Pascoite gets bored and blogs about anime, vol. 3 · 3:37am Feb 24th, 2021
Tuesday is probably the most convenient day for me to do these, so I'll slide into that schedule starting now. My intent was to start at the top of my alphabetized "finished" tab, but as I look down it, the first two things to discuss on it are both movies, and the first two of these blogs were also about movies, so I'm going to skip them for now and come back to them next time. A couple of series, after the break.
And as I go down my list, I want to keep related items together, so I'll also skip for now things where I haven't finished sequels yet.
First up is Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day. This series won a number of awards when it came out, and yet I still get the feeling, perhaps erroneously, that it's not very well known.
Well, a teeny aside first. It wasn't until the last couple years that I started watching a lot of anime online. Before that, the only access I had was whatever anime showcase programs were on, so Toonami on Cartoon Network mostly, but a few other now-defunct programs: Anime Unleashed on G4 Tech TV, Automat and the Friday anime lineup on IFC, and Ani-Mondays on Sci-Fi. That means there's a lot of older stuff I'd missed, and I'm somewhat filling in on it now.
So, Anohana. The actual Japanese title apparently translates a little closer to "we still don't know what the flower we saw that day was." I'll warn you up front: this is a tear-jerker. In most ways, that's a compliment, but I think they did go over the top a few times. Like when every single person on screen is bawling, that starts to kick me out of the authenticity mindset. In some circumstances, sure, but this group of people really wasn't in a state where they were getting along that well, and real people try to exert some self-control when in front of those who aren't very close to them.
Minor spoilers here, but this is all stuff you learn in the first half of the first episode. The main character is a high school boy named Jinta, and he's gradually become withdrawn to the point he skips school to play video games all day. His dad is a hippie-ish type who takes a hands-off approach and figures Jinta will sort himself out, and Jinta's mom got sick and died some years ago. However, Jinta's not alone. There's a girl hanging out with him who looks somewhat younger and definitely acts less mature than him. It quickly becomes evident that only he can see or hear her, and she's the ghost of a childhood friend of his. There was a whole circle of friends, but the girl (nicknamed Menma) died in an accident, not long after Jinta's mom died, and for various reasons, this led to the circle of friends breaking apart. It's clear that by the time the series starts, she's been there for at least a little while, but I can't tell whether it's more like weeks or months.
Menma says she has a wish. She doesn't really acknowledge that she's a ghost, but she still seems to understand it. She can interact with the physical world, and I don't know why she really doesn't try to much, particularly when it comes to the possibility of communicating with the ones who can't see her. They can feel it when she bumps into them, and they can see objects floating when she holds them. But for the most part, she's fine just communicating with Jinta. Problem number one: she doesn't know what her wish is.
It's no stretch of the imagination to say that her wish will somehow involve getting the circle of friends back together, but the specifics of it do have some nuance. Some of these friends have become rather broken people in the meantime, and they have a pretty big climb back to where they can even relate to one another anymore. Then of course they have to deal with the possibility that granting her wish means she goes away. Menma's family is a bit of an obstacle, too. Jinta can't tell them her ghost is there, but they have very split reactions to the group's attitude about her.
One thing I love about this show is how relatable and believable the various characters' actions are (the occasional maudlin-ness notwithstanding), from the way Jinta likes his exclusivity in being the only one who can hear Menma, to the way he gets frustrated when the rest don't believe he can, to the way the rest get jealous when they learn to accept it, I could easily see myself having those same feelings under the circumstances.
Rating: very good
11 episodes, relevant genres: slice of life, coming of age, sad, tragedy
Also in the series is a short film called Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day: A Letter to Menma. This is something I gather is called a picture drama or some sort, where there's a story being narrated, but the visuals are just a still scene that may pan or zoom, or that may have some rudimentary animation to it. Anyway, this is functional but not particularly impactful. Each of the group writes a letter to Menma, and most of them aren't noteworthy. They say nothing unexpected and really feel trite more than anything else, but if there's one reason to watch it, it's for Poppo's letter. That one was nicely done.
Rating: decent
Next up: Baccano! Man, this was an ordeal. This is one of the messier in medias res openings I've ever seen, with a ton of characters belonging to nearly ten factions all thrown at you at once. It takes a little while to sort them out, but you soon gain a sense of which ones to group together, and who act with a common motive. One thing about it that will come up again in another series is that I'm impressed with the way the writers could still make the sheer number of characters feel unique and memorable.
It's definitely on the gory side in general, and particularly with a couple specific characters, but it also does a good job at showing multiple sides of the redeemable characters. Plus it doles out the character-defining moments throughout, so there's a steady diet of thinking one of them is no more than a killing machine as the plot focuses on something else, then comes back and gives that character a great transformation.
With a cast this big, it's no surprise that all your typical archetypes are covered, but the best one here is the well-meaning but airheaded duo of Isaac and Miria. They steal the show at every turn. A few others are rather likable; my favorites of the rest were Nice, Chane, Firo, and Ennis. The opening of this show is one of the stronger ones I've seen; not only is the music great and on point but the screens naming all the characters can be useful to keep things straight in the early going, plus the art is just nicely done. I'll always watch the full opening and closing credits the first time I see a show just to try them out, but I'll usually skip them after that. Sometimes, I'll watch through one or the other every so often, if they're good enough. This was one of the rare shows where I watched the full opener every episode.
As to setting, it does branch into a couple of other time periods, but mostly it's set during the 1920s and 1930s in New York City, and there's a lovely noir feel to it all. Lots and lots of mafia intrigue as well, which I can normally take or leave (I have zero interest in anything related to The Sopranos or The Godfather, for example), but enough of these characters are good at heart that it doesn't descend into glorifying the truly despicable people like most mafia properties do. To be fair, there are some truly despicable people here, but they get their comeuppance.
If you like gangsters, if you like an extremely varied cast, if you like the Roaring Twenties aesthetic, if you like action, this is an easy one to recommend.
Rating: excellent
16 episodes, relevant genres: action, dark, mystery
And a few quick hits of some of the rest in this area of the alphabet:
Allison and Lillia (Allison to Lillia, 26 episodes)—The art and scenery here were nice, but the political intrigue always felt like the type where the writers are out of their element and just guessing at how things would work. Couple that with all of the plot twists being either easy to spot from a mile away or arising because of someone making an unbelievably stupid decision, and there's not a lot to recommend here. I did like the characters and so had a rooting interest in them, but the plot was too full of contrivance. Rating: decent. Relevant genres: adventure, action, romance.
Anonymous Noise (Fukumenkei Noizu, 12 episodes)—Not a bad high school drama, and if you like alt rock, I think you'll appreciate the songs from it. The characters are well drawn, the back-stories are interesting... Honestly, I would have easily rated this higher except none of the plot threads go anywhere (including ratcheting up a major conflict in the penultimate episode), so it's very disappointing that nothing comes to any sort of conclusion. Rating: good. Relevant genres: music, drama, romance.
Appleseed (movie)—I'm not actually sure whether I saw the 1988 version of the 2004 one. Probably the latter. In any case, it was a functional thing of the cyborg/mecha flavor, but it didn't leave much of an impression on me. Even after rereading the summary of it, I barely remember anything about it. Rating: decent. Relevant genres: sci-fi, action.
Asteroid in Love (Koisuru Asuteroido, 12 episodes)—High school slice of life thing about two science clubs that combine to remain viable, the earth science club and the astronomy club. If you particularly like geology or astronomy, then I think you might find this enjoyable, but otherwise I think it might be too boring. I do like both, and even then, I just found it decent. One of the more interesting plot twists goes nowhere (the two main characters originally met years ago, and one thought the other was a boy, then they don't see each other again until high school, but after the initial surprise, this gets shrugged off instead of making something of it). Rating: decent. Relevant genres: slice of life.
Actually, that last one brings up a topic I'll discuss from time to time, and that's how realistic anime tropes are. I really don't have any idea how many of the things that are portrayed in anime as being ordinary actually happen in real life. I have a few in mind, but I'm going to hold them back until they're applicable to the shows/movies I've covered.
The one here is how prevalent it is that Japanese high school kids are rabid about joining school clubs. This is a very common trope, and as seriously as school is taken in Japan, I tend to believe this one's true. The sense that kids are not only encouraged but barely short of obliged to join extracurricular activities turns up a lot in anime. Here, it's not unusual for any given kid not to participate in any, and unless you're straining for that Ivy League admission, there's not a feeling that you'd better or else. I don't even know how many clubs my high school had, but it was probably 30 at most, and it was up to you to find what ones existed if you were interested in joining any. In contrast, anime shows huge showcases of clubs all desperately trying to recruit members at the beginning of the school year, friends quizzing each other about which ones they'll join, some hoping to garner enough participation to avoid being disbanded. It's definitely different, but it rings true to me.
Now comes the part where y'all who actually know tell me the truth.
Have you ever seen Death Note? It's pretty good.
And yeah, Baccano was great. It felt like it was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.
I always assume Japanese culture is exactly as it is portrayed on screen. :V They have so many magic powers, it's not fair!
For seriously though, from what I've always heard, high school is like, super important get-shit-right time for Japanese kids, and then they get into a good college and can slack the fuck off and party. I don't honestly know where clubs fit into that, because you're right, the emphasis seems ever-present. I just always figured it was like here, and colleges like seeing that kind of thing on a transcript.
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Yes, I've seen Death Note. I'll get to that one before too much longer. It's not that far down the alphabet...
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Yes, I know the focus is on studying super-hard in middle school so you get accepted into a good high school, then studying super hard in high school so you can get accepted into a good college. I agree, the extracurriculars are more or less resume padding the same as here, but more vital when the competition to get those prized good college spots is so fierce. This one makes too much sense to me to be an exaggeration, but what do I know?
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Looking back through these off the latest blog (Vol.4). A couple things about this:
1) What you're describing is only one slice of how high school works in Japan. Where I worked (in a small city, off in the countryside), maybe 25% to 33% of our high-school aged kids were on this track. Most had already sorted into what were essentially vo-tech highschools. We had one for engineering/construction type jobs, another for commercial/retail type jobs, and I worked at the agricultural vo-tech. Maybe one or two others I'm forgetting. I suspect this is still mostly true in places like Tokyo. Everyone needs to go to high school, but there aren't that many kids who will need to go to college as opposed to getting a regular blue-collar job. So exam madness is fairly overstated in anime. It's a slice of one particular type of life experience—but that life experience is so culturally widespread and understood that stories with this trope stay relatable, I think, even for people who haven't gone through it directly.
2) As for clubs, this is overstated for comic effect in anime and manga—but not by a whole lot, and I don't think this differs heavily between types of high schools. I was a teacher for heaven's sake, and I basically had to endure it. I finally ended up "joining" the kendo and taiko clubs during my first year—and a number of students seemed fairly aggravated that I picked two, because it meant I couldn't commit the appropriate amount of time or energy to either. (This was frankly fantastic for me in the long run, though, because it let me gradually ease out of both and become something of an occasional guest star who would come along for major tournaments and events, and liven up practice by making it a little different.) I think there may, may, have been kids at my school who weren't in any clubs—but they were treated like the next thing to yakuza: wild, dangerous, and disgraceful. (And I know a few of the kids getting treated this way did still end up joining clubs, though I'm not sure how happy they were about it.)
3) On a similar note to the clubs, school "sports days" and "culture days" are indeed annual events that all students have to participate in. Often, clubs dictate the program of events and what sorts of activities are available, especially for the culture festival. Again, Japanese mass media somewhat overstate the pressure these events put on students—but only a little. These events are manic.
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The culture day is one I'm going to bring up later, once I hit a show that has a prominent one. It's a bit of a different question I had about it though. I hope you'll spot it when I do ask.
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I'll keep a lookout for it.
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This is the best comment. :D This is all excellent to know, thank you!
Baccano! is a great show. I keep going back and forth on whether it would be better told chronologically or not.
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Hm, good point about the chronology. I'm not sure which way I'd prefer it. The two time periods differ so much, but I think having it initially launch you into that gangster atmosphere was probably the right choice.