#2LR Too Late Review: Read or Die the TV series

Review: Read or Die the TV Series:

I'm not sure that I can come up with much of an introduction to this anime series, because what I need to say pretty much comes after the summary in order to be understandable.  For those who want to hew to SPOILER SPACE, I'll try to obfuscate as many of the spoilers as I can get to.


The story of Read or Die is not really reading per se, but the story of paper.  In the great Southern Woods... oh, actually, in Hong Kong, a famous Japanese author, Nenene Sumiregawa, found herself in a bit of trouble. She was saved by a group of women called "The Three Sisters Detective Agency".  The three women are Michelle, Maggie, and Anita.  All three of the sisters have the power to make paper bend to their will, to fold itself and stick itself together, and to move as they want it to. Michelle's power is primarily in making a bow/arrow, Maggie's power is to make animal shapes and activate them much like golems, and Anita's power is to be able to use paper in its deadliest form... to cut others.

The three sisters take Nenene back to Japan, and end up acting as her bodyguards so that Nenene can finish her latest book.  Anita is still young enough to need to go to school, so she enrolls.  One of the other students
there is a very effeminate boy, "Junior", who can walk through walls and/or floors without any problems.

To introduce the remaining characters and their backstory are Nenene's agent, the first evil conglomerate "Dokusensha", and the second evil conglomerate -- the British Library (?!)  As well, Nenene's on the search
for one of the teachers that she most learned from, Yomiko Readman (pun likely intended by the Japanese writers).

The story has quite a few twists and turns... Dokusensha, while paying off the Three Sisters to complete jobs on the side, ends up using Nenene's agent to kidnap her.  It seems that they want to use a set of artifact
books to try to rewrite Nenene's brain.  Their plan goes south when the Three Sisters realize what is happening and mount a rescue mission back to Dokusensha's main offices in Hong Kong to get her back.  As probably predicted, they are successful.  The interesting wrinkle is that they're labeled "terrorists" for causing all this damage to the building, so there is a bit of the cloak-and-dagger involved in the rest of the show.  It almost would have been interesting, but it got relegated to the memory-hole within only a couple episodes.

After those events the Three Sisters end up finding Yomiko Readman, in the halls of the Library of Japan based off of a tip from a local bookstore owner.  Yomiko's in there along with another woman, Nancy, who seems as meek and mild as a mouse.  Both turn out to be hiding from the British Library, the arch-enemy of Dokusensha, as both turned out to be agents.  Yomiko can also paper-bend, and not just to make little folded footballs during class.

And that's when the plot really ends up going off the rails.  See, the British's power from the mid-15th century through World War II was due to "Mr. Gentleman", who they managed to keep alive all those centuries.  He's dead now, and as a result the British Library hatched a plan to "bring him back", as it were, through the use of Junior's body as a vessel.  There's really very little reason for Nenene to be involved, except as we find out later... the British Library (and their aptly title leader, "Mr. Joker") need her to write the Gospel of Mr. Gentleman once he revives... as no one knew who Jesus was except through the record of the Bible.  Of course, Mr. Gentleman will bring the British back to prominence, even at the expense
of historical allies such as the U.S. of A.

Wow.  Well, in the final encounter, Joker *literally* invites all of the main characters save Nancy and an American heavy they picked up along the way to see his "moment of triumph", without really even restraining them much.  In this case, it was Nenene who managed to hide the Three Sisters' paper-based ammunition on herself, only to bring it out in order to save Junior at the end.  And it also turned out that Nancy was like Double-O Eight, though in a far-tighter (and far more revealing) catsuit than James Bond ever had.

I'm pretty much skipping the sideplot of Anita going to school, but that's because you would've cared even less than I did had you watched it yourself.


[Spoiler space OVER]


I suppose that I've been spoiled by a few series lately, even finding some good stuff out of series that would pretty much be one-note (Rosario + Vampire).  I can pretty much say that this series was watched out of sheer dedication to finishing rather than any desire to find out what happens.  I obtained the first few DVDs from the local library, and I literally had three of the discs sit on my dresser for almost four weeks before I finally watched all of the twelve episodes contained therein.

There was exactly one good moment, which was finding out which character was responsible for kick-starting the action portion of the first section of the show (the Dokusensha section).  I had to admit that the writers/animators did a good job hiding who it was, though it wasn't as if there was a huge trail of bread crumbs or anything... it was just one of those left-field surprises that catches you offguard and keeps your attention because of it.

After that though, the whole thing pretty much fell apart.  How to characterize why it fell apart may be difficult except to say that it was way too unbelievable.  I couldn't summon the suspension of disbelief needed for the second half's Macguffin to work with any sort of clarity.  I think it was because even the show was pretty unclear as to how it was supposed to work.

The segments of Anita going to school in Japan were also really... boring.  I couldn't have cared less, and it's not like there was emotion overwhelming and the sequences didn't exactly add any depth or plot or anything to the story.  Late in the series, Anita gets into a fight with Michelle, and I realized why I couldn't have cared less about these school segments... it's because the character of Anita is screechy, rather unredeemable, and there's really no character arc to her to rehabilitate any of those features.  Of course she had a tragic backstory (in these things, who doesn't?) but... well, as a character who ended up becoming a... or really, *the* main protagonist... mark me as uninterested.

Of course, that just leads me into the last "unbelievable" comment.  Even after the backstory which was way too out there to be believable, there's two situations (one involving a helicopter, and then the final encounter) where it's so patently obvious what has happened.  I find it annoying when you can see the bait-and-switch the writers are attempting to write as it is happening on the screen.  It's almost like watching a magic trick when you know the secret behind it.  I wish that at some level, they either A) went for smaller stakes / more permanent *results* in the helicopter thing and then B) had another episode or two to do a far better job of resolving the final conflict, as the ten-minute resolution really sucked.  The final assault should have been at least two episodes... dammit, there's four paper-benders and two special agents assaulting a building that had a fricking LAKE built around it and plenty of airborne and mecha defense.  Yet they find the train that goes right up to it and trick the idiot security guard, even as the evil organization's fantastical defenses make mincement out of a US carrier wing.  Screw that.

Yeah, I know, I should be warning you about the spoiler space, but this is pretty basic stuff that the writers of an anime should look into rectifying, especially if you're going to show how many books all the main characters read... yet the writer(s) go for the massive cliche instead of anything new... and that really becomes the basis of the complaint.

Feel free to watch this show for the action sequences, they're kind of cool. The interplay between Nenene and the Three Sisters is enjoyable especially in the beginning.  Other than that... it's old ground tread upon for the umpteenth time, much like watching pretty much anything on American network TV anymore.  And about the only "dying" you'd do in Read or Die is breaking your neck falling through a plothole.


Final rating: 1.4

#2LR Too Late Reviews -- Rosario + Vampire

#2LR review: Rosario + Vampire

Most nights, my daughter is the one to broach the subject.  "Want to watch some anime tonight?" is her usual request.  Some nights, she'll ask to watch old archived Strong Bad emails, but it's typically anime that she asks for.  Other than the current dislike of MST3k, I've trained her well.

My wife and I usually get the younger two boys off to bed by this time, and more often than not we're trying to get through a series.  We can't devour one as quickly as my daughter, who's probably watched the vast majority of Full Metal Alchemist through a couple weekends over the past few weeks, but we try to get two or maybe three episodes in of whatever current series we're watching.

My daughter is exceedingly lucky... paying for Netflix and Hulu Plus is perhaps $20 or so a month, and there's quite a bit of choice for streaming options.  Before having this option, I had resorted to three other tactics to watch anime.  One was renting it from specialty stores, which was hit-or-miss considering how many times we've moved.  At one point, I joined a campus anime club, which had a limited library.  And when I say limited, that meant that they would have the first few tapes of a series *but not all of them*, so you had to figure out other ways to finish most series you borrowed.  And as always, your last recourse was purchasing the whole darned series, which ran into the hundreds of dollars for a single series from a publisher (Pioneer, Viz) who cheaped out by putting only two episodes per videotape.

Now?  Well, the two services will end up being a couple hundred per year anyway, and you don't get to own it after you're done.  But that means that if you've really tried, you will have watched more than a few series by the end of that year too.

Why is this important?  It's because I'm now watching series that I probably would not have given a second thought to starting in the old days.  And Rosario + Vampire is one of those series, for a couple of different reasons.

First, a rundown of the plot.  No spoiler space warnings here yet, but just wait...  Tsukune (or, as the English actors kept saying it, "Skoo-nee") is a human who is just getting out of middle school.  His poor grades ensure that no local high schools accept him, so he ends up finding a private school, "Yokai Academy" that will accept him.  Shortly into the first episode, he runs across the main female protagonist of the series, Moka, who happens to be a vampire.  He then finds out that the rest of the school is a collection of monsters that runs the gamut from traditional Western monsters like vampires, witches, naga, witches, female demons -- succubi, to Japanese monsters like kasa-obake, and even into Hindi mythology (example, the Apsara).

One of the first student rules is that no humans are allowed at this monster school.  However, Tsukune feels safe because the kind and sweet Moka has an alternate form that is activated whenever Tsukune takes her seal of power from her.  Moka's alternate form kicks some major butt, though also with a personality change from caring to blunt, slightly egotistical, and self-serving.  It turns out that the barrier that keeps humans out of Yokai Academy would be threatened if there were too many strong monsters there, and Moka's alternate though true form would cause the barrier to weaken. Both Moka types seem to care for Tsukune, but in the beginning of the series it's pretty clear that the blunt (inner) Moka is happy to have him around as a food source compared to the kind (outer) Moka, who likes him as a friend, her first human friend.

This is a harem anime with heavy doses of fanservice, and as such the first four or five episodes introduce all of the other female members of Tsukune's harem.  They include the succubus Kurumu, who like Moka is attracted to Tsukune because he's a human, and wants to breed with him to ensure her line.  To that end, she is forever flaunting her large breasts in and around Tsukune to entice him.  There's a witch, Yukari, who happens to be a genius and was skipped a couple of grades, so she is therefore a couple years younger than the rest of the high-school freshman friends. She gets to be Tsukune's flat-chested lolita (and the brunt of many Kurumu body-image jokes).  There's the "snow woman" Mizore, who has power over ice and cold and also doubles as a creepy stalker for those who want their girlfriends so interested in them that the girlfriend moons over them incessantly.  And by the way, Moka gets to have a transformation sequence every time she's called into battle.

Ultimately, I'm sure you're pretty much guessing what the show is and probably know a good 80% of the plot if you're familiar with the genre.  It's certainly understandable.  You may be surprised to hear me report though, that both my eleven-year-old daughter and my wife enjoyed watching the show, through both seasons one and two (a total of twenty-six).  I was kind of surprised as well, especially since my wife is not exactly a fan of the fanservice in general.  I'm generally not a fan either, because typically the fanservice means that writers are hobbled in trying to get their creations in body-baring situations.  For the same reasons, I'm usually not crazy about harem stories either.  So, what could make this series worth watching?

I would like to think that the characters do a good job of it, surprisingly enough.  When they're not engaging in fanservice, they seem at least slightly realistic, and while there's certainly more than a bit of cliche abounding, it's not... overwhelming, nor particularly painful.  The series does engage in breaking the fourth wall, and between that and keeping the tone mostly light, it's pretty funny.

There are times that the protagonists find themselves in danger, and the main character Tsukune does a decent job of not making himself insufferable.  The plottish parts of the story always seem to raise the overall level of the show.

I felt that they did a decent job balancing the characters in this show... there are some that introduce as harem shows that end up relegating other characters in the background, which always seems a weird choice.  (If you didn't want to write a character in or couldn't make it work, why did you attempt to adapt that manga then?)  They hand lines and conflict to all characters in fairly equal portions, so it feels at least more realistic to storytelling.

Of course, with this show there is a however.  The however is that the fanservice ramps up in season two.  I won't make a catalog of perversion, but suffice it to say that the animators drew big bouncing breasts plus a metric ton of panty shots in season one, and they drew big bouncing naked breasts with a metric ton and a half of panty shots in season two... and they included bringing Moka's transformation sequence into adult territory.  More profane language also crops up in season two, many instances rather unnecessarily.  If you're watching with younger ones already (why?) make sure that if you're going on from season one to season two they're prepared for these things, and if the fanservice or coarse language is why you watch, then you'll want to rewatch season two more frequently than season one.

I have another however though, and that will come with COPIOUS amounts of spoiler space.  (Now comes the spoiler space warning!)


Season one's ending was the possible death of Tsukune, which you knew full well wouldn't happen.  Season two's setup for the ending was that the sweet and kind Moka may not make another appearance again, as Moka needs to use her power seal in order to keep the barrier between monster and human worlds intact and can't use it to make sure that the "outer" Moka is around anymore.

So, the real inner, flawed, self-serving yet unused to people Moka comes out.  And it is clear, she's grown to like Tsukune as a person rather than as a meal.  I'm loving this turn of events for a couple reasons... one is that one of the characters has "grown", and is now even showing her real self rather than the mask that the writers have had her under for the better part of twenty episodes.  I loved it because I thought it was a challenge to Tsukune... and how often do the protagonists of a harem anime get a challenge?  It's not a challenge to fake-kill a protagonist who you know is going to recover, but would the writers be bold enough to change the equation?

I thought that this could bring this show into very interesting ground.  Within the harem-anime setup, you've got multiple female protagonists all revolving around a male antagonist, and there's always a pretty clear method to figuring out which one will "win", aka gain the affection of the male protagonist.  In this show, it was the number of mushy "moments" that Tsukune and Moka would repeat each other's name in the throes of LUUUUV.  To me, Tsukune started off in the series having feelings for Moka based on her personality and her actions... but the Moka he had feelings for really was a mask, only in effect because of a magical artifact that she willingly gave up.  The real Moka came forward, ironically enough through an action of self-sacrifice and love of others, and the real Moka really did have feelings for Tsukune.

So, how does Tsukune respond?  Not by taking Moka as her true self... not by learning to expand or grow his love, knowing that the Moka he has feelings for is inside the Moka that is now there.  Not even by rejecting her and going with one of the other three girls who do have unrequited feelings towards him.

Tsukune's response is to "try to get the old Moka back".  There's no room in his love for a person to change.  Nor is there any room in his love for a person to grow, or for his own love to change, or for him to even have to make an uncomfortable choice.  The ending does show that Tsukune's dedicated to "the one he loves"... he takes on Moka's father, who is set up as pretty much one of the strongest monsters ever, and ends up not getting killed.  Ultimately though, life has messy choices, and in Tsukune's case the one he loves is not really a true person, just a half-a-person, and he's uncomfortable around the other half of the person.  So... what is love?  (baby don't hurt me.)

At any rate, the ending for season two could have set up a fascinating hook for a season three.  The series uses the ten-minute resolution rather than the season-three five-hour resolution that could have made this into a fascinating show in its own right.  It would have allowed this series to grow just as much as it would have shown its characters growing, but that was not in the cards (nor storyboards).

As it is, and in utterly no surprise, the ending brings everything back to the status quo of about four episodes previous, with the added bonus that Tsukune tells us that he's "not grown up enough" to make his choice.  It's too bad that the girls all didn't say, "In that case, we'll find someone grown up enough to stop stringing us along and who's mature enough to handle a real relationship", but that would have ruined the harem just as much, I suppose.  So, the ending reinforces the same escapism that you probably came into the series with, at least.

(spoiler space over)

And the discussion about the ending colors my final review, because I do feel cheated if there's a fascinating avenue that the writer(s) could have taken their creation but didn't.  As you may or may not recall from all of my Twilight movie reviews, I had quite a few complaints about the movies in general... but I was not truly incensed and annoyed with the storyline until Stephenie Meyer took the amazing opportunity that she wrote herself in the end of Book Four (which was movie 4-2) and squandered it completely.  Same as above... the ending to Rosario + Vampire could have catapulted this series into *rewatchability*, to become more true to life than it was before, to explore things that the typical harem anime does not... to grow into something to contemplate and think about deeply, and to maybe even glean a message or three from....... and completely wrote them off.

There was one previous review where I wrote that the ending completely screwed up watching the show, which was Code Geass.  I can't get down on the ending to Rosario + Vampire as much as I can get down on Code Geass's ending though.  On the surface, this series' tagline is "Japanese Twilight as a harem anime with fanservice".  If that's what you're looking for, with the once-an-episode fight sequence and characters that aren't completely brainless, then this is your show.  And as long as you know that what you see is what you're going to get, that there's nothing underneath the surface, then you will probably enjoy watching this show.  I know that I would not have minded the ending as much had I been warned not to raise my expectations, at least.  It's funny, the characters fight, pine, enjoy each other's company, get mad, and generally have fun, and end up at the beginning.  And most viewers will say the same.

Final review for Rosario + Vampire: 2.6 (stripey pairs of panties)

#2LR Too Late Review: The Cat Returns

  There are times, in those early hours of the morning or when I'm relaxing, that my mind ends up wandering.  Sometimes it goes far afield, and sometimes it stays right where I am, kind of playing around my feet like a kitten with a ball of string.  When watching today's #2LR movie, The Cat Returns, the best comparison that I can make is to one of those half-aware dreams.

  To get the real-life details of the movie down on paper, this is a Studio Ghibli movie, though it's not a Miyazaki film.  It's actually a pseudo-sequel to the one of the few non-Miyazaki Ghibli theatrical films, Whisper of the Heart... which, despite owning (and enjoying) the movie, I have not done a Too Late Review of.  At any rate, both movies share a specific character... a cat figurine that comes to life, either through stories of the protagonist (in Whisper of the Heart) or by itself, to help the main protagonist in this movie.

  Consider the below Spoiler Space...

  The movie presents Haru, a high-school girl who is reluctant to get up, occasionally late to school (and laughed at by her troubles), and crushing on a boy who's already taken.  While she and her friend Hiromi are in town after school, she sees a cat carrying a curious wrapped package.  The cat attempts to cross the street, but is set upon by a large truck.  Haru gives her best efforts to save the cat with the device in her hand... a lacrosse stick, which she uses to scoop up the cat as she dashes across the road.

  The cat is safe, and oddly enough talks to her afterward to thank Haru for her actions.  Haru is confused, especially since no one else heard the cat on the busy street.  She thinks nothing of it, though her lacrosse stick is broken.  That evening, she goes to bed but hears a yowling out by the road.  There's a procession of cats, but these cats all walk on their hind legs.  At the tail end (HA!) of the procession is the King of Cat Kingdom, who thanks Haru for her actions... she saved the Crown Prince from death, and the King wants to reward Haru for what she's done.

  The next morning, Haru's yard is overgrown with catnip, which she is unfortunately allergic to.  She dashes off to school, but finds that her shoe locker is filled to the brim with mice.  Later on, her friend calls her to tell her that there's a couple gross of lacrosse sticks all over the hallway, and to ask Haru what to do with them.  In the afternoon of this very strange day, another cat comes up to Haru on its hind legs and tells Haru that the Cat King wants Haru to become his daughter-in-law, to marry the prince that she saved.

  Haru is taken aback, but thinks very long and hard about the offer.  The messenger cat takes her silence as consent and tells her to expect the Cat King to come around to collect her in the evening.  After the messenger cat leaves, Haru realizes that she may not want to do this... and she hears a voice telling her to find the Cat Bureau via a cat that is waiting for her at one of the cross-streets.  Haru seeks out this cat, an exceedingly chunky cat named Muta, and he leads her through quite a few paths to the Cat Bureau.  There she meets both the cat figurine mentioned above, Baron, as well as a stone crow that comes to life, Toto.

  While Haru is trying to process all of this, a massive group of cats comes to the Cat Bureau and pulls her away from her conversation with Baron.  Muta is pulled along with the cats, while the Baron and Toto try to follow along as best as possible.  The cats prove too quick... Haru and Muta are deposited in the Cat Kingdom while the Baron and Toto are on the outside looking in.

  Haru enjoys the Cat Kingdom at first... it's always noon, and the grass is perfect for catnaps.  Shortly after though, she's taken to the palace to be fitted into a dress... and finds herself starting to turn into a cat.  It's explained that she'll turn fully into a cat in order to facilitate the marriage between herself and the Prince, and Haru wants none of it.  A banquet is held for her later on, and the whole time she's despondent.  The Baron shows up and finally perks her spirits up, and manages to get her away from the Cat King.

  We find out that Haru has a chance to go back to the human world, that there's a portal at the top of a tower that's surrounded by a maze.  If she makes it back by morning, she'll be human again.  At first the Cat King is content to watch her get lost, but she and the Baron figure out the secret to the maze and get through to the tower.  The Cat King gets mad and ends up blowing the tower before she can reach the very tip-top to go through the portal.  At this point, it's revealed that Muta was a fearsome criminal (he ate all the fish in the pond) who was booted out of the Cat Kingdom, and he tries his level best to send Haru on her way out.  Thanks to timely intervention from the Prince and the cat that the Prince really would like to marry, the Cat King is thwarted and Haru manages to make it back to the human world.

  She bids a tearful goodbye to her new-found friends and ends up at the school for another school day.  During the epilogue of the story, we find out that Haru's pulled herself together far more, her adventures have helped her to realize who she is and what she needs to do in life... she gets up to go to school early, doesn't moon over her crush, and generally acts like an adult.

Spoiler space over.

  If you managed to make it through the plot, you'll see why I introduced the movie the way I did.  To me, this is almost the perfect vision of one of those lazy dreams put up on a movie screen.  The plot starts pretty conventionally, but progresses to weirder, and weirder, and weirder... little by little, so that you don't quite wake up from your dream, but it's far stranger to end with than it was to begin with.  Next thing you know, the day's crept up on you and you have to move around again in the "real world".  Heck, one of the plot points has to do with the time-limit set by the rising sun... if that's not a metaphor for the dreamy part of the plot to "wake up", I don't know what is.

  I suppose though that one of the depressing parts of this movie is the whole "growing up" thing.  The protagonist is shown as far more adult, far more put-together, far less impulsive, far more responsible... it almost feels like that equals "no imagination" to me.  There's times that I've had little to no imagination when I've been an adult, and I realize looking back on those times that I was also pretty glum and bored with life at times, especially those times when I was by myself.  Writing has been my primary outlet for getting through the imagination-less solitary glum parts of my life, and I hope that Haru has her lacrosse to get her through those parts of her life.

  In Whisper of the Heart, the message is to follow your dream, to become good at what you enjoy doing and seeing where life takes you.  In this movie, I feel that the message is to not get caught up in someone else's dream (e.g. the Cat King's), and to make sure that you're comfortable with your own self before trying to work towards a dream of your own.  It does make a lot of sense, in that at the end of the movie Haru has learned more about herself and is comfortable being who she is rather than defined by either her previous actions (such as saving the Prince, or helping those in need) nor is she willing to play someone else's role in life.  She's now in the position to dream for herself, to create her own world rather than borrow the Cat Kingdom's world to just laze around in.  So, in some odd way, the message of this movie is the prequel to Whisper of the Heart despite the characters making a reappearance for a sequel.

Final grade for this movie: 2.9 

It's especially good for a lazy afternoon, where your dreams and the movie's vision end up glomming together...

#2LR Kicking it Retro - with Lupin III, The Castle of Cagliostro

This is going to be one of the most characteristic of the #2LR Too Late Review posts.  The Castle of Cagliostro was Hayao Miyazaki's first directorial job.  It was released almost thirty-five years ago, and features a character that has been featured in multiple movies and television shows.

The character, Lupin III, is a cat burglar on the screen, sort of an anti-James Bond.  It's also a character that is a thief in its own right, using the name of Arsene Lupin, a copyrighted character from a French series of novels.  As a result, the character is known in Japan where the copyright laws weren't tightened (at the time), but is pretty much not known at all in the U.S.

On top of that, if you were to want to purchase this movie, you're looking at either a bootleg (poetic justice!) or somewhere between $40 and $60 dollars.  So, to sum up... really old movie, barely-known character, AND difficult to find and watch.

That's just what Too Late Reviews was built for.  Spoiler Space begins here.

Lupin III has just completed a heist in Monaco with his partner in crime, Jigen.  As he's driving off, he realizes that the money is purely counterfeit, albeit extremely good counterfeit.  Lupin and Jigen drive through the European countryside until they happen across a girl driving a 2CV trying to escape a car full of thugs.  After attempting to help (yet failing), Lupin and Jigen decide to follow after the girl, entering the tiny European nation of Cagliostro.

Lupin gets the backstory of who the girl is (a princess) and why she was wearing a wedding dress (she's to be married to the count) as well as the country's story (their rulers perished in a palace fire seven years ago). He also realizes that this is the place that the counterfeit money is coming from, having tried to breach the walls of the "new palace" ten years ago and failing.  The evil Count wants to marry the Princess in order to consolidate his power.  The count also is searching for a treasure that is rumored to be connected to a pair of rings, one each held by the Count and by the Princess.  The Count is not happy that Lupin is in town, so he sends a bunch of minions after Lupin and Jigen.  Both crooks manage to escape the assault and take up temporary quarters in the ravaged abandoned palace.  In the meantime, Lupin calls for another partner in crime, the Japanese samurai Goemon, and also his nemesis, Inspector Zenigata of Tokyo Police / Interpol.

Lupin manages to infiltrate the new palace through the water system as Zenigata makes a ruckus trying to enlist the Count's aid in capturing Lupin.  Lupin then uses an unwitting Zenigata as a ruse to enter the palace.  Afterward, Lupin finds the princess (Clarissse), but is flushed down a rather long trapdoor, failing to die at the bottom but finding a captured Zenigata.  The count sends assassins in to kill off Lupin and Zenigata, but both manage to get the drop on the assassins and use them to escape their imprisonment.

Lupin and Zenigata conclude a truce and find the counterfeiting machinery in the basement of the castle, just past their spot of imprisonment.  All of the world's currencies are printed from this tiny country, counterfeit, which Zenigata considers a far greater issue than capturing Lupin.  As both men escape, they capture an autogyro to try to free Clarisse, but the Count's men manage to catch them just in the nick of time; Lupin, Zenigata, and Lupin's sometimes associate Fujiko Mine all escape, but Clarisse is left behind.

Lupin is rescued by Goemon and Jigen, and goes into the final backstory, telling about his history of trying to storm the castle when he had more enthusiam than sense.  The three of them manage to hatch a plan to get back inside the Count's castle.  In the meantime, Zenigata brings the counterfeiting to the attention of the United Nations, but all of the nations agree to sweep the issue under the rug because... huh, that was a weird reason, but because all of them are up to their eyeballs in counterfeiting and for some reason exposing what Cagliosto is up to would implicate them, and also because "Cagliosto did not request Interpol assistance".  Zenigata gets mad, but decides with Fujiko's help that he needs to get back into that castle.

On the day of the wedding, the road is full of people trying to get to the palace.  The old priest is held up by the traffic... Fujiko, in disguise as a news reporter, is also stuck, along with Zenigata's Interpol brigade.  The wedding starts, and gets to the cliched part asking for objections.  It goes by, but as the priest is saying the last words, the huge cross in the back bursts forth with voice saying that the wedding is an abomination.  The cross falls forward as the priest dodges out of the way, and Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon burst from the hole left in the floor.  A battle starts up, and the Count cuts off Lupin's head... but it's a fake Lupin, the real one was posing as the priest the whole time.  In the ensuing battle, Zenigata manages to get to the hole in the floor, and as Fujiko documents with a handheld camera, Zenigata "just happens to stumble" across the counterfeiting ring in the basement, on live television, forcing the world governments to have to act.

The last thirty minutes (!) is a long chase and fight sequence, featuring quite a bit of action including the workings of a clock.  Lupin gives the Count one last opportunity to redeem himself, by offering the rings and the ability to obtain the "treasure" in return for Clarisse, who the Count had cornered.  The Count responds by shooting Lupin halfway down the side of a clock tower and taking Clarisse anyway.  Clarisse manages to get away by jumping off the side as Lupin does the same to save her.  The Count comes to his untimely end by following the instructions to gain the treasure... and as the treasure is revealed, Lupin tells Clarisse that he loves her, wanted to come to her aid, but that she can't come with him (awww.)  Zenigata continues to chase Lupin but stops to speak with Clarisse one last time.  As Clarisse explains that Lupin didn't steal a single thing, Zenigata remarks that Lupin made off with Clarisse's heart (awww..)  In the final scene of the movie, the chase begins anew down the French Riviera.

Spoiler Space over.

This remains a popular movie even this long after it has been released, and it is easy to see why.  The character of Lupin III can be corny at times, but this is a character that loves what he's doing, loves being who he is and is comfortable doing what he does.  There's witty banter amongst the friends, retorts between the Count and Lupin, but the heart of the movie is clear here... there's quite a few characters that sacrifice for each other, even when they don't need to, and none of them really gain anything from their sacrifice other than knowing that what they're doing is right.

There's also pretty much zero fanservice in this movie.  If there's one major thing that differentiates this anime series from James Bond, it's that there's no Bond girl.  That's not to say that Fujiko gets decked out in the *series*, but this movie is as tame as it gets for fanservice.

Also, you can see the influence of the 80s throughout this movie.  It seems that every time the movie's dialogue goes quiet, the soundtrack pops up to remind you that it's still there.  The music is definitely stuck in its time, but there are moments on the soundtrack where the music is really genuinely good.  The animation is very decidedly two-dimensional, and there are times that you don't have to squint hard to see the imperfections shine through... Zenigata's eyes, for instance, don't always both point forward at the same time.

Overall, this is a good movie with a fun and fast-paced story, and the set pieces (each of Lupin's assaults on the castle) are terrific and paced well.  You would be hard-pressed to make a real-life movie from this... there's just a couple of just-this-side-of-implausible tricks in Lupin's bag, such as his belt-buckle fishing line rope or swimming against a falling curtain of water, but that's one of the things that I truly like about anime... you can push the boundaries just a little bit, and as long as the universe doesn't bend one way specifically, you're able to keep your disbelief firmly locked away.

So, this is a movie that I would gladly give a 3.4 to based on the first viewing.  I managed to snag a copy through Netflix though, and unless you want to pay the aforementioned $40-$60 price tag, you may have to do the same.  I do know though that if they manage to arrange for another release, I will very likely be there.

New MSTing!

  In a once-a-year (or even once every two years!) announcement, Megane 6.7 and I have published another brand-new MSTing.  It's not available at our main A MSTing For All Seasons site due to access issues that will hopefully be rectified shortly.  It can, however, be read at Mediaminer by following this link .  Thank you for all your support and patience!

#2LR Too Late Reviews - Castle in the Sky

I love our local (now, Chicagoland) library.  Not that our previous Wisconsin library was bad, but there's just so much more selection here.  On our first trip there, we borrowed a copy of one of my favorite Studio Ghibli movies,Castle in the Sky.  I realized as I went through some of my previous articles that I hadn't written a review of this movie, so I made sure to watch the movie closely so that I could put up a Too Late Review and a few comments.

Not that this really needs Spoiler Space, but here's the warning nonetheless.

This is the story of Sheeta and Pazu.  Sheeta is the long-lost princess of a magical floating city in the sky, Laputa.  In the very first scene of the movie, Sheeta is being held on a airship.  Suddenly, air pirates led by the matronly Dola arrive to attack the ship.  She tries to hide outside the airship, but accidentally lets go.  After a couple seconds, the necklace that she took from the guy inside the ship glows, and she floats to the ground unharmed.

At this point, we meet Pazu.  He's an eager sort who wants nothing more to help... he goes to help Sheeta while on an errand to help his boss.  He manages to catch Sheeta before harm comes to her, and after his shift is done he takes her back home for her to continue to rest.

In the morning, he plays the trumpet as the day starts.  I mention this because the soundtrack rocks, and there'll be more at the bottom about this.  The pirates have figured out where Sheeta landed, and the army has too.  In a rather wild piece, Pazu and Sheeta run and run and run from everyone and both end up falling... so that Pazu can experience the power of Sheeta's amulet.

More plot is revealed in the mineshaft through Pazu's hermit uncle.  When they escape, they're instantly corralled by the army as the pirates look on in fright.  Pazu and Sheeta are imprisoned in a fort, but Sheeta arranges for Pazu's release.  Pazu goes back home dejectedly... and meets the pirates.

At this point, the pirates now are on the side of "good", or at least have a similar goal to Pazu as both want to find the Floating City, Laputa.  While in the fort, Sheeta uses the power of the amulet to accidentally wake up a robot.  The robot looks frightening, even scaring my seven-year-old son, but as the sequence goes on you can find the heart contained in the metal shell... as the movie shows that this robot has more feelings, paradoxically, than the entire army who is more than happy to shoot at it and doesn't care if Sheeta gets hurt.

Sheeta drops her amulet but is saved by the team of Dola and Pazu.  The three of them join up with the rest of the pirates to follow the army to the city of Laputa.  Sheeta and Pazu manage to get there first, and the stillness of the city is broken by robots and the occasional small scurrying animal... this structure is a city in ruin, choked and overrun with plants and animals, and very much looks the part.

The army and the pirates arrive.  Sheeta is taken while Pazu escapes to try to figure out a way to save her.  The leader of the army then backstabs the rest of the army, as we find out that all he wanted was to control the flying city and its amazing contraptions.  Pazu, through his determination, reaches Sheeta.  Sheeta, for her part, manages to free herself and obtain the pendant back, and through the power of the pendant manages to self-destruct the city.  The tree in the middle of the city saves them, as they manage to entangle themselves in the roots and float away.  We also see the pirates at the end, who managed to still walk away with a sizable amount of booty.

Spoiler space completed.

I absolutely love Ghibli characters.  Dola is definitely one of my favorite characters in this movie... she takes absolute pleasure in what she does and brings that joy into every scene.  Cloris Leachman provided the voice, and seemed to have such enjoyment through the role, matched by the animation, that it's hard to dislike her after the pirates' conversion.  Pazu and Sheeta as the lead characters are also very effective and interesting; Pazu's determination seems to see him through every single challenge, and Sheeta is no shrinking flower.  She's willing to get her hands dirty, and while she does end up getting led by Pazu a couple times, she's still willing to carry the action herself, sacrificing herself more than once for the greater good as well.  The robot from the fort gets another mention here, as hopefully the audience learns like Sheeta does that even if the shell looks frightening, it does not automatically mean that the spirit on the inside is frightening too.

The last note here is that I love the soundtrack for this movie.  The theme, as stated by Pazu (in trumpet form!) is a stately cadence, almost as if you can hear the march of time itself as the sun comes up and the people wake up.  There's the promise of a new day, and not knowing where the day may take you.  There are many other moments where the soundtrack is good, but I really thought that it shined brightly when Sheeta and Pazu landed on Laputa; both the uncertainty when they were first discovering the structure and the wonder when they realized what it was and learned of its wonders.

I absolutely recommend this movie, I would give it a 3.9 on my 4.0 scale, with the one-tenth off purely due to the length.  It is a bit longer movie, and if your attention does wander a bit it will do so towards the end.  However, it is a terrific movie, one that will be added to the collection when the opportunity arises.

#2LR Too Late Reviews - Escaflowne, Episodes 6-12

  Watching Escaflowne, episodes six through twelve, and there's a few more themes that are coming up in the show.  I'll break directly into Spoiler Space going on from here...

  Taking up from episode six, Vaan and the Vaanettes are still in Asturia.  The ruler of Asturia completely doesn't believe them, he's solidly on the side of Zaibach.  As Asturia's king talks, Vaan's older brother shows up.  This is the guy that was unable to take Fanelia's throne for some odd reason that we will hopefully find out about.  Vaan gets targeted by Dilandau, sitting in her mecha, but Hitomi saves him at the last minute.  In the next episode, Hitomi gets sad 'cause Allen has a lovelife and gets herself captured.  After she is rescued, Vaan, Hitomi, and Merle the Cat Gerle escape off to the forest.

  Vaan targets Gaia's version of an oil field and manages to save the girls again.  Hitomi gives back the favor in the following evening, alerting Vaan to the invisible mechas attacking them in the forest.  In around here, we find out that Vaan has always been a two-winged angel, that he's Folken's stepbrother, and that Folken for some reason wasn't able to live up to his birthright.  Also, we get to meet The Old Dude, the leader of Zaibach who seems to be a cross between Emperor Palpatine and Quincy from Bubblegum Crisis 2040, who goes on about his fortune-telling probability machine and how Hitomi is messing everything up.

  Vaan, the girls, and Allen and his troopship all meet up in the next kingdom over, Freid.  They also manage to bring along a Zaibach prisoner from the aforementioned battle.  The itty-bitty prince of Freid doesn't know what's happening, and Vaan/Allen try to tell him that Zaibach's trying to <Brain> Take over the worrrld! </Brain>.  There's a speedbump though, in that the are bringing in an interrogator.

  The interrogator gets waylaid by another "new concept" kind of thing... there's shapeshifters in this universe and they work for Zaibach too.  The shapeshifter "interrogates" the Zaibach prisoner, who gives an exceedingly poor excuse and even more tortured reasoning, but is accepted by the seven-year-old prince.  This results in jail time for Vaan, Merle, Allen, and Hitomi.  Next, the shapeshifter interrogates Hitomi.  He hypnotises her, and then asks to have her magic medallion.  Once the two of them make contact, they go into a together trance where Hitomi predicts his death.

  The shapeshifter disappears and Vaan volunteers to go after him.  The shapeshifter manages to report to Dilandau, but Dilandau decides to kill him 'cause she's not crazy about him.  Vaan manages to fight off another group of Zaibach mechas, and now he's got Hitomi's detection powers too.

  That's about it for the Spoiler Space.

  There's two things that conspired against me on this review.  The first one is that my late-90's vintage Escaflowne tapes ran out on episode 8.  We waited for quite a bit to have Netflix fill in the gap, and then caught up on a couple of other things before circling back.  So, some of this review was reconstructed from rememberies generated through Wikipedia's episode list, though we watched the last four episodes through the previous week.

  The other thing that worked against me is that it seems a lot of spinning of the wheels.  At one point, Zaibach arrayed their forces against Freid.  From what they showed, Zaibach had more than enough to wipe out pretty much every city that Vaan and Allen weren't in.  So, why don't they?  I... really don't know, there's not a satisfactory explanation there.  After all, Fanelia was little more than a gnat to them.

  I understand that they have to "get the Dragon" (speaking of the mecha Escaflowne)... but, well, they've got Dilandau, who's willing to burn the rest of the world.  Why don't they turn Dilandau loose to give Vaan no port to stash the big ol' mecha?  As it is, Dilandau is more than happy to kill allies, and I'm sure that Dilandau would barely even need three additional mechas to burn the world down.

  There's not really an overarching message to gather from this middle portion, because the show is still trying to set up the stakes and position the characters... but we're quickly getting to the end of the setup, I think... I hope... and then I may have a better idea of theme to write about for the next portion.

#2LR Too Late Review - Escaflowne, episodes 1-5

There's so much to go through, I could legitimately write a week's worth of posts (and at this rate, I just might).  There's all of what I posted yesterday to go through which could be teased out to about five blog posts, especially since Civ V ended up almost playing as two separate games depending on if you have the expansion pack.  But tonight, I figured I'd go with the anime that we're currently screening, vintage 90s anime Escaflowne

As with most of my other reviews, consider the below Spoiler Space.

Escaflowne, oddly enough, starts as a high school coming-of-age anime.  Hitomi Kanzaki is (from what I can see) a first-year high school student and budding track star on the girls' track team, and seriously crushing on one of the upperclassmen from the boys' track team.  However, when she starts her race, she pulls into the lead only to collapse from a bizarre vision.   The first episode then completes the strange transition from high school drama into a high-fantasy and steampunk hybrid taking place on Gaia, a planet where one can see the "mystic moon" (Earth) in the sky, along with the regular Moon.

Within this world are people who know how to get her back, but of course before they can do that, the small city-state they live in is attacked by another group of people who raided the Romulans for their cloak technology, as well as having flamethrowers and other weird shooty things.  Hitomi and the king of this city-state, young Vaan, escape in Vaan's mecha robot to another country.

In the next country they pick up some allies, including the somewhat pompous knight Allen Schezar, though the ranks of the allies are thinned out somewhat by the same enemy mecha robots (from the nation of "Zaibach").  Through some fancy flying by their airship and a daring rescue plan, they prevent Vaan and his special mecha from falling into enemy hands.  They escape, flying the airship into the sunset.

(Spoiler space over)

Fittingly enough, episode 5 could have ended a sort of miniseries, as the airship flies away and the enemy base is unable to scramble units to chase after our heroes.  Having a conclusion to this story arc gave me a good opportunity to blog about the series up until this point.  Of course, it was also about an hour and a half, pretty much movie-sized if you strip out theme songs and recaps too, so it should give the viewer a good idea of where the proceedings will go.

This was a series that I watched quite a few years ago, back when I attended university and was a member of the anime viewing club there.  At the time, I recall that I was not a huge fan of the show, and to some extent I can understand why I was not at the time.  While watching, I can see a bit of why I was not a fan at the time; for instance, you can't quite classify this show as "high fantasy" because of the mechas, but you can't call it steampunk because the outfits and the methods of fighting (pure swordplay) scream high fantasy.  At one point during Episode 4, the defenders that were fortifying against a mecha attack were preparing.... catapults.  Not even trebuchets, not cannons, but catapults.  (And ballistas, for what it's worth).  So, there's massive amounts of technology inside the robots, but not an ounce of it outside the robots.  I'm sure that there will be an explanation, such as that the robots were old technology left there by others, but that doesn't quite explain Zaibach's cloaking mechanisms or new robots... those are purely out of left field and far beyond even today's technology.

The other issue I pointed to fifteen years ago was that I was not a fan of the protagonist, or the king, or the knight, or... well, really anyone.  However, I suppose that this was the young me that didn't feel like thinking through a show and not giving it a chance.  Hitomi, Vaan, Allen... they are all irritating and annoying in their own way, but the more jaded reviewer I've become now realizes that their foibles and annoyances actually make them more human than if they were perfect.  Watching this show again makes me feel that the protagonists are more real, that they have personalities and feelings and concerns, and draws me in more as a viewer.

As well, another high point is the that the writers of the show do a decent job of injecting enough comedy to keep you on your toes.  Since the humor is not frequent, each punchline gains more impact because there's not another one for a little while.  In this regard, they set Hitomi up with a good foil, the cat-girl Merle, who snips at her and puts in her own digs.  Hitomi, when she's aware enough, gives as good as she gets though.


It should be noted that there are quite a few hallmarks of the male-targeted cliches in this show, including the sword-fighting as well as the giant mechas.  While they managed to sneak in a female protagonist and they seem to be setting up a "Jacob-or-Edward"-style subplot of who gets to date Hitomi, the writers have also managed to make her enough of a girly-girl that she's not going to kick ass and take names.  For each time she's making a nine-foot leap to run to Vaan's side to warn him of danger, she faints after a premonition.  I almost wish they had her pick up a sword and really bust out some of the stereotypes, but alas, this show did not want to bust too many of the cliches apart (immediately, at least).


This time around, especially having seen more series, I've been more interested to see where the plot goes.  Of course, I am a bit put out by the fact that I know some of the twists yet to come, but I have completely forgotten the ending... so, bonus!  I actually have VHS tapes of this one, and they're dubbed too, so I can't really give a good opinion of the voice acting nor the music.  To be truthful, there is some painful dialogue in the English version, though I'm not sure if the same painful dialogue (or bad delivery) is present in the subtitled version.

So, I have enjoyed the first movie-length portion of Escaflowne, and that has guaranteed me to keep watching through the second movie-length portion (episodes 6-10).  Stay tuned for further reviews!

#2LR - "Soul Eater" Review:

No change in status, though thankfully I am receiving some small amounts of feedback on my resume.  One interview is scheduled for next week at least, considering it's been only a week I will take that as a good sign.

It's a mixed bag... this gives me the time to watch more anime as well as to play more video games, but it's not exactly under the circumstances that I wanted... being able to play is one thing, but having motivation past the job search itself has been trying.

So, I'm summoning what I have left to give a review of "Soul Eater".

Through the first three episodes, we're introduced to the main characters, who comprise three rather odd teams.  See, there are "weapon meisters", people who wield the weapons.. and there are the weapons, which happen to be other people.  I know, sounds odd, but at the very least we're not subjected to massively long transformation sequences.

The main protagonists are Maka Albarn, your prototypical scythe-wielding high-school sophomore, and Soul Eater, your prototypical high-school sophomore that turns into a scythe.  One of the other two teams consists of Black Star (assassin who can't stay silent) and his weapon Tsubaki.  The other gets odder... the weapon meister is Death the Kid, which happens to be the Grim Reaper's kid.  His two weapons are a pair of sisters from Brooklyn, NY, who happen to turn into guns.  Heh.  And oh, by the way, Death is really a good guy.

So, you can probably tell that this series is half-comedy.  There are quite a few other characters to add to the mix, teachers Sid and Franken Stein, who both happen to be weapon meisters.  Maka's father, which is also a weapon himself.  Excalibur makes mulitple appearances as one of the most annoying characters you'll find almost anywhere... Excalibur's shtick is that while any meister can wield him, he has 1000 rules for being handled.  You can likely guess how arbitrary the rules are.

The other half is actually fairly decent action... even if sometimes it trends into the cliche slow-motion cuts and Death the Kid's massive attack, which typically gets shown three times each instance it's shown.  While the first battle between new participants usually throws a surprise attack or two at you, when they do the next battle it flows fairly decently.

They did a very good job of showing the characters at their worst as well as at their best.  All three characters had their weaknesses... Black Star's braggadocio and Kid's compulsiveness work against them at quite a few times.  Maka, for her part, loses her share of duels, to the point that even though the show doesn't physically mention it too many times, you wonder exactly why she's lead because it's not exactly a given that she'll win any duel.

If there is one other thing that this show does well, it's opening and closing theme songs.  I particularly enjoyed the songs in the second season, especially the funky-fresh ED3 as well as the rock song OP4.  The animations accompanying the theme songs were pretty cool too, to the point that I wouldn't automatically skip the opening or closing sequences.

Fair warning, not to ruin the whole show, but the epilogue is like ten seconds long... there's closure, but not like scads of it.

Overall rating: 3.2  I will watch this one again, and I will think of this show each time I groove out on the theme music in the future on one of my mix CDs.

Thanks again for your patience, I hope to have more reviews up through the next few days.

#2LR - Too Late Reviews - "Working'!!" Season 2

  In the first series of "Working!!", the regional manager of the Wagnaria restaurant, Otoo, enters the scene every few episodes or so.  There's actually two reasons that he's out and about so often.  One is that, well, he's a regional manager for what is presumably a franchise restaurant, so he's probably at the other franchises inspecting their books as well.  As a reason, this works perfectly fine... but the show operates on two levels, so there's another reason he's in view occasionally.  The other reason is that Otoo's searching for his lost wife.

  After watching this whole series, I feel that Otoo's character and motivations do a very good job of summing up the two-pronged approach of the whole series.

  The first prong is that there is a mundane reason and a wacky reason to everything in the show.  The manager Kyoko can't work because she's lazy... but she's also a glutton that manages to suck down ice-cream sundaes pretty much four-an-hour yet it's never reflected in her figure (nor, for that matter, does her face ever get dirty).  The floor manager Yachiyo is pretty much the sweetest person in the show, excepting possibly Popura... but carries a katana on her at all times and manages to scare the customers.  Souta, the head chef, is aloof and maintains an extremely cool exterior, but in one of the more relatable "wacky" reasons, pines after Yachiyo and is not collected enough to ask her out.  The other cook, Souma, always has a smile on his face yet manipulates people and delights in their misery.

  The trick to all of this is to be able to balance the mundane and the wacky so that there's enough wacky to balance out the mundane, but that there's not too much wacky to make it non-relatable.  I really do believe that the show does a terrific job in this balance, and I felt that it delivered at least one or two laughs per episode for me.  I quite enjoyed the relationship between Souta and Popura, and despite the fact that Takanashi's "quirk" is a bit on the skeevy side (which many of the characters comment on), he's still sympathetic enough to be a good protagonist.

  Which brings me to the second prong of the show's approach.  Otoo's search for his wife in season one of "Working!!" is paralleled by another introduced character in season two of "Working'!!".  The character's name is Yamada, which happens to be the same surname chosen by the new character alluded to in the second review of season one.  The new Yamada is looking for his sister, and one of the episodes details Souma's travels with the female Yamada in trying to throw the male Yamada off of her scent.

  I bring this up because the show is continually searching for family.  There are already families depicted, Takanashi's specifically, and in a couple of appearances, Inami's family as well.  However, the blood family relationships are not all smooth; Inami's wacky reason, her androphobia, is caused by her father specifically. Takanashi's older sister Kozue creates the most strife for him outside the house, as she will come to the Wagnaria restaurant in order to drink alcohol and embarrass Takanashi (and make him pay for it).  This isn't to say that Takanashi and Inami hate their family, but just that the most friction for them comes from these sources.

  However, and possibly unlike "The Office", the employees of the Wagnaria restaurant seem to coalesce into a family.  Takanashi risks life and limb to help Inami with her challenges, Popura bears the brunt of the teasing with exceedingly good cheer, which helps the other employees with their stresses, and the restaurant continues to run with older brother Souta as the anchor in the kitchen.  It's almost as if the show is saying that while you may be looking for pieces of your family elsewhere, you never know where you might find more of your family... such as in the "family restaurant" Wagnaria.

  This show was absolutely in my sweet spot, and I will give it a 3.8.  As stated above, "Working!!" has enough of real life in it to be relatable but enough humor in it to be really funny.  It's also got soul in the under-the-surface family struggles and triumphs.  The best part is that when I go to rewatch episodes of "Working!!", no matter which season, I could pick any episode and I would be able to enjoy it immensely, rather than rewatching two or three really good episodes without watching the rest of the so-so episodes.

  A couple last notes, one on-topic and the other not.

  --Matsumoto, the silent waitress, gets lines in the finale of season two.  It makes me wonder if this show goes to a season three whether or not this will be a running joke, that she'll only be seen until the last show and then heard only on the finale.

  --In the course of the past couple days, I've had my back bicycle tire go flat (my main transportation to work, even now in November) and my email hacked by someone who sent virus links to my contacts and deleted the contacts shortly afterward.  I thought that I'd finally escaped the majority of my recent stress because a major project that'd been running since August had been completed last week... but the project resurfaced again on Wednesday.  My sincerest apologies if you happened to get an email from the person in Peru with the bogus links, and thank you for your patience as I try to get things back to an even keel.

#2LR - "Working!!'" Season 2, episodes 1-6

Stories, in any medium, run on conflict.  After all, there can be no resolution to a story that doesn't have something to resolve.  Since stories and television shows only have a limited amount of "studio space", this means that the characters pretty much have to bring the conflict to the table.

This means that there are only a couple different characters that pretty much act as blank slates.  The first type, practiced for millennia, are the straight men.  The straight man is a blank slate mostly because he or she has to be normal in order to show the vast gulf of difference between a random person and the madcap zany main character (say, your Jim Carreys or your Jerry Lewises).  Giving the straight man any quirks not only takes away from the camera time of the zany half of the duo, but it lessens the gulf between them and gradually normalizes the zany main character.

Another type of blank-slate character has been practiced for ages, but has shot up in popularity quite a bit in recent times.  Having the main protagonist as the blank slate allows the protagonist to be humanized in much the same way as the straight man, and allows your readers to connect to the story easier, almost being able to subsume their characteristics into the main character and therefore live out the story.  The Harry Potter series does a very good job of this, introducing a main character that's so hard put upon by his family that in the beginning, the character is pretty much "different from everyone else" and "not at all like the loathsome people around him", and oh by the way "has a secret talent that no one knows about".  If that doesn't describe more than 90% of humanity, I'm shocked.

Today's ode isn't about either one of them.

Today, I want to sing the praises of the ignored background characters.  The ones who chew up eight minutes of screentime shooting at Captain America, keeping him pinned down and unable to help Iron Man.  The ones who get sent on away missions purely to act as cannon fodder, to allow the stakes to rise for Captain Kirk to come up with a more dramatic decision later.  The ones who are surprised when the Nazgul ride up and end up knocking down the walls of their village.

There's a variant at work here in the second season of "Working!!'"  To begin, the characters are arrayed with two primarily running the food prep in the kitchen, and four (Takanashi, Poplar, Inami, and Todoroki) running the floor.  A fifth character is added, Yamada -- this was alluded to in the previous review -- who also works the floor.  A *sixth* character, Takanashi's younger sister Nazuna, even pitches in on occasion.

The problem though is that there's conflict to be had, and while Takanashi is the primary protagonist of the show, he has his own quirks and hangups and definitely does not qualify as a blank-slate character.  As a result, the show introduced another character in Ep. 13 of the first season and gave her a couple quick lines. Matsumoto desperately wanted to be "normal" (a new one, a yearning to *be* a blank slate?) but was given a quirk anyway, of being clumsy.  Even with the quirk and even with the lines, through six episodes she can be seen only when the animators wanted to show the restaurant running "as normal", and for some reason one of the other six characters just can't be bothered to go out on the floor.

The oddest thing is that the floor is the only way you see her.  She does not show up even a second in any of the character conversations, not even as scenery.  She's not even anywhere near the kitchen window to pick up food, or drying dishes, cleaning the back rooms, on break... nothing.

I don't quite think that it's boredom on my part that I really enjoy seeing these random characters... on the contrary, I can only imagine how much richer the show could be if these random characters were allowed to grow their own quirks and idiosyncrasies.  After all, if not for characters who start as new but gain familiarity, how would stories in that specific setting even take place?  (Such as Lord of the Rings generating from a character that didn't even exist in The Hobbit?)  In Matsumoto's case, is this significant in that we see people "at work" all the time but without the connection of work, they wouldn't exist otherwise?  Or should I even attempt to read so much into it?

With all that said, I quite enjoyed the first half of the second season of "Working!!".  They pumped up Takanashi's quirks to put more conflict into the show, and that definitely helped the proceedings.  They gave more screen time to the manager, who evidently runs a gang on the side, as well as Takanashi's sisters.  Takanashi gets his foot into his mouth far more as well, and while it's sometimes really jarring to see him act so differently in five minutes than he acted in the previous twelve episodes, it does help a viewer to realize that he's not head-and-shoulders above the fray, he's an active participant in the scrum.

The final seven episodes await, and so far I have not been disappointed... except, I suppose, in meeting Matsumoto and figuring out how she enters into the equation.  (Null set, I'd guess.)

#2LR Too Late Reviews - Final Review, "Working!!" Season 1

By episode 13 of "Working!!", the narrative arc is firmly established.  The main narrator of the series is Takanashi, and while he may not be involved in every plot that goes on around him, it does seem as if he is the straight man to everyone's neuroses.  However, when there are an additional eight characters--each making at least one appearance through the end of this set of episodes--you can imagine that there is more than enough humor and conflict for all.

I do have more than my share of praises to offer the show, starting first and foremost with the pacing.  I enjoyed the fact that this was not in any way, shape, or form a bunch of one-off jokes with everyone returning to status quo by the end of the episode.  To be truthful, if there ever was a setting that this format would match best to, it would be a restaurant... any Gordon Ramsay show can demonstrate this very easily, or even Iron Chef.  The grand majority of food in one's life is only remembered as long as it takes to get to the next meal.  There are plot elements that followed this format, such as the aforementioned hot springs episode, or the episode where Takanashi's younger sister comes to work an internship.  Part of the joke surrounding the episode is the fact that his younger sister is possibly two inches shorter despite being between three to four years younger, and she pretty much towers over the remaining female cast.

The one reason that I continued to watch anime, though, was that the majority of the shows have a narrative arc to them.  The main conflict of the show is an issue that has both a very local dimension as well as a universal one, in that one of the other waitresses (Inami) has a fear of men, and when confronted with one typically hits him quite violently.  The remaining male cast has more than happily accepted Takanashi as he is now Inami's personal whipping boy, and the show focuses on how he tries to help her get through these issues.

The universal dimension to this is an issue that is as old as (communal) work itself... how do you deal with a coworker who is unable to adapt or cope?  Takanashi certainly has his share of options, and ends up picking the most difficult yet most rewarding... he tries to help her through it.  It certainly helps the series and the comedy that this is the solution that leads to the most humor, as long as one follows the "comedy equals tragedy plus distance" formulation.  Of course, the other thing that the series tried to do is to not show blood after the first time, as this isn't exactly supposed to be Mortal Kombat (or even "South Park".)  It would be so easy to follow the path that Takanashi's manager laid out, which was to schedule them opposite... but Takanashi, like many other people, doesn't mind a challenge.

Of course, the other issue is local in that these same two people are together and facing adversity.  The writers of this first series seem very careful (yet very gleeful) in not resolving any of the possible romances that they are trying to set up among the characters.  It would be very easy for me to conclude this review much like the writers are concluding Season One, by giving it an incomplete.  However, I'm going to swerve you a bit too, and give you a ceiling and a floor and the reasons why.

Ceiling for this series -- a solid 3.5.  I want a bit more humor, and I want more characters bumping up against other characters.  Workplaces are some of the most unpredictable places and outside conflict, just as much as inside conflict, can be used in very interesting ways.

Floor for this series -- 1.8.  Yeah, it's highly volatile, and that's because I see some of the possible pitfalls forming. One is that almost everything is inside conflict between all of the established characters.  This gives the show more of a soap opera feel to it, and I hope that it doesn't bog the show down.  Takanashi's losing his quirks, which is a sad thing in my mind... I don't want him to be a completely impartial narrator, and I would love to see the other characters act as the straight man even occasionally.  I can navel-gaze with the best of them (you should've seen my first two rather pretentious starts to this review), and I hope that this series doesn't get too much deeper into its own navel itself.

If I were to give an overall current rating, I would say it's a 2.7.  It had a great start, and hopefully it will recapture some of its momentum.

#2LR Too Late Reviews - "Working!!", section 2

When a show is struggling, there are a couple things that Hollywood usually tries in order to bolster its ratings without having to sever contracts to everyone else.  One is the "new character" route, the best example being "Full House", adding more and more infants to the lineup in order to squeeze out as many viewer shares as the kids' cuteness could manage.  I would hazard that they were most successful due to the fact that they literally built that show on as much kids' cuteness they could, so all they were really doing was just giving the audience more of what they want.

The other method that writers will use, especially in ensemble casts, is to throw a romance into the works.  This works because the romance almost becomes its own character, and ends up throwing conflict and humor in its own right.  The one major example I can think of is "Friends" with Rachel and Ross and Chandler and Monica, though television is littered with times that not only were romances introduced, but they even added another character (hey, it's Courtney Cox again!) to the show purely to put up a romance.

I say this because, as weird as it sounds, episodes five through nine of "Working!!" did both.

It's weird to see something that shakes up the core of a show happen so quickly, but it seems that there is happy news afoot.  "Working!!" is currently soft-pedaling the introduction of the new character Yamada (a young waitress), who has no background and lives in the restaurant's attic.  That's good news, because I think that if you try to make the new character the immediate focus then you've lost the focus you had on the characters.  So far, this doesn't have the same smell of desperation that other new characters have given off in the past.  Having this new character be present but not overly active is almost like hiding a time bomb in a basement.  At some point, some of the foundation will give way.  I would like to give extra points to "Working!!" for giving the new character a full part in the opening and closing credits... it was shoehorned, but not painfully so.

The only downside is that it seems painfully obvious exactly how the new character's conflict gets presented and even seems obvious exactly who will help resolve it... so I will watch, hoping to be pleasantly surprised that the writers will have some skill in completing the story arc.

The "throw a romance into the works" part comes from the main protagonist Takanashi, who is doing his level best to help Inami, one of the waitresses he works with, to overcome her fears and natural tendencies.  The show seems to be playing this off as an ersatz romance, which almost makes me wonder if this show is going into love triangle mode.  It's an easy way to generate conflict, but man it makes me feel slightly cheap because you know that the writers are doing their level best to try to play on your emotions ("I want X to win!") just to keep their viewers.  The worst part is when "love triangle" ends up turning into "harem", or goes full Ranma 1/2 and instead of lines between characters, there's scribbles.

The other characters introduced include Takanashi's family of sisters, who get more screen time in one of these episodes.  Much to the show's credit, they didn't go all fanservicey on the obligatory hot springs episode, there was pretty much no fanservice to speak of, though there is just a bit of a hint when the series focuses on one of Takanashi's sisters... she's just missing a Patsy Stone for full comedic drunken rampage.

It is quite impressive that there's so little restaurant-ing going on in the show so far...

#2LR Too Late Reviews: First Impression, "Working!!"

Reviewing an anime series is a bit different than reviewing a movie.  If an anime goes on for twenty-six episodes, it ends up at about nine or so hours, give or take a few minutes based on commercials, opening theme, and next week's preview.  There's so much more time to fill with an anime series than there is a movie.

There are movies that promise an immersive experience, such as Avatar, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or even the Harry Potter series.  You may note that there is, quite often, a direct relationship between how immersive the experience is and how long the film is.  (I'm sure that if you were to crunch the numbers, the eight films of Harry Potter would exceed the screentime that a season of anime brings.)

When you have all this time though, the setting itself almost becomes a character... Planet from Avatar, Middle-earth, Hogwarts... due to the fact that characters interact far more with the background when there is time and reason to show them interacting with the background.

I am currently viewing the anime "Working!!", set in a family restaurant called Wagnaria in Hokkaido, Japan.  (The English production is known by the name "Wagnaria!!")  As of so far, I am at episode 4, which has been introducing the characters one-by-one.  The show opens on what seems to be the current main protagonists, Takanashi, an 11th-grader who is roped into being a waiter at a family restaurant by one of his (here-to-fore unknown) classmates, 12th-grade Poplar.  She's super-short, and Takanashi loves short stuff, though "not in a creepy way" he maintains creepily.  Takanashi's mouth gets him into trouble at times as well.

For her efforts, Poplar is short and reminded of it constantly, from customers mistaking her for an elementary-school kid to not being able to put things on high shelves to not being able to carry dishes to the sink.  One of the enjoyable things about Japanese though is that practically everything is a pun, and Poplar in this case is no exception.  Her happiness and bubbly personality have made her popular (see?) with her coworkers.

The other denizens of this series are being introduced as well, including the manager who does not lead by example, her second-in-command that lives only to serve the manager, the two cooks (one aloof and the other conniving), and the other waitress who is scared of (and therefore hits) all men.  Since there's so much studio space to explore, the characters are gaining backstories, additional quirks, and other sources of conflict and comedy as the series goes on.

If I were to compare this series to anything, I would say that it would be as close as one could get to crossing "Azumanga Daioh" with "The Office", and setting it all in a restaurant.  Much like "Azumanga", "Working!!" came from four-panel comics which gives the episodes a feeling of hit-release-hit-release that wouldn't normally occur with a twenty-minute show... most times when you're watching a show, the action builds on itself while there are times that a set piece is purposed for a joke, and then everyone goes back to what they were doing.  While the plots for each episode are self-contained there are still moments where you can almost see the direction your eye is supposed to go to get to the next comic.

And yes, this all loops back to the introduction.  The restaurant itself, Wagnaria, is a family restaurant.  There is no fine-dining here... but everyone's set up for it.  The waitstaff is all impeccable in their crisp white shirts, Takanashi's bow-tie, and the girls' skirts.  The kitchen staff is just as impeccable -- amazing in the context of a restaurant that there's not even a single stain on them.  In one episode, Poplar is trying to demonstrate how to dry dishes without fingerprints left on them, which shows a fastidiousness that may be purely Japanese but is still unfamiliar for such an informal restaurant format.

So, therefore, at this moment in watching the series, I feel as if the restaurant (i.e. the setting) itself is throwing the most major paradox.  I may be off-base and seeing something that isn't there, but these characters almost don't fit in the box that's been drawn for them.  On the other hand, you could even say the same thing for the characters of "The Office", in that the whole conceit was that you had all these dysfunctional people brought together to complete a goal that they would possibly be better at without all the other dysfunctional people underfoot.

Since it had been a while, I checked a few other series ("Soul Eater", "Puella Magi Madoka Magica") along with "Working!!" to see if there was one I would be interested in watching.  I realized that the last few series that I have enjoyed the most ("The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya", "Azumanga Daioh") were ones that could be called "slice of life", and that "Working!!" is similar in tone and setting.  I expect that this series will get a couple extra notches due to my biases, but I will strive to offer both the good and the bad of this series as best as possible.  And yes, I will be working back to the other series mentioned above eventually.

The plan is to stop every few episodes and to give an indication of my thoughts, especially since when you stack four to five episodes it's practically movie-length anyway.  Reviews will follow and Season 1 (there are two) will receive a grade once I reach the end.

Anime Review: Fushigi Yuugi

  It's been quite a bit of time since the last post, which is a good indication of how many things I've watched lately that bear review.  Unfortunately, all I can tell you other than the review below is that both The Daily Show and Colbert Report are pretty much spot-on with the satire in what has become even more ridiculous than 2008, 2004, 2000, et. al.

  So, in that vein, I will talk about an anime which I am re-watching rather than a new one.  Back in the 90s, when I was at college, there was a group that would meet up on Sundays to watch various anime.  Before college, in those dark days, my gateway anime was Ranma 1/2 and the only real standby was Canadian broadcasts of Sailor Moon.  Sailor Moon was, to some extent, an overarching narrative... but it absolutely followed some of the conventions of the 80s animated storytelling cliche, in that there was absolutely a villain-of-the-day and that the main baddie would not be called to task... except for that weird and wonderful day (spoiler alert? for a twenty-year-old story?)  when they finally went up against Beryl, and some of the main characters actually died (albeit temporarily).

  Ranma 1/2 was WIIIIDE open.  I would compare that anime to a cage where you stick a bear, a tiger, three dogs, a few weasels, a wolverine or two, a honey badger... throw in a few chunks of meat, or poke one of the many animals, and watch the ensuing ruckus.  The plot was driven purely on the chaos that Rumiko Takahashi built in to all of the characterizations.  It was tons of fun, though there's only so many ways you can keep the status quo going as the series ended up to thirty-eight volumes.  By the end, the author had thrown in as many different kinds of meat that was possible, and you were wondering when the bears/tigers/dogs would either finally make peace or rip each other apart.  This is illustrated extremely well in the fanfiction that goes with Ranma 1/2, as the same character that was the final villain in one story could serve equally as well as the mentor/companion of the hero in the next story (Happosai and/or Cologne).

  So, my college group would screen anime I'd never seen before.  All anime in my hometown was either $30 for a tape of two (!) episodes at the Suncoast, or hopefully you found a friend who was into the same thing and had some tapes (little chance).  It was at the college group that I realized what anime really could be.  The first series they screened was Escaflowne... which wasn't bad as series go, but I just do not have a great interest in the mecha which seemed to be at least some of the focus of the show.  That's a blog post for a future time.  At any rate, having a show that told an overarching story and had characters reaching goals along a journey was much like the fantasy literature that I enjoyed (Lord of the Rings, David Eddings' Belgariad/Malloreon/Elenium/Tamuli series, Piers Anthony's series) and I was absolutely hooked into this form of narrative.

  In that vein, by borrowing from the group library, I found Fushigi Yuugi for the first time.  (It's finally time for the review!)


  For a Cliff's Note version of the plot, two ninth-grade middle-school girls are in the Japan National Library and come across a magical book called "The Universe of the Four Gods".  These two best friends start reading, and find themselves literally sucked into the book.  Immediately they find themselves in trouble, and one of the main characters of the story saves them from danger.  From there, one of the two girls goes back to the "real world" (and serves the story as temporary narrator and future plot point).  The one that remains starts to meet the remaining main characters of the story, and then moves back from the book to the real world.

  At that point, the narrator then gets sucked into the book to become a character herself, but aligns herself with the other faction.  The plot then moves into two phases, where the main character now has to accomplish the goals of the book, wants to try to reunite with her friend (and to tell her friend that she still likes her) and also falls in love with one of the characters.

  That is an amazing amount of material to balance, and I feel that the story does a very good job of balancing all of these focuses so that they all stay fresh yet provide additional conflict for suspense.  I would say that one of the weaker plots was the falling in love part, but on the other hand it has to be remembered that the main character is a fifteen-year-old girl (and her seventeen-year-old paramour) so there would absolutely be situations that logical behavior would not be expected.  With that being said though, there's really some weird stuff going on.

  The other statement to make about the story is that (without trying to put too many spoilers in) that death happens.  Once the first one hits somewhere around episode 30, it keeps cascading all around and through the story.  In some situations it gets gratuitous, but in this story it feels right and it does a lot to advance the story (and to raise the stakes).

  When I found this series and found that there was a location in my college town that I could rent the final few tapes, I was rather ecstatic.  I ended up watching the series about four times in my junior year... once by myself, once with my college roommate, once with a couple of other college friends, and then with my significant other.  I was able to watch it that many times because I enjoyed the show quite a bit, it has humor, suspense, and emotion.  It may be an older series, but I think that it's held up pretty well.

  Last caveat... there's an OVA series that is set after the original series.  It started as a sort of fanfiction project, and then the author accepted it and the studio animated it.  If you really like the characters, it's worth watching.  Otherwise, skip... the plot and the storyline are pretty weak.

  Rating (original series): 3.5.  There's a reason I've bought the DVDs a long time ago.

  Rating (OVAs): 1.2.