The New TV Season!
Oct. 7th, 2005 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsYesterday marked the opening of the Fall TV season in Japan, and already I've had a chance to watch a few of the new animes. Here's my opinion of three of them. Note that I watched these raw. My Japanese was good enough for conversational speech, but when the topic became highly technical I missed a lot, so my knowledge of what's going on may not be the best.
Cluster Edge
I so wanted to like this show. The previews looked wonderful and the technology and setting are something for which I'm a bit of a sucker, with the end of the airship era, the start of the modern. Throw in the fact that the storyline featured a cast of handsome young men pining for each other and I would be so there! This was the show I've been waiting all summer to preview.
Cluster Edge is set in an alternative world with technology somewhere around that of 1905, but with some kind of superior power supply (think Steamboy) making high-end but baroquely styled flying machines commonplace (think Nausicaa). We've got your religio-political plotting with nifty costumes (Trinity Blood) putting to rest the last factory for the clone soldiers of the last great war (Star Wars). Into this, we have six absolutely beautiful young men (Meine Leibe), and a series of coincidental encounters that would put any volume of chick lit to shame, with a bit of mysterious happenings (is it magic? Imagination? An all-male version of Mai Hime? You decide!). The characters are all named after geology terms: Beryl, Chrome, and the hero Agate.
I don't like the art. This was the first episode, one which supposedly sells the series to the watcher, and I'm not sold by the art. The scene where Beryl is introduced is a three-minute over-the-top selling of his supposed "worth" to all the young women on the train (and a predictable reaction to it afterward), and it's done with a series of stills with no particular loveliness to them. In fact, there's a lota of stills in the first episode, which makes it feel like it was done by some hentai-house. The attention paid later to Agate has all of the pace and drama of the view of the Enterprise from the first movie "director's cut." And Agate's "escape" is really poorly done; I would have expected some reaction (but not necessarily explanation) from the opposing group, but they're more of a macguffin than a storyline antagonist.
I'm much more interested in Chrome's story. (Grief, those names are already getting on my nerves.) The whole "clone soldiers" thing seems trite now, and forgive me if, the first time I saw him my first reaction was "Cyclonus... and his Sweeps!" And the encounter between Chalcedony and Agate was just forced. And next week, the cutest boy of all is introduced and his name is... Sulfur? Lovely.
My Otome
My Otome is the successor (it's not a sequel) to Mai Hime, which I had really enjoyed. My Otome is set in a completely different universe, with a different (but somehow vaguely similar) plotline. The really brain-damaged aspect to this is that several of the characters are being completely recycled-- some voice, same look, but otherwise completely different roles. Poor Natsuki, who in the last series spent a lot of time avoiding being sexy spends this episode trying to be "official" dressed in a corset. I feel sorry for seiyuu[?]Chiba Saeko-- does she really need the paycheck that badly, because it sounds like she's actually trying. The reserved and professional Shizuru is now a kick-ass magical girl, along with Akane, who now deploy from the car from Big O, now painted white and with special ejector seats for mahou shoujo. Mashiro, who was a calm and wise invalid in the first series is a wisecracking recalcitrant, and very active princess. Kaiji-sensei, the teacher with the role of greek chorus in the original, is now Kaiji-sousha, commander of a military force (and still doing the as-you-know speeches).
It hurts my brain. It's all wrong. It's just plain stupid.
Mai Hime was set in our world. My Otome is set in a fantasy kingdom where the provinces are just now getting used to the internal combustion engine and the kingdom capitol city has starships and holograms. A quasi-religious evil group that uses blood rituals to summon animal/machine hybrids threatens the peace and stability of the kingdom, and the royal family has the power to unleash in certain women superhuman powers: those who graduate from the Otome Academy get to become Otome, those with the power.
Our heroine, Akira, crosses a desert mostly on foot to get to the Academy. She finds a town with a train headed that way, encounters another Otome apprentice, Nina, and immediately becomes "her friend." Nina comes from a high family and wants little to do with the street rat until the two of them encounter Princess Mashiro being pursued by thugs and both Nina and Akira show off their pre-Otome prowess (and qualifications) by kicking ass. A monster shows up and the only way to save the princess is for her to knight Nina right there and then. Nina manages to hold off the monster long enough for Mashiro and Akira to escape in an aircar, but the monster manages to take a swipe and Akira and Mashiro are thrown through the air. Akira manifests Otome powers without being knighted (the mystery emerges!), and Shizuru shows up just then to deal with the monster in one shot. It's all very silly.
The sad part is that I'll probably watch it anyway. The writers of Mai Hime were good at character development and while Mai Hime's principle character of Mai Tokiha has no rivals for intriguing depth yet in My Otome, the art is as nice as it was for the original, and so far nothing really horrible has been done with the script. The characters, on the other hand...
Aria
On the other side of the fence completely from all that absurdity comes this tiny little gem of a series that, frankly, I can't believe made it into production and I'm so happy it did. Our main character is Akari, a girl from Earth who's taken up residence on the terraformed water world of Aria and makes her living as an undine, the pilot of a gondola, for a little touristy corner of the world that looks a lot like a rebuilt Venice.
The story has no real plot; there are no real conflicts here. It's mostly about Akari learning to be a gondolier and all of the adventures she has: the tourists she meets, the strange places she visits, the young man who might or might not want to be her boyfriend. It's a wind-down series, there's nothing overpowering or pineal-gland poking in it. It's not sexy or violent, it's just a cute SFnal slice-of-life series. Of everything offered so far, this is the one I want to watch.
Cluster Edge
I so wanted to like this show. The previews looked wonderful and the technology and setting are something for which I'm a bit of a sucker, with the end of the airship era, the start of the modern. Throw in the fact that the storyline featured a cast of handsome young men pining for each other and I would be so there! This was the show I've been waiting all summer to preview.
Cluster Edge is set in an alternative world with technology somewhere around that of 1905, but with some kind of superior power supply (think Steamboy) making high-end but baroquely styled flying machines commonplace (think Nausicaa). We've got your religio-political plotting with nifty costumes (Trinity Blood) putting to rest the last factory for the clone soldiers of the last great war (Star Wars). Into this, we have six absolutely beautiful young men (Meine Leibe), and a series of coincidental encounters that would put any volume of chick lit to shame, with a bit of mysterious happenings (is it magic? Imagination? An all-male version of Mai Hime? You decide!). The characters are all named after geology terms: Beryl, Chrome, and the hero Agate.
I don't like the art. This was the first episode, one which supposedly sells the series to the watcher, and I'm not sold by the art. The scene where Beryl is introduced is a three-minute over-the-top selling of his supposed "worth" to all the young women on the train (and a predictable reaction to it afterward), and it's done with a series of stills with no particular loveliness to them. In fact, there's a lota of stills in the first episode, which makes it feel like it was done by some hentai-house. The attention paid later to Agate has all of the pace and drama of the view of the Enterprise from the first movie "director's cut." And Agate's "escape" is really poorly done; I would have expected some reaction (but not necessarily explanation) from the opposing group, but they're more of a macguffin than a storyline antagonist.
I'm much more interested in Chrome's story. (Grief, those names are already getting on my nerves.) The whole "clone soldiers" thing seems trite now, and forgive me if, the first time I saw him my first reaction was "Cyclonus... and his Sweeps!" And the encounter between Chalcedony and Agate was just forced. And next week, the cutest boy of all is introduced and his name is... Sulfur? Lovely.
My Otome
My Otome is the successor (it's not a sequel) to Mai Hime, which I had really enjoyed. My Otome is set in a completely different universe, with a different (but somehow vaguely similar) plotline. The really brain-damaged aspect to this is that several of the characters are being completely recycled-- some voice, same look, but otherwise completely different roles. Poor Natsuki, who in the last series spent a lot of time avoiding being sexy spends this episode trying to be "official" dressed in a corset. I feel sorry for seiyuu[?]Chiba Saeko-- does she really need the paycheck that badly, because it sounds like she's actually trying. The reserved and professional Shizuru is now a kick-ass magical girl, along with Akane, who now deploy from the car from Big O, now painted white and with special ejector seats for mahou shoujo. Mashiro, who was a calm and wise invalid in the first series is a wisecracking recalcitrant, and very active princess. Kaiji-sensei, the teacher with the role of greek chorus in the original, is now Kaiji-sousha, commander of a military force (and still doing the as-you-know speeches).
It hurts my brain. It's all wrong. It's just plain stupid.
Mai Hime was set in our world. My Otome is set in a fantasy kingdom where the provinces are just now getting used to the internal combustion engine and the kingdom capitol city has starships and holograms. A quasi-religious evil group that uses blood rituals to summon animal/machine hybrids threatens the peace and stability of the kingdom, and the royal family has the power to unleash in certain women superhuman powers: those who graduate from the Otome Academy get to become Otome, those with the power.
Our heroine, Akira, crosses a desert mostly on foot to get to the Academy. She finds a town with a train headed that way, encounters another Otome apprentice, Nina, and immediately becomes "her friend." Nina comes from a high family and wants little to do with the street rat until the two of them encounter Princess Mashiro being pursued by thugs and both Nina and Akira show off their pre-Otome prowess (and qualifications) by kicking ass. A monster shows up and the only way to save the princess is for her to knight Nina right there and then. Nina manages to hold off the monster long enough for Mashiro and Akira to escape in an aircar, but the monster manages to take a swipe and Akira and Mashiro are thrown through the air. Akira manifests Otome powers without being knighted (the mystery emerges!), and Shizuru shows up just then to deal with the monster in one shot. It's all very silly.
The sad part is that I'll probably watch it anyway. The writers of Mai Hime were good at character development and while Mai Hime's principle character of Mai Tokiha has no rivals for intriguing depth yet in My Otome, the art is as nice as it was for the original, and so far nothing really horrible has been done with the script. The characters, on the other hand...
Aria
On the other side of the fence completely from all that absurdity comes this tiny little gem of a series that, frankly, I can't believe made it into production and I'm so happy it did. Our main character is Akari, a girl from Earth who's taken up residence on the terraformed water world of Aria and makes her living as an undine, the pilot of a gondola, for a little touristy corner of the world that looks a lot like a rebuilt Venice.
The story has no real plot; there are no real conflicts here. It's mostly about Akari learning to be a gondolier and all of the adventures she has: the tourists she meets, the strange places she visits, the young man who might or might not want to be her boyfriend. It's a wind-down series, there's nothing overpowering or pineal-gland poking in it. It's not sexy or violent, it's just a cute SFnal slice-of-life series. Of everything offered so far, this is the one I want to watch.
