Anime Reviews

I’ve never been an anime/manga person/otaku (minus watching Akira and Ghibli films), but strange things happen during finals season, and one of the strange things that happened during my last finals season of my undergrad career was my introduction to Studio Gainax, and subsequent Gainax trip. And because I love reviewing things, here’s some thoughts on:

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt

Somehow, this anime was my introduction to Gainax as a studio, discrete from the background radiation of entertainment: specifically, it started with (SPOILER ALERT)this AMV(END SPOILER ALERT) in which the music and visuals just fit so perfectly (better than the original music video) that I had to look up the anime backing it, and was surprised that it was a Japanese animation, since the style seems derived from western schools of art.

It didn’t help that it was available in full on youtube, so I went through the entire series in a few days (which wasn’t hard, it is only 11 episodes long). It started out as a pretty standard monster-a-week show, with more fanservice than your typical western animation; then it started taking increasingly absurd turns, but it settled down and turned back into your usual rough and tumble action anime for the grand finale. Well, as much as a wacky concept like P&SG could be expected to settle down. Throw in a few eyebrow raising twists, and there you have P&SG.

Overall, the animation was pretty good, and the absurdity of it all didn’t quite reach escape velocity (this being a good thing). But really, the absurdity of finals season was the perfect backdrop, and who knows if I would’ve enjoyed it some other time? Plus, apparently P&SG is one of the more wackier anime, so it’s all downhill from here, right? Right?

FLCL

So after watching P&SG, I decided to check out the Gainax TVTropes page, and found that not only were there other Gainax shows (surprise!), but more of them were also available online. And after the gentle mindfuck and silliness that was P&SG, I decided I needed even more in my life and heard FLCL would give me the requisite strange, so I decided that I’d check it out.

I will admit that yes, if I had not read the accompanying summaries attached to the show online, then I would’ve been lost for at least a while. It might also have helped that I probably read the Wikipedia summary of the show once in the depths of my past…

So, it was wacky, it was fun, and OMG CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (vs. P&SG, which was just fun and wacky). And unable to outstay it’s welcome at only 6 episodes: for my story-holic mind, it hit that sweet spot, that just right density of immersion that seems to be frequented by short stories and novellas.

But really, there are giant robot battles and a coming of age story and guitars involved: what could go wrong?

Houkago No Pleiades

After being pleasantly surprised at how short FLCL was, I decided to check out some more OVAs by Gainax: Wish upon the Peliades was short (4 episodes!) and also available online.

Well, it turned out to be too short: instead of being the usual half hour, each episode was around 5 minutes long. This meant that the magical girl premise of HnP wasn’t really fleshed out, and it wasn’t *really* anything special, without real resolution or a reveal that it was something artsy-fartsy that could lack the requisite resolution. I haven’t seen any other magical girl animes, but I imagine this would fit in the usual fare (minus the compression). However, the entire thing is only 20 minutes long, so it’s not such a big deal to just turn your brain off and watch for a bit.

As it stands, I’m not sure if Subaru (HnP was a collaboration between Gainax and Subaru (the car maker)) was trying to do this as a marketing effort to otakus (what? why?), or as a throw back to the days of patronage.

Also, while we’re talking about Subaru: who the HELL doesn’t put cruise control on their cars? Backstory: my family got a Subaru recently, and (surprise!) it doesn’t have cruise control. Cruise control is merely the most basic drive by wire automation, and not only does it abstract away the acceleration mechanics into velocity control, it also serves as a small fuel efficiency booster. However, it’s useful as a market segmentation tool, so I guess you got me there, Subaru.

Anyways…

Gurren Lagann

So after being disappointed by HnP, I decided to check out something a little longer. Evangelion seemed like an obvious choice: it’s a flagship anime, something even I’ve heard about. However, I couldn’t find it legally online, so I moved on to another long format and popular anime from Gainax that was: Gurren Lagann (I know, death to dubs. Doesn’t matter, got story).

Clocking in at 27 episodes, it was pretty long, and took almost 2 days of straight watching to finish. It wasn’t just my story-holism that kept me going: it starts out as a straightforward rough n’ tumble giant mecha anime, and then all of a sudden starts deconstructing itself. And then it reverts to a giant mecha anime again (notice a pattern?).

Really, it’s rocking fun (note: both this and FLCL have catchy soundtracks) with even more fanservice than P&SG, and a story line that settles comfortably into the full season, managing to be thought provoking (for a TV show: it seems that if books came after TV shows, they would be heralded as moving insanely fast, with writing styles mutating through stylistic space with frightening speed. And one person has complete creative control of the work?!). Plus, I now have an urge to yell “Just Who The Hell Do You Think I Am?!” at random times, so you should watch Gurren Lagann so you understand, or even yell along.

The… future?

So, my current Gainax trip ended a few weeks ago, but I’ve only cleared 4 items out of their warehouse: truly, the rate of production of entertainment is frightening, even when you winnow it down to the very best (ex. Hugo Awards count). However, I do plan on getting around to the indispensable Evangelion (eventually), and maybe another Gainax work (Diebuster? just for kicks?).

And speaking of anime, I forgot to count Studio Ghibli among their ranks: they’re accorded a spot in my mind at the same level as Pixar, truly, yet I haven’t watched half their works, so I’ll probably try catch up on that queue, too.

And then there’s things like Battlestar Galactica. Ho boy.