Ray: [Mouryou no Hako is] too slow paced and by the 10 minute mark I got bored. No, it’s not yaoi, I get that, but I honestly don’t see it as a great show. It’s just dressed up with surealism and bizzaro-ness.

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 Audio Face Off 1 - DMC [15:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (305)

Here’s a little experiment–an audio version of one of our now-regular feature, the Face Off. Here, we have a rambling conversation about the recently concluded Detroit Metal City, one of the most outrageous and yet hilarious comedies to come along in anime in a while. We talk not only about the final episode but also about the manga, and why there doesn’t seem to be any bands today that are like DMC.

As befits a show of its nature–this audio file is tagged “Explicit” in iTunes. Unless you want your kid to be like Krauser-tan, we suggest, as Negishi does, that your child listen to something else. :)

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 Anime Diet Radio Episode 27 [63:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (188)

 

 Anime Diet Radio Episode 27 [63:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (61)

After a long, long break–this is the 27th episode of Anime Diet Radio. Which was recorded a month ago, as you’ll quickly tell when you discover how far we were in the Fall season on this one…it was employment, folks, full-time employment that did me in for about a month. But in either case, there are three news items about the weirdness of otakudom as well as a Roundtable extravaganza about ef-a tale of melodies, Ga-Rei Zero, Kuroshitsuji, Kurozuka, and Chaos;Head!

I should also note that Anime Diet Radio Episode 28 is actually in the can (recorded last week), and should be released next week.

Show Order

• (00:00-04:37) Introduction
• (04:38-12:00) News 1: Evangelion 2.0: “You Can (Not) Advance”
• (12:01-18:44) News 2: Kannagi is “Pizza Hutted”
• (18:45-26:33) News 3: Woman Threatens Parents Over Manga
• (26:34-27:22) Roundtable: Intro
• (27:23-31:18) Roundtable: MIke on ef-a tale of melodies
• (31:19-38:35) Roundtable: Ray on Ga Rei Zero
• (38:36-45:18) Roundtable: Jeremy on Kuroshitsuji
• (45:19-55:00) Roundtable: All on Kurozuka
• (55:01-63:23) Roundtable: All on Chaos;Head
• (63:23-end) Conclusion

Show Notes

• OP: “motto☆Hade ni ne!” by Haruka Tomatsu (OP to Kannagi)
• ED: “Vanilla Salt” by Yui Horie (ED to Toradora)
• The original news items for the Evangelion story(1), the Kannagi/Pizza Hut promo(2), and the woman’s death threat(3) are at Anime News Network.

Web References for iTunes Listeners

• (1) http://tinyurl.com/4ohdxv
• (2) http://tinyurl.com/3g2nnz
• (3) http://tinyurl.com/6yjewv

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I totally forgot that last episode the crew was facing the Old Turtle Dude and the overtly wacky long hair woman.

I’m obviously missing a lot of references here, as Kuro is sucked into the illusion, and the Turtle dude makes him take out some human waste in the delusion (yeeeewww).

Also, Kuro works with the strange hair woman in reenacting the scene of confrontation between her and Saniwa; or he’s like the cue for her to start; sort of like the guys hitting the small drums in a Noh play.

It’s a bit odd that him and the enemy almost coordinates in the reenactment; again, there’s a Japanese cultural reference that I missed somewhere.

As the plot takes a sharp turn (this being 13 episode and all), Kuromitsu shows up, and dispose of the enemy in her remaining stage. But the mysterious to Kuro’s memory and why Kuromitsu cut his head off at that time still isn’t solve, nor anything from his memory for that matter.

The answer is in the Genom/Tyrell Tower, the Gate of Mordor, the core of the Death Star…

One way in, one way out. But if Kuromitsu is waiting in there, then…

Could she be the one orchestrates it all? What about the Onmiyoji?

What parts of Kuro’s (I guess being Minamoto Raiko doesn’t matter now) memory is real? Which part is false? What’s the ultimate significance?

We get a breather from the epic battle in this episode, and Ninja Scroll like supernatural enemies fills this episode up and together with the Noh play sequence, makes it all that more exotic.

I await the release of subtitled (English or Chinese) DVD with eagerness and impatience. I just hope the show doesn’t let me down.

Oh and, don’t just read this! Watch the episode and immerse in this piece of art yourself.

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My, my…my first real article in a month, and it’s a game review of all things. This isn’t just any game, though–it’s a very anime-ish game, featuring Hirano Aya no less as the main girl, and it offers a blend of story, music, and sensible gameplay that has me enthralled like I haven’t been since the old Final Fantasy games.

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Every piece of fiction or fantasy must meet certain fundamental criteria to be successful. Or, to restate in a less oracular fashion it’s much easier to pigeonhole fiction when it goes wrong than it is to explain why a certain fictional work is done well. The former is due to a lack of technique, forethought, research, or a combination of all three. The latter comes from gut feeling, an emotional response. We read what we like to read (or watch) and if we had to explain why we liked it we’d be hard-pressed to find the right words to express our feelings. But if something goes wrong then we can easily point our fingers and say, well, this is what they did wrong, and this they they could have done better.

“Suspension of disbelief is a necessary attitude in order to enjoy fiction” and to this sentiment I wholeheartedly agree. Reading the Lord of the Rings, for example, would be damned difficult if at every page you had to mutter to yourself, “there is no such thing as orcs!” or “where do the orcs come from if there are no orcs of the opposite sex?” If a person reads it in this manner at some point he would throw the book into the fireplace or the basement or into whatever other place he reserves for the books-that-he-does-not-like and that would be the end of that. This reason is why some people do not read fiction at all, but luckily most of us are not like that. We retain a bit of our younger imaginations and it becomes tickled whenever we see or read something that we have never read before.

But “suspension of disbelief” does not mean an ignorance of the subject nor can everything in fiction be suspended, though some things can. Science, in particular physics, is oftentimes suspended with little detriment to the story. A hovering spacecraft without any evidence of propulsion to counteract the downward push of gravity would contradict Newton’s Third Law of physics, but more than one author has used that marmoth to good effect without to much harm to the story. If everything in ’science’ fiction and fantasy had to conform to everyday laws and realities then all we would have left is fiction and where is the fun in that? So the answer is yes, yes we need suspension of disbelief and if coincidences happen more often in fiction then the mathematics of probability would suggest, we keep our mouths shut and our eyes glued to the story.

But the one principle, the principle that no fiction writer can ignore, science fiction or otherwise, is that his characters must behave like real people. These characters may be put into all sorts of fantastic situations but in the end they must behave in ways we would understand. “If I was put into this situation would I behave like this?” or more generally “if Bob was put into that situation, would he behave like that?” And if the answer is ‘yes’ then the writer did his job and the story is fun. Suspension of belief applies to almost everything, mathematics, physics, biology, you name it, but it doesn’t apply to characters.

And Xam’d, despite all of its other redeeming qualities, does not accomplish the task of making its characters real. Maybe it’s because, unlike most of my audience, I know too much about children and the military to enjoy it properly. But I think it’s more than that: the problems in Xam’d point to deeper flaws in the marketing and production of anime, and perhaps even flaws in Japanese society itself. Japan has not had a military in sixty years [a good thing] and yet some Japanese continue to use the military in their stories even though they have no idea what they’re writing about [a bad thing]. Unfortunately this situation cannot be avoided. Most science fiction requires explosions, warfare, weapons, and destruction, and that requires… militaries! And so instead of doing actual independent research on real militaries the producers pull out the standard liberal tropes and cliches of what they think the military is like. And that leads to the sorts of disasters that we see in Xam’d.

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Children, according to the general opinion, are cute and that while I do not wish to challenge this opinion I would like to point out that they’re not always cute. They need a little bit of order and a little bit of authority, to break up the fights, but most importantly they need something to DO. Most children are not geniuses and if they were forced to stay in one place for a very long time the most they would think of doing is to bang their heads on the desk and whine. I’m sure most of us have had experience like that in school. And yet in anime, nine times out of ten, the children do nothing except to look cute whenever they appear onscreen, and disappear into thin air whenever they’re not needed for character development. What do these children do in the intervening time? This phenomenon happens not just in Xam’d but in many other shows including this season’s Casshern Sins. The children are not real characters. Instead they’re little figurines whose existences serves as foil for the development of other characters. And so whenever these children appear we feel or think, “oh no, not again, not more stale character development!” For the story and character development that is very bad.

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The reason I think manga is fundamentally superior to anime is because most anime comes from manga. If there is a good anime then there will almost always be a good manga, but if a manga is good there might not be an anime for it. To make a good manga requires pen, paper, time, and a talent for drawing, but to make an anime to be shown on TV requires a lot more: effort, money, time… everything. This extra barrier filters out most manga and so very few innovative manga become anime. If the producers know that a certain formula will make them money, why should they change and try something knew? Mangaka may be artists but televisions executives are businessmen and since that will always be so, manga will always be more innovative and better than anime.

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If we lower our standards sufficiently enough soon everything even cow dung will appear beautiful and pretty to our shining and radiant eyes.  I did not like the way the major dressed in Ghost in the Shell or the way Faye dressed in the first season of Cowboy Bebop but their characters were compelling enough that it could be overlooked.  Furthermore both demonstrate that at times they do have a sense of fashion.  When Faye walks into the opera house to catch Mao but instead is caught by Vicious she’s wearing a gorgeously sexy and perfectly appropriate dress.  When the Major is in the presence of the Prime Minister in Season 2 of GITS she wears a very respectable colonial brown khaki instead of her usual bimbo outfit.  Clothing matters.  GITS is also one of the few anime shows where not all of the soldiers are incompetent.  The people in Section 9 at least know how to use their weapons and to follow the chain of command, which is much more than can be said of the soldiers in many other anime series.  I’ve heard that the series Flag has competent soldiers too, but I haven’t watched it yet.

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Are their better anime series out there this season than Xam’d? I don’t know, and I don’t think so, which is why I’m not watching much anime this season.  However there are many good manga out there.  May I recommend Vinland Saga, which has some of the best goddamn storytelling ever? Full Metal Alchemist is good, and I also recommend it, but it not quite as good as Vinland Saga because like Xam’d it has too much of the liberal claptrap about the military.  I also recommend One Piece because unlike the other Big Three, it’s funny in a whimsical way and it doesn’t take itself as seriously as Naruto or Bleach.  One Piece mostly sticks to what it is good at: which is Luffy and his particular brand of humor.

Another good series is Biomega for its gargantuan futuristic landscapes, apocalyptic atmosphere, and general explosion and pawnage.  The main character and hero is surprisingly likeable despite the fact that he rarely talks and that most of his behavior consists of blowing up enemies with his gun.  Nihei, the mangaka, is good at capturing the little gestures that gives personality and context to his characters.   He can do that in the space of a single page, which is important because he has to kill them off several pages later.  Biomega is unique because most of the characters die shortly after we meet them.

Another good series Yokohoma Kaidaishi Kikou, which is the only slice-of-life manga that I’ve managed to finish.  I won’t lie: the main character, Alpha, is gorgeously pretty when she has all of her clothes on and she’s the main appeal of YKK.  As I’ve said before, I like to see pretty women, but I don’t want to see prostitutes.   Ashinano, the mangaka knows how to draw the hips and the curves on a woman’s body, and he knows how to draw clothes to fit that body.  It also has [as an afterthought] some of the most beautiful landscape sketches I’ve seen.  Drawing breasts is easy, drawing clothes is not.  As Yoda might say: “this talent… few men have.”

Another good manga for those who prefer their villains megalomaniacal and their heroes angsty is Pluto by Naoki Urasawa.  In theme and character it is very similar to 20th Century Boys and Monster, both I highly recommend.  A megalomaniacal but tormented villain pulling the strings behind the president of the United States and other world leaders is planning on taking over the world, and only a couple of brave, angsty souls who know the truth can stop him.  Pluto is what Astro Boy would have been like had it been created by Urasawa.  Earlier I had mentioned that most of the time when adults look at children they see instead their hopes and fears towards children rather than the base reality.  Urasawa does it perhaps more than others, but he does it well.  He knows how to catch children at their very best when they’re particularly charming or vulnerable [counterpoint: in real life this rarely happens] and some of his most endearing characters are Dieter in Monster, Kanna when she was just a girl in 20th Century Boys, and Atom’s sister Uran, in Pluto.

Another good series is Berserk, which has copious amounts of blood, guts, demons, giant swords and naked women and a surprisingly good story beneath said blood, guts, demons, giant swords, and naked women.  However I would not recommend this series to a Southern Baptists for fear of offending him, but then I doubt any true dye-in-the-wood Southern Baptist would watch anime in the first place.  The reason why the violence and the blatant sexuality in Berserk is preferable to the sexuality in other anime or manga series is that in Berserk it’s honest.  When a half-naked or fully naked women walks into a room, the other people in the room notice, and some of them would try to take advantage of the situation.  It’s fan service and yet at the same time it’s not fan service because the violence and the sex, while abundant, is not gratuitous and plays an important part in the story.

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For fear of stating the obvious young children as portrayed in media, anime or TV rarely behave as they would in real life. Grown-ups, when they observe children, do not see them for what they are but instead see them for what they want them to be. We’ve all heard of the horror stories of over-pushy parents forcing their hopes and dreams onto their kids, but the truth is that almost every parent does it to a certain extent. Over their young children parents have almost total control of their thoughts and destinies and for better or worse most will use some of that power to shape them as they see fit. Many authors, writers, and mangaka- some of them are parents too- exercise a similar attitude towards their fictional children. In consequence most children as portrayed in literature or media are either miniature adults forced to handle situations beyond their years or behave as an extension of the author’s fantasies of what children should be like. There is a significantly greater percentage of thoughtful, loving, and patient children in fiction then they are in real life, and that while real children can be thoughtful, loving, and patient such behavior runs counter to their natural instincts [which is to poke others with a pen, and to make bunny ears]. In this respect they’re not so different from adults.

This false perception of childhood does lead to gross blunders, which is what the producers of Xam’d do. In short: if we take a group of orphaned, traumatized kids, and lock them into an airship the size of a large house for several weeks with adults who are not their parents, what do you think will happen? Will they behave sweetly and thoughtfully as they do for the most part in Xam’d or will they knock holes into the walls, which is what most kids bored out of their minds would do? The answer is glaringly obvious and yet both the producers of Xam’d and the majority of its audience miss it. Suspension of belief is necessary for fiction, but it should not be confused with ignorance.

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As any good sergeant will tell you [and me], weapons in the hands of new recruits are more dangerous to themselves than to their enemies. In other words it’s much easier to accidentally shoot the friendly person standing next to you than it is to hit the enemy hiding behind a rock several hundred feet away [and firing back]. The purpose of drill and various other repetitive exercises in basic training is to teach the recruits to handle their weapons safely. Afterwards if some wish to get better at marksmanship or any of the other arts of war they would go on to advanced training. In consequence the vast majority of basic training recruits would have no idea what to do if they met an enemy, nor would they know how to use their weapons effectively. Minimum training is not a substitute for actual experience. This reason is why veterans are so important for armies. By example they can teach the greenhorns how to survive and become effective on a battlefield.

The most sacrosanct code of the military, the rule above all rules, is the chain of command. For example if I outrank you, then you must obey me, and vice versa. In a strange, unexpected situation like a terrorist attack or a hundred-foot experimental monster escaping from its cell the first things a disciplined soldier will do is ask:

1. Who [the *#&@] is in charge?

2. What [the %*#&%] does he want me to do?

And then after the crisis is over:

3. Who [the &$^@#] was responsible for this disaster?

Rarely will soldiers out of fear of punishment or disapproval act independently of their platoon and officer. The idea of one soldier, and a recruit at that, going berserk and attacking a hundred foot monster without backup and without the support of his immediate superior is the stuff of nightmares… for the drill sergeant and the entire chain of command. In their eyes this is how disasters happen, or are made worse. The purpose of training and drill, since its invention in the 1500s, is to beat out of the recruit any independent thought or action that is not in line with the military and that includes what Fuirichi did in that episode.

I am also greatly annoyed at the lack of an obvious chain of command in Xam’d. This criticism applies to various other anime shows that involve a modern or a futuristic military such as the entire Gundam franchise. In the example in the paragraph above, the overall section commander ordered the destruction of the experimental monster. But how did that order reach Fuiruchi and the other recruits? More importantly who led the attack on the monster? By all indications the attack was an seat-of-the-pants operation by recruits working independently without a clear chain of command, and with very little communication between one another. This sort of behavior is a recipe for disaster, and it goes against the entire ethos of their training, which presumably they received. The only reason why the situation did not become an absolute disaster was because the monster was too confused, too kind, or too stupid to retaliate with her (its?) giant beam weapon.

Also, when Haru, Fuiruchi, and their guide walked into the mine in episode eight as part of a military relief operation, the question that should have been in everybody’s mind is WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THIS THREE-MEMBER PLATOON? It wasn’t Haru or Fuiruchi since they have the same rank, and it certainly wasn’t their guide because he was a mercenary. The truth was that NOBODY was in command and the episode inadvertently demonstrates the chaos that this situation can create. When Fuiruchi tells Haru to stay behind she refuses, and her decision at least in the eyes of military law is perfectly correct because Fuirichi does not outrank her. If there exists such a thing as punishment for military incompetence then all three member sof the platoon should have been killed by the creature lurking in the mine. But in anime there is no consequence for stupidity. Haru and Fuiruchi in Xam’d are not real soldiers: they are children playacting as soldiers and this criticism extends to the characters of various other anime series too. As I’ve said before suspension of belief might be necessary for enjoying fiction, but it should not be an excuse for ignorance. The soldiers and the children as portrayed in anime behave not as actual soldiers or children would, but instead behave as to how the authors believe they would . Unfortunately this belief is hopelessly uninformed.

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Xam’d, I think, is one of the more promising shows this season, which says more about the season than the show itself. It does many things right. Its main character, Akiyuki, keeps up with his correspondence despite being a teenager,and he is willing to risk life and limb, and the displeasure of his boss, to see his girlfriend. He’s like-able. Given the nature of the plot, which is about the wrenching separation of war, Xam’d could have become a beautiful romance in the likes of Ernest Hemingway or Gone With the Wind.

But it’s not. It has too many cliches:

1. The children on the ship are sweet, kind, and thoughtful as if they would never get bored being stuck on an floating airship barely bigger than a house.

2. The military is incompetent in military matters. Granted that there has been many militaries like that throughout history [like the Persian army in front of the Mongols or the French army in front of the Germans] but at the least none of these armies created an experimental test subject and then let it escape because its scientists, the ones who MADE it, didn’t know of its true capabilities. Naturally of course it is the trainees, conveniently placed above the underground cell containing the experimental subject when it escapes, who has to bring the subject down, which they do without any casualties or great trouble. The monster had escaped by frying several thick steel walls with its laser beam, but once out it chose not to use it to harm others. Apparently its pacifism will establish the facts that it is better than the ones shooting at it, a common theme in Japanese anime, and that these trainees are ready for combat, at least against incompetent opponents.

3. Akiyumi had a best friend before he became a Xam’d. The show doesn’t spend much time on their relationship but we may assume that since they are best friends they would go to school together, laugh together, eat together, and otherwise enjoy each other’s company. A couple of months after Akiyumi’s best friend joined the military he was willing to shoot his former friend with an automatic weapon on a crumbling bridge. What happened? Well, what happened was that Akiyumi got a mysterious blue bump on his arm that allows him to transform into a super-human shape. Super-humans are non-human and thus evil, according to the logic of the military in Xam’d. Furthermore simply by joining the military is sufficient cause to transform a normal law-abiding happy teenager into somebody who is willing to shoot his best friend with an automatic weapon on a crumbling bridge. Quite obvious indeed, according to the Japanese producers of this show.

4. Why does the captain of the ship walk around in her bra? Oh yes, to please the fans. Right… fans. There’s nothing particularly wrong with fan service, except for the fact that her crew members, unlike the fans, don’t seem to notice it. For example Akushiba, one of the crew members, collects pictures of pin-up girls, but he never looks at the captain with anything other than in a respectful manner. I admit that Xam’d is not unique in this respect, but nonetheless: if the fans notice something and the characters in the show don’t then either the fans are unusually perceptive or the characters are blind- and it’s certainly not the former.

In conclusion, Xam’d is not a particularly bad show by anime standards, and in fact I’d say it’s a good one, but then again if we set our standards low enough….

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Ah ha! So there ARE more things than hentai doujinshi and figures in these backpacks after all! I was right! XD

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