Cruel Angel Theses

I don’t know what’s worse, really — finding out that a show you thought sucked actually becomes quite decent a few episodes later on, or realizing that the promising premise that a show kicks off with was nothing but smoke and mirrors. After watching sola 02 & 03 I think it’s developing into one of the latter, and I might be wrong, as I was before, but this definitely looks like Harem For Dummies.

my eyes were doing a Limp Bizkit at this point. you know, ROLLING ROLLING ROLLING.

I don’t think it’s exactly a good thing when your eyes glaze over several times during an episode, and not because of fatigue. Neither do I know what went into the head of Kanon’s author when he decided to write this garbage because it’s getting worse. After the admittedly interesting premise that sola 01 introduced, we’re back to rubbish. Utter crap. Sky fetish aside, does anyone realise how generic everything‘s becoming, or are you guys too busy drooling over Matsuri’s zettai ryouki to notice? It’s a bloody fluke.

Frankly, it would be nice if Matsuri started showing more of her disintegration powers and less playing House with Yorito. The thing is that sola didn’t present itself as much of a harem in the pilot — it actually looked like a promising story, with the mysterious girl, the quaint sky obsession of the protagonist, and the goth loli in a box. But I see where it’s all leading now — the new girl vs childhood friend harem dilemma? Check. The token silent character, who also happens to be his older sister for double damage? Check. The cheesy jock villain, his smarter sidekick, and a whole lot of by-the-book quips? Check.

My head is spinning, and I don’t know whether to attribute it to the 30 laps I swam earlier or how the reality of sola is setting in so fast it hurts as I write this. It’s simply awful. There’s so many things gone wrong with it that to list them would be like writing a summary in point form: there’s hardly anything redeeming as I see it so far, and for it to go on in the same vein would be highly likely given the predictable path that’s been laid out.

I’ve got issues with sola for not knowing its direction, or at the very least not pretending to know its direction. It can’t decide if it wants to be a harem, a shounen, an avant-garde minimalistic pretentious piece or all three at once. It tries and fails, miserably — there aren’t enough girls for a harem, there isn’t enough action for a shounen, and as for being avant-garde and minimalistic, well, Kanon got the last piece of the pie, I’m afraid. So it’s just pretentious.

Now this, this knows its direction.

I’m going to praise this every week until you like it.

Looks like every episode is going to be as engrossing as the last. The thing about this particular adaptation’s that this time around, Gonzo’s managed to mould the series into something that ensures maximal conflict. It’s the Spiderman approach made anime — before this, Romeo & Juliet seemed like lovebirds who deserved to die anyway. It was admittedly hard to empathize with those who speaketh ye olde Englishe whose backstory was practically non-existent; you were thrown into the heat of things, literally, and made to empathise with them through their plight alone.

Romeo x Juliet’s changing all that. The way in which they’re setting the foundation for further conflict and maximised drama later on is beyond commendable, to say nothing of the huge cast whose idiosyncrasies are made real, almost plausible in a city with the Neo- affix, of flying horses. More importantly, however, there’s real characterisation present here. Something rather daring, I suppose, in this day of all style and no substance, but you’ve got to realise that sola’s the epitome of what anime means to otaku for the most part: it doesn’t matter what the story’s about, give me some skirt and I’ll survive.

What makes R x J a gem for me is that they’ve made the classic important, and relevant. An audience who would’ve never bothered to touch anything with the Bard’s name on it now see it in a different light for the first time. There’s no stumbling over old language, no obscure vocabulary and funny syntax to mess with. Just the story alone. I’m still amazed at how this is set to be something of a work of genius, how despite the frills surrounding it they have focus — it’s still ultimately a story driven around the idea of two people in love. No ifs and buts about it.

Unfortunately, there’s the sordid reality most of us need to wake up to some time or another. Anime was never really made for any target audience bar Japan, which is why we’ve got to suck it up, and grin and bear it — our counterparts over there would rather have characters made to pander to their needs, where depraved fetishistic desires holds sway over what the industry should always have stuck to — telling a good story.

sola is several parts wish fulfilment and one part masquerading as story. Despite all my misgivings about it I really have a soft spot for the ED song, and I’ll stick with it till the bitter end while I continue to rant about the fall of substance, just to wipe my predictions in everyone’s face much later. I thought Shana was dangerously toeing the border of mediocrity at times, but its successor’s already staring me in the face. And while Shana had its saving graces, gave us melon-pan and new meaning to the term tsundere, it would be best to say that in a few years time all that’s going to be remembered of sola would be its pervasive gimmick.

Also, it’s quite the irony how original, supposedly contemporary material can pale in comparison to a text adapted from centuries ago yet the former’s preferred much over the latter; but I guess you knew that already. Isn’t even a fair battle to begin with, but who cares?