You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn't have put so much time into it
The points you bring up are clear regarding the actual 'meaning' of the short, but I'm not sure if it ever pretended to affect the viewer at a basic emotional level. The directing style and more importantly the way the short treats the actions of the characters, violence specifically, feel deliberately detached and distanced to me. I had no issue taking in the endless imaginative ways by which this macabre mood was brought forward, be it by how events play out or just the surrealistic animation depicting them. It's quite easy to just view it from this angle where it becomes a showcase of all the ideas they manage to cram into 30 minutes of runtime, and these cute little cats doing brutal stuff is immediately impactful due to the dissonance it creates.
On the point of the violence, I felt that the director/Yuasa were somewhat trying to mimic the 'style' of the manga but didn't really have the heart in them to go all the way. There isn't that sense of sadness/desperation that can be found in the manga. I think it was necessary in the sense that Nekojiro found it as an outlet for herself and so the OVA had to include it to an extent.
I'm sure most people though just view the whole thing as an animator/Yuasa showcase though.
I gave up on any sense of story or an overarching plot with this series. Now, I just watch it for the pure beauty that this series is. Screw the story or the shipping. Just watching it for the sake of the artistic creativity and vivid colors that is in this series.
Well I'm entertained enough by the teen soap. As for its look...it looks as good as any other PA Works anime, though all reflectiveness adds a certain something.
So I think one of the reasons I was starting to get burnt out on watching anime is due to feeling the need to do a writeup after every episode, to share here. So don't be surprised if you see me posting less in here; I'll probably give my impressions on current shows, or shows that I really feel the need to talk about, but if I can't really think of anything interesting to say, I'll probably not say much of anything or just give my impressions when I finish a series.
So I think one of the reasons I was starting to get burnt out on watching anime is due to feeling the need to do a writeup after every episode, to share here. So don't be surprised if you see me posting less in here; I'll probably give my impressions on current shows, or shows that I really feel the need to talk about, but if I can't really think of anything interesting to say, I'll probably not say much of anything or just give my impressions when I finish a series.
Turning whats supposed to be a fun way to unwind into work always seems like a bad idea. And if not I'd be starting a anime blog not posting in a forum.
I really, really liked that discussion between Alicia and Alice. We get a little more insight as to the kind of person Alicia is as well as her mentoring style. It doesn't always seem like it, but Alicia puts a lot of responsibility on herself when it comes to mentoring Akari, and despite how easygoing she seems, she takes it very seriously.
And I think one thing worth pointing out here is that, similar to most things, Akari is very similar in this respect to Alicia. When she screws up, nobody realizes this more than her, and she very much takes responsibility for her mistakes. Scolding her would be largely pointless for the most part since once again, Akari actually takes the things she does seriously, even though she can be absentminded at times.
I have to be honest, this is not the most inspiring of lineups to me. Giovanni's Island is the only new film that isn't franchise related, only that and K haven't been released on disc elsewhere in the world, and I swear GitS gets shown in some form every year... I realise there are limits to what they can program based on what's available or what's been released but I'm not exactly distraught I can't be there this year.
Maybe the Edinburgh programme will be more exciting.
Glasgow line-up for Scotland Loves Animation revealed:
I have to be honest, this is not the most inspiring of lineups to me. Giovanni's Island is the only new film that isn't franchise related, only that and K haven't been released on disc elsewhere in the world, and I swear GitS gets shown in some form every year... I realise there are limits to what they can program based on what's available or what's been released but I'm not exactly distraught I can't be there this year.
Maybe the Edinburgh programme will be more exciting.
Akira gets screened practically annually, GitS not so much - I presume it's ended up scheduled because Manga finally managed to clear access to the new HD masters of the not-2.0 version this year.
I'd heard a fairly old/classics-heavy line-up was likely this year a while back - Andrew P doesn't seem to like programming franchise movies unless it's something fairly super-big, particularly those which are fairly continuity heavy. It makes K seem an odd addition, but outside of Ghibli movies which haven't migrated here yet, a lot of anime pictures this year have been pretty nerdy sequel-fare, and whilst I'd have liked Bodacious Pirates or iM@S, it'd probably be difficult to fill a cinema for either.
I'm kinda curious as to if one of the rumours I'd heard pans out for Edinburgh, as it's not really in evidence here, but we'll see.
This is a spinoff set in the Disappearance universe and the characters are a bit different. Amazon has a small preview up from the first volume showing the best character in the manga at work.
This is a spinoff set in the Disappearance universe and the characters are a bit different. Amazon has a small preview up from the first volume showing the best character in the manga at work.
Adding that most people watch the series in a stupid order that exacerbates Haruhi's bad points (2006 broadcast and the only the new 2009 episodes) instead of the chronological order showing her growth as a person after Sigh through Live a Live/Day of Sagittarius/Someday in the Rain/Disappearance/unanimated novels. She turns into a good character when Tanigawa doesn't use her as a psuedo-antagonist.
Hehee. Well if you like this portion of Hyouka you will love the Festival part. A lot of people were largely disinterested before then so if you already love it then you will REALLY love it.
So I got around to watching this randomly earlier today. I'm not sure if it was the Yuasa involvement or just the short bits on sakugabooru. Anyway, my first reaction halfway through the film was that it's garbage. I'm not a fan of surrealist stuff at all and this was definitely an exercise in that area. I tend to think very literally and logically and so for things that are supposed to affect me on an 'emotional' level like stuff in this OVA, fall flat for me. Then the ending happened and I actually have an appreciate for the work now weirdly enough despite the ambigious nature of it.
Let me describe the gist of the OVA, it's the story of a brother who goes on a journey to get the remaining bit of his sister's soul back. Now the concept has been done before in multiple mediums, such as What Dreams May Come, but this has to be the most fantastical take I've seen on it. The way the story is told, is something that could only be done in an animated form. I say this because there are certain scenes such as
God reassembling a person mid-air or the water elephant
are something that could only be done via CGI and I can't see a short film getting the funds necessary to do that in a story as bizarre as this. The entire 32 minute runtime is a series of short events during the brother's adventure and a number of them are quite morbid. One has the brother
cutting a pig companion up, feeding the cooked pork to his sister, and finally feeding the pork back to the pig companion
. It's a weirdly dark tale for the artstyle that focuses heavily around death.
So I did some research after watching the OVA and it turns out that the mangaka of the manga series that the OVA is 'inspired' by, committed suicide. The manga, Nekojiro Udon, is a series of sadistic short stories by the brother and sister. I could only find three translated chapters but it's dark humor all the way through. I'm a big fan of dark humor but unfortunately the chapters did nothing for me, mostly because of how sad the stories are. You can really get the sense that the mangaka, Nekojiro (Chiyomi Hashiguchi) both hated and was scared of the world. It actually reminds me of Eminem's earlier materials, such as the initial Slim Shady EP, in that the audience could see the inner suffering of the artist. It's more depressing than funny. It's really sad too when you think about the stigmata surrounding mental disorders in Japan, so I'm guessing Nekojiro didn't have the best care possible. There's a good interview by Yoshiaki Yoshinaga, who worked with her professionally and knew her well on a personal level, where he describes Nekojiro. One thing that stands out is the below quote
The reason I'm bringing up the personal circumstances of the mangaka is that unlike most anime, it's actually really crucial to understanding Cat Soup as a work. In that sense, Cat Soup is a meta-reflection of Nekojiro. Hell, the name is a reference to her, in addition to the ketchup pun, in that she represented herself as a cat in her manga (similar in style to Arakawa's cow) and her food choice. This is pretty unique in anime, the work being biographical in the sense of taking the actual real life viewpoint of the deceased, and is the only case I can think of. It's like someone else making The Wind Risesin it's exact state, instead of Miyazaki directing. In the OVA, the sister is missing half her soul and so appears lifeless through much of the adventure and lethargic. After reading about the circumstances of Nekojiro, I now understand that the sister is an allegory for Nekojiro herself suffering from depression. Take for example the above scene early on in the OVA:
We have the brother listening to a trio of housewives talking in a series of noises and he pulls the back of one of the ladies where a bunch of air comes out deflating her. The other two ladies notice but then quickly continue having their conversation. Nekojiro's husband, Hajime Yamano was a notable womanizer so the trio of housewives are commentary on the gossip that surrounded Nekojiro's personal life. A bigger aspect would be the apathetic God who does a bunch of party tricks for a circus and is later seen causing the suffering of the protagonists through his manipulation of the Earth and messy eating. This is one area where Yuasa's involvement shines through as it reminds me of the God figure in Mind Game, except the God in Yuasa's later work was a bit more caring.
The ending is worth discussing in this context as it can be interpreted in two separate, but not mutually exclusive ways:
1.The brother drowned at the beginning of the OVA when he was playing near the tub and this whole OVA was him hallucinating about saving his dying sister next to him. The lights going out signify his life coming to an end and darkness entrapping him.
2.The other conjunctive explanation is that the family and house flickering out is to remind the viewer that this is a film. Now you can tie that into the first interpretation or have it be something more hopeful, in that the events of the movie are real but it's just a little meta thing at the end.
Considering the rest of the film, I lean towards it being a mix of both in that since the OVA is a reflection of Nekojiro's life under depression, the ending was commentary on her suicide in that there isn't a happy ending.
The artstyle in the anime is simplistic, similar to the basic artstyle in the manga, however the animation itself is really notable. The above is a pretty long-take drawn by Yuichiro Sueyoshi, something pretty rare in film (a great recent example being the ghetto escape in True Detective) and especially so in animation. The only other notable example I can think of in anime is the first ending theme in Eureka Seven:
Other notable animators were Yoh Yoshinari (who did this cool liquid cut), Hiroshi Shimizu, Kunihiro Abe, and Osamu Tanabe. The OVA has a lot of stretch and squash so it felt closer to something out of a cartoon. Speaking of cartoons, the violence in the film was reminiscent of the stuff found in The Itchy & Scratchy Show:
There was also this whole long cut of samurai cutting up a fish that recent watcher of Space Dandy will pick up. The music was done by Hiroshi Ogasawara and I can't remember a single piece from the film.
So after all that reading/writing and rewatching (I rewatched the OVA again before writing this post), I still don't know if I like the OVA. Weird huh? I do think it's an unique work and it has a bit of a profound effect on me even if I found the pacing rather slow at times and a bit too eccentric at others. I think the ending generated a lot of goodwill for me as the notion of it being
the hallucination of a dying cat is so damn dark and unrelentingly grim
that I like it for that notion. I should also mention that I did enjoy the moments where the brother tries to care for his sister(being an older brother myself).
Thats an impressive amount to say about an OVA that was basically a huge death metaphor and a bunch of literally random shit they came up with. I remember a short commentary of this ova (I think its included with the disc) where the director literally says something like "I wanted the animators to make a bird with the sky in it just because we can" There really isnt much symbolism behind a lot of it. It was just weird for the sake of being.
I second this, that set on Amazon is a great deal, and you never know if it'll go up in price later. I doubt you'll see it any cheaper. It's a shame it doesn't include the movie, but I don't think that has a dub yet, so maybe that's why they left it out.
Some fun character designs in there. Not fan of Washu's re-design but RyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyokoRyoko!!!
I second this, that set on Amazon is a great deal, and you never know if it'll go up in price later. I doubt you'll see it any cheaper. It's a shame it doesn't include the movie, but I don't think that has a dub yet, so maybe that's why they left it out.
For fellow Aussies, I just got an email from hanabee saying they just added bakemonotagari to their free streaming service. They really seem to be ramping their content up for a service that is just an add for discs rather than a revenue stream on its own.
No wonder Yoshii got depressed. Also how the hell did he live on the surface considering he was Texhnolyzed himself ?
The interview with the speaking chair was hilarious though his logic leaves something to be desired. "We don't need Raffia but we will import it anyway."
Funimation screwed up. Why would you put a recap episode after what happened in the previous episode?? Anyway, this was another incredibly lazy recap with 0% insight.
Funimation screwed up. Why would you put a recap episode after what happened in the previous episode?? Anyway, this was another incredibly lazy recap with 0% insight.
Episode 18 is definitely not a recap episode. There is an episode 16.5 which is the recap. Maybe its numbered 18 in order? I hate recap episodes for this reason.
