Spring 2008 Impressions: All the pretty boys

19 04 2008

Spring 2008 Impressions: All the pretty boys

Posted by: Owen S in Anime, tags: First impressions

I know, lumping in Macross F together with Special A and Itazura na Kiss is indiscriminate. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to make a post with just Macross F or write a post about it with merely Code Geass as its sullen companion because it would be like comparing a Portobello Mushroom burger and a Wagyu steak — they’re both good in their own ways, but the latter is on an entirely different level, and they appeal to different people looking for different things.

yes, they retained this despite all the other cuts and changes

The changes from the Premiere version that aired back in December weren’t for the best, I’d have to admit. As I noted in my MAL mini-blog (I’ve taken to jotting down Twitter-sque thoughts about an episode before it disappears from memory, inspired by IKnight), why should I care about Alto? The 1:30 worth of Maaya Sakamoto, for all of her sweet-voiced glory and reunion with Yoko Kanno, would have been better suited to the second episode, and the time better used for a more coherent introduction.

I was really annoyed at how the broadcast version handled a few things, because it felt like a totally different show, and how I perceived the characters were handled differently — for instance, Sheryl seems a lot more normal and friendlier in the premiere as a result of it giving her more facetime, as opposed to her sudden appearance in the broadcast version. In the premiere, her image is built up scene by scene, a thorough preparation that ensures that when she finally appears, we’ve been party to both her professional and personal spheres, and fully grasp the level of her popularity. The broadcast version, on the other hand, made Sheryl out to be a tsundere and bitchy diva, and if that was the director’s intention, well, it worked.

Then there was Alto. The “Kabuki diva” joke mentioned casually by Michel/Mihail when he launches into the air during practice was lost on me, mainly because Shinsen didn’t get it right in the premiere version. Neither is the joke elaborated upon (he’s called a princess because he was once one of those Kabuki actors who played the girl role) in the premiere version, so when the broadcast version started throwing the relevant images at me, I got the joke a lot more quickly. The same can’t be said about the cancellation of the corkscrew — while I felt his frustration a lot more in the premiere, the broadcast made me think nothing of it as a result of it being mentioned in passing more than anything.

Other things not found in the premiere version include the Vajra interfering with the control systems of the missiles, the state of emergency being initially taken by pedestrians as a drill, Nanase (the purple-haired megane) working at Nyan-Nyan, and the practice flight exposition, in addition to some scenes taking place earlier than others or being shuffled around. I wouldn’t say that the changes were for the worse considering the different facets of the characters emphasized, but having seen two versions, I wondered if the OP was all that necessary considered what was lost in the process.

There’s also a Sophie’s Choice regarding the two groups fansubbing it, and I wasn’t aware till I downloaded both versions — while AiA-IZ has the superior video quality since Shinsen’s version, in the words of a friend, “looked as if the encoder(s) added a blur + hideous filter to it”, IZ has a history of leaving seemingly unimportant portions of an episode untranslated, Dragonauts being one example, and what they’re doing for Macross F is equally retarded, with episode 02’s OP and ED containing romaji and nothing else. Depending on whether you prefer your fansub encoded properly or subtitled properly, you’re going to suffer either way.

Special A suffers from Character Perfection overdose, Sibling Comparison syndrome, the Gonzo treatment (which has been especially painful as of late), and the dreaded I Can’t Believe You’re The Protagonist cancer.

even the random chibi sequences were so-so

First of all, I’m both disappointed and annoyed that the great screencaps I saw in the days leading up to the subs didn’t match my image of the show at all. From what I could make of Garten’s preview, it looked crazy, gorgeous, and entertaining, with many a laugh in-between. Unfortunately, I have to say that m.3.3.w’s encoder(s) must have failed miserably along the way for the video quality to deteriorate to such a faded/washed-out degree (or maybe they took classes from Shinsen’s encoder — compared to Garten’s screencaps, it looks like a totally different show), and I was let down in that aspect — it turns out the show didn’t look that great after all when you let incompetent encoders mess with it.

But that’s just a minor detail, and one that I don’t really plan on dwelling on. What I do plan on dwelling on is this show’s sheer blandness, its inability to reach out to me and actually endear me in any sort of way to its characters over a span of two episodes. Problem here being? They’re too perfect. What Ouran had wasn’t so much perfect characters as they were characters with sometimes severe flaws, and how do I relate to a bunch of rich elites in a fictional school if you’re not going to give me any chinks in their armour? The so-called “character traits” here came off as them merely going through the Anime Archetype Manual (Shoujo Edition™), and by the time the second episode came around I was severely nonplussed.

It goes to say that any comparisons whatsoever with the Ouran anime deserve to be buried immediately. This is not Ouran. This will never be Ouran, because it can’t be Ouran. Ouran, for instance, was actually funny. Ouran was a great satire, Ouran had characters with traits that endeared, not bored me to them; Ouran made me want to watch more because every episode was a refreshing mouthful, not bowl after bowl of stale shoujo leftovers and clichés from yesteryear. I found myself repeatedly comparing it with Ouran, and for good reason; despite having an almost-identical setting, Ouran managed to hook me with its premise and entice me to watch more. S.A., on the other hand, has nothing of value to interest me whatsoever.

As much as I’d have liked to say that Gonzo did something right with this one, I can’t seem to find anything. Ouran was made by Bones, which got everything — from the OP to the ED to the BGM to the animation to the character designs — all of it right. With this one, on the other hand, I found the characters suffering from the sameface disease that afflicts artists of lesser ability; the music, be it the OP or ED or BGM, all sounded horribly mediocre; the animation, while decent, didn’t play much in the way of convincing me to watch more, already impeded by the terrible quality of the encode to begin with.

The nail in the coffin was its protagonist, Hikari. To cut a long story short, S.A. suffers from that rare but terminal affliction that makes any viewer identification an uphill task; as she’s a perfect (albeit #2) student in a perfect school surrounded by perfect classmates, how do you relate to her in any way whatsoever? If I don’t make the connection after two episodes I doubt I ever will, and from what I can gather so far, this looks set to be the tiresome vein in which it’s going to continue, for 22 more episodes. Let me know if this gets better.

this is a good indicator of how funny and awesome this is

Itazura na Kiss was, despite its appearances, epic enough to surpass Special A in every department bar character design, and even that didn’t matter as much, all things considered. The moe-tards who called it ugly really need to do their homework and use their brains before shooting off their mouths next time, since the manga’s had pretty dated art to begin with, and I don’t see how this could have been changed any more without taking great creative liberties.

This was also a fresh breath of air after insipid S.A. — for one, Kotoko was way more easier to relate to than Hikari; while S.A. seemed like just another trashy shoujo work with wish fulfilment after wish fulfilment (now I know how girls must feel when they watch bad harem), InK, despite its seemingly cheesy predicament (boy lives with girl under the same roof due to circumstances is totally original content), segued into it smoothly without breaking my suspension of disbelief. I would usually have problems with this setup given any other circumstance, but the way in which it was done here seemed perfectly believable, maybe realistic, even.

One thing I liked about the first episode was how it brought two issues to the table that I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed. Firstly, the matter of the Japanese perceive love: Kotoko says that “I was in love with him for two years”, but that’s not how I perceive love to be at all! It’s probably a cultural thing, common Asian background aside — when I think of “being in love” I naturally associate it with a relationship, not a one-sided affair of which the other person’s oblivious to until he or she’s notified of it; that falls under “crush” or “infatuation” to me, and nothing more.

Secondly, there’s the matter of class differences: Kotoko’s classmates console her at being rejected, yes, but instead of reaffirming her self-worth, what they do is reaffirm her self-worth and tell her how it was a lost case from the beginning — the idea of going out with someone from a higher level in the school’s hierarchy never occurred to them, and they think that Kotoko’s foolish for wanting someone out of her range, as it were. It’s nothing new, but the way in which they later try to further dissuade her from thinking about it reminded me of strictly stratified Japan is socially, and it was interesting to see those unspoken rules come into play in a manga of all things.

Philosophical leanings aside, I’m fairly convinced that InK is the shoujo work to keep an eye out for in the Spring season, and I’ll be keeping tabs on this one for quite some time to come. Despite also being subbed by m.3.3.w, which means that you have “720p” files that weigh in at about 140mb and play easily on an old 1.4ghz PC, there isn’t really much lost in the way of production values — with realistic characters, an emphatic protagonist, a new approach to an old theme, and succinctly charming music, what’s not to love? I’ll go out of my way here to say that for a manga that was developed in the early 90s, it looks great for its age, and I’ll be damned if I let a trifling matter like how the characters look like stand in the way of my watching this.

Last but not least, there’s Code Geass R2.

It should be obvious by now, but if you’re one of those not watching this, well, I’m laughing at you like Lelouch pictured above is. The budget that R2’s been allocated has been put to good use, and some of the picturesque scenes in the two episodes aired so far gave me that epic feel that post-timeskip TTGL had. Anything that I could bring up in praise of it would have already been repeated a hundred times over, so the only thing I’ll say here is that if you like anime in any form whatsoever, you owe it to yourself to watch the first season if you haven’t, if only to start on this stellar second one immediately.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.