna reflect that even if we don’t want it to. So simply explaining to people at a young age that seeing something on the big-screen (or little-screen) isn’t indicative of how one should act in real-life isn’t enough unless people are taught at a young age to make smart decisions in life. Perhaps, while we’re there, adults should be taught to lead by example too, since they have a lot of influence over children. Far more than they’d want to admit, as The Tale of the Princess Kaguya has so plainly shown.

I agree that change has to come from all facets of life, much like how we view gun culture or mental illness in the West. Any closing thoughts?

I recognize that this is a bigger issue than simply two sides of a person’s brain duking it out over whether or not smoking is a problem in anime. I’m not an idiot. But I do think that the culture of smoking in anime, which absolutely exists, is still concerning as is. That no age is immune to it, even children, shows how far it’s penetrated society, so much so that I’m not sure there’s really an easy fix. But I remain firm in my personal belief that it’s worth talking about, even if it’s not easy. Because no addiction is easy, even smoking.

I want to add to that by saying that, even if it comes off that way, we’re not intentionally trying to slander and shame people who do smoke by discussing this. I recognize, like Left, that addiction is a real issue that needs to be reframed by everyone in society, and the pressure to change is multi-faceted. But I also want to stress that life is complicated, and that art should be celebrated in-spite of the questionable components it might not fully-address or might use to convey its message. Because shunning a masterpiece over something as trivial as, in this case, its use of casual smoking is being ignorant and closed-minded, and that’s even worse than acknowledging that it’s a problem to begin with. It’s really no different than swearing, alcohol, excessive nudity or violence in that regard.

Indeed. Thank you for tuning in to my first ever conversation with both hemispheres of my brain. I might do this again in the future if feedback warrants it, but for now I’d like to thank my brain for engaging itself peacefully. I only hope it doesn’t make me look schizophrenic.

You’re most-certainly welcome!

Pleasure!

Until next time, I guess!

Who’s excited for Ghost in the Shell being in theatres? I’m not. Not only was this a train wreck, but it had the audacity to ruin the original premise in favour of a whitewashed, C-grade knock-off of Jason Bourne in a sci-fi world. It’s been a disaster years in the works, and it saddens me that this is acceptable in 2017. I only hope it never happens again-

Oh… (Courtesy of Zero Media.)

On second-thought…

So Netflix dropped this little bundle of joy not too long ago, and, as expected, the internet freaked out. Ignoring the peculiarity of this over other, more-adaptable anime, claims of “whitewashing” surfaced again, such that no reasonable discourse could be had. As someone who's spent three pieces on Infinite Rainy Day, as well as one on his personal blog, deconstructing the whitewashing in Ghost in the Shell, I sympathize. But looking at it as an outsider, I’m not sure I’d go that far.

Let me explain.

See, adapting material from other cultures is tricky. On one hand, you have to make sure the material translates to your own culture. On the other hand, you also have to make sure the translation respects what you’re adapting. This can either work (see Edge of Tomorrow or The Departed,) or not work (see the remakes of Oldboy and Ghost in the Shell). It’s largely hit-or-miss, in other words, with the odds usually being against you.

One of the most-common ways foreign stories readapt themselves for Western consumption is by changing the cultural context. One such an example is Ringu, remade by Gore Verbinski in 2002 as The Ring. Both stories work similarly, a mysterious tape that kills its viewer within 7 days of being watched, but the characters, settings and cultural framing are entirely different. Yet because Verbinski understood what made the idea work, the remake does too.

Conversely, you have Oldboy. The original is a classic for many reasons, and lots of fans insisted for years that it remain untouched. So when director Spike Lee decided to remake the film for Western audiences, people were let-down when the end-result was a carbon copy of the original, except with American actors. Unlike The Ring, the film changed the cultural context, yet refused to add anything unique. As a result, it didn’t work.

Which leads back to Death Note. Despite not being a big fan of the anime, I got two episodes in it before I became bored, I recognize its place as a landmark in anime. I also know that it’s been re-adapted twice into live-action in Japan. It clearly has a lot riding on it given its reputation, especially coming off the heels of another anime adaptation that was a failure. So I get the backlash.

That having been said, I’m not on-board with it. For one, it’s taking a page from The Ring and changing the cultural context for Western audiences watching Netflix. And two, it’s being directed by cult-horror favourite Adam Wingard, whose work includes You’re Next and The Guest. The fact that Wingard is revered by modern horror fans should give some semblance of hope, especially since casting Willem Dafoe as Ryuk is an incredibly-inspired choice.

Besides, the argument can be turned around with the live-action Attack on Titan films. Despite being based on a Manga, the original story was set in a Euro-centric world. The cast of characters was practically all white, and their technology was reminiscent of Renaissance Age Europe. But when the live-action films were announced, everything was changed to Japanese, including the cast. Yet the story remained pretty much the same, so couldn’t that be argued as “yellowwashing”?

And yes: Hollywood has had a history of whitewashing in mainstream media for decades, while the reverse can’t be said because of limited resources and acting talent. Yet the claim of whitewashing here is tricky because it ignores the reality that this isn’t American characters pretending to be Japanese. Everything about the premise, right down to the setting, is being changed to accommodate Western sensibilities. So I think people need to calm down a bit.

Besides, I’m not so sure that this film will fail because the cast isn’t Japanese. It might actually fail because it’s jamming too much into one film. If anything, I think Wingard and Netflix should’ve taken a cue from Japan and made this two or three films, so as to allow the story to breathe. I like how it’s a Netflix exclusive, especially since I’ve liked a lot of the Netflix original content I’ve seen, but being one film might choke it. And that’s probably worse than whitewashing, as it looks to be trying.

And yeah, I don’t think the “remake” aspect is a big deal. I’m of the mindset that anything is fair game for remaking so long as there’s a valid reason, as nothing is inherently perfect. There’s always room for change and improvement, and in some cases it should be encouraged if it means getting the content out to a larger audience. It’s simply a shame this happens to be on the heels of a crappy film that suffered from racially tone-deaf writing and casting, or I’d be more optimistic about giving it a chance.

About a decade ago, Death Note because one of the most popular things among western teens, and it's truly something to be embarrassed about. Despite the series masterful handling of twists and thrills, it was written by a man who honestly seems to think women belong in the kitchen (a rant for another day, and a LONG one) and much of its charm came from the sheer unbridled stupidity. A major plot point in this series was having a TV so tiny that you could hide it in a potato chip bag. The main character had a long con where he gave himself magical amnesia. The series battle of morality ultimately came down to eugenics and social Darwinism (Light actually did want to genocide all the lazy people I am dead serious) versus torture and sacrificing criminals because justice or something. It was basically an early day Mahouka except it was actually engaging and so aggressively stupid and ridiculous that very few people took it seriously once they became functioning adults.

Basically, it's a guilty pleasure, and a very popular one that Hollywood kept trying to workshop into something, but it never happened.

Until now.

Netflix is really taking their chances with original programming now, and Death Note looks like it may be one of their biggest missteps ever, and did you see Iron Fist!? Now, in fairness, the talent involved has promise. Director Adam Wingard is a damn fine horror director, and the cast seems talented. I mean, Willem Dafoe is Ryuk, a bored death god that eats apples and makes bad jokes, while also having a face that looks like a cross between a juggalo and a possessed mime. Perfect casting. I also kind of like Lakeith Stanfield being cast as L, especially with the hoodie look. It seems like a stylish, fun take on the robotic slacker detective with the morality of your average Wubbya cabinet member. But there's also a lot in what little is out there that raises eyebrows.

For one, the creators seem really interested in making this as “mature” as possible, with lots of death, sex, and *gasp* DRUGS! A girl is SMOKING!! SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! This is utterly baffling because Death Note ran in a shonen magazine, and while the main character was a gaslighting, misogynistic piece of shit mass murderer, he was as interested in sex as I have in trying to understand the WWE beyond John Cena and the Undertaker's interest in puppetry. It's a worrying direction, especially because it's so unnecessary with the goldmine of insanity at hand. No one wants to see Light fuck (unless it's L because Fujoshi), but they do want to see a small boy making it rain money to avoid a public lynching, or another death god with no spine to speak of viciously eating chocolate bars given to him by the US mafia.

Basically, camp is probably a better direction for a crowd-pleaser than taking the material seriously. That's not to say this story isn't ripe for that take, though, but you need a REALLY good script, and I suspect this movie will not have that. Two of the writers are unknown, and one of them is best known for The Lazarus Effect and Fantastic Four 2015. Both of these movies are widely despised. That is not reassuring. The best case scenario here is that they remain somewhat faithful to the source material in plot and characters, but since the camp (if any remains) seems to be trading cultures from far too emotional boys manga to American horror, that's still REALLY troubling. There is no type of camp more tired that modern horror camp. We probably can't expect Evil Dead lunacy, so something more along a PG-13 Saw is about the most to expect.

Now let's assume the movie manages to avoid being racist garbage. I honestly have little issue with Light being a shitty white kid, and nothing I'm seeing so far seems to suggest to me that they're going to make him a sympathetic shooter kid (at least god I hope not), and I don't mind the subtext change if they actually stay conscious of it. Light was a great character because he was basically the worst possible version of a conservative minded elitist, just not quite to the point where he would have acted on it until he got power. I doubt that was intentional since Ohba and Obata don't seem to even understand the concept of self-awareness (they seriously thought Light was morally ambiguous), but that's what we ended up getting. You can still make that work with a white Light, even if it's not as shocking as a model Japanese student doing this because, I mean, look at the news. But I really doubt by how much they're selling on fucking and action that they get this is why he's such a good villain. I also doubt they understand that L ended up being roughly the same as Light, but less a reserved megalomaniac and more a puzzle obsessed shut-in who saw most human life as pawns in a chess game. They seem to get it a little ...except they made L a black guy. In a hoodie.

He's the person representing the law in this movie.

Yeah.

Really, the biggest problem is that I worry they'll try making Light sympathetic without tweaking his motivation. His motivation is the same basic outlook as all of history's worst recent monsters. I doubt they're going to try making him misunderstood, but trying to validate his views is incredibly dangerous. Outside all that, the film's lack of budget is very apparent in the trailer, with some pretty flat looking shots (though L in the hallway was pretty nice), and I'm not sure how they're going to condense the series into a single film. But if history is anything to go by ...don't get excited.

Oh, and they named Light “Light Turner.” Insert Fairly Odd-Parents joke here.

Welcome back to the Good Ones, a series that aims to list out some good characters in god awful franchises. For those new to this format, the idea is that I pick out a particular anime, manga, game, or other, then discuss what it is and why it's just like the worst thing ever, then proceed to pick out the characters worth salvaging from the disaster. At the end, I name the best character, and then the most “amazing” character. Our first entry was over the infamous Queen's Blade, one of the poster children of bad titty anime that gets whispered about in terrified breaths as that show that had the exploding acid boobs. This time around, I decided to go a bit more recent and look at a similar franchise that deserves some shade: Valkyrie Drive. To be specific, the first anime of the franchise, Valkyrie Drive Mermaid.

You know, in retrospect, we probably should have expected a yuri series made by the Senran Kagura guy was going to be gross. In fairness, the show has a lot of expected gross, and a lot of genuinely amazing content (Lady Lady holy shit), but it kept look at its foot and thinking “I think what this foot really needs to be is swiss cheese, the worst of the common cheeses, and also I should go kick a puppy and steal candy from children.” The sheer amount of terrible decisions in this show stops being that surprising when you realize the writers had brought up a bunch of sensitive queer topics, but their knowledge of queer topics goes about as far as “girls making out is pretty good.”

For the record, they're not wrong on that point, but there's really a lot of basic shit they should have gone over. The biggest issue is the complete mishandling of a female character pretending to be a man, but even basic stuff like “hey how about not having men rape lesbians in backstory” was shockingly ignored. Like, okay fine, I can accept the implication that something happened in this flash back you showed up. But maybe not include a scene early in the series where a villain forces a main character to relive a traumatic experience where she was gang raped and have her break from the illusion because she's been through it before and is therefore cool.

There's so much wrong with this series, but you can go check out my seasonal reviews for more info. For now, I want to focus on the stuff that actually worked, mainly the characters. Say what you will about the man who once packaged a game with a panty scented strap, him and his people get how to write diverse and compelling characters, even when they're initially based around a fetish.

Meifon Sakura

Meifon (Or Mei Fong, nobody can seem to agree) is a flat chested girl who first appears wearing a bizarre cowgirl outfit (Western, not the animal, I have to make this distinction when talking about these particular creatives) and helps the main characters escape the grasp of Waerter. She handles the role of exposition and plot device for most of the series, working as a smuggler who gets supplies to the women on the island who refused to join with Waerter's fascist ways. Her main motivation is not to do the right thing, but because she loves money. Sexually.

Like, if she could have sex with money, she would.

Most everyone in this series is either a Liberator or a Extar, the former necessary to cause the latter to turn into a powerful weapon via making out. Yes I know, please just accept this because things are only going to get weirder. Take Meifon, who is indeed a Liberator, but has no Extar. Her sexuality is never confirmed in the series, but I think this is only because any of the main sexualities gets overwritten by her being a HUGE timophiliac (aka would like to have sex with money). She loves money so much that money is her Extar. She cam make a superpowered robot suit with money. I'm dead serious. She's such a weasel and a great bit of comedic relief, and she plays a similar Nanael role of being the odd woman out commenting on the weirdness before her (and that's a lot of weirdness). Granted, she's sexually attracted to money and wears a cowgirl outfit while apparently being Chinese, so maybe she's not one to talk.

Rain Hasumi & Lady J

I'm sure may people who have seen this show will wonder why the pair of Lady Lady only get a regular entry. I was surprised as you are. Rain and Lady J are two rebels on Mermaid Island, and also total lesbians. Like, I know that's true for most everyone in this show, but it goes triple for them. They flaunt how into each other they are, all while dressing in the loudest ways imaginable. Rain wears a leather biker fetish suit, sunglasses and has a single red streak in her hair, while Lady J has the most underboob that anyone has ever have ever. I have no idea how her outfit stays together most of the time.

On an island of shy schoolgirls and gross, predatory women only interested in power, these two stick out for how much they clearly trust each other, so much so that Lady J has no problem when Rain steals a kiss from Mirei when they first introduce themselves to her and Mamori. I'm willing to bet they've made out with half of the island, in fact. The two are a bit like Charlotte, a woman who has an entire harem of lesbians, but they also manage to likable and engaging characters in the process. Where Charlotte is a vain, angry idiot who's the root cause of most every horrible thing in this series for no good reason whatsoever, Lady Lady help out others when they have the time while working on a larger goal to help everyone on the island, all while having some of the nastiest make-out sessions the island has ever seen in front of everyone, and remember, superpowers on this island activate with nasty make-out sessions. Theirs are just that much nastier. I actually have trouble believing these two actually exist sometimes because THEY'RE SO GAY. LIKE, SO GAY.

Also Lady J turns into a motorcycle with titties.

Momoka Sagara

Ladies and gentlemen, the problematic fave. Momoka is the series main antagonist, even if she working for a more significant antagonist staying off screen. She's Mirei's old Extar and a very, very angry girl who also knows how to use sex appeal to manipulate idiots. Considering the island she's on, that is an incredibly useful skill to have. She dresses in a ridiculous evil schoolgirl fetish outfit and is usually seen playing with a lolipop, all while wearing a slightly punk variant of the Miku Hatsune hairstyle. She's basically a gyaru archetype, alongside her two friends, one dark skinned girl and one overweight and constantly peppy. That's what I like best about her, because that idiot nympho facade she gives does a good job at hiding that she is both horrifically mentally damaged, and ungodly powerful.

After Mirei was sent to Mermaid, Momoka became the subject of human experimentation and got incredible powers she doesn't need a liberator to activate. But a whole mess of terrible things also happened to her, and she blames Mirei entirely for abandoning her and refusing to kill soldiers that tried to hurt her. The end result is a very messed up girl who can absorb the life out of other extars and liberators to make herself stronger, and an enthusiasm to do so as much as possible. Causing pain and suffering is really all she has left, and the sheer amount of damage she causes in her pursuit of making everyone else as miserable as her actually manages to verge on horrifying. She's just one Hell of a great villain.

Kasumi Shigure

Kasumi is about the only level headed person on this island, and if everyone just listened to her, most every conflict in the series could have been avoided, particularly every time she said nobody should listen to Charlotte (SERIOUSLY). Kasumi and her sister ended up being brought to the island due to their abilities, and her sister did not handle the stress from the roving bands of lesbian punks too well. She helped found Waerter to protect her sister, and is generally the only person with a brain at most any sign of an issue. She has a good back story, and is also one of the most badass characters in the show, even when she has no access to an Extar (she refuses to let her sister fight in this lunacy for her own good).

She was pretty close to being the best character overall, honestly. She's very sympathetic and makes for one of the best antagonists in the series, a tragic rival just trying to do right by her sister and everyone else, but stuck in a situation where she can't really do that. Her blind devotion to Akira, whom saved her and her sister, doesn't help either, making her partly responsible for Waerter's more questionable actions. Despite this, she's the first one to realize that Momoka is bad news, and she manages to redeem herself in the finale. If anyone in this show deserved a happy ending, it's definitely her.

Best Character: Mirei Shikishima

If you're wondering where Mamori, one of the leads, is, I didn't include her for being terrible. I could rant for a year about how awful a character she is, I swear, but thankfully her better half saves things a bit. Mirei is by far the best character in this show, no contest. You know. Despite that one episode. The one that implied she was sexually assaulted by a bunch of soldiers in order to make her look cooler. I'm dead serious. This is a creative decision the staff of this show had. Major reason Valkyrie Drive Mermaid is terrible.

But hey! Mirei is still good!

Mirei was apart of the same organization as Momoka, and also lived the opposite sort of life to the sheltered Mamori. Where a Mamori had a loving family, Mirei was raised as a child soldier and was experimented upon to give her enchanted strength and agility. However, she was unable to take a life, so she was deemed worthless and was going to be destroyed, until a scientist who felt pity for her managed to smuggle her to Mermaid. Mirei's humanity is the reason Momoka lost hers, and Mirei herself didn't really have any purpose to continue on until she met and fell in love with Mamori. Her back story is solid, but it's her day to day interactions with the cast that make her great.

Despite her no nonsense personality, Mirei manages to prove herself constantly awkward, unable to handle daily life or the absurd fun house mirror version of it she constantly encounters on Mermaid. In particular, she tends to frazzle around Mamori, who is hilariously older than her, yet nowhere near as mature. She always tries to do the right thing for her, even if it means she doesn't get to be with her, but eventually learns to try exerting herself and making her own wants and desires clear. What's kind of clever about Mirei is that while the show portrays her as tough, and she is, it also portrays her as awkward.

Mamori is a people person, able to converse with most anyone in her own graceless way. Mirei, however, starts off incredibly mistrustful, then is simply unable to communicate with others properly because she never learned how. Despite how terrible a character Mamori is (WHY DOES SHE INSTANTLY GET A CRUSH ON THE ONLY MAN ON THE ISLAND SERIOUSLY WHY WHO'S IDEA WAS THIS), she is ultimately good for Mirei's growth, and her influence eventually gives Mirei the strength to confront and help Momoka. The show is basically Mirei's, despite Mamori acting as narrator. She's the one who truly grows as a person and as a hero, and what Mamori managed to awaken in her eventually resolves Mamori as well. Add in the great character design, and Mirei is a shining gem surrounded by a swamp of hetero-lens homosexuality.

Most Amazing Character: Nimi Minimi

This girl is why Lady Lady didn't get a higher honor. Nimi Minimi is, get this, an Extar with the power to grow giant, and yes, that is her real name. She is even dimmer than Mamori and very, very naked at most all times because what can you make a giant wear anyways? She gets her own weird episode where she can't find a way to shrink back down as everyone keeps suggesting bad ideas and makes her imagine the worst case scenarios where the Japanese military hunt her down as a kaiju. This all eventually leads to her storming into Waerter to find her partner, in where she knocks Charlotte away with her giant, vainy tit, which I sadly cannot show you, but it's a moment I will never forget for as long as I live.

The best part? She comes back for the finale. And thank god for that. I'd be pissed if you didn't bring back the 50-ft ditzy schoolgirl. She's seriously one of the dumbest ideas anyone has ever had and I'm so glad they didn't shoot that idea down. And they named her Nimi Minimi. Maybe there is hope for humanity.

Ever since I was a newspaper critic, a variety of problems with a rating system have always nagged at me despite the public's demand for it. The blatant misunderstanding over how a star rating is not a rigid, one-size-fits-all system (A three-star review to a Martin Scorsese film is not the same as a similar rating to the couple of Adam Sandler movies I can't help but like). There's the laziness of an audience that takes the number of the review or if it's positive or negative and throws away everything else for a context-free pissing contest (Insulting my audience right off the bat. I'm doing well here). Then there's my own little issue where sometimes the ratings completely fail. There are the four-star movies I know are important and great works of filmmaking, and then there's the three-and-a-half start movies that are more obviously flawed or more standard that I love and cherish far more than the greats (The Princess and the Pilot is a movie that's built on a large foundation of conventions, and I adore it and want as many people to know it exists). Then there'e the not-quite-good movies that I enjoy more than many actually good ones. I'm not talking about the Ed Wood type of film. I'm talking about titles like Hackers which are not what I'd call good for a variety of reasons, but are enjoyable and have enough good in them to where if it's on, I'll watch the hell out of it.

This little bit of review theory is a long setup just to tell you Children who Chase Lost Voices is an extremely weird movie for me to discuss in a critical arena. I don't think it works. Makoto Shinkai's comparisons to Hayao Miyazaki have been ludicrous ever since the first desperate anime peddler tossed it out there, and a movie where Shinkai is literally trying to imitate the grandmaster only amplifies the differences between the two men. He's more like if Yoshifumi Kondo (Whisper of the Heart) hadn't died in 1998 and he's continuing that work (They both hold middle school as some kind of holy experience. What middle school did they go to?). This is a movie with some really ill-fitting parts, oddities, and occasional indifference in a fantasy adventure to a great and fantastic unknown. Yet I want it to work, and so much of it does work that I get drawn into it, hypnotized by moments right up until scenes such as when monsters that can only hunt in darkness carry off our heroine in the middle of the night and then wait HOURS until she's awake and surrounded by sunlight to consume her. Right. Still, I've watched this movie five times. I'm fascinated by it more than I would be a movie where I came out saying, "Hey, that was enjoyable." So let's dive into one of these curious cases.

Asuna is a self-sufficient middle schooler with a deceased father and a mother who works a night shift as a nurse (But is thankfully not one of the Night Shift Nurses. DON'T WATCH THAT, by the way). We meet her napping by a rusted-out railroad... as one does. She's an extremely bright girl, but is a bit thin on socialization despite being the class representative. She'd rather pass the time searching her crystal diode radio on a nook overlooking her small, mountainside town with wandering cat Mimi. One day on her wanderings by the train tracks, she runs into a bear-like creature and is only saved by Shun, a fangirls' dream amalgamation of a Miyazaki teenage boy. He's handsome, heroic-yet-gentle, and gets a real swoon-worthy moment. If he turned into a dragon, it'd be all over for us straight men. It's like the movie recognized he's too perfect as he dies out of site of Asuna about five minutes after being introduced by one of those movie illnesses where absolutely nothing is wrong until he suddenly drops over dead. Characters dying simply because this is a movie about accepting death happens more than once here.

In town, Asuna's teacher is replaced due to maternity leave by Mr. Morisaki, a solemn man who spends most of his class time talking about the various forms of the underworld. What we know is he's part of the suspicious-looking men who collected the remains of the bear monster, so he's more than just a sub. The threads begin to come together when Asuna returns to her hideaway to fine Shin, Shun's far more surly brother. He's looking for Shun's pendant which contains a Clavis, a crystal that allows entrance into Agartha, the actual underworld featuring the gate between life and death. Also looking for the Clavis are Arch Angel, a group of people with vague goals to discover the secrets of eternity who use military hardware to accomplish it. Can you guess who's a part of Arch Angel?

Events lead to them into Agartha and Asuna travels with Mr. Morisaki, who left his team behind to search for a way to revive his wife (She died of an illness that actually feels like a real illness). What they find is plenty of open fields and ruins after decades of armies trying to discover its secrets tearing it apart. The remaining citizens are rightfully suspicious of Topsiders while the open world has Izoku, demons that hide in shadow and seem very interested in consuming Asuna. Oh yeah, and the underworld has a sky. No stars, but at night, it has long stretches of aurora. If you know anything about how the sky and aurora work, this is very suspicious, but even in a hidden world beneath the earth, you can't take the sky away from Shinkai.

The first quarter is actually some of the best stuff Shinkai's done. It's using Miyazaki's aesthetic to make a Shinkai movie (Though old-style animation for the character designers seems to mean Shin Megami Tensei sideburns. In the commentary track on the Blu-ray, it is said it takes place in the seventies, so it makes sense). Great pains were made to replicate hand-drawn animation, going as far as to hire an animation assistant who worked at Ghibli and using The Answer Studio Co. made up of former members of Walt Disney Studios of Japan (They mostly did a lot of the Disney sequels that barely qualified for theatrical). They did time-consuming key animation like a shot of a car driving over train tracks without CG or going the extra mile in displaying Mimi's behavior as a cat. Also in the commentary track, every location in the village is discussed as being "very difficult" or "a nightmare" to design because there was so much detail to put in. I'll probably bring up the commentary track often because Shinkai is surprisingly transparent for an auteur with what exactly he's trying to express, how he's doing it, and what certain aspects really mean. It's extremely informative from that standpoint, though they do have a penchant for stating the obvious ("This is a scary scene").

The script establishes Asuna as a character without blatant info dumps and gives a human ambiguity Princess Mononoke as he cuts his hair and renounces his past. But Ashitaka had some key details like his mount Yakul is a character in of itself and Shinkai laughs in the commentary about how he didn't even think to give Shin's horse a name (Maybe he's a fan of the band America). As mentioned before, the Izoku take Asuna with the notion of consuming her and then leave her in a place that most exploits their weakness. Later on, she stays in water to keep away from them as it's another weakness of theirs and the movie can think of nothing other than the water suddenly disappearing to create danger. The beginning 30 minutes and the last 15 are solid, but the path to get there is wobbly and cobbled together.
to how she feels towards certain parts of her life. The village is loaded with thoughtful details and lovely set pieces. Even when Shun arrives, there's a certain sweetness. Then Shin shows up and has to rush Asuna into the heart of the actual story, and it doesn't feel the same. There is less detail in the surroundings and the locations that seem like they should have a wealth of knowledge in simply being there are bare and unmemorable. The script also becomes as scattered as the villages in Agartha. Shin has a close friend who is introduced and then dropped, probably as part of Shin's arc where he resembles Ashitaka from

I joke about some of the aspects, but there is a very strange sense that Shinkai isn't particularly interested in the underworld and the adventure that takes place within it.The devil's in the details and comparing what the movie spends a whole lot of time on and what it barely addresses gets fascinating results. Take the bear-like creature that's on the train tracks at the beginning. It turns out to be one of the Quetzal Coatl (I have no idea if splitting it into two words is an intentional choice, or the people in charge of the subtitles saw a typed-up Engrish page Morisaki was writing on the subject and went with it), guardians of the planet that are usually benign. Why did it attack? Because pollution sometimes makes them forget their purpose and they go berserk. This is brought up once and then never becomes a thing again. This is a loose thread utilizing the theme of environmentalism that runs through Miyazaki movies, but it's a single, disconnected piece . Compare this to Asuna's house, which had location scouts work endlessly to provide details to a place where her family cluttered it up for decades. Maybe it's just me or maybe Shinkai never wanted to leave the village.

My best guess is the team assembled was extremely skilled at scouting and recreating Japanese locations, but when it came to using Middle Eastern and Tibetan inspirations for Agartha, didn't have quite as much knowledge to properly fill out the world. There are windmills standing against falling towers, massive cities crumbled, and none of it is particularly striking. This is supposed to be the most eye-opening stuff, isn't it?

Following that up, there are revelations you'd think would be a big deal but aren't. This may come off as a spoiler, but Asuna's father turns out to be from Agartha. "Half-breeds" are much-derided by the underworld and a delicacy for Izoku, but what does it mean for Asuna? Who was her father? How did he get to the surface, why, and what's the story between him and her mother? Part of processing death is understanding who the deceased were and celebrating what they meant. I know having subtle undercurrents to major points has precedence in a Shinkai feature, but this seems like a vital part of the movie got discarded. This isn't a questions like how the tenants of the underworld held off the Nazi war machine if the best of what they had was long barrels from the 1700s. Yes, it's a sticking point in my brain, but it's not essential if the question never has an answer. A serious movie about processing grief where we get to know the bare minimum about the subject of that grief seems off.

My theory is the movie started as just going to be a story about Asuna living her own little existence until her substitute teacher comes in and she slowly connects to him about the death. She was little and didn't understand what had happened while he can't let it go. From opposite ends they both help other other find ways to deal with their pain, whether it's invisible or always there. That's kind of in this film, but the camera's zoomed out of it, revealing the wide expanses of Agartha as well. That said, Morisaki definitely makes a good villain-who's-not-really-a-villain from a Ghibli movie. He's obsessed with saving his wife and willing to do anything to get it done, but he's not a bad guy. There are particularly well done exchanges where he's trying to be a caring, patient adult, but has occasional lapses because he doesn't really know how to interact with a kid on a personal level. It was never a thing that came up.

With all of this, the main issue arises that Asuna is a passive lead, which doesn't work for an adventure. Miyazaki had strong girl characters with a desire and drive to do something, and Asuna is getting dragged along by Morisaki and Shin through the underworld without her own initiative. It's hard to have any sense of wonder witnessing the hidden land when the lead doesn't seem particularly enthralled or engaged by it. I do understand the entire thrust of her arc is she doesn't realize what she wants or even what's going on in her life, but everybody at least consciously wants something and Asuna only gets determined in cases of life and death. Shinkai's blind spot has always been writing female characters, and while he's improving here, Asuna is not enough to carry the entire movie.

Shinkai's visual trademarks are still here, but much of the time, his vision feels half covered over by the need to be more epic. A gorgeous rice paddy will be surrounded by other buildings that clutter up the layout. The skies Shinkai is famous for get covered up by the foreground (One especially intrusive moment where a rainbow is out and begging to be looked at and the focus is on the wrong side of a bunch of stone). Tenmon's music-always a bright spot-also takes a hit in the effort to widen the scope. His main theme is wonderful, but every time he has to make something grand, it either tries to take over too much of the emotional burden or doesn't register. The battle themes poke out through everything on screen to shout, "DA DA! THIS IS THE BATTLE THEME!"

After all of this, the last 15 minutes finally get everything almost right. Shinkai's vision is cleaned up and the movie finally pushes matter between what Asuna and Morisaki want. There's one hell of an extended fight scene with Shin even with a few continuity errors when it switches angles. Everything comes together in a meaningful way. My only reservation is Asuna once again assumes a passive role in the finale and has to be saved a couple times. You can argue about what a strong female character is or isn't until you're blue in the face, but what's wrong here is the protagonist is a passenger in their own story. Overall, though, the film finally gets that these characters need something that moves them, both physically and emotionally, and for Shin, it's more than simply everybody thinks his brother is perfect, he sucks, and that just pisses him off (Though as the younger brother of a much more successful guy, I get it).

What we have is a good beginning, a good ending, and a middle that sags, wanders, and occasionally loses its purpose. Even so, there are plenty of small moments within which shows talented people making a real effort to enhance the feature. If you'll remember a scene in Spirited Away where Senchiro sits down and eats a rice ball and the full impact of what's transpired hits her emotionally. Thoughtful details like that exist, like Asuna suddenly perking up when the prospect of a bath is brought up, or the few times Morisaki drops his facade and has a genuine reaction to something. It simply lacks an amazing journey to take all of these aspects and tie them together. There is just enough quality in it to keep me coming back to see if I missed something. Occasionally, I find I did. Still not enough to call it a good movie, but I would certainly say it's worth watching to see if it works enough for you. In the realm of Ghibli-inspired adventures, would you rather watch Origin: Spirits of the Past? No. The answer is no, people under 20.

You know, with so many terrible anime live action adaptations coming out that have almost no chance at being good, it's important to remember that they still have a chance. History says there's no way any of this will ever be good, and history usually proves itself right when it comes to awful Hollywood trends that manage to last for decades. But there is one significant exception in there and no, it isn't Edge of Tomorrow, that was based on a book and manga, not an anime. No, I'm talking about 2008's Speed Racer, directed by the Wachowskis and genuinely one of the most delightfully stupid movies I have ever seen.

As my colleague Tom has said in the past, “All live action remakes of animation presume that animation is incomplete or imperfect.” This is usually the big problem whenever Hollywood tries adapting anything animated into live action, though with significant exception to Disney, which is a whole other kettle of fish. This problem gets worse with anime, as producers tend to want to westernize it as much as humanly possible for commercial reasoning that doesn't even make sense, usually robbing a work of not only its visual energy, but also of its thematic meat. The Ghost in the Shell movie is a great example, as it tries adding a half-baked trans-humanism theme simply to justify white washed casting, while changing the complex and interesting ideas of the various source material at hand to a dud standard evil government/corporation make superhuman who wants revenge plot. As for that Akira movie that's been in production Hell, every single version of it we've seen a script for has been ungodly terrible from concept alone. Hollywood trying to westernize an anime usually results in racism or a generic spooky Ring girl singing French nursery rhymes (that was actually in a previous Akira script).

Speed Racer is about the only real exception to this rule, and we can mostly thank the Wachowskis for this. The two are huge anime fans, and their previous effect heavy outings have been a good indication of their love for using silly, ridiculous lunacy for the sake of exciting action set-pieces. Handing them a retro anime to go wild with was the best possible decision for a Speed Racer film. See, the Wachowskis' approach to Speed Racer was not to try and improve on the source material, but to embrace what it was and try to make that into a proper new whole. While its contemporaries look at their sources with disgust or an unearned sense of superiority, Speed Racer is absolutely in love with not just the anime it's based on, but it's greater cultural impact.

There are talking really fast jokes here, but they never swipe at the anime, but just embrace the silliness that came about from that poor dub work. The action is explosive and cartoony, willed with all sorts of absurd sight gags like giant springs and super jumps. It's almost like if Mario Kart had realistic graphics, less horrifying and more Saturday morning in effect. But more importantly, the characters in the movie all treat this extremely seriously, or just as a matter of fact. Speed Racer understands that to make a good homage of something, you need to take it as seriously as the thing you're paying tribute to has. Speed Racer is funny, but never at the expense of the anime that it comes from.

The film also has a strong structure and likable characters. Roger Allam makes for an incredibly effective scumbag businessman villain, managing to be both warm and friendly one moment, but threatening and heartless the next. Emile Hirsch has a solid script to work with as the titular Speed Racer, but he also went the extra mile and watched as much of the anime as possible to get a feel for the cheesy style of the film and how serious he should act in character. Everyone making up Speed's family gets a moment to shine, especially Paulie Litt as Speed's little brother and the main comedic relief, and surprisingly, they actually got a good performance out of Matthew Fox as Racer X. The fact that his role is supposed to be a bit dickish and hammy made the casting perfect.

It's a simple film, but one that leaves you with a smile on your face. It's also arguably more animation than live action, as CG is used heavily throughout to recreate the anime's sillier sequences. There is absolute no attempt to try and take the exaggerated styles of the source material and make them more realistic, and that gives the film its own special flavor. Speed Racer the film adores the very flawed anime as a sort of kitsch piece, seeing something great in its strengths and flaws mixed together. It's sort of like that new Kong movie in many respects, a film using the technology of the present day to do things its source material couldn't do just by technical limitation, yet sticks as close to a similar ridiculous feel as what it's building on. That's not to say Speed Racer is the perfect way to make every anime movie, not at all, but it has a lesson all future adaptations need to learn.

If you want to make a good anime adaptation, you gotta like what it is first, then stick with that for the foundation.

Adapting visual novels to animation is not an easy task. There have been dozens of shows over the years that have tried their hands at it and the results have been decidedly mixed. How do you condense hours upon hours of story and multiple romantic (if not outright sexual) routes into something comprehensible, suitable for television, and able to comfortably fit into one or two seasons’ worth of half-hour installments? I don’t know if anyone will ever come up with a perfect formula for adapting visual novels to television, but there are plenty of examples of how NOT to do it. One of the more recent examples is 2014’s DRAMAtical Murder. Don’t recall it? I don’t blame you. The summer of 2014 was one that was loaded with many big name shows that are still worth remembering: Tokyo Ghoul, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, Barakamon, Terror In Resonance, just to name a few. That’s not even counting the sequels and second seasons to shows like Space Dandy, Sword Art Online, and Free! It wasn’t even the only boys’ love series airing at the time, as the genuinely delightful Love Stage!! debuted in the same season. Its only distinguishing qualities were the unique qualities of its source material and how badly it bungled everything it had to offer. Our own Tama coveredhalf of it during our seasonal coverage of that season and was far from impressed. Having seen it all, I can say with some degree of authority that he only scratched the surface of this show’s badness.

DRAMAtical Murder started out as a BL dating sim released for PC by Nitro+Chiral in 2012. While it has never been officially released in the West, it did manage to find fans on both sides of the Pacific amongst both boys’ love fans and visual novel fans. Its fans praise its original sci-fi setting, its handsome yet eccentric cast of characters, their elaborate yet tragic backstories, and the promise of seeing them enjoy some explicit man-on-man action with Aoba. If anything, the game has gained some degree of notoriety on the internet for the weird, dark, and abusive elements of its bad endings. We’re talking about a game where you can have sex with a guy who is both your robot dog companion and part of the hero’s consciousness and that’s one of the leastweird and rapey sex scenes possible. Still, plenty of smutty visual novels have been turned into perfectly watchable and TV-appropriate series, so the news of DRAMAtical Murder receiving one wasn’t all that shocking. There were warning signs of its quality before its premiere, such as the fact that it was animated by a fairly new studio known mostly for in-betweening and a director with plenty of animation experience but none before (or since) in directing an actual series. Still, no one could have expected how bad the results were to turn out.

The show takes place on the island of Midorijima, which is dominated by the giant, shining dome of the futuristic pleasure palace Platinum Jail. Overseen by its founder Toue, its residents want for nothing and live in bliss. Meanwhile, the island’s residents are forced into the cramped, run-down buildings of the Old Residential District. There gang wars rage in the alleyways alongside sessions of an immersive fighting game called Rhyme, but for our protagonist Aoba Serigaki things couldn’t be more normal. He’s content to live his days with his grandmother, his robotic pet companion Ren, and his job at the local junk store. His peaceful days are ended when a game of Rhyme uncovers secrets hiding within Aoba’s mind. To find the truth behind these secrets, Aoba must master the mysterious power of his voice and infiltrate Platinum Jail, and heal the secret mental trauma of his impromptu man-harem: childhood friend Konjaku, Noiz the hacker, Mink the freedom fighter, and a weird gas-mask-wearing man known as Clear.

So that’s the plot in a nutshell, but how does it work as an adaptation? Well, I can’t speak to the specifics seeing as I’ve never played the game, but I can say that the pacing is positively dreadful. The first half is incredibly slow in no small part because Aoba keeps resisting the call of the plot. He ignores the turf wars, he’s indifferent to Rhyme, and he doesn’t seem all that interesting in wondering why his hair can feel pain, why he gets such frequent headaches, or why everyone seems so fixated on his voice. He mostly just hangs around town with each of the guys until the plot forces his hands with a kidnapping, a whole bunch of infodumping, and some rather convenient invitations from the villain. Just as Aoba sets out on his quest to save the day, the show then pulls the brakes hard by dedicating the next four episodes to the routes for each of Aoba’s potential semes. Not even the ending is fully satisfying since it relies largely on a few more nonsensical plot twists and the fact that the villain all but lays down and dies to get out of Aoba’s way. It’s no less ridiculous than anything else on the show, but not ridiculous enough to take it into so-bad-its-good territory.

That’s far from the only narrative problem. It also has one that’s all too common to visual novel adaptations: it never knows when to shut up. Anytime that any sort of exposition has to be delivered, the scene must stop dead in its metaphorical tracks so that someone can all but talk directly to the audience as the camera slowly tilts up. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things for them to explain, be it the rules of Rhyme, the politics of the turf wars, or Aoba’s ridiculously convoluted origins, and every time it happens it grinds the show to a halt. Things don’t get any better once the boys get into Platinum Jail and Aoba has to use his super-special voice powers to perform some impromptu therapy on the supporting cast. Now I’m sure that their backstories were very affecting in the original game, as some of them deal with serious issues like abandonment, learning to be human or goddamned genocide. The problem is that most of them have not spent enough time with Aoba previously to make any sort of emotional connection. In some cases, their interactions mostly consisted of beatdowns and cryptic answers. You simply can’t turn a few conversations into an actual emotional connection when you’ve only got 25 minutes or so to work with, no matter what sort of trippy dream imagery or trauma you might throw at the audience.

Of course, some might argue that the target audience wasn’t watching this show so much for the plot, but for the promise of hot BL action. Surely you would think that this show would deliver some manservice for those thirsty fujoshi in the form of stolen kisses, suggestive dialogue, and compromising positions. Alas, the joke was on them, as there is virtually nothing in the way of BL content in the entirely of the show. What few moments are there are brief, poorly framed, and delivered with all the raw eroticism of a tuna fish sandwich. This absence might be forgivable if the story was better written or better adapted, but the story is handled so badly that it just makes the absence of romance all the more obvious. You can all but see the points where the sex scenes used to be and they haven’t been replaced with anything of substance. It’s clear that the show’s staff was not comfortable with the fact that this was a boys’ love show at all.

So where did all the show’s smut go? Why into the thirteenth episode, an OVA which is exclusive to the home release! Through means of a sort, I was able to watch it. Having done so, I wish I could take it back those precious 24 minutes of my life. This isn’t an epilogue to the series or even a missing episode, but instead a disjointed collection of some of the bad endings from the game put to animation. While they are all brief and heavily censored vignettes, they all seem to end in nothing but blood and violence and each is more disturbing than the last. There are bloody beastly blowjobs, a scene where Aoba’s head is literally torn off in an act of affection, a scenario that’s far too reminiscent of Boxing Helena for anyone’s sanity, and more than one scene where Aoba is taken by force by animals that are not quite animals. I spent nearly every single moment of Episode 13 staring aghast at the horrors playing out before me. I sincerely dread any soul who looked upon this episode and thought it was ‘sexy.’

Of course, if you got that far into the series, you have already survived the horror that was the previous twelve. If you know anything about this show, particularly as it aired, it was that it had some notoriously bad animation. There’s no way I could sum it up in a single screencap – there are simply too many instances to count. There’s the jerky walk cycles, like that found in this particularly memetic clip. There are the bizarrely unfinished backgrounds that either have incredibly inconstant perspective or made of bizarre bits of cheap CGI that make the characters seem to float. Even when the setting is on-model, it tends to spend most of its time in dark, dingy alleys that add nothing to the atmosphere. One of the few things that the show strives to retain is the games’ original (and deeply ridiculous) character designs. Their faces are nothing special, but their costumes are a hilarious mish-mash of club kid wear, bizarre elements like one-sleeved dusters and gas masks, and bad Auron cosplay. Sadly, their faces tend to suffer for that attention to their costumes. Aoba in particular has a bad tendency to go off-model on a regular basis throughout the show’s entire run. The animation got so bad that by Episode 3, the show’s official Twitter feed made a public apologyfor the quality and promised to redo the animation for it and the episodes before it.Keep that in mind if you dare to watch this series on Crunchyroll or The Anime Network: what you’re seeing is the IMPROVED version of the show, and it still looks godawful.

At least the Japanese voice direction is competent; the same cannot be said for Sentai’s dub. Despite the fact that it was directed by veteran dub director Christopher Ayres, it’s a shockingly amateur affair that’s largely derailed by Gabriel Regojo’s incredibly wooden performance as Aoba. The highlight of both languages are the actors playing Clear, as both Masatomo Nakazawa and Greg Ayres lend the character a lot of innocent charm and some genuine pathos at points. Former site contributor Lilac goes into much more detail on the DRAMAtical Murder dub as part of the

Dub Cast podcast. I could go on and on nitpicking all sorts of details, but when taken as a whole it all adds up to an inexperienced studio and director that weren’t comfortable with the material, weren’t good at adaptation, didn’t have much to work with on the animation front, and lacked the talent to overcome these limitations.

Naturally, the show flopped in Japan, as it barely managed to push a couple of thousand units with its first volume and only got worse from there. It was licensed by Sentai Filmworks here in the West, but why would anyone bother with this series when the same company can provide both the previously mentioned Love Stage!! as well as No. 6? The latter in particular is a far better example of a show that combines the notion of a YA-friendly sci-fi dystopia with a gay romance that’s actually well-handled and isn’t horrendously rapey. It’s bad enough that BL anime has a largely bad reputation thanks to some notorious old hentai OVAs and far too many seasons of garbage like Junjo Romantica and Super Lovers. We don’t need to add a disaster like DRAMAtical Murder to that list to make that reputation even worse.

After all this retrospective-ing, it is finally time to discuss Makoto Shinkai's behemoth that put him on the echelon of the people he's been compared to his entire career (Much to his horror and dismay that Miyazaki is going to come down from his tower and disintegrate him). Japan's biggest box office hit of 2016, worldwide crowdpleaser, and worthy of an attempt to sneak in Los Angeles screenings at the end of December to try for the Best Animated Feature Oscar (Didn't make it to nominations, sadly): your name.

So what does it take for a guy who normally has more ponderous, deliberately-paced stuff to fill up theaters around the world including the one in Omaha I was at where I was forced to share an Alamo Drafthouse table with a complete stranger? The answer isn't really that complicated. He just kept to his strengths, minimized his weaknesses, and told a damn good story (based on his own novel) with plenty of carefully plotted points that–thankfully–marketing kept their traps shut about. It might not be his strongest visually (Though everyone who just watched their first Shinkai movie are heavily disagreeing with me) or his deepest emotionally, but it works on a high enough octane on every level that it's easy to forgive.

At the beginning, your name. seems to have a false start with an introduction before slipping into what seems like an anime TV series opening sequence montaging the basic concept next to the credits. Of course, movie credits have had similar types of openings, but this one feels so jarring, like it was meant for television. Did Shinkai just always want to do an anime opening and never had the opportunity? There's an infamous interview with Daily Mail where Shinkai tells everyone to stop watching the movie because it's not that good and they ran out of money to make exactly the movie he wanted to make. I think this is one of the rough corners he's talking about.

Anyhoo, the train gets back on the track immediately with Mitsuha Miyamizu waking to everyone noting how she's returned to normal after a seriously weird day where her hair was apparently a mess, she was playing with her breasts, and she forgot vital details like where her locker and desk were. She goes about her day as normal, though with her absentee father the mayor up for re-election, the rumors of corruption make it harder than usual. She lives and works at a shrine of the small town Itomori and only wishes to be free of country living. In fact, she makes the very specific wish that she wants to be reborn as a boy in Tokyo. The very next day, she wakes up as a boy in Tokyo. Specifically, a high school student by the name of Taki who has a workaholic father and job as a server at a fancy restaurant. After a day of bumbling through his life, Mitsuha awakes again and finds out Taki has been taking her place as well, and the two start a relationship and establishing ground rules for their body swapping that may or may not get ignored throughout the course of their supernatural situation.

These misadventures are amusing in of themselves and open the doors for certain possibilities. Mitsuha personally seems to be moving towards the life of a boy once she gets the hang of his intense and busy urban life, even snagging a date with Taki's supervisor Miki that he sort of botches when he's in his own body. She seems like the better fit for Miki, obviously. It would've been an interesting direction, for sure, but the story decides to take another turn of its own, one thankfully most people have been mum on. It's really what sells the movie and has made it such a word-of-mouth smash, and seriously, the less you know about it, the better you're going to be. I can't tell you, and even the people who hint at it are doing you a disservice.

Much has been made about how gorgeous the movie looks. If I hadn't just spent the past month going through Shinkai's filmography, I might be just as high on them as those praises. However, I'm slightly below everyone else if only because I've seen his visual prowess at the top of his game in the most intimate shots in 5 Centimeters Per Second which showed a mastery creating the exact scene and mood desired, even at the sacrifice of subtlety (The weather at all times in early Shinkai tells you exactly how you should feel). your name. is an exceptionally pretty movie, no doubt, making up most of Shinkai's visual interests. You have celestial events, urban sprawl, a small mountain village full of rustic detail, all combined with dense imagery and slick animation for the most part. This is all him rather than Children Who Chase Lost Voices where he's trying to be someone else and doesn't seem particularly engaged in it at times. The sights run the gamut from an overhead of a Tokyo train station at morning rush to a full-motion Shinto ritual dance. It looks great, but the goal of most of the shots are simply to look great. There are a few times where it effectively creates awe-inspiring moments, mostly at the tail-end of the feature.

Instead of his long-time composer Tenmon, Shinkai instead decides to go with rock band Radwimps handling both the songs and the music. If this entire venture was giving Shinkai's aesthetic a pop sensibility, it works out well. The songs, especially "Zen Zen Zense" during the body swapping montage in the middle, give a hearty boost to the action on screen. They also handle the dramatic score, and if you'd told me Tenmon was still heavily involved, I would believe you. The emotional gut punches are still given are suitable and laudable backing. The only quirk was in my screening of the English dub, where the songs are done in English. Now, the band did the retooling themselves and the English lyrics do tend to match up generally with their original meanings from my meager spot checks (And trusting internet translations), but there is some awkward phrasing and stream of words that just happened to fill out the melody and gave my ears some pause when I caught them in the background ("One last hello, you've opened your eyes. But you won't even look me in the eyes, what's wrong with you?"). Thankfully, it only happened once or twice for me and it shouldn't be too bothersome. FUNimation deserves credit for doing more than treating it like another anime in the factory.

Speaking of the dub, I have fantastic news: It was not directed by Steven Foster. Foster was the person in charge of Shinkai's work when they were licensed by ADV/Sentai Filmworks. These dubs were either unnecessarily rewritten to change the meanings of scenes or filled with flat actor deliveries. Either would've been disastrous handling of a major product that could've sunk a movie that deserved better. The dub we get directed by leads Michael Sinterniklass and Stephanie Sheh is solid. The two main characters do have a generic anime lead quality to them, but that is more in line with Shinkai's vision of having a movie that can be more universally accessed. They do get to have fun when they switch between each other and the nuances in their voices keep who is in whose body straight.

I haven't talked too much about what really makes your name. fly, and that's the writing. It's with zero exaggeration that I say this movie should be taught to show how to foreshadow and intertwine story elements into an individual work. The usual Shinkai trope about two people separated by distance applies, but it's so much more. There's a comet, small-town politics, Shinto religious beliefs with some extra mysticism thrown in, urban verses rural living, some real-life events we won't discuss here for spoiler purposes, and more. Everything has a part to play and there are very few loose ends. It is wonderful to look back on just how expertly the movie played the cards in its hand. Just how the phrase "Magic Hour" alone is used is brilliant. Shinkai's had trouble writing girls and women in the past, either giving them basic traits, or taking them out of the movie entirely when they get older. I won't say he's completely out of the woods since Taki gets significantly more screen time as the movie goes on and Mitsuha's biggest moment happens offscreen, but she is as important piece of fabric to the rest of the movie as anyone else.

Of course, it would be strictly academic if the movie was only good on a structure level. Shinkai has sheepishly noted how well the emotional manipulation is down to literally charting exactly how the audience will feel at certain moments during the film. The thing is: It works. It really REALLY works. The big reveal dropped an anvil on my stomach. The climax did make me tear up plenty for joy and sorrow equally. Even if it's a mechanical rollercoaster ride of emotions, the machinery is hidden exceptionally well. If you really had to get at me to make a complaint, it's that the characters don't have a stirring dramatic moment that wouldn't be the same if it was another character of the same sex in their place. What I mean is, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time had a particularly headstrong and stubborn lead in Makoto whose most devastating moment is when she lets her stubbornness get the best of her and she's essentially shoving the most important person out of her life and we watch her facade crumble before our eyes as she realizes what she's done and starts bawling. That is an incredibly personalized dramatic moment for a character and the similar moments here are more universal, though there are a couple individualized reactions, one involving a drink that plays a vital role.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a good analogue for this movie. Even as an imperfect crowdpleaser of sorts, it is equal parts fun and sorrow that really knows how to hit the right spotswhen it needs to. I adore both movies (As I've explained, sometimes I like imperfect better than perfect) and I would even put your name. above its predecessor a bit as its problems are at the beginning and less disruptive to the work as a whole. It's not the deepest examination of the soul by Shinkai and it may have turned past more intriguing story ideas on its way to the one it has, but as a blockbuster with big ideas and a good heart, it's a pretty great one I will keep coming back to for its wonderful array of emotions. And Shinkai, on the remote chance you're reading this, don't worry about calling down the thunder of Miyazaki to reveal your flaws to the world. You know Spirited Away, the movie that won the Oscar? I say this as someone who loved it: It had some REALLY crummy integration of 3DCG into its traditional animation. I think you're good on that front.

I'm sure by now that you've all noticed the utter madness that is Persona 5 discourse, but I'm not here to get too deep into that. No, I'd rather focus on one particular aspect as a springboard. The thing that's really captured the talk most is P5's translation, which while not necessarily bad, is also not good either. It is the Maroon 5 of video game translations, basically. It's an odd situation where plenty of lines read fine, and then you hit one that technically says what's supposed to be said, but doesn't quit read right. The ordering of words is off, or sometimes it feels like there's too many words. Or, maybe the just use the wrong word (“was a scum”) or doesn't bother to use the obvious phrase being made (“interior of my womb”). Using my own amateur experience translating stuff on Pixiv, I've gained some insights on something like this happens, and I think it might help you all get a better understanding of the importance of localization, along with the difficulties with translating.

The first thing you need to understand is that the Japanese language does not flow like the English language. Where English has a mess of words with a single particular meaning each, Japanese has a bunch of characters that can be combined together into different meanings. Unlike letters, which are based on the sound they make when spoken, these characters usually relate to a particular, more vague meaning that changes based on the other characters used in a sentence. On top of that, there are times when characters relate to sound, mainly with the Hiragana and Katakana scripts, which can be used to sound out names normally constructed with other types of script, and also be used to sound out words from other languages, though almost never exactly. If that wasn't enough, sentence structure flips a bit with how the language functions, so you can't follow English structure rules. Even slang is usually not done in a string of words, but by combining characters to make a term. To just make it an absolute mess, sentences don't even need subjects sometimes because it's expected you figure it out from context. Oh, and tenses that tell the reader when the events described are taking place? Does not exist.

Take “mesu,” for example. This, in Japanese, basically means “female animal.” In Japanese, it's simple and precise, and can be used with a subject to imply something humorous or erotic (you'll never guess what genre loves this word the most). It just reads in two short syllables. But when you translate to English, you can't simply write out “female animal.” It's too wordy and undercuts the original intent of its inclusion. So, you have to find a work around. Check context if a particular animal is named and has a female term, create a new phrase that has the meaning of the sentence but in a localized form that makes sense to an English reader. You will have to do the second one if no animal is being mentioned to add more context, meaning the literal translation is just “female animal” and that just doesn't work in English. Or, if you're translating a ridiculous porn manga, just go all the way because overly long descriptions of sex are hilarious.

Stuff like “All Your Base Now Belong To Us” happens when you translate too literally. These sorts of translations are overly literal, not taking into account how awkward these sentences sound when directly translated to English. They look like a mess at worst, or simply lack flair at best. For example, I almost never see a phrase like “have they all gone crazy!?,” but instead “have they all gone funny!?” This seems oddly dry in English, and doesn't convey to an English speaker what it does for a Japanese speaker. Japanese sentences also sometimes have most every subject in the sentence be named for context, so this can result in repetition when translated to English carelessly. Plus, the Japanese are less interested in prettying up the language with mottoes and sayings you may be more familiar with in English. Instead, they LOVE puns. LOVE them. And puns are actually part of the language's base.

Remember when I said characters change their meaning when next to other characters? Basically, they're doing the same thing we English speakers do when we make puns. They take a certain word, and change it in a particular way to make a pun, make the word sound slightly different, or sound the same with different spelling and new meaning. But while it results in bad jokes for English speakers, it can significantly change the context of a sentence in Japanese. You see this mostly in names, like how you can have multiple different characters named Ichigo, but their names mean wildly different things, like how Bleach's Ichigo has a character in his name that refers to protecting and others don't. Sometimes, this is used for the sake of foreshadowing or misdirection, or maybe just a joke, but it doesn't translate. Unless a character mentions the meaning of their name, it probably won't come up in translation.

All these issues resulted in heavy localization from translation groups that have tried striking a balance between readable and faithful in recent years, but there's the issue that people are people and tend to put their own stamp on these works. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. Being into the thing you're translating means that the translator will do their best to give the best translation possible. Some of their ideas may not gel with the audience entirely, like P4 keeping Japanese honorifics, but they generally go over well. Modern Fire Emblem is a good example of both this in good and bad, as there were a ton of changes made to the meaning of sentences and dialog from the original Japanese script, but in some cases, it served the games better and added more personality to a duller script. Its good outweighs the bad, despite it getting a tad too loose and into “let's make a meme” territory. If you want an example of bad translation, we have to hop on over to Funimation since they started doing while airing dubs.

While the Space Dandy dub is fantastic, not every Funi while airing dub has worked. Maid Dragon, for example, has gotten a lot of criticism from queer circles upset by subtle changes in the script changing the dynamic between the leads (who by the by, are into each other, the manga confirmed it) and plays it off as a tired predatory lesbian gag. Also they keep making shotacon jokes in interviews and no. Prison School, on the other hand, aimed at playing up its ridiculous nature, and while that can work because it is an absolutely ridiculous show, doing things like referencing Gamer Gate in a scene meant to set up a massively important plot point and character arc was ...um, maybe a bad idea. It distracts from the scene's intentions, and said scene wasn't meant to be laugh out loud hilarious. It also ignores that the show isn't too interested in reference comedy or making lots of joke lines, but letting absurd, overly well presented absurdity play out seriously from the perspectives of the cast. It's trying too be more Family Guy when the show is closer to American Dad, if that makes sense (formula vs absurd humor).

On the other hand, we have Persona 5, an example of translating the script too literally, resulting in awkward line reads. There have been mumblings that Atlus in Japan ordered a new script from them and not the US team (supported by an endless stream of stock lines commonly used by Japanese speakers that get repeated a ton), and I would not be surprised if this was the case. Along with the general nature of Japanese companies being kind of awful to employees and Western branches, Persona 5 ended up being insanely Japanese, even lampooning actual Japanese celebrities and political figures. Wanting it to be authentic is fine, but applying this to the entire script, including sentence structure, resulted in a very shaky final translation. It's more in line with bad translations from smaller JRPG companies who can't afford voice actors.

Translation is a tricky thing because it's not a science, but an art. There's no hard rules to follow, so it's all up to the translators. How they choose to tackle the translations can change the context and meaning of a work massively. The best you can do is try to strike a balance between what works in English and original context. Also, never make a western reference ever unless it was already there. Let's just be honest guys, Shin-Chan's dub aged like milk, and Ghost Stories was never that good in the first place. These should not be localization standards. But neither should Persona 5, by any stretch of the imagination.

If you believe it should be, you was a scum.

See, that's a joke son, a joke. Oh, sorry, I mean “As expected of A Joke.”

I'm done now.

(This site used to gather these quotes: http://www.personaproblems.com/)

So, how about that Ghost in the Shell movie? Y’know, the movie that came out a while back? The one with Scarlett Johansson? The one where she played a Japanese woman? The one that opened to abysmal reviews and poor box-office results? That movie?

Before anyone says anything: no, I didn’t see it in theaters. I have no intentions to, for obvious reasons. However, even though it got buried by The Boss Baby, of all films, at the box-office, I can’t help but be sad that it didn’t turn out better. Especially in-light of the underlying circumstances, as evidenced by this video from Glass Reflection:

Hmm… (Courtesy of Glass Reflection.)

There’s a lot to unpack, but I won’t go overboard because I’ve already dissected this film numerous times on Infinite Rainy Day. However, since Arkada brought up points I hadn’t discussed prior, I figured I’d do so. Here goes:

I’ll begin with Arkada’s take on the movie: he thought it was fine, if not un-Ghost in the Shell-like. He enjoyed the visual aesthetic of the film, but felt it was hollow and had little to add to the franchise. His biggest distraction was Johansson, although he doesn’t fault her because she had little to work with. That said, he was fond of Takeshi Kitano as one of the side-characters, as well as the movie’s focus on The Major’s relationship with Batou. Overall, he understood where the film was coming from, but felt it could’ve been better narratively.

This is fine criticism, but it doesn’t excuse the blatantly-offensive writing and casting. I’m well-aware of that now-famous YouTube video of Japanese citizens sharing their thoughts, but it doesn’t negate the core issue. Ghost in the Shell missed a real opportunity to cast an unknown actress from Japan in the lead role, and given that the script played up its casual racism as something to be applauded, I can’t help but feel like that was ignored in favour of the aesthetic. Plus, given that Japan perpetuates the “Little Black Sambo” stereotype in its depictions of black people in anime, I don’t think they’re the right group to be discussing this.

I also find it troubling how Hollywood viewed this IP as an excuse to be its vapid, cash-greedy self. I’m not really the biggest fan of Ghost in the Shell, but it deserves better than it got. Ignoring the whole “Blade Runner imitation” component, it was never meant to be a standard, paint-by-numbers story. It had themes of identity and gender politics that permeated its runtime, and ignoring that in favour of Jason Bourne-meets-Total Recall is laziness. It’s like Bob Chipman said when analyzing why The Amazing Spider-Man failed: a film can survive many shortcomings, but a bad lead isn’t one of them.

But the part that really struck home was the grander implications of the movie itself. Honestly, this is the part of the video that I agree with Arkada on. I remember a while back writing about how anime’s perceived in the West, as well as why. Not much has changed, but anime isn’t the exclusively-insular market it once was. Investors and film execs are acknowledging the anime bubble’s presence, adapting and incorporating certain aspects into film culture. We’ve seen that with Pacific Rim, which paid homage to the Kaiju genre in ways that hadn’t been done before. And this is coming from someone who wasn’t big on Pacific Rim anyway.

However, anime’s influence on Hollywood has come into play in more subtle ways via Ghost in the Shell. Be it the subtle musings of Dark City, or even the loud existentialism of The Matrix, there’s no denying the impact anime has had on Western entertainment in recent decades, as well as the continued impact it’ll have in decades to come. Even children’s TV like Avatar: The Last Airbender, as well as its sister series Avatar: The Legend of Korra, have incorporated aspects of anime in their aesthetic and storytelling styles. Anime continues to indirectly shape the experiences of 21st Century filmgoers, and it’s not looking like it’ll stop. That’s what the live-action Ghost in the Shell failed to understand with its half-baked attempt at cashing in on a 22 year-old property.

I’m not sure what to make of having anime eventually become an accepted mainstay. I enjoy discussing it with friends and family when possible, but the novelty factor keeps it exciting. There’s something special about introducing my favourite Miyazaki films to people for the first time, even if they aren’t so enthused. Attack on Titan becoming water-cooler talk would be a little disheartening, even if it’d also be kinda cool. And, lest we forget, we might have another GamerGate, and we’ve had enough trouble with one of those!

It might also lead to some decent anime adaptations in film form. Unlike video game movies, which have been improving in recent years, anime has an advantage of being adaptable to the storytelling medium of film. It has a linear narrative, it flows in a structure and it tells its narratives through visuals. With the right tweaking and talent, we might get films to rival Speed Racer, assuming you’d even consider Speed Racer good to begin with. There’s real potential with the medium, in other words.

So it’s a shame that what could’ve been a contender, i.e. Ghost in the Shell, turned into a mess, especially with Netflix premiering Death Note and horror director Jordan Peele being courted for Akira. It’s not like these have to be automatic failures, even when all the cards are stacked against them, but when the takeaway of “whitewashing = bad” only occurs once big-budget movies bomb financially, well…what else should we be expecting? Are we supposed to throw in the towel, claiming this is a lost cause? Do we keep experimenting and taking risks, all-the-while hoping to get it right? Or do we find the middle ground of adapting anime into films when they offer a Western angle, making sure they're functional and respectful to the source material? It’s tough to say, but since this trend will only escalate as the anime bubble starts to burst, it seems as though an inevitable choice has to be made.

That having been said, one reality is for certain: anime water-cooler talk is about to get a lot more heated in the coming years!

Have you ever noticed how you have to clarify what you mean when you say you like playing RPGs? Do you like Fallout or Shin Megami Tensei? Dragon Age or Final Fantasy? Mass Effect or Dragon Quest? The question always divides by nationalities. Western produced RPG games are given the name WRPG, and the Japanese produced ones are called JRPGs. Sometimes. Dark Souls, a series made by a Japanese developer, is not commonly seen as a JRPG. Meanwhile, some indie RPGs made in the west, like Cthulhu Saves the World, tend not to fall under the WRPG banner. If you're at all familiar with the debate, you may have some understanding of how these differences are made, but the reasoning only further shows why the labels are losing whatever meaning they had. Really, the terms of JRPG and WRPG are quickly becoming meaningless as the Japanese cast away established genre structure, and the west embraces more action focused mechanics. The JRPGs and WRPGs of today are absolutely nothing like they were just a decade ago.

First, it's important to establish that these terms used to have meaning. Japanese and western developers quickly became interested in transplanting the skeletons of tabletop gaming into their own games, but each focused on different elements. WRPGs really grew on PCs and had access to better hardware, allowing for all sorts of experimentation and mountains of text that could never fit on a console of the era. The major WRPG darlings, like Ultima, Fallout and Planetscape, all benefited from being able to store tons of text and dialog, and they used that to build structures where players could express themselves through choice. WRPG developers early on were mostly interested in creating stories with multiple paths, where a player could leave their own imprint on the world. Or, they simply practiced using a very open ended structure where a player could tackle quests however they wished, usually with little restriction. You could even solve some problems or fights entirely with dialog. What the player did usually became core to what the stories wanted to say or convey (while Ultima just enjoyed the open structure more than anything else).

JRPGs, on the other hand, propagated more on consoles, and visual novels became more significant on PCs. The PC scene became more focused on a focused narrative than player expression, even launching the careers of famously cinematic focused developers like Hideo Kojima. On top of that, most Japanese PC games remained in Japan and never got the same financial success as games made for consoles. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy basically helped establish the structures for the classical JRPG and got the international acclaim, stripping away player agency for telling a linear story with challenges the player had to overcome. The tabletop structure was still there with the use of concepts like health points and stats, not to mention some borrowed monster types, but the design of them gave players simple goals to complete, possibly due to how limited console hardware was. By chance, it was these games that became popular and influenced RPGs in their country most. The likes of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Shin Megami Tensei, and others helped established that oh so important core structure.

WRPG and JRPG refer to these early structures, along with general mechanical make-up of said games. WRPGs and JRPGs were generally simplistic in play style, focusing entirely on menus and memorizing information like status effects and skill uses. WRPGs would add in a greater array of dialog options, while JRPGs were made famous with their simple turn structure. However, even in these early days, there was already experimentation and genre pushing in these genres, with games being made that didn't fit so neatly in these labels.

In the world of WRPGs, we started seeing games plant WRPG trappings on different genres and play-styles. Dungeon crawlers are the earlier example, a series of first person games that relied more on graphics than their top down contemporaries. Some of the earliest WRPGs had elements of this style of game before evolving, but the rise of the FPS resulted in more experimentation with the genre. This eventually lead to the likes of System Shock, a series of exploration and survival focused RPG style games, and Deus Ex, a combination of FPS action and WRPG status and experience systems. Eventually, these experiments became the norm, with companies like Bioware growing more into an action bent with their Mass Effect series, and event in more traditional games like those in the Dragon Age franchise.

JRPGs, on the other hand, had series like Ys and Tales. Ys can be best described more Zelda than Final Fantasy, but the series has constantly struggled with how it should define itself. It introduced a simple action combat system with JRPG experience systems, making it unlike anything else out there. Namco's Tales series has also always stood out for its real time battle system playing out more like a beat-em up or fighter, letting you control a character in real time and create combos in combat for bonuses. There was also more experimenting with traditional JRPG narrative structures with turn based strategy, resulting in games like Fire Emblem and Disgaea fitting nearly alongside more traditional games. The PC scene also saw more visual novels add in elements of JRPGs, though not to much fan fair. These early experiments may have played a role in visual novel elements being more common in JRPGs later on however, like Persona 3 adding in VN style social links to create new elements for the game's dungeon crawling.

The classic WRPGs and JRPGs exist mainly as indie titles these days, and many of them still experiment with the structure, like Helen's Mysterious Castle's surprisingly layered combat system. But what's stranger is that traditional RPGs are mainly coming from the west now, as players of classics like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound have decided to make their own spins on the themes and game systems of these titles. You can see this in the work of western developer Zeboyd Games, who have made a career making traditional style, sprite based RPGs in the style of Japanese classics. Even if you move out of the indie scene, you can still find many games of unexpected origin, such as everyone's favorite example of the meaninglessness of these labels, Dark Souls.

From Software's Dark Souls has absolutely none of the trappings of a traditional JRPG, despite being a RPG made in Japan. Hell, I've seen many mistake it for a western developed title. It doesn't have any sort of traditional Japanese art styles common from the genre, choosing instead a grim, dark age/horror style that has served it incredibly well. Its mythology and trappings contain a lot of western basics, which is somewhat expected from the JRPG due to it being heavily based in western tabletop games, but they're presented more like you'd expect in a particularly grim PC title (does anyone remember Hellgate: London, or is that just me?). Plus, action game base with RPG elements added. The fact that Dark Soul exists kind of negates the traditional genre terminology.

We're reaching a point where the people who still use these terms regularly either do so out of habit, or in order to slag one country's projects as inferior. Game reviewers love doing this with Japanese developed RPGs, in particular, and games like Dark Souls are actually given points for not being like “JRPGs.” I've actually seen this with the likes of Final Fantasy XV, one of the most anime things I've ever seen, because it has open world elements and is therefore now more similar to Ubisoft sandbox games through some sort of ridiculous logic. It's becoming clear that these terms are starting to mean very different things.

There's still a place for them in the likes of smaller titles like Wasteland 2 or Cosmic Star Heroine (both very faithful to their roots, even if one doesn't match up with the expected country of origin), but WRPG and JRPG have become meaningless, and sometimes derogatory, terms for larger, more difficult to define releases. I mean, most modern RPGs in the west are sometimes insulted for not being enough like RPGs (see Mass Effect). I think we've reached a point where major releases can just be called RPG, because so many of them have taken ideas from one another, or from entirely different genres. If a game is trying to be like a classic style JRPG or WRPG, that's fine, but your Final Fantasy XVs, Dark Souls, Mass Effect: Andromedas, and Deus Ex: Mankind Divideds have moved so far beyond those old labels that using them on them feels suspect or just inaccurate. The gaming world is becoming more and more global, so think on your terminology a bit more.

This retrospective ends on a somewhat anti-climactic note with The Garden of Words. When I first got the Blu-ray disc years ago, I popped it in immediately, watched it, and threw in storage where it's sat until I got this retrospective idea to eat up two months of writing. Not that I meant to banish it away forever, but I watched it cold not realizing it was 46 minutes long and the title is kind of a misnomer. I meant to revisit it and never really had an active opportunity to do so until now. When I saw a second time, I had the same reaction that's baffled me. The movie added another layer of irony to its title: I'm left with few words except it's nice, the one thing I say when I have nothing to say. Now let me try my damnedest to elaborate on this not-quite-short, not-quite-feature-film.

There have been Shinkai works that zero in on small relationships, but this one might have the microscope pushed to its limit. The story focuses on Takeo, a first-year high school student in Tokyo whose mind isn't particularly focused on his schoolwork, but on crafting custom-made shoes. He lives with his older brother after his mother ran off, and is facing a further separation from his family with the notion that his brother moving in with his girlfriend is all but imminent. At the start of Japan's rainy season, he finds himself sharing the shelter of a scenic park with a significantly older woman whose breakfast involves beer and chocolate. After some awkwardness, Takeo begins a conversation with the mysterious-yet-seemingly-familiar woman. She reveals herself as Yukari, gives a vague hint as to where he knows her from, and mostly leaves it at that. Takeo does tell her about his hobby and offers to make her new shoes.

The two continue to meet on rainy days and share a special connection with each other throughout the rest of the month. For those who like their anime spiced up with action and tons of story development, you should know this takes up half of the feature. The second half continues after their separation, with their lives feeling forced into evolving past their usual day-to-day existence. Takeo finds out who Yukari is, and after he digs through what led her to taking Suntory time at 8 a.m., the perspective switches to Yukari as she tries to sort out her next step. I would get into more specifics if it didn't feel like I just dumped the entire anime into your lap in two paragraphs.

Needless to say, this is a smaller, far more intimate piece than your name. This is Shinkai at 5 Centimeters Per Second speed with a slower, more poetic work sans grand trimmings. This even lacks the metaphor 5 Centimeters had about a satellite exploring the great unknown beyond the Solar System REALLY being about growing into adulthood. Shinkai's trademark is two people separated by a great distance, and the distance this time is age. The special connection shared is taken by Takeo far differently than Yukari, and this is the crux of their conflict. Also, Yukari is a teacher at his school and that comes with own bag of issues (It's heavily hinted at within the first ten minutes as Yukari notes his uniform, but Takeo doesn't piece this together immediately).

Regardless of scale, The Garden of Words is hands down Shinkai's best looking work to date, including his recent juggernaut. There is imagery here that is absolutely stunning. The park Shinkai modeled the centerpiece of the animation after (With CLEAR NO ALCOHOL SIGNS POSTED, YUKARI) is incredibly recreated to the point where it no longer looks like animation. That overgrown branch lightly lapping at the pond is like every similar branch you've seen, but taken through an artistic, it's kind of magical. Especially laudable is the rain often utilized by the not-so-subtle narrative (You apparently can't have one of these Shinkai things with great atmosphere without the weather telling you exactly how you should feel). If you want to see where Shinkai has come from to where he is now, watch the scene from Voices of a Distant Star where he's desperately trying to create layers during a shot with a downpour to hide the fact that he can't create much movement to now, where he can even recreate the frizzy drops heavy rain creates when it hits the ground.

The weird thing about this is the writing suffers from the issues previous pieces by the same craftsman have, but in a different way. Shinkai has struggled with writing women, but this time, Yukari is a developed character. She feels like an actual woman and not just a character with enough thought put into her to make "the girl." The problem arises when most of her quirks are meant to be METAPHORS (Capitalized for emphasis on how heavy they punch you in the face). Her deal with having alcohol and chocolate turns out to be they're the only things she can taste these days. She's lost the flavor of life. GET IT? If not, here's a conversation about how she's "forgotten how to walk." It just so happens she's talking to a kid who builds shoes as a hobby. There, did that metaphor knock you on your ass?

All though I really shouldn't be knocking that conversation so much as it is one of the few moments where they connect by talking to each other. I know I've said this before, but for something titled The Garden of Words, the conversations aren't really that stimulating. The meat of the issues are mostly tackled in monologues and the talks are mostly prefunctory until the final conversation (That doesn't take place in the garden). Maybe it just goes to show how special relationships that help people are maybe not the biggest things in the world, but there are heavy-handed moments like when Takeo measures Yukari's feet in an overly sensuous moment.

Speaking of which, yeah, we should talk about the teacher/student thing. This has been summarized as a love story by some people, and yes, Takeo eventually does say he's in love with Yukari. I didn't really see it that way. What it is is two people who have very different reactions to essentially giving each other a reason to go on with life. Takeo has never had a person who made him feel that way, so he interprets it as pure love. Yukari has lived life a bit more and has responsibilities with social lines she can't cross, but understands she had a connection that is both rare and precious. The ending handles it very well (With the one burst of Tenmon music you'll remember from his otherwise low key score) and it gets what needs to be expressed, even if the writing in the middle doesn't quite fill all the emotional holes leading up to it.

I've criticized a whole lot here, but I do like this feature as much as it seems like I don't. It's a pleasant and occasionally beautiful work feel could've been one of the defining movies of the director if it had a couple more drafts. As it is, it gets the point across instead of living the experience. I get what the movie is trying to express and sometimes, I feel it. it just doesn't get to the level of intimacy required for something like this to be truly special. I would still recommend people check this out, especially if you want to compare and contrast where Shinkai's evolution. And with that, my retrospective comes to an end. Thanks for indulging my nearly two months of re-watching DVDs and Blu-rays to make content because I didn't have anything lately that caught my attention (Um, Fuuka turns an insane manga into the most generic-yet-watchable romance I've ever seen. Not really worth filling up space). We'll catch you next time when I'm likely not discussing movies that feature luscious thunderstorms, middle school students who find their puppy love possibly becomes toxic as they get older, or the game of finding the hidden (yet vital) subplot. Until then, keep watching the extraordinarily recreated skies!

So, who wants to hear about some super queer smut? I don't just mean gay, I mean gender destroying. There is literally not another artist out there I can think of like today's subject, Milda7, also known as Rinsu. See, Milda7 was originally a science fiction manga artist, and they brought that talent into more erotic stories, creating strange machines that would be well at home in an 80s cyberpunk OVA (not to mention all the guns). But the reason I decided to spotlight Milda7 in particular is because of their subject matter and who they are. See, Milda7 has a bit of a masochistic streak they put into their art and stories.

Those stories are about men being forced to dress like women, usually with clothing and make-up that can't be removed for years.

I should mention that Milda7 is a real life crossdresser.

Milda7 specializes in a fetish known as feminization. Not to be confused with genderbend stories (which are usually just sex changes, a topic for another day), feminization is a dominance based fetish where a male is forced to dress and act female. It doesn't pop up a lot, but what I have come across has never reached the sheer levels of dedication of a Milda7 work. It's strange I was surprised to find out the artist was a crossdresser years after discovering their work, because stepping back and looking at it again really shows a perspective you probably wouldn't see from someone without some first hand experience or deep interest in the subject.

I did some digging around their blogs and websites and found a few things of note. Their sci-fi manga postings was one thing, but Milda7 also posted an autobiographical comic about the first time they dabbled with forced crossdress play. Also, lots of selfies, which is great. Oh, and they may be a military otaku, which seems strange at first, but does explain many of their work revolving around an all-women espionage group who use their vast resources and armory to make boys wear dresses that are glued to their skin forever. I'm honestly not sure if this is just hobby to them, or part of actual tactical operations. I think it's a mixture of both at times, honestly. I should also mention many of their earlier works have continuity between them, and these women are reoccurring antagonists. They even get names. It's wild.

As Milda's career has gone on, their work has become more explicit, starting significantly with a character narrated comic on a train about an encounter with a molester. However, many of their works are simply focused on the being forced to be feminine aspect instead of anything overly sexual, including one comic I'm translating called Takashi OL (aka office lady). Outside the last few pages that get into the body modification stuff and one single sex scene, the majority of the surprisingly long comic is focused on humiliation and subtle brainwashing, as the main character is under the influence of a strange perfume that causes him to subconsciously present as female, manipulated by the company's head. A lot of the story is just long stretches of Takashi finding some sort of satisfaction from crossdressing, while being unable to interact with the people around them for most of the comic. The turning point ends up being late in, where Takashi starts accepting a female identity and becomes somewhat comfortable in the role, up until the company head tries breaking them out of that role to see their humiliated expression.

The key element of most Milda7 works is BDSM, with male leads being cast into unfamiliar status and being bent to the will of others, usually women, sometimes men. But what sets their work apart is that they trade cuffs and collars for make-up and hair-dos. Dresses and ribbons are put on in such a way that the wearers can't actually remove them, like inhumanly tightly tied hair ribbons, uncuttable hair extensions, or make-up that doesn't wear off for years – if at all. There's even one comic where a group of women use teleportation technology to bind female garb to the very atomic structure of an all male crew. It's also notable that these outfits are never presented in a realistic manner. They're always cartoonishly feminine, with big hair, gaudy accessories, loads of make-up, and outfits that value frilliness over utility. The average woman in these works looks like an average woman in sensible wear, but those forced into feminine roles are given showy, loud wear. They can't be seen as anything else but women.

Exaggerated elements get used a lot to get characters in these situations, which is where Milda's work really shines. That past experience with sci-fi manga comes into play as villains love using absurdly intricate machines in some stories, and they look like the products of nightmares. They're darkly colored and have all sorts of strange shapes and forms, with a large variety of claws, cables and wires. They also come in a wide variety of shapes, including a strange flying bondage dress, or make-up appliers with a ton of little claws and arms moving about. We sometimes even get to see monsters, and they take heavily from darker 80s OVA affair and the work of Giger. Milda7 works have a very strange atmosphere because of touches like these, but its the coloring that really makes in whole.

Milda7 works mainly with pencils and charcoal. Their works are black and white, but feel almost unreal most times because of the odd shading that can be achieved from these utensils. Much of their work also has fade in borders, with images on a one color background. It makes it seem like you're viewing something in a haze, like catching a glimpse of a dream. It's usually used to great effect, both to create threatening atmosphere or give the feeling of a creeping force in the background, but it can also simply emphasize the surreal nature of some stories. Like, in a way, the artist is exploring and expressing an aspect of themselves within their work, something they can't fully explore in their real life. This makes color that is present all the more impactful, as it's often useful to show how unnatural the wear and changing personalities of the leads are, but not necessarily unwelcome. The worlds of these works feel naturally threatening, and the bright colors and lively patterns that appear with clothing and make-up are presented as something lovely or comforting. It's only further offset by an increased darkness around everything else at times.

The more pretentious part of me is fascinated with these works because they feel like the artist is exploring their own gender identity at times, or simply their sexuality. That autobiographical comic I mentioned gives signals that Milda may be more than a fetishist, describing their own fixation on femininity. I've mentioned it before when discussing some thoughts from a bigender friend of mine, but crossdressing fetishism is usually used by those questioning their gender identity to explore and contextualize the idea of not being their assigned gender. It just makes Milda more interesting as an artist, as they state in their Twitter profile that they're a boy by day, and woman by night.

There's also little details in these works themselves. Milda doesn't just focus on the normal feminine signifiers, but the details often ignored that really show their interest in femininity. Takashi OL, for instance, puts a ton of focus on Takashi wearing a hair-do that shows the back of their neck completely. That's a feminine thing, but not one that comes up often among the average person's views on femininity. There's also the presence of strange items like weighted earrings or flower decorated swimcaps, which are far too specific and unseen among normal fashions. These are works made by someone who cares deeply about how they present themselves to the world.

Milda7 stories are a strange mixture of erotic, intoxicating, hilarious, and shocking. I really can't say I've seen an artist quite like them, and we'll probably never see someone similar. Everything about them is original, and I'm glad to see them experiment more with comics outside their smut comfort zone nowadays. I can't say for sure if Milda7 themselves are queer or not, but their work definitely is.

May 23rd marks the 19th anniversary of Studio Ghibli's dubs under Disney. Beginning with Kiki’s Delivery Service in 1998, the partnership would include every Hayao Miyazaki movie prior, two of Isao Tahakata’s films (aka Pom Poko and My Neighbors the Yamadas,) Whisper of the Heart, The Cat Returns and theatrical releases of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Tales from Earthsea, Ponyo, The Secret World of Arrietty and The Wind Rises. This also helped secure Studio Ghibli’s place in film fandom, including an inevitable Oscar win in 2003 for Spirited Away. However, considering how big a gamble this was, it begs the question of “why”. Why did Disney, a multi-billion dollar corporation, pick this small studio to be their ambassador of anime to the outside world? And why did Studio Ghibli, a fiercely-independent company, agree to this collaboration in the first place?

Firstly, it’s important to view both companies’ respective histories. Disney was founded in 1923 as a small studio in Los Angeles for animated shorts. Initially a joint-venture between Walt Disney and his brother Roy, it didn’t take long before Walt longed for theatrical animation, and in 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became the first animated film to achieve mainstream success. Since then, Disney has gone on to become a mega-enterprise, trucking on over 50 years after Walt’s death by purchasing intellectual properties and companies like The Jim Henson Corporation, Pixar, ABC, Marvel Entertainment and, most-recently, Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Sufficed to say it’s showing no signs of stopping either.

Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 in Tokyo, by Toshio Suzuki, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, following the success of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind the previous year. A studio determined to produce films separate from the limitations of televised anime, they’d spend over a decade gaining a foothold in their native Japan before being picked up by Disney in the late-90’s. In over 30 years, the studio has amassed many accolades and awards, including the aforementioned Oscar in 2003. Despite ceasing film production in 2014 following the retirement of their founders, the studio’s legacy trucks on.

Despite Disney being synonymous with Studio Ghibli now, this wasn’t always the case. Studio Ghibli, particularly Hayao Miyazaki, has had their movies pre-1994 released in dub form to varying degrees of success. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind had a hack-job dub in 1989 called Warriors of the Wind that cut out roughly 30 minutes of the film, changed the characters’ names, rearranged the main storyline and neutered the movie’s message about the environment. That dub is so heavily-chastised that even Miyazaki himself is stated to have hated it, but attempts at early localizations didn’t stop there. Castle in the Sky also had an early dub in 1989 that’s aged poorly, while Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbour Totoro both had halfway-decent dubs in the early-90’s. Even The Castle of Cagliostro, a pre-Studio Ghibli Miyazaki movie, had a dub long-before Manga Entertainment got ahold of it, so it’s clear that there was always a demand before Disney stepped in.

But Akira also had an early dub, so why is Studio Ghibli special? What makes that one company so important that Disney, a big money-maker with infinite resources being spent elsewhere, felt a need to partner? Remember, The House of Mouse’s biggest concern is making money. Considering that anime’s never been a big cash-cow here, despite there clearly being a market for it, you’d think it’d be above them to distribute movies that, at best, haven’t even cracked $20 million at the North American box-office. I think the answer goes deeper than monetary concerns, as it stems from something that’s more personal.

See, while Disney the corporation might be focused on marketability as a means for profit, Disney the living entity is all about the craft. I know this can be said of many artists, but Disney’s currently home to some of Hollywood’s best: the team behind the Muppet movies care deeply about turning puppets into believable creatures, while the teams at Marvel and LucasFilm care deeply about taking fantasy characters and making them relatable. Conversely, Disney’s animation divisions, namely Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar, care deeply about about making the inanimate, or animation, feel animate and real. Couple that with Disney’s execs, who care deeply about money, and there’s been a real push recently to make engaging properties in hopes of netting the big bucks.

Studio Ghibli, while not as big and money-centric as Disney, still cares about making relatable films. In their current library, only one film is considered a dud, that being Tales from Earthsea. The rest of the library ranges from okay to excellent, with a few of their films ranking as some of the best on TIME and Empire’s greatest films lists. That might sound suspicious to an outsider, but given that IMDb, which is entirely run by non-paid filmgoers, frequently ranks the studio’s work in their all-time bests, right up there with Pixar, it’s clear there’s something special amidst the accolades. Their attention to detail is astounding, and it should come as no surprise that many Western film enthusiasts, including a few from Disney, have much fondness for their work. And it’s this fondness that allowed Disney to gain approval from Studio Ghibli’s parent company, aka Tokuma, to bring the studio’s library to the West, provided that nothing from the original material was altered or changed without their consent.

There’s a whole spectrum of debate over which dubs are good, if at all: are the Jack Fletcher trio of dubs, i.e. Kiki’s Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke, good because they add extra dialogue and jokes, or is that what holds them back? Did the golden age of Disney-Studio Ghibli dubs begin with John Lasseter and Spirited Away, winning them theatrical accolades, or are they equally as bad? Are any of the dubs even good at all? And if so, which is the best?

But I think the superficial level of dub quality misses out on the fact that this deal, which ended in 2013 with The Wind Rises, ran deeper than money; after all, despite the brilliant marketing campaign and excellent release window of the President’s Day/Family Day weekend in 2012, The Secret World of Arrietty made less than $20 million at the box office. Sure, it went up against releases like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and This Means War, making it the surefire victor of quality, but it wasn’t the heavy-hitter fans would’ve liked. The deal with Disney clearly boiled down to a desire to have these films seen by more audiences, otherwise it wouldn’t have been made at all. And given how so many people at Disney are Studio Ghibli enthusiasts, it’s easy to see why.

Even still, I think that Studio Ghibli and Disney share much in-common. Their films may be different narratively and thematically, but their messages of eco-consciousness, family, love and hope are quite similar. I even regard Studio Ghibli as what Disney could be if they weren’t boxed in by Western, familial expectations and were more ambitious and daring. Both have also made an impact in their respective hemispheres and filled needed voids. And while you could argue that they’ve “outlived their usefulness”, I don’t see how quality filmmaking will ever be outdated.

That’s really it: one brilliant company recognizing another brilliant company and feeling a need to promote it. Is that a circle-jerk of artistic vanity? Maybe. But it’s also a sign of talent respecting and revering other talent, something important in an industry where too many lesser-known artists are drowned out.

That was the secret of the Disney-Studio Ghibli deal. So the next time you wonder if Disney’s only a shallow company out to make money, remember that they took a gamble, and incurred losses, to make sure that something they cared about could be shared with others. Not many companies, especially multi-billion dollar conglomerates, would do that these days.

It is easy, with the degree to which Hayao Miyazaki is lauded, not only in terms of anime as a form of animation, but among the pantheon of animators, from Park and Lasseter to Bird and Chomet, to forget that he is just one of two Japanese animators who have received the highest accolade possible in cinema. The other is Kato Kunio, whose work I will explore today. Whilst less prolific than Miyazaki, and with almost every film he creates being under 15 minutes, they are nevertheless as beautiful, as artistic and indeed as important as a record of the direction of anime as the better known director's work. Often surreal, largely silent, and with an often melancholic or nostalgic feel, Kato's work is, despite its brevity, often thought-provoking and visually arresting.

Unlike Miyazaki (or indeed many of the more famous figures in modern anime)'s background, I could find very little about Kato-the biography on his own site doesn't list his most famous work, "La Maison en Petits Cubes" (2008) and gives little about his background other than the facts he was born in 1977, he studied animation at Tama Art University and joined his production group, Robot Cage in 2001, just before making his first film, the Apple Incident (2001)

The Apple Incident, in short, is a mixture between the work of Monty Python's Terry Gillam, and renowned Internet counter culture oddball (and creator of Salad Fingers), David Firth. Firstly, the animation-Kato's animation style is anime in the widest possible context-in this film in particular, they are rough-hewn or often shadowy figures, with squarish faces, surprisingly westernized eyes, and an almost Soviet-style limited animation style-the majority of the animation is either very simple movement, such as chewing, pointing, walking, or more fluid, as in the case of the titular apples, which seem to float, fall, roll, and crush as they move around.

At many points in this two and a half minute short, figures simply gesticulate, or stand around, and indeed the way that Kato tends to draw figures are as simple but effective outlines, or shaded in, to ripple and move with the animation. Indeed, the vast majority of the backgrounds and scenery, and the solitary vehicle that appears, a tram car, is shaded in with the predominant colour of the background, either a copperish green or a sludgy brown or yellow. The backgrounds themselves are simplistic-enough to give one a good idea of what the setting is, but simple enough to not distract from the characters, such that they are, who are shaded lighter than the often oppressive backgrounds. Towards the end of the short, the city (or town) is replaced by a blueish sky, and slow moving clouds.

Before we tackle the tone and story of The Apple Incident, it's necessary to talk about the sound design of this short. There's no voice acting, sound effects or music in this short, and indeed it's not until the later and much more elaborate short, The Diary of Tortov Riddle that we get the latter two. What we do get is best described as "ambient noise". Emphasis on the "noise". For the great majority of the short, starting about a second in, and ending a second before the short does, we get a long, unceasing series of high-pitched tones, some muffled or burbled speech, and that's it. As to what this quasi-Eraserhead headache inducer means, or indeed what Kato was thinking adding it in the first place, I cannot tell you (having found several copies on various video sites, all with the same tone, I'm forced to believe that this is part of the original film).

The Apple Incident, in the simplest of terms, is a simple but effective surreal horror. One day, huge apples arrive in the sky, and indeed in the buildings of a town, some descending from the sky, others appearing in the hallways of apartment blocks, a-la The Shining. Some apples crush people about their daily business, other roll out of control down streets, some just fall, to the horror of the watching populace. A tram arrives, shadowy figures, presumably workers, making their way home, are halted by the huge apples that they promptly mine into and consume, before a final scene shows those who have (presumably) consumed the apples standing outside as smaller apples appear on their heads.

As to what The Apple Incident means, it's difficult to say-there is no clear reason as to why the apples arrive, why they fall from the sky, why some appear indoors. The apples are merely a threat, and one that is eventually bested, only for the apple-vanquishers to become, themselves, partly apple. The visual influences of disaster and horror movies are occasionally notable, at least from my perspective, but, like the film it seems to take auditory cues from, perhaps the very nature of the work is to be almost impossible to understand. The apples simply are, and this work, short though it is, is content to be an interesting, if somewhat crude, piece of work compared with Kato's later work.

Yet, some of the visual, and indeed story-telling elements do carry through to his next work,The Diary of Tortov Roddle (2003)-the greenish pallet, the use of colour washes, of simple sketch outline buildings, of simple but effective figures whose clothing is dominated by black.. Where they differ wildly is in tone-Tortov Roddle is a gentle, rather than abrasive surreal, and the work often calls to mind Miyazaki at his most visually narrative, or even, if I may be so bold, old progressive rock albums-a city aboard the back of a huge turtle that swims out to sea to meet other city-turtles, a fish that appears in the air above a coffee cup, strange upright walking rabbits that travel the sky in a half-sunken tram car. Also notable is the greater complexity of the work-the animation is more accomplished and feels very natural, with the facial expressions, movements of people and backgrounds in particular far better executed.

Added to this is a mood-setting soundtrack-dark moments, such as our hero dreaming his pig-mount grows to a terrifying size is undercut with unsettling, almost electronic, music, restful sections with acoustic guitar and gentle ambience, or piano, funny moments with playful horns, even a section that approximates your typical 1920s cartoon score, whilst a meeting with a young lady that reminds Tortov of a possible lost-love is underscored beautifully with a haunting music box melody that is then repeated, even more evocatively on strings, accordion and piano. Kato's composer, Keiji Kondo, (no, not Koji Kondo of Mario and Zelda fame) almost acts as the voice of Tortov for this film, as no dialog, other than the written inter-cards [in the style of old cinema], which are clearly intended to be excerpts from Tortov's diary, appears. Elsewhere, the sound design is greatly improved with sound effects such as bear roars, footsteps, and most evocatively, the sound of falling rain at the end of the penultimate section, adds a depth to the world

What is most notable about Tortov Roddle is the tone of the piece-whilst it takes the form of a series of vignettes, little incidents that happen to its hero, the tone overall is wistful, almost melancholic-some of the small stories end on an amusing note, some on a thought provoking note, but in particular "The Melancholy Rain", in which our hero recovers from a bad dream in a rainy city, and the final vignette, "The Flower and the Lady", seem to ask some questions that the film struggles to answer-who is the mysterious lady? Why is Tortov always travelling, and alone? The film (or more correctly, set of films) seem to certainly move from the whimsical to the thought provoking-and it's clear that the last two are far longer, far more complex and indeed far more emotive pieces than the preceding four episodes, as though Kato is moving and developing his story-telling as he goes.

Whilst the film certainly has a story, with a vague narrative of Tortov moving from place to place, encountering, in turn, the city on a colossal frog's back and the spectacle of many of these cities atop many frogs, to a cafe with strange fish that appear to the drinker, to a small outdoor cinema projected onto the back of a bear, to the rabbits returning to the moon via a tram car (a mode of transport that appears to be a favourite of Kato), to the bad dream in the rainy city and another dream, or memory of a woman, it remains largely separate little stories, as though these are mere excerpts of a more complex and complete diary.

What is notable, however, is that, whilst the first four can be surmised as "Tortov comes upon interesting spectacle/people/place" the last two seem to reverse this, looking at Tortov himself, becoming less "what has Tortov found" and more "who is Tortov? Why is he on this journey? Where has he been?" with the previously surreal visuals giving way to evocative if more naturalistic scenes, culminating with the final shots of Tortov and his memories of the mysterious woman among the flower fields.

It is memory that underpins Kato's most famous film, La Maison en Petits Cubes (Or; "The House of Small Cubes", by far his best known and most lauded work, and the receiptant of the "2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film", among other major animation awards. It certainly acts both as a career and technical high-point (indeed, Kato has not made another major film in the following nine years, restricting himself to shorts that I couldn't even find information on in Japanese, aside from the collection of shorts, Fantasy, made around the time of The Diary of Tortov Roddle).

What it also does, in striking contrast to the rest of his work is tell one coherent, and character-driven narrative, largely stripped of the surrealist imagery that defines his earlier work-whilst the visual style of Kato's previous work, with its Giorgio de Chirico-esque (if the name sounds familiar, the Italian surrealist also influenced the cover of Playstation arthouse masterpiece, Ico) buildings, and greenish-grey colour washes remains, this is a far more intimate and less showy film. One also cannot help, with its francophone title, brownish grey colour scheme during the old man's recollections of his past, human-scaled homely grubbiness and gallic feel, most notably in the visual design of the protagonist, but be reminded of the work of French animator, Sylvain Chomet.

At its center, La Maison is a dive into memory and the role of a location in telling a story-the dive of the old man who has to retrieve his pipefrom the depths of his flooded home reflects the old man travelling back into his past, remembering the events of his life that have transpired in the rooms, and how these have affected him as a person. The short's opening shot of a large number of photographs only compounds this sense of memory, whilst his building-ever-upward to escape the rising waters of a world seemingly flooded (make your own judgment as to whether this is an allegory for escaping the past, a critique on mankind trying to avoid responsibility for climate change, or simply the way to present beautifully surreal images of flooded towering houses.)

Awaking one day to his newest room being flooded, the old man has more bricks brought to his house via boat, and begins adding another layer-this scene in particular suggests a greater maturity to Kato as a director, content to let the camera run as his elderly hero goes about his work. Transporting furniture by boat, his beloved pipe falls from his mouth and sinks into the flooded house below-unable to find a suitable replacement, he thus decides to dive after it.

As he reaches it, in the flooded room below, so a memory of a (seemingly now departed) wife picking up his pipe and returning it to him floods back, and he begins to swim downwards through the house, seeing the bed where he nursed her, then his children and their family posing for a photograph, his son in law visiting for the first time, then his daughter as a young child. And down he goes, to his daughter in her playroom building towers of blocks, before he arrives down at what would once has been his front door, before, leaving via it, he arrives back at what was once street level, restored in his memory to a grassy landscape, as the entire story of his childhood and his relationship with his wife, and them building what would become his house, before we are suddenly brought back to the present, and the old man sits alone in what was once his small little bungalow. Returning to the surface, he makes himself supper, pours a second glass of wine, and clinks the glasses together.

With its grumpy old man, and its travel through the memories of that man, it is easy to compare La Maison to that by now iconic opening five or so minutes of Pixar's UP-both focus on memory, are almost entirely silent, and, to an extent, take place in a single location. Yet, this is something of a red herring-Up is a pair of lives at important, if increasingly sorrowful moments, and end in sadness. La Maison, in sharp contrast is a story of a life via rooms-most of the moments captured and later remembered by the old man are happy, if bitter-sweet, and whilst the first and last memories seem to encapsulate the loneliness that the old man feels, the rest are quite happy-it is easy, and indeed part of the human condition to connect a room, or even a certain seat or place within a room with, for example, a particular memory, or time of your life.

At the heart of La Maison, one could suggest the film is, despite its visual metaphor of rising waves and sunken cities, essentially about either accepting or denying loss, and old age. The old man builds higher, isolates himself from his loss and his past, and it is only when he loses something he cannot replace, (the pipe, but possibly also his wife) that he begins to reconsider and in essence, dive into his past; indeed, there is something oddly cathartic about his continual diving down, as though he seeks some higher reason, some eureka moment as to why he is trying to escape loss and old age, and finds it, ironically, in the construction of the first layer of his now towering house.

by far the longest memory, the recollection of his entire childhood, of his love for his now absent wife, and their act of construction together of this first layer, and the first meal they shared together are some of the most beautifully simple yet searingly beautiful sequences of any animator's works.
Yet, once he returns to the surface, makes his dinner and pours two glasses of wine, in a recreation of that first meal the final scene is surprisingly difficult to read as a piece of film. Is the second glass of wine intended to signify that he has come to terms with this loss, or that he, in a sense, cannot, and thus repeats what is his favorite memory of the two of them? That, dear reader, falls to your opinion

Yet, through my eyes, Kato ends his story with a sense of closure-it is as if, by returning to his past, that the old man realizes how far he has come, and despite his implied losses, and the sense of melancholy, he is able, at least, to remember his wife and child fondly. Indeed, this wistful melancholy, and the idea of memory and how past events shape us seems to be a common thread in Kato's work, with both this and Tortov Roddle ending with their protagonists moving on, Tortov physically, and the protagonist of La Maison emotionally. It's strange that two such tonally different films culminate with thissame realisation.

Kato is a surprisingly soft voice in an industry that seems ever more dominated by large egos-with the exception of The Apple Incident, his films are gentle, emotionally driven, beautifully animated, and visually as far from anime as one could think. Yet, in the nine years since his win, only three films, all by Studio Ghibli, have bee nominated for any form of animated feature Oscar, with not a single victory. Why Kato, and indeed, by extension, why Miyazaki won, is a certain universality-particularly in Kato's silent and emotionally-driven sunken world, one does not need words to reflect upon the idea of memory and emotional closure. His, in short, is a voice that needs to be heard again.

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