Spring 2012: Finally Something Worth Watching

It’s been a while since I had something really interesting to write about in the world of currently airing anime.  I was starting to think that I was actually becoming a jaded, grumpy old man about anime and manga and maybe I needed to take a break from it.

Luckily, I was wrong.  I’ve found some new manga that have me once again eagerly awaiting the next scanlation release, and, finally, an anime that has succeeded in surpassing my expectations and has me simultaneously anticipating and dreading next week’s episode.

I’ll address the anime in this post:

黄昏乙女×アムネジア(Tasogare Otome x Amnesia) Twilight (or Dusk) Maiden × Amnesia

I actually haven’t finished last season’s Another yet.  Frankly, I got bored with it.  I suspect I’ll finish it up after Dusk Maiden is done, but this story is both better plotted and just plain more interesting.

I’m a tough customer where horror is concerned.  The last couple of shows that managed to tweak my horror receptors to any significant degree were Ghost Hound and Mononoke – both quite a few years ago.  I hoped that Another, with its good production values might do the trick, but the war of attrition format was in the foreground and character development was given short shrift.  It’s hard to care if somebody comes to a bad end if you have seen him only once before he dies.  Slasher movies have always been a fail for me for this reason.  Likewise, I regard gross-out horror as a cheap gag used by those who can’t or won’t bother to build empathy and tension in the reader/viewer (I’m looking at you, Stephen King).

Cover of manga vol 6

I took a look at Dusk Maiden mostly because of the title.  I somehow (luckily, I suppose, given the quality of the anime adaptation) missed the source manga entirely, which is a little surprising as it has been in scanlation since 2010.  The first few episodes of the show reminded me a lot of Natsu no Arashi, which is a fun (two season) romp, involving (generally) benevolent ghosts, a tsundere reverse trap, and titillation of adolescent boys, but definitely not horrific in any significant way.

Accordingly, I introduced it to milady, who also found it pleasant, harmless slice-of-life bedtime show starring the ditzy, ubiquitous, voluptuous ghost of 15-year-old KANOE Yuuko (庚 夕子). Kanji note: Kanoe refers to the seventh month in the Chinese calendar; these kanji for Yuuko are probably best read as something like ‘evening child.’  The ‘-ko’ ending on many traditional Japanese female given names usually is ‘child,’ and has fallen out of favor in recent years.

Arashi-san with her magic navel, for comparison

As in Natsu, there were flickers of dark/supernatural stuff here and there, but I wouldn’t be writing about the show now if all it had to offer was the retelling of Natsu no Arashi suggested by the first five episodes.  Now for the good news: those first five episodes, while having the appearance of harmless slice-of-life, also happen to be chock full of character development for the four principal characters.  By the end of episode five, the viewer has replaced tropes with unique character identities for three leads, and is probably willing to let the fourth slip by on well-established behavior patterns.  If the show continued with another seven episodes of the same stuff it would probably get quite dull.  At this point, I guess I should admit to being a Kirie fanboy, but then I always did like strong-willed tsundere types. 

Natsu DVD Vol 2 Cover

It’s probably worth mentioning that the director of Dusk Maiden has also worked on Now and Then, Here and There, and  ef memo (yes, source of the most dramatic voicemail in anime), and was series director for both seasons of of Natsu no Arashi.  Likewise, the screenplay author also did all of Natsu no Arashi, and both ef series. If there’s some look and feel carry over, I think we can guess why.

Visually, the first five episodes are pretty, but nothing exceptional.  The animators have aged the characters up a bit in appearance from the manga.  In the first chapter of the manga it’s made quite clear that the male lead is a first year middle school student, which would make him age 12 or so.  Yuuko died when she was 15, and they’re both drawn reasonably credibly for their ages in the manga.  By appearances in the anime, you’d likely assume that it’s a high school and they’re both three years older than they really are.  If you mentally age the characters down to middle schoolers their actions (and an algebra test question we see at one point) suddenly make a lot more sense. 

Yuuko sings the blues well, but she has had 60 years to practice...

A feature that is exceptional is the Opening (OP) and Ending (ED) songs, which are both quite good and thematically appropriate.  Notably, neither is sung by a seiyuu in the anime.  I’m glad that somebody is still willing to get professional singers to do the singing for anime – the simple fact is that most professional seiyuus are adequate singers at best, and many can’t carry a tune in a bucket (OOKUBO Rumi’s ED for Acchi Kocchi comes to mind here).  Kudos, therefore, to the producer of Dusk Maiden for leaving the music to the professionals instead of the seiyuus or some generic nominally-pubescent boy band.

Another interesting feature of the OP and ED is that they’re ‘sung’ by Yuuko.  That is, they both make sense from her point of view and she is shown singing the lyrics in what look like two slickly-produced, self-contained anime music videos that happen to be at the beginning and end of each episode.  It works very well and I hope it catches on.  Or maybe I don’t, because I suspect that it wouldn’t work well at all with, say, HIRANO Aya doing the singing. 

Of the two performances, the ED has the weaker animation, but the better music – OKUI Aki’s workmanlike performance leaves no complaints.   Teenage newcomer SUZUKI Konomi’s performance of the OP mostly shows that she isn’t done growing yet: she’ll be a fine mezzo soprano once she fills out and her voice settles into its adult register.  Now, however, she’s reedy in the upper midrange exactly where she needs to be able to belt out pure tones for a power ballad like Choir Jail (and no, I don’t know what Choir Jail is supposed to mean).  HIKASA Yoko could have done it better.  The OP animation with a falling maple leaves motif, however, is beautiful to watch and does a fine job of covering up the weakness in the music, which, despite my criticism I will happily affirm does not suck, unlike a simple majority of Anime OP songs these days.  What is most notable about these two performances is what is missing: there’s no obvious voice post-processing – no excessive accutune, no vocoder, no false chorus.  It’s just good music sung by good singers with none of the techno crap crutches so often used by J-pop producers to cover up the technical weakness of the ‘talent.’  I haven’t been this nice to anime OP and ED music since my glowing review of the ED of The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi.

Enough about the bread on either side.  What about the middle of this ectoplasmic sandwich?

Meet KANOU Yuuko

Anime Yuuko

Ghost or not, she’s obviously constructed on sound principles.  As I mentioned above, the characters have been aged up in appearance from the manga.

Manga Yuuko

In the manga, Yuuko’s busty for a 15 year old, but is anatomically possible.  In the anime, not so much.  Sure there’s some basic shounen titillation going on here, both for the target audience and for the male lead.   I’ll admit to preferring the navel fetish quirkiness of Natsu no Arashi, but yes, this works too.  And in both Dusk Maiden and Natsu there’s a plot requirement: Yuuko must be a) appealing as a romantic prospect to Male Lead, and b) physically distinguished (and presumably more appealing than) her theoretical competition among flesh-and-blood girls in the story.  We seem to be stuck with implausible body compositions in anime for the forseeable future (and for the record, no, I have never seen nor heard of a 15-16 year old Japanese girl built like Yuuko, certainly not one who grew up during and after WWII!), so I can’t really single this show out for being more farfetched than, say, R-15 for example.  Yuuko theoretically has not one but two competitors for the male lead’s attention, so must be visibly different from both, one of whom is on her family tree.  Her bust and hair do the trick.

Yuuko has no memory of how or why she died.  She also seems also to have little interest in learning about it except as a hook for the male lead’s attention.  She haunts a private middle school on top of a mountain which has stood for many years.  As the town grew, so did the school, so there are twists, turns, and disused buildings throughout.  She seems almost aggressively happy and optimistic, which, if you consider it, is rather peculiar for a ghost.  The show does accept the common cultural memes requiring some unhappy/unnatural death as a cause for a haunting. Yuuko is happiest when she can interact with living people – most people can’t see her, and so it has obviously been a rather lonely sixty years.  She’ll happily talk to anybody, but she’s happiest snuggling and talking to the male lead.

Meet NIIYA Teiichi (新谷 貞一)

Teiichi's character design sheet

Yup, he’s the one defined male character in the show.  His name translates as something like most righteous/upright/constant of new valley.  Teiichi is also the thinnest character in the show.  He’s as pure hearted as his name suggests, and he’s kind to a fault, but we know basically nothing else about him beyond these characteristics.  I have the feeling that this is intentional to make him a more perfect shounen everyman, but boy does it stand out against the depth of characterization of the three other principals in the show.

Yuuko and Teiichi

He seems to have no personality quirks at all beyond seeming to prefer the company of a well-endowed ghost girl to the flesh and blood kind.  Teiichi is a first year middle schooler (yes, he’s age 12), is slight and short of build, and is obviously neither the brightest in his class.  He addresses Yuuko as Yuuko-san.  Given that she’s about 60 years his senior and was a third year when she died, that’s probably the respectful thing to do even if she’s mentally more similar to a ditzy child much of the time.

Kirie-senpai gives Teiichi the lowdown

And in the other two corners we have two other female protagonists.  Kanoe Kirie (庚 霧江) and Okonogi Momoe (小此木 ももえ).  Kirie is Yuuko’s great niece and her grandmother’s memories of Yuuko shape her expectations of the ghostly lead.

...but is not always so confident

Kirie is pensive, decisive, determined, a little high strung, and easily spooked.  She’s also not entirely honest with herself.  She can see and interact with Yuuko, but is initially very cautious about doing so.  Her given name translates as something like ‘misty bay.’

Momoe is a guileless first-year

Momoe (her whole name translates fairly close to ‘this little peach tree’) is genki (‘lively’ is about as close as English gets), clueless, loud, a first year like Teiichi, and completely oblivious to Yuuko as anything other than the focus of the school’s ‘seven spooky mysteries.’  She thinks ghost stories are great fun and the idea of going around the school investigating them with Teiichi even moreso.

Your first clue that this isn’t just another cute school comedy romance involving a ghost comes in episode six.  It’s set in the schools bunkasai (usually translated as ‘cultural festival’) and involves lots of really cool formalist animation and even more mass psychosis.  It’s downright scary in spots, and does a fine job of letting you know that you’re not watching Natsu no Arashi anymore.

If you started episode seven expecting things to go back to normal, you’re in for a shock.  Nope, the nebulous romance comedy is replaced by something decidedly serious. 

Episode six takes a somewhat darker tone...

This is where the plot starts moving quickly, and where the stuff you were  expecting in a “drama, horror, mystery, psychological, romance, supernatural” (animenewsnetwork.com) anime series starts to happen.  We had episode nine last week as our usual bedtime viewing and it bothered me enough that I slept badly that night.  The teaser right before the end credits suggests that I won’t be electing to watch episode ten at bedtime either.  Fortunately, there’s stuff like Acchi Kocchi and Gallery Fake for that slot.

Plot development comes fast and furious

The difference between Dusk Maiden and Another is striking – Another has significant character development of exactly two characters and starts killing other people (who don’t get a lot of character development) as soon as the plot allows.  Dusk Maiden doesn’t even threaten to injure anybody until episode six, so when the possibility appears, you’re suddenly very surprised and very interested.  You’ve also developed an expectation of ‘normal’ for each of the lead characters.  Accordingly, when any of them starts behaving differently, the viewer notices immediately and is alert and interested instead of just adding up the new body count tally.

This is the advantage of a small cast in a small setting.  We don’t really know anything about anyone else in the school beyond the four members of the occult investigation club.  When someone does intrude on the main characters, the intruder is drawn just deeply enough to be credible.  All the other screen time and character development goes to the core cast.

Yuuko sings alone, haunting the one setting

It is also the show’s big weakness.  The school is the only setting – Teiichi, Kirie and Momoe’s homes are never seen.  The four characters are the only real people in the entire show.  It’s almost as though the story was written as a stage play for a small theatre and ensemble cast.  This show, sadly, does have the ‘Fruits Basket floating world problem.’

But most of the time you just don’t care.  At any particular instant either Yuuko is cavorting, Momoe is spazzing, Kirie is shouting or quivering in a corner, or something spooky is happening.  It’s well plotted and constantly entertaining.  The manga, interestingly, actually is better plotted in some places than the show.  In other places, the advantage of showing over telling wins out.

In any case, it's better than anything else I've seen this season, or last season for that matter.  Enjoy.

Winter/Spring 2012 - What I'm Watching Now

Psygremlin and I have been grumping about the sorry state of anime over at mangacityforums pretty much ever since the 2008 recession/depression started. Funding for creative projects dried up practically overnight and we went from hoping for something like a Kaiba or a Simoun to hoping for anything that didn't involve teenage sports, teenage vampires, ancient magical swords, pedophilia, or sibling incest.

It's been a lean few years. AIC animation studios got bought by a pachislo machine company (pachinko/pachislo parlors are casinos, and yes the same sort of people are involved in the business there as in the USA). Worse, Madhouse got bought by Nihon TV channel to save them from financial troubles caused by the recession as well. Nihon TV promptly canceled Satoshi Kon's final movie (Dreaming Machine) and sadly, we'll never see what might have been his greatest work.

There were several seasons when there was one show worth watching, and that wasn't especially good except in comparison to most of what was playing.

In fall 2008 we had choices of new series like:
Spice and Wolf
To Aru Majutsu no Index
Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino (not really a continuation of the Madhouse series)
Michiko to Hatchin
Tytania
Tentai Senshi Sunred
Mouryou no Hako
Toradora

It's a pretty diverse list - different quality, different genres, different maturity levels. But they do have one thing in common - they're from some sort of seinen material (Spice and Wolf, Gunslinger Girl, Michiko to Hatchin, Toradora) or are highly deconstructive of their genre conventions (Tytania, Tentai Senshi Sunred).

That sort of 'edge content' is what has disappeared from the market. By Fall 2009 the only new non-generic things released were Sora no Woto, The delightful Hanamaru Youchien, and two quirky one-shot OVAs: The Legend of Koizumi and Boku, Otaryman. But the worst was yet to come. There were some other good shows airing, but they were franchise continuations - no financial risk if the first show was successful.

It's all about the risk. There's no great anime right now because nobody in the Anime world is willing to run the risk necessary to create it. I suspect that a lot of interesting proposals are being dumpstered and a lot of projects are being reworked or shelved because they aren't sure things. Anime studios are playing to the base - which for them is the adult otaku market and little kids. I suspect that middle-school boys ate Ben-To up - it was cleverly produced and had all the right memes. I anticipate likewise for High School DxD, which I've been skimming in light novel form (mostly out of curiosity about the Paradise Lost meme soup) but can't imagine enjoying as an anime.

In Fall 2010, the new odd choices were down to Panty & Stocking, Shinrei Tantei Yakumo, and Kuragehime. Good choices all of them (I thoroughly enjoyed both Yakumo and Kuragehime), but mostly lacking in seinen value. Cerebral, plot-driven stuff like Spice and Wolf was long-gone.

And then came the drought: Fall 2011. The closest thing to seinen content was Mirai Nikki. Yeah, not really the thing.

I chose fall seasons, but Winter/Spring or Summer would have done just as well.

Tl/Dr version - Psygremlin asks: "So, is there anything good [in this season's anime offerings], or am I just being a grumpy old man?"

We're still in the dry spell. The shows I'm looking at this season are (in order of eagerness and carefully avoiding spoilers):

Another - Picture the creepy atmospherics of the better episodes of Ghost Hound in combination with the haunted school imagery of the Mai arc episodes of Kanon.

L&R: Another anime promo art and light novel cover, respectively.

The plot is sort of an spooky, impersonal version of Ano Hana as a school haunting. Excellent visuals, good seiyuu work, and suitably atmospheric SFX and music combine to make this my current pick for best show of the winter 2012 season. The OP and ED are appropriate but uninspired. On your left you have a poster illustration for the anime, on the right the cover of the source light novel.

Daily Lives of High School Boys (Danshi Kokosei no Nichijou) - It's a silly premise, but they're handling it very well. It's sort of a male version of the first season of Hidamari Sketch, but without the art school overtones and a stronger 4-komi plotless element. They also add a 'High School Girls are Funky' post-script after the end credits. Light, harmless, but often funny with no false notes. This, like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, rewards viewers with detailed Japanese pop culture knowledge. Video game slang, tropes from dating sims, light novels and anime are all much in evidence.

Ano Natsu de Matteru - I've seen this show before. It's called Onegai Teacher and it was a pretty big hit a decade ago. Ditch the whole 'stopping' handwave by the simple expedient of aging down the red-haired alien chick to a teenager (same chick right down to glasses, hair color and ship critter, although no pocky box has appeared yet), but is supremely well done. The execution exceeds the material with this one. Basically, they've tightened up the weak spots in Onegai and bumped the production values a bunch and produced an enjoyable, though by no means original or creative show.

At left: Could it be...Kazami-sensei? At right: Reductive, yes, but pretty to look at.

There are some interesting questions left hanging - most noticeable to me is: why is somebody's teenage daughter driving a spaceship around anywhere near a planet that hasn't experienced first contact yet? For that matter, if she has the power in her little ship to miraculously fix the devastation caused by her crash, why wasn't she just teleporting between A and B anyway? Why does lead character remind me so much of (Japanese) Young George Lucas? What is the deal with Limon senpai? If you think too much about this one, your head hurts, just as it did with the original.

Papa no Iukoto o Kikinasai! has been the surprise so far, getting on with the story in journeyman fashion. I have, incidentally decided that the OP and animation thereof is the best OP or ED this season out of what I've watched.

At left: Yuta unwittingly beholds his doom. At right: The hypothetical happy family shot in Yuta's one-room manshon. Guy in back is the pedo otaku viewer surrogate.

Great art? No. But it's simple and good at what it is. I will never love this show - there's too much fanservice in it for that - but it is well executed for what it is, and is on the 'this is OK' side of the pedobear scale - indeed, if I knew that there weren't dirty-minded pedo otaku watching it in Japan and hugging their Sora-chan, Mio-chan, or Hina-chan (shudder) pillows I'd be completely fine with it. Now if we can just get to the stage where Oda-senpai reappears and starts interacting with the nieces fun should ensue. The anime is actually a little better than the manga, so far. I hope somebody at Baka-Tsuki picks up the source light novels - they're probably pretty good.

Bodacious Space Pirates (Moretsu Uchuu Kaizoku)- Just OK. Again, the characters are pretty off the shelf, but the material is at least mildly interesting. They're really playing up the [Maria-sama ga Mitteru/Ouran High School Host Club/Mei-chan no Shitsuji] wealthy high-school/pirate princess dichotomy angle so far.

At left: Dunno if they're bodacious, but they're what's on offer. At right: Main Character in schoolgirl mode.

The ED animation suggests that we're going to end up with Joshikousei Pirate Star Trek TOS with Kuro-megane as Spock, Forelock meido girl as McCoy, and Main Character as Kirk (of course). This would be improved with the addition of voluptuous, green-skinned dancing women, but isn't bad for what it is so far. One thing I do like is that there is no sexual typecasting going on - lots of technical specialist roles are all held by girls. So far (ep 5) we have exactly one male character in any capacity and he's a prospective subordinate to Main Character. As my favorite early review (from artist-retired at myanimelist.com) says, "..I-is it okay? I mean this should be a total piece of garbage by all means, but there's no panty shots? No bungie cord titties flopping around? There's a shit ton of girls and even a maid cafe, but... Why doesn't this show suck?" From visual novel series Miniskirt Pirates. Unanswered questions: why don't the characters get fuzzy hair in microgravity (hairspray? but aerosols are murder on full recyc HVAC systems)? Why don't their school uniform skirts not create panchiro constantly in microgravity? I'm happy they don't, but my SF-geek willing suspension of disbelief wants to hear about velcro or something. At least their post-diaspora skinsuits looked credible, even if their bust sizes don't. Oh, and for the record - this is probably the worst OP recording of the season so far - even worse than Kill Me Baby...

Rinne no Lagrange - athletic highschool chick (president and sole member of the 'jersey girl' club which involves track suits and not big hair and bubblegum as you might expect) has some sort of mysterious subliminal connection with alien-provided transforming giant robot. Said providing aliens are represented by Mr. 2smooth2begood and Ms. Probablygoodbutconflicted. Random 'bad guys' who get lots of air time and character development are trying to take Main Character and her giant robo away. I strongly suspect that the bad guys are going to turn out to be the good guys and that Ms. Probablygoodbutconflicted will choke/defect in some critical battle scene when fighting Main Character after man character has been captured/suborned/convinced that the bad guys are really the good guys and that Mr. 2smooth2begood is, in fact, bad. Nice mecha design - you can tell that there are mecha design otaku out there and that they are being pandered to. It's better than watching paint dry. The characters are unexciting. Main character's victory 'Maru' move is already annoying. Ms. Probablygoodbutconflicted's signature 'nyaa' gesture is also already annoying (this is after ep 3). Probably will watch it, but it's going to be dead last in the regular viewing rotation. The characters and situations are just too off the shelf to interest me much.

Recorder to Randoseru - Same people as did Morita-san wa Mukuchi but only has one gag, which is pretty stale after the first ep. Even at three minutes, not worth my time. At left: otouto and nee-san. Yes, that's the one joke (illustrated left).

And last and most decidedly least, we have Kill Me Baby! It's 4-koma again. It's incomprehensible. It's badly drawn. It has a really annoying theme song. Oddly enough, I don't hate it. I don't like it very much either, but if I'm in a sufficiently angry-and-mindless nihilstic frame of mind it might be the right tool for the job. I probably won't finish this one. I might not watch ep 2.

So what are we watching in place of all the great anime we wish we were watching? Great old stuff! Psy has started some stuff I've recommended that he never got to: "I've finally got my paws on Aoi Bungaku, so that'll help me through the lean period. Going to have a look at some really old stuff - Mermaid Forest, Utena and The Third."

At right and below: There's always good old stuff like Takahashi's Mermaid Saga and Gallery Fake (yes, that's Van Gogh's Sunflowers behind) to tide us through the global meltdown.

We never finished Aoi Bungaku or Utena and never even started The Third, so his ideas are suggestions for chez Senile as well. We've been treating e-chan to Kamichu! and both versions of Cyborg 009 among other things. Milady and I have been enjoying Gallery Fake, which is 37 eps of excellent characterization and ambiguous situations involving fine art.

L&R: Gallery Fake DVD vol 1 cover and manga vol 1 cover

After watching lots of formulaic anime, I sometimes forget that characterizations are what make a show worth watching. Neither of the lead characters in Gallery Fake (pictured left) are simple enough to be tropes, although Fujita probably is the source of one. Sara is the sidekick and sounding board, but is a stronger, more complex, and more entertaining character than the leads in Rinne no Lagrange, Moretsu Space Pirates, or Ano Natsu. There's just no substitute for seinen material.

Last night our evening viewing was Tailenders - something else I'd been meaning to watch for ages.

PS.We await the on-again off-again Mardock Scramble

Ore no Imouto

Complications Involving Big Brothers and Little Sisters

I'm one of those people who didn't really like the upgrade that Kyon no Imouto got in the Suzumiya Haruhi animes versus her more distant supporting role in the source light novels. She usurped an important character development point of Kyon's.

That said, I'm following the Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai anime and I must admit to some complex opinions on it.

At left, the cover of volume 1 of the Ore no Imouto light novels.

Beforehand, I was worried that it was going to be some variation on inappropriate pervy/incestuous stuff like Kodomo no Jikan, which could be cute, but is mostly just creepy. (See Hanamaru Kindergarten for this same plot done without the creepy lolicon) Happily, it isn't, at least not so far (ep 7).

The lead character (Kyousuke - 京介) is a Kyon sort. He's the mild-mannered man seeking a normal life being constantly (at least during the plot) thrust into abnormal situations. It's not a new idea in comedy - several of the great Hollywood and UK comedies of the 20s and 30s use the straight man comic lead (Harold Lloyd and the young Alec Guiness come to mind), but the Japanese seem to have come late to it. Tanigawa's leading man in the Haruhi stories has become a trope. I can't regard this as an entirely bad thing, nor an entirely good one. I'd rather have quirky original non-trope characters, but if they had to use a trope, at least they picked a non-annoying one. The good news is that at least they didn't choose the iconic Sugita Tomokazu (the voice of Kyon, Yuichi in Kanon, and Rin in Shuffle! among thousands of other cool, detached male characters) to do the role. Instead they got the guy who played Tomoya in Clannad, and Ryuu in Kimi ni Todoke to do the deed. I think he's an excellent choice - someone as detatched as Sugita's characters would not fit the quiet desparation that drives Kyousuke to take muscly dad's right cross in place of his little sister.

Kyousuke is, by any measure, a late bloomer. He's 17 and seems to just be noticing that girls can be something other than annoyances or platonic companions.

L and R: If Manami had anything to say about it, Kyousuke would have more action than a pinball machine in an earthquake.

Something that
the anime does well is provide an initial expected trajectory for Kyousuke's life. He's perfectly happy to be a good student, go onto college, and then settle down to some sort of civil service job for the next 40 years or so. He expresses an interest in a simple, relaxed life, going so far as to purposefully delay taking the logical 'next step' in some of his relationships to maintain it. While he doesn't appear to be interested in police work (his father's career), he does seem to have a strong sense of and appreciation for the proprieties and gentilities of quiet existence, including brotherly duty to his junior sibling and valuing peace and order above self-expression.

There's a surface similarity here to Kyon in the Haruhi books, but the difference is that Kyon mostly uses the 'normal man' suit as a sort of camouflage. He eventually admits even to himself that he loves being the straight man consort to a fickle goddess because it livens up his otherwise somewhat dull life. By comparison, at least as of episode 7, Kyousuke really does seem to be more desirous of 'comfortable' than 'interesting.' The source light novels are currently being translated, and I'm curious to see how much depth the characters gain relative to the anime.

All of this set up gets pushed around in the first couple of episodes in which he discovers that his 14 year old little sister is not a noisy annoyance but a person, and that she seems to value his opinion and support, much to his surprise.

Fourteen-year-old Kirino-桐乃 (the little sister in question) is practically a walking stereotype. Not a trope, mind you,

At right: The core cast. L-R: Saori, Kuroneko, Kirino, Manami, and Kyousuke

although she embodies several of those as well, but she actually is very close to what I remember many/most middle-school little sisters of friends being like when I was in high school and college. She's not especially bright, is very focused on appearances, and is certain of her own certitude until she makes some misstep or is challenged, whereupon she collapses into a weeping puddle or has a fit of pique.

Her relationship with Kyousuke is mostly tsun-tsun, with increasingly common moments of mild dere creeping in as she begins to trust him as a source of support.

The OP music is the same every time but there's considerable variety in the OP animation including character introductions new to that episode. The ED songs vary by show and have unique animation for each one. I like this trend - if you have to tack on the OP and ED stuff, at least make it entertaining and different every episode.

So far, so good. Now the predictable, eye-rolling bits.

1. Her need for 'life counseling' is a consequence of her infatuation with otaku culture. And no, not just any otaku culture.

Couldn't be Harlock, Gundam, BL or Yaoi, nope. She has a thing for magical girl stories (and, a-la Genshiken, she has a 'bogus' favorite mahou shoujo anime that we'll no doubt be seeing animated in a couple seasons) that has, as she has grown to her current surprisingly-mature-looking 14 years, grown(?) into an obsession with erogames. Little sister erogames.

At left: Kyousuke deflects trouble from Kirino by claiming the eroge is his. Otou-san is not amused.

As I commented when I had just seen episode 1, "Basically, it's just a crossing of the characters of Kyon and Kyon no imouto from Haruhi with the plot from Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu."

Yeah. Pretty weird. And if it were played for irony, deconstruction, or social criticism, it would be predictable and possibly cogent and incisive, but probably not very popular with the viewership.

So far, though, Kirino is taking the traditional (and hollow) youth culture tack of declaring that her self definition is dependent on self-expression through eroge and expressing her inner otaku.

Her relationship with her favorite fellow otaku (a taciturn goth-loli) is similar to her relationship with her brother. Again, very typical in my observations. This is not the eye-rolling part. The eye-rolling part is that she's an otaku despite there being no reason given why she might be or why she picked up an interest in imouto eroge of all things. It's counterintuitive, and would bear exposition. So far, (ep 7)they haven't even hung a lampshade on it.

2. Her income stream. She has to be cute. It's in the title after all.

At left: Kirino's secret closet of addiction.

She doesn't, however, have to be a model. This is rather obviously a simple plot device to a) explain her ability to afford a secret closet full of (really expensive) erogames and anime, and b) will presumably serve to get her involved in the anime business pretty soon. Middle school models aren't particularly common. Again, it's just a little too convenient and there hasn't even been a vague attempt to explain it or lampshade it.

3. Complete lack of recognition that a hardcore otaku lifestyle might be marginalized by mainstream Japanese culture because it's - oh yeah - antisocial and unhealthy.

At Left: Kirino's 'normal' friends are not thrilled to find that she's an eroge otaku.

Tthe downsides of otakudom are either glossed over or handwaved away. This makes some sense for Densha Otoko, but a 14 year old girl with welcoming access to mainstream society is a different matter.

4. Fan Service. Yes, they were doing fan service with the 14 year old girls. Not much, thankfully, but it was definitely there.

At right: Kyousuke is always willing to give his sister a hand.

There's been a spate of this lately in a wide variety of shows - you'd think middle school girls were the apotheosis of feminine sexuality from the number of upskirts and low angle shots we've had lately. Factoring in a) that Japanese girls develop more slowly than they do in Europe and America and, b) they don't eat as horrible a diet as American kids do, it's reasonable to assume that a Japanese middle school girl wouldn't be cuter/more developed/more feminine than the American middle school girls I see every day when I drive e-chan to school. Quite a few of them are cute, yes, but generally not in a 'want to see her pantsu' way to any healthy male over about age 18.

5. Complete ignorance of the Westermarck effect. No, I don't expect Fushimi-sensei (the author of the light novels) to know about a fairly obscure bit of imprinting research, even if it is iconic in the psychology business and even if it is a standard checkbox item in Psych 101 classes the world over. That said, all you need to do is ask anybody who has a sibling what they think of getting some action in that quarter. Put simply, the only people who actually find the idea of sexual hijinks between siblings interesting are those without siblings. If either party cohabited with the other before the age of six then there never is romantic interest between them.

The 'love my imouto' stories that have been popular lately all have this blind spot. It's pretty much a requirement for the plot to go anywhere. A better question is: why are these plots popular in Japan now? My theory is that it's a consequence of Japan's low birth rate - relatively few Japanese below the age of 30 have a sibling. The concept of a sibling is an abstraction to them and they don't see any reason why there wouldn't be some sexually-charged moments between siblings.

So having named its deficiencies in considerable detail, why am I still watching it? Because it's entertaining and ambiguous. I'm curious to see which of the possible plot paths it will take, and it has consistently been willing to go anywhere with the characters to get a laugh out of the viewer.

Total Recall

Huh? What? Senile has finally lost it. He's referring to cheesy Schwarzenegger movies now.

Maybe. I almost titled this post We Can Remember it For You Wholesale, which is the Philip K Dick story that inspired the movie. But then I decided that, since nobody in the anime/manga fan world seems to pay attention to anything but anime and manga, I might as well title it with something from pop culture in hopes that somebody would get the reference.

At this point, you're bound to be wondering what I am writing about. Relax: It's all new stuff (currently airing anime) and it all relates to the theme of moving memory and identity around technologically. I'm going to order these by personal preference - most to least favorite.

1.
Kaiba
カイバ
Madhouse/Yuasa Masaaki

Ever seen Fantastic Planet, or any other eastern-bloc animation from the '60s or '70s? Nah, I didn't think so. Well, if you had, you'd say "Wow, this looks a lot like animated Eastern-European formalism from the '60s or '70s!" As it is, you'll just have to take my word for it. Since Madhouse did the animation and production, you can rest assured that it looks exactly how it is supposed to look. I think they were warming up for this when they were making the dream world sequences in Paprika...

At Left: Kaiba awakens knowing nothing of who he is or why he is here.

This is one of those shows that keeps me looking at anime. It seems that for every thousand shounen fanservice fests out there there is only one show like Kaiba, but that one is so worthwhile that it justifies all the crap. You just never know when you're going to stumble across the concentrated results of creative imagining. Kaiba is bright, beautiful, dark, puzzling, on the surface and deep and mysterious all at once. It involves space travel, mind control, thought transference, the definition of self, and the ethics of terrorism...and that's just in the first four episodes.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the enigma that is Kaiba. It's bright, colorful, complex, and it (unlike nearly everything else this season) even has good OP and ED music. Be forewarned: everything you see in episode one relates to everything else, so even if you don't understand what's going on, pay careful attention. It'll all be explained later on...probably.

2.
RD Sennou Chousashitsu (Real Drive)
ＲＤ 潜脳調査室
Production I.G/Shirow Masamune (yes, that's the pair that did last season's Ghost Hound)

This show has two things in common with Kaiba: 1. It deals with the abstraction of intelligence in a virtual world, and 2. It throws you into the plot already running at full speed.

The differences are just as significant. While Kaiba is set in some measurelessly distant future, There's a date explicitly set in the middle of the 21st century for Real Drive. Likewise, while the art of Kaiba is formalist and fantastic, Real Drive is set in a world so real and literal that you can almost taste the sea foam when the 'camera' pans across a shoreline. Beg, borrow or steal enough computing horsepower to watch this one in High Def if you must - there's a lot of detail, both painted and rendered on the screen. And if you wait for the DVD, you'd be well-served to see it on Blu-Ray.

At Left: The years have not been kind to Haru Masamichi. But at least he has great views.

Meet Haru-san. He's got a problem. He went for a dive one afternoon and woke up fifty years later. Luckily for him, and for his world, the nursing home he inhabits these days is fully wired. Also lucky for him, he draws a smart and genki candy striper (Aoi Minamo) to help him in his dives into the Meta-Real Network (usually known as 'Metal'). Extra points to those who bother to parse Minamo's surname kanji, btw.

At Right: Is 15-year-old Minamo-chan Shirow's first genki girl? She gets extra points for the brown eyes, hair bow, and lack of idealized features. She even has chubby thighs, just like the real thing. Think "Matsuri from Kamichu! meets GITS".

I haven't watched a lot of this one yet, but Shirow's plots seldom disappoint. There's some talkiness at the beginning, but once Haru wakes up from his dive, the show gets on with it and the talk is driven by the plot, instead of vice-versa.

3.
Himitsu - The Revelation
秘密 〜The Revelation〜
Madhouse/shoujo manga by Shimizu Reiko

If you find Real Drive a little too futuristic, there's always Himitsu. The idea here is a pretty simple one: Cops in the near future do the Law & Order thing by sucking the memories out of a dead person's head with a computer. Since the last thing a murder victim saw is often the murderer, it helps a lot with criminal investigation.

At Left: Uke, meet Seme-san, your new boss. But who's who?

Our protagonist is the 'new guy' on the detective squad. He has been hired in to replace a detective who died of unnatural causes. His special ability is lip reading, which turns out to be very useful to the detective team for the simple, if unexplained reason that the computer sucks visual, but not auditory memory out of dead (but not too-long-dead) brains.

But wait, it gets better: In order to get all the memories out of somebody's brain, you have to crank it up to 120% of neural function, as indicated by dramatic bar graphs that go into the scary red zone right before stuff starts happening. Huh? Try running this idea past a research psychologist. For extra amusement value, make sure that the boffin is taking a drink first... Let's just say that this show has the same relationship to neurological science that Star Trek has to nuclear engineering.

Since it's based on a shoujo manga, there's a lot of hand-wringing involved about the ethics of knowing a dead person's innermost thoughts and the basic 'yuck' value of the whole thing, at least in the first show. Our protagonist doesn't exactly show himself as a shining example of intestinal fortitude. The super-plot is all about solving murder mysteries. There are sub-plots involving some light yaoi themes and the aforementioned hand-wringing.

At Right: Seme-san is revealed by his important posing in front of racks of blinkenlights. That is, unless he really wants to just give it all up to the new hire.

The storytelling is rather conventional murder-mystery stuff. Frankly, Arthur Conan-Doyle did this better more than a century ago in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery," and thankfully spared us the boys love angle. The 'thrilling climax' failed to thrill me. It had the feeling of an Agatha Christie story: All the chess pieces move around on the board with just the endgame shown to the audience, and then Miss Marple recites the game for you at the end. Meh. I watched one episode and haven't looked back. If you have read enough actual detective fiction to know good from bad, you'll do the same.

If you want to see a better version of this same basic plotline done with genetics and the paranormal instead of technology and the mental, consider watching Witch Hunter Robin.

Gunslinger Girl - Further Thoughts and Anime Series 1 and 2

I've been reading Gunslinger Girl again. This is prompted by having finally acquired all five volumes of GSG in print in the US (from ADV Manga).

Here's review of the recent ADV releases from a conversation on Mangaforums:

Read through the ADV release of Gunslinger Girl vol 5. My conclusion: it's just as good/bad as their vol 4.

In particular, the very last conversation in the volume between Hillshire and Triela is an excellent point of measure. Psygremlin and I had a conversation here on exactly how this should be translated which culminated in me translating it myself from the Japanese raws. In short, ADV fails. I wouldn't translate '褒める' as 'congratulate.' My dictionaries are rather clear that it's 'to praise,' which coming from Triela has a very different meaning than 'to congratulate.'

There's another place where they get it not quite right. Somebody else's translation of the Henrietta and Giuse in the former monastery scene looking at the portrait (I think it was Toukoubi?) included a nice cultural note explaining what is the deal with the monk, the cell, and the portrait. Nada from ADV.

If it were Naruto nobody would care. But here the mangaka has gone to significant trouble to put his fictional story in the real historical Italy with real buildings, artwork, cars, guns, etc. Because of the nature of Japanese college entrance exams, it's distinctly possible that many Japanese (at least the ones attracted to Gunslinger Girl) would recognize much of what is missed by less-well-educated English speakers...

Cultural notes, people. They don't take up any space, and they often add a lot of value...

My final grade for the ADV translation of Vol 5: C (adequate, but the fan scanslations are significantly better).

And that pretty much sums it up. The first place to look for a quality scanslation of Gunslinger Girl is Toukoubi. Sintendo also did a good job, but have disbanded. Sadly, I know of no fan scanslations circulating of any volume earlier than four, which means that I might just decide to adopt a darker cover and do it myself when I feel like spending an hour a page improving my Japanese reading comprehension someday. As I've said about Ai-Ren and Chobits, Gunslinger Girl deserves a best-possible scanslation and (with the exception of Toukoubi and Sintendo's work) hasn't had one.

Gunslinger Girl is thought-provoking. It's full of moral quandaries and no-win situations. Like Ai-Ren, I think it it some kind of emotional litmus test, possibly of one's ability to be compassionate.

Looking at the printed manga has been an interesting experience in itself. The eye catches different details on paper than on the screen. I was especially interested in the contents of Giuse's desk in vol 3 - he's building a ship in a bottle, and has an aquarium. A patient fellow, our Giuse.

Here's part of a long conversation between me and psygremlin at mangaforums about Gunslinger Girl, among other things. I'll edit to reduce spoiler content, but if you click through to the original, you'll be entering a spoiler minefield, so be warned. Here's Psygremlin, having just watched the original 13 episode anime (there's a sequel in production now).

Just finished watching the series, and although I have a lot to say about it, I'll keep it brief for now, because I don't know how far you are in watching it, plus there's probably going to be a raft of spoilers.

But salient points are:

- I love the artwork in the show, very nice and crisp. That caught my straight from the lovely opening sequence.

- Now that I'm finished I can see exactly why you bought it up in response to my comment about the brutality in Here & There. Except I feel that in many ways GSG is more 'horrific'. Here & There deals with war and people are brutalised during wartime. In GSG, it's about the indifference and almost contempt the girls are treated with. Most handlers treat them like the machines they've designed to be (despite clear traces of their inner humanity shining through - think Triela and her bears). Most of the handlers (apart from Jose) seem to see the girls' devotion towards them more like a dog's loyalty and obedience than "love" - for want of a better word.

- Although one scary part of their conditioning comes through in the interaction between Rico and the bellboy (as you mentioned). The soulless, mechanical way in which she says "sorry" literally sent a shiver up my spine. She wasn't sorry at all - she was doing her job and he got in the way.

- Strangely (and possibly highlighting the 'wrongness' of their situation) if I compare it to the last girls with guns anime I saw - Noir (altho this is more a lolis with guns) the main difference is that although Noir killed more people than your average Tarentino movie, not a drop of blood is ever shown on screen. Whereas in GSG, there's plenty of blood flying when bullets hit home (not to mention poor young Elsa). Add to this the fact the girls are running around in clothes more suited to the mall (and their ages) than say a military style jump suit highlights their youth, perceived innocnce (which could be more naievety - afterall, Henrietta no longer knew what Venus was), and wrongness of their situation. (a bit like the girls wearing their school unifoms in space in Voices of a Distant Star).

- Funnily enough, I found the OP (which I now love) became more and more poignant for me as the story progressed each episode. Especially the opening line "In truth, there is no better place to be" - when you consider the girls' situation before they ended up at Social Welfare (great pun too - they remove people that could affect the welfare of society), they are in a "better place".

And here is my reply:

You got what I hoped you would get out of the Rico/Bellboy scene. It's not what she does, but how she does it that makes it so horrible.

One of the ways that Aida really tweaks the reader/viewer's sensibilities is with the brutal, bloody reality of what the girls do versus their native personalities. Is innocence the same as naivete, or is it simply that they don't have vivid memories of what they did on missions because of the conditioning?

Something worth mentioning too is that children really are the ultimate pragmatists. Aida seems to understand this. Rico might be fully aware of what she's doing, but she knows it's the only because of what she does that she isn't stuck in a hospital bed anymore. Jean may beat her, and her missions may be horrible, but it's obvious that to her, at least, being able to walk and do things for the first time in her life is so good that it's worth all the bad.

One thing I find interesting is how the handlers are portrayed. They're generally not soulless bastards. Marco is detatched from Angelica precisely because he was emotionally hurt by her progressive amnesia due to the conditioning. I think Aida does a great job of making everybody (even the "villains") someone worth knowing and understanding - much like Miyazaki does in his best work.

Concur on the clothes - not only are they necessary for urban camouflage, but they point out that the cyborg assassins are girls who, left to their own devices, think as girls think, and wear what girls wear. Jose's gift of the expensive fashion over coat to Henrietta is very definitely a gift of human affection, and Henrietta treasures it as such.

Ultimately, GSG is not about lolis with guns. It's not about mind control. It's not about the ethics of terrorism and anti-terrorism. It's not about cyborgs. (although all of these things are touched on). GSG is about people and the consequences of actions, both anticipated and unexpected. That's why there's blood - it's a consequence of shooting people. GSG works as a story because it always follows through with the consequences.

It's art, and I'm surprised it's not more widely seen here, given that the anime is both accessible and commercially available. But then nobody has read Ai-Ren, either, which is as profound in its own way.

Which provoked this reply from psygremlin:

What's interesting is there are essentially 5 very different relationships (6 with Elsa) portrayed in the fratellos. And each seem to work on their own levels. Obviously we feel most for Jose and Henrietta, because he treats her more like a human - as Triela says "his kid sister" - than the others. Yet I got the feeling that even this approach - while humane in our eyes - wasn't right. There were a couple of moments when Henrietta does something - like the way she first holds the coat, or wants to keep the wrapping from the camera - that bordered on the obsessive. Add to that the fact she knew what happened with Elsa and her handler, and I'd have to say of all of them, she would be most likely to do the same.

To which I said:

The treatment of Elsa in the manga really brings it home - Jose/Henrietta is the literal fratello attatchment at its closest and most intimate. If the wheels come off this relationship, it turns into Lauro/Elsa. It's made quite obvious that Henrietta empathizes completely with Elsa, and that's why she's the only one who can answer the question of Elsa's fate of all those who have been asked. Her empathy is what I found so heartbreaking in the manga scene. She obviously isn't abstractly considering doing what Elsa did when considering Elsa's condition.

Yes, Henrietta is obsessed with protecting Jose (to both his worry and discomfort at times), and is obsessed with being the precise center of his attention. This is all creepily familiar with anybody who has seen the responses that military working dogs have toward their handlers (yes, same term). All it would take to upset this particular applecart would be for Henrietta to discover that Jose had a serious girlfriend...

Hillshire/Triela is presented as an alternate and (I agree) generally more functional relationship. The difference here isn't so much in the relationship itself, I think, as in the difference between the participants. Henrietta and Rico are the emotionally youngest of the girls, and from their stature I guess that they are the physically youngest as well. They're emotionally very different from Triela, who is enough older that she's dealing with menarche and the change of perception that comes along with it.

Since Triela's more emotionally mature, she needs a friend and partner much more than she needs a protective/loving big brother. Teddy bears are an amusing choice of gift for her because she, of all the girls least wants/has a use for stuffed animals. She seems to know that she ended up here because she was nearly killed in a snuff film, and it gives a certain edge to her perspective. Hillshire, accordingly, fills the friend/partner role. As much as anything, he humanizes her when she's prone to indiscriminately kill. The conditioning adds a certain creepy reverse-lolicon quality to their relationship, which Hillshire (being a both a wounded but still determined idealist and all-round decent guy) carefully ignores.

I thought that sending Triela off to train with the green-beret equivalents of the Carabinieri was a stroke of genius. It also thought it pointed out that they (section 2) had spent a lot of time training the girls to behave like perfect SWAT team members (policemen, basically), but had neglected several thousand years of experience in the basic rules of human strife that every good soldier (or good martial artist) knows. It's sort of a variation of the question asked by Neviril in Simoun - You send us on these missions and tell us to act like soldiers, and then you train us to be police. Which do you want us to be, and are you willing to accept what we will become if we do what we must to win?

It's worth mentioning that Giuseppe and Hillshire are alike in that they don't like to blunt their charges' awareness with heavy conditioning, preferring instead to teach their charges appropriate behaviors the old fashioned way. Giuseppe and Jean are brothers (actual fratelli), but couldn't be more different in their approaches to fratello management.

...which was true when written, but the more recently scanslated chapters of the manga have developed Jean and Giuse's relationship as brothers, and shown some complexity to Jean's treatment of his Cyborg charges (he's also responsible for Claes) that was not apparent before Vol 3. As in real life, people in GSG change, and their actions in the present are not always predictable from those of the past.


Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino Anime

In other Gunslinger Girl news, Gunslinger Girl II: Il Teatrino is running now in Japan. It's another 13 episode show, and it is, so far, very canon to the manga. Aida-sensei is supposed to be prominently involved in production and scriptwriting, and they're getting a lot of little things right.

Sadly, what they're not getting right is the animation, which is...acceptable at best. It's obvious that the animation is both rushed and done on the cheap. The first episode is the worst (crowd scenes had me cringing), but other than that, it's watchable. The first series was done by Madhouse, who do Kon Satoshi's movies now, so probably couldn't be bothered to do a TV show like GSG2 even if the budget had been big enough (it obviously wasn't).

Here's my take from having just watched the first episode:

I've also heard bad things about the AEN sub (from different sources) so I waited a whole day and pulled the torrent for the Triad release. When I added the torrent last night before bed there were 300+ seeds and 600+ peers. Completion time was limited by recipient bandwidth. It was sitting on the hard drive this AM when I woke up.

{edit - later}
Watched GSGII ep 1. My initial impressions: OP song indifferent. OP animation (partially - looked like some posterized photo capture there) OK, but not spectacular. Does get the point across, though.

I got really, really tired of the lame moving-block animation in the crowd sequences. Either animate the people or do snap cuts between stills. Don't bother with Hanna-Barbera-style moving cutouts. OTOH, Backgrounds were great. They were playing with a watercolor wash look (probably to hide that they'd ripped some scenery out of photos) but it worked OK.

Something that didn't work quite as well was the character animation. Henrietta's face wasn't as mobile as in the manga, which is something of a trick given that the manga is still pictures. Likewise, they didn't show the payoff scene in the walking-on-the-curb sequence (I suspect it was cut for time). Things improved after Hillshire and Joze returned from France, although the animation was still rather clunky. The vehicles aren't generic (thankfully) but haven't gained the stature of the manga yet. I suspect they will - writing the Alfas out of the plot would probably not please Aida-sensei. Likewise, nice to see that the Vespa is yellow...

The cyborgs' eyes seem to be intentionally creepy. Fine. I can cope with that, and it does fit, especially when 'Etta does her trick on the scooter. I don't think I'll ever get used to Joze's hair, though...

All of the scenes are canon from the manga, though they are rearranged in chronological order to provide a good introduction episode before starting on the Pinnochio arc. I didn't much like how Henrietta came off looking robotic, reverse-lolicon and incompetent while Triela looked thoughtful, mature and capable, though this may be dramatic setup for the first Pinnochio encounter - 'pride goeth,' etc. They did get the feel of the dynamic between Joze and Henrietta fairly well. They touched on that between Hillshire and Triela, and showed very little of Jean/Rico, but nothing out-of character happened.

I liked how they introduced all the Section 2 supporting cast. We only know a couple of names, but we have seen all the faces and characteristic mannerisms. Nice touch. I was also amused by Beatrice's cameo...

ED song and animation - not bad at all. As evocative as 'The Light Before We Land,' if with a rather different text. Gets the point across well, I think. I wonder if they'll sub in different animation vignettes as we go along.

I have to say I wanted a higher-res encode from Triad. Lots of artifacts, etc. I'm guessing their raws weren't wonderful, but ugh. Since the filesize of the AEN sub is about the same, I suspect they're both from the same raw. Oh well. I'm sure it'll go to DVD sooner or later.

Conclusion: Animation nowhere near as good as Madhouse's work in the first series. Right now it gets an A for backgrounds, a B for character animation, and a C for misc. animation. Music: OK but nothing wonderful - isn't as evocative as that of the first series. Character development and plotting: A. If it stays at this standard I'll grumble at the animation gaffes, but will enjoy watching. If they're saving up cash for later eps, all might be forgiven, though I'd say they were stupid to short-budget the first show.

And here from a little later on:

Re GSG2: to be fair, the bar was set very high by Madhouse. They are a cinematic-quality shop, so naturally their work looks very good indeed (and I think that GSG II is a victim of their success - I'm sure they're working fulltime on Kon Satoshi's next movie right now). That said, it looks like Artland wasn't really trying. I don't know about the budget, but so far this falls in the category of 'cheap TV animation.' Which is fine for something like Hidamari Sketch, but not so good for something as immersive as GSG. Re 'shiny' I think that's both a stylistic choice and a way to hide a lot of the splice work holding the backgrounds together. That's fine - it is sunny Italy after all. I didn't like that cars on the street are mostly matte polygons with dropover textures. Quick, cheap wireframe CGI work.

They definitely got a lot of the important stuff right, which is why it's watchable with such marginal animation. Yes, Henrietta with Joze's shirt was done very well (but I was a little annoyed at them getting the surfaces of his desk right - there's a bottle, a tank, and a computer, but not showing any detail - you don't know what's in the bottle or the tank. Joze's character remains more opaque than it might to the viewer because of that). My reaction - and Hillshire's - to the the way Triela looked after the big shootout was well done. Likewise Triela and the manhole cover. In both cases, it does a good job of setting up the essential tension between the characters and their job.

And here, I talk a little more about it after having seen episode three:

It's becoming apparent to me that, while there's no budget (and this is a great pity), they're trying very hard to tell a good story. The placing shots of Montalcino at the beginning of the ep were reminiscent (in a somewhat low-res, fuzzy way) of the trip to Sicily footage from the first series. They got the feel right, which indicates that somebody in this overworked and obviously underpaid art department is trying hard to get it as right as they can. Likewise, pacing and direction are quite good. Even the spots that should be draggy aren't too draggy. The only places I feel like the art quality hurts is in facial expressions- Aida's art style gives a lot of expressiveness in a face, and we don't always see those subtleties carried across to the animated character.

Yes the framing rate could be higher - the jerky motion does bother me, and is reminiscent of a lot of mediocre TV animation of the last two decades. But if they had to sacrifice plot, backgrounds, or frame rate, I'm glad they chose frame rate. On the upside, there was actually good BG music in this ep. It was distinctly reminiscent of the happy Italian town BGM from the first series, which is no bad thing. The OP continues to leave me cold (cheap drum machines usually do), although I sorta like the still montage. The ED works better for me, and I still like the inset vignette. Stark works well with GSG, so the stark titles and credits are good. I suspect that when we see a higher-res picture, they'll suffer significantly less than the animation will.

My conclusion, as of ep 3 at least: ArtLand doesn't suck. They're just underpaid. And if they had to scrimp on something, I'm glad it was the opening episode, which was barely canon to the manga and mostly existed to establish characters. I just hope it didn't hurt the ratings for the rest of the series too much - after all, Aida's still writing, and if this show does badly we'll never see a GSG season 3.