Operation: More Posts on the Blog

So since I finished Infinite Jest, I think I can be forgiven for not wanting to tackle anything else of that scope for a little bit. The next book I think I'll read is probably Ulillillia's book, which should arrive in the mail pretty soon. Until then I'm spending the time I was spending reading doing other stuff, which I will touch on here.

Sora no Woto

This anime I was really excited for back when it was announced. The trailers really filled me with a sense of delight that was Miyazaki-esque. I watched the first episode when it came out and quite enjoyed it, and then just... stopped. I can't remember at all if I ever had any reason to not continue watching, but I simply didn't. I did at some point think to download all of it when it finished airing, but inexplicably didn't watch it then either. To be fair, 90% of my anime watching is motivated by seeing some thread on /a/ about it that gets me hyped up to watch it, and I never really saw them discuss it, so I went a pretty long time without ever even thinking about it.

ANYWAYS that's all over now, 'cause I'm watching it and enjoying it quite a bit. The feeling of "wonder" has only diminished a surprisingly small amount, and just as the scenery starts to become a bit stale, they mix that up or replace it with some mystery as to the current setting or character backstory or something. One thing that's sort of bugging me though is the whole dissonance they're trying to achieve with, like, the underestimated gravity of the reality of what the characters are doing and such. It's like, oh boy, straight-up moeblob funtimes! Clumsiness! Eagerness! Tsundere! Curiosity! Ambition! I mean the main character is pretty much just Yui, like, I can't really think of any difference at all, and the rest of the characters are cut from similar molds. And that's all set up intentionally straight and unsurprising just to drive home the uneasiness of their vaguely post-apocalyptic settings, the fact they're soldiers and they might have to kill people, etc, etc? It's creepy the way they acknowledge such things explicitly but never actually change the tone to reflect it. It would be a profound sort of affect, maybe some sort of commentary even, on how civilians' behavior changes, or doesn't, during war, but it isn't quite there. It seems more feasible in my eyes that the show is merely trying to have it's cake in eat it to, or rather, have their moeblobs and make them stand. One character shoots a gun at what ends up being a bird, fearing that her life is in danger. Hilarity ensues. One character is stricken with a fever. This is treated in a similar way to any "one character has a cold" episode of any other slice of life show, even though here it's implied that another character's mother died from similar symptoms. And there's strange bursts of dramatics with fitting tone, but then it just settles down to the type of atmosphere one would expect from a show with these character designs.

But it's still fine. It's not the first show to mash up moe stuff with dramatic stuff, and it's not the first show I'll have beef with for doing it in even a slightly flawed way. Appropriate tone, and making changes in tone appropriately, are two of the things I value most in any sort of art, and I honestly feel like it's just about the hardest thing to do. It requires both an intimate knowledge of each component and a "big picture" perspective that's just about mutually exclusive. Furthermore, it's so dependent on the existing emotions of the viewer that for it to be successful, one needs to go in with the confidence that the work has been so engrossing thus far that every viewer is on the same baseline of emotions - i.e. there's no sense subtly trying to change the viewer's emotional palette if you aren't sure where you're changing it from.

OK, so what's an example that does it right? One I can think of is another war-themed character-driven comedy of errors, the magnificent Catch-22. This was the first book I read where I really noticed this idea. I remember flipping through after finishing it and reading the final episode in Rome right after one of the really funny scenes, like Yossarian moves the bomb line or something, and found it almost nonsensically jarring without Heller's masterful transitions between the two. More importantly was just how excellently he wrote each scene, his depressing descriptions of the Eternal City no better or worse than his frantic yet disinterested comedic voice; indeed, one would never even think to compare the two despite them fighting for room in the book. The slightest weakness in either tone would render it a disappointing distraction from what would then be considered "the main attraction". This is why comedic relief often fails to impress if it isn't handled with proper restraint and timing, I think. Wait maybe that was obvious.

OK, so what about the anime example of this exact thing that you have neglected to mention on this blog post, despite you mentioning it to everyone else under any circumstances?

I really cannot talk about that show now. I am unready to discuss its greatness.

But Sora no Woto is still really good, despite these vague and high level beefs that mainly stem from me comparing it to another anime that I won't mention. The characters are legitimately moe, the music and setting aesthetics are nice (DAT ARCHITECTURE), everything is well paced and the dialogue is good. Oh, and the voice acting is top tier! The reason I actually started watching it again, as silly as this is, is because I was looking up what other roles Ika Musume's VA (who will forever just be Ika Musume's VA to me) had and saw this.

But just saying, everything I just said there is even more true for the unmentionable show, times a billion.

20th Century Boys

After I watched some Sora no Woto I started looking around for other stuff I downloaded and then just did not watch for no apparent reason. The three live action 20th Century Boys movies were among them. I have sort of a confusing love/slight dislike thing with 20CB. Confusing to me, probably totally incomprehensible to everyone else. I think the manga is terrific. The concept is interesting, the characters are great, the art is amazing, all that good stuff. But the way it sort of drags out... not that it ever gets like, insufferable, just a few slight pacing problems near the end... the way "oh and then there's ANOTHER problem" keeps getting piled up near the end... the way each twist seemed less exciting than the last... I dunno, it's like, the way the plot was extended seemed additionally bad because of how good the plot was initially. The way they extended it seems reminiscent of how JRPG stories usually go around the third or fourth disc, but those usually have the sort of open-ended "stop all the evil" plots from the get-go that can adapt to evil organizations above evil organizations, head bad-guy replacements, sudden doomsday scenarios, etc. 20CB, on the other hand, had a very tightly contained original plot. It was great because everything kept escalating and the tension did so as well. He didn't have as much freedom as he did in Monster, but the 20CB's was so brilliant because the cast was inherently limited and so neatly tied up chronologically and such. He successfully managed to transition into a big timeskip and second arc without losing much momentum, but I didn't think it held out quite as well beyond that.

But I digress. It is a great manga, still one of the best I've ever read. I just feel like I need to make these complaints, because I cannot help but entertain them when I think about the ending and catch myself recoiling at "they did that again" or "there was another whatever" and c. So, the live action movies! I figure they might fix these things, right! So far (watched the first of three), kinda good. I was surprised at how much they managed to keep in, but it was pretty long to, I suppose. The pacing suffered a bit from the transition from manga chapters - the feeling of "climax/cliffhanger every 20 pages" equated to "audience thinks the movie is always five seconds away from ending during the entire latter half", which can be jarring. They rearranged some scenes to nicely bookend the thing and foreshadow a bit more. The actors were all great, really consistent with their manga depictions. I recommend it to any fans of the manga. I don't know if people unfamiliar with the series would like it or if they'd just find it confusing or whatever.

That's all for now.