Anime

[jojo]

I preferred Poppy Hill to any of Hayao Miyazaki's post-Spirited Away work. Then again, I like Whisper of the Heart more than most of HM's work as well (and Only Yesterday more than all of it). I will watch HM's next movie -- but honestly I feel Japanese animation has pretty much passed him (and current Studio Ghibli) by. There are other studios/creators whose work I find much more consistently satisfying.

Eh, I don't know. Your tastes from what I see aren't really representative of the 'mainstream' opinion. I mean, you've consistently said you don't really like Makoto Shinkai's stuff, and he's currently the most popular director in the anime industry...

Of course, my tastes are probably even more niche.

[Michael Kerpan]

I have NEVER claimed my tastes in anime (among other things) are representative of anyone but me.

But I do feel that Studio Ghibli is artistically "over the hill" (just like Disney).

[feihong]

I'm kind of curious as to what compelled Goro to enter into the anime industry after having tried to avoid it for so long. His insecurity for being "Hayao's son" seems to supercede whatever he wants to say in his own work.

Which is too bad, because he's a fairly compelling interview. He has a lot of interesting things to say in them, but for some reason those thoughts and ideas aren't being transferred into much of his work.

Definitely agree with everything you said. From what I read, Goro entering the anime industry seemed a response to pressure and encouragement from the producer Suzuki at Ghibli––Hayao kept retiring, and I think Suzuki was trying to put a square peg into a round hole, or what have you, recruiting Goro as a replacement. I wonder if Suzuki thought that the animators at Ghibli would listen to Goro because he was the son of their fearless leader? But I don't think Suzuki reckoned on getting anything but a dutiful heir to his father's legacy, and instead, Goro spend a lot of his life trying to be distinct from his father in key ways. It seems to me that Goro is wrapped up for life in wrestling with his father's legacy; if his thoughts and ideas don't make it into his movies, I would guess it's largely because he doesn't have the storytelling skills his father has. Goro doesn't bring with him that lifetime of visual storytelling experience which has made Hayao's movies so compellingly watchable, even when they were less than one might want them to be (a la The Wind Rises, perhaps, or Howl's Moving Castle). Goro isn't the visual artist his father is, either, and I think it shows––not only in the drawings he does, but also in what he imagines for his visuals. Poppy Hill was helped by being set in a very pedestrian world, which Goro could animate almost like a Nobuhiko Obayashi drama. But the more exaggerated, communicative visuals which are the Ghibli standard call for not just surer drawing skills, but a more well-exercised visual imagination––which I think comes with drawing all the time, very purposefully. I don't get that sense from Goro––his drawings don't quite imply that energy. I think computer animation has been a retreat for him, to tax his drawing skills and his visual imagination less, and to avoid constant comparison to his father––comparisons he makes perhaps more than anybody. I wonder, too, if the self-consciousness which seems to present in Goro's mind really offers him any respite on a project, allowing time for him to think about how to put his ideas into his filmmaking? That's my somewhat florid take, anyway.

And while there are more feature animators out there now, making movies which are different than Ghibli, I don't see any of them so far creating as consistent a run of engaging movies as Ghibli has done. I thought Belle and Weathering With You were just terrible films (haven't seen the "girl falls in love with some *sshole who becomes a chair" movie yet, but I'm about to). I don't see any of these creators offering the kind of consistency Ghibli has in the past. I think the television anime out there right now offers much more consistent interest.

[jojo]

I still have high hopes for Yuasa, but his feature films of late have been strictly in the YA genre which is so popular in anime right now. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Ride Your Wave and Lu Over the Wall, but I think they're largely unambitious works compared to most of his TV stuff and The Night is Short, Walk on Girl. Then again, I don't entirely lay the blame on him or any other anime studio out there for spamming all these safe, samey films on audiences. Japanese sponsors seem far less keen to bankroll anything that strays too far from what's currently popular or proven. That probably explains why Mamoru Oshii hasn't released an anime feature since 2008

I have NEVER claimed my tastes in anime (among other things) are representative of anyone but me.

But I do feel that Studio Ghibli is artistically "over the hill" (just like Disney).

I would never write off Ghibli (or Disney, for that matter) for being irrelevant or out of date, mostly because they've NEVER been on the 'cutting edge' of animation in the first place. They've always done their tried and true classical style through all sorts of trends and fads and they always seem to draw a large audience whenever a movie of theirs drops. And I can't argue they haven't started trends--I think the proliferation of these mild, YA focused and aggressively crowd-reassuring anime films today is exactly the result of the success of Ghibli. While for some of us they've 'missed' on an artistic level more often lately, it seems to be a minority opinion since every time a Miyazaki film drops, audiences flock to it and other animators copy him. For example, Ponyo which is considered a "late period Miyazaki" is also one of the most referenced by modern anime films or even in some cases, already re-made (Yuasa's Lu Over The Wall). So I can't in good confidence say the business has passed Hayao Miyazaki by when even his later, supposedly less acclaimed work still has great influential power on the stuff I'm seeing today.

[Mr Sausage]

Steamboy (Katsuhiro Otomo, 2004)

I'm surprised it took me so long to get around to Otomo's work given my love of Akira. His anthologies were terrific, and Metropolis was a worthy successor to Lang in that it looked astonishing while being thin and inconsequential on a script level. Now here's his second feature as a director, a production ten years in the making. Not as wild or dense as Otomo's big sci-fi opus, but Steamboy has the same visual beauty and hurtling pace. What surprised me is that this is an out-and-out anti-war film, indeed a more coherent and less sentimental one than Miyazaki's anti-war films.

A lot of steampunk is fundamentally nostalgic, including Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. For Otomo, steampunk is his way of representing the birth of the military-industrial complex. Tho' set in the mid 19th century, Otomo's film looks towards WWI, seeing its origin in the intersection of militarism, nationalism, and capitalism that results in the grim one-upmanship of an arms race. Otomo undercuts any sentimentality for the Victorian era or steampunk in general by having the first two scenes show the callous disregard for human well-being that lies behind mechanized profiteering, where machines and their expense become more important than lives.

Of course that doesn't stop Otomo from using all the steam-powered weaponry to craft action scenes full of thrills and excitement, with widespread destruction where the inevitable deaths are kept just out of one's eyeline--this is a piece of crowd-pleasing entertainment, after all. But good lord is it exciting, full of old-fashioned boy's adventure cheer and thrills.

A terrific adventure film. I wonder why I don't hear its praises sung more often. Maybe it's because, for as many beautiful and astonishing images it contains, there's nothing here that anime hadn't been doing for over a decade. Everyone's already seen floating islands and steam-powered wizardry, kids flying about while chased by men in black suits. It does what others have already done. But it's all done so wonderfully. This is easily one of my favourite animes as Otomo is easily one of my favourite anime creators. Bring on Orbital Era!

[knives]

I still have high hopes for Yuasa, but his feature films of late have been strictly in the YA genre which is so popular in anime right now. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Ride Your Wave and Lu Over the Wall, but I think they're largely unambitious works compared to most of his TV stuff and The Night is Short, Walk on Girl. Then again, I don't entirely lay the blame on him or any other anime studio out there for spamming all these safe, samey films on audiences. Japanese sponsors seem far less keen to bankroll anything that strays too far from what's currently popular or proven. That probably explains why Mamoru Oshii hasn't released an anime feature since 2008

His latest, Inu-Oh, isn’t in the YA demographic.

[Michael Kerpan]

His latest, Inu-Oh, isn’t in the YA demographic.

Indeed. An amazing movie -- a wild a any of hi TV work, I think. And he (and his studio) supported Naoko Yamada's incredible Heike Monogatari (which was a sort of companion piece to Inu-Oh).

[beamish14]

Steamboy (Katsuhiro Otomo, 2004)

I'm surprised it took me so long to get around to Otomo's work given my love of Akira. His anthologies were terrific, and Metropolis was a worthy successor to Lang in that it looked astonishing while being thin and inconsequential on a script level. Now here's his second feature as a director, a production ten years in the making. Not as wild or dense as Otomo's big sci-fi opus, but Steamboy has the same visual beauty and hurtling pace. What surprised me is that this is an out-and-out anti-war film, indeed a more coherent and less sentimental one than Miyazaki's anti-war films.

A lot of steampunk is fundamentally nostalgic, including Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. For Otomo, steampunk is his way of representing the birth of the military-industrial complex. Tho' set in the mid 19th century, Otomo's film looks towards WWI, seeing its origin in the intersection of militarism, nationalism, and capitalism that results in the grim one-upmanship of an arms race. Otomo undercuts any sentimentality for the Victorian era or steampunk in general by having the first two scenes show the callous disregard for human well-being that lies behind mechanized profiteering, where machines and their expense become more important than lives.

Of course that doesn't stop Otomo from using all the steam-powered weaponry to craft action scenes full of thrills and excitement, with widespread destruction where the inevitable deaths are kept just out of one's eyeline--this is a piece of crowd-pleasing entertainment, after all. But good lord is it exciting, full of old-fashioned boy's adventure cheer and thrills.

A terrific adventure film. I wonder why I don't hear its praises sung more often. Maybe it's because, for as many beautiful and astonishing images it contains, there's nothing here that anime hadn't been doing for over a decade. Everyone's already seen floating islands and steam-powered wizardry, kids flying about while chased by men in black suits. It does what others have already done. But it's all done so wonderfully. This is easily one of my favourite animes as Otomo is easily one of my favourite anime creators. Bring on Orbital Era!

I adore this film as well. I think a lot of people wrote it off after only seeing the dubbed cut, which is a full 20 minutes shorter than the subtitled version. Otomo really wants you to think about big issues in his works-environmental stewardship, the dangers of nationalism and militarism, the necessity of exercising caution with scientific inquiry.

I remember seeing the subtitled version the very night it opened in Los Angeles. The audience erupted with the final line, which still gives me frisson

[Michael Kerpan]

Summer season report -- now about one-third of the way through,,,,

A decent season, better for "continuations" than new shows overall.

New fantasy dramas I like include: Dark Gathering (main characters have to deal with ghosts and other malign spirits), Helck (demons against humans, with a human hero who has decided to switch sides -- for reasons not yet disclosed), and Undead Girl Murder Farce (a female detective in Edwardian? England has been reduced to a disembodied head when the rest of her body was stolen, she solves mysteries for others as she looks for the person who stole the rest of her body -- likely to encounter Sherlock Holmes sooner or later).

Zom 100 is a post-zombie apocalypse whose young salaryman hero was so abused by his prior workplace that his current circumstances seems almost like a vacation. If he is oblivious much of the time, the overall setting is rather dark. Heretical Last Boss Queen is a villainess isekai -- and not a bad one (she is around 11 during the show so far). The person she seems to have supplanted was already a nasty piece of work and was fated to become pretty horrific. Our villainess heroine takes drastic steps NOT to follow the intended course of events. Seven Spellblades is more or less a Harry Potter-ish story. Ayaka is about a teen (the son of a powerful exorcist) returning after many years to his home islandI, where things seem to be going wrong (due to increasing paranormal activity). i wouldn't say I LOVE any of these -- but find them somewhat interesting and entertaining.

AI no Idenshi is the only fairly straightforward science fiction series -- dealing with relations between humans, humanoids (at least semi-sentient androids) and robots (theoretically non-sentient workers). Not as compelling as Time of Eve or Vivy, but decent enough so far.

My Happy Marriage is a romance drama (with fantasy elements) set in early Showa era Japan. This is something I might grow to love, depending how things develop (after a sort of subdued start) -- or maybe it will remain in moderate like territory.

Truly notewothy brand new comedies are lacking -- Masterful Cat Is Depressed Everyday has a preposterous premise (an adopted stray kitten has grown up to take care of all of a disorganized office lady's house work and cooking) is enjoyable enough. Reincarnated as a Vending Machine is even MORE preposterous (I guess) and is more enjoyable than I expected. The only other is Temple - a rather ecchi harem show, set in a Buddhist nunnery, which acquires the services of an aspiring Buddhist monk (fleeing from romance). It is what it is... There are a few new romcoms -- none of them of great interest to me. Some like St Cecilia and Pastor Lawrence and The Girl Who Forgets Her Glasses seemed potentially promising, but have not come close to capturing much of my heart (unlike numerous new shows last season). Dreaming Boy Is a Realist may or may not turn out a bit better in the end. My Tiny Senpai was a drop-after-one.

Horimiya Piece fills in some of the gaps not covered by the original season -- mostly it presents more wildly humorous events (that might have disrupted the comparative real-feeling-ness of that prior season). It is, by its nature, episodic -- but very well-made and thoroughly enjoyable (assuming you like the characters -- which I did, based on the manga, even before the anime series).

The stand-out show for me is BanG Dream -- MyGo. It will definitely be my favorite of the season and possibly the favorite of the year (it will certainly be a contender). Watchers of prior seasons (and fans of the franchise) say this is dramatically a quantum jump above its predecessors (I wouldn't know). I will say it is one of the very best music-centered drama anime (or movies) I've watched. Really exceptional in pretty much every respect. It has packed genuine emotional punches already (currently up to ep. 6, as it was an early starter). Unless one has NO interest in shows of this sort, highly recommended.

Most of my favorites of the season are sequels or continuations. My two favorites of this sort (mostly overlooked last season) are Monongatari (involving dealing with errant tsukumogami) and Sacrificial Princess (sort of Beauty-and-the-Beast-ish -- but involves much more interspecies "politics"). I guess these both fall into shoujo territory -- but of a very superior sort. It's a shame they have not managed to get more traction.

[feihong]

FlCl: Grunge arrives with its first episode a miserable mutant of Dr. Moreau, suppurating and dragging itself across the floor––screaming for you to kill it, to end its own misery, and ours. The art is 3d rendering that takes us back practically to the era of Transformers: Beast Wars and Reboot. The story is like all the other failed FlCl sequels––a maimed mixture of retreading the totems of the original (without any shred of their meaning in the first show), and an injection of new content which does not gel with the experience or the meanings of the original series, nor does it work in and of itself as any kind of special, original work. The soul of the original FlCl was rarified enough to be unique; all of these follow-up sequels (and this one, which is apparently a prequel of some kind) is continue to prove how impossible the first show's magic is to recapture. The original is personal art (even though it is kind of an unusual blend of director Tsurumaki's and writer Yoji Enokido's disparate passions); the new ones are more motivated, I think, by Gainax being forced to sell the license to the show, and its purchaser, Adult Swim, trying to maximize exploitation of a popular title, a la Disney's full-court press on Star Wars. Are the people at Adult Swim unaware how much brand-value Disney has burned through there? A remaster of the original show and a new merchandising push would have been tasteful––and even appreciated––instead. Like with the other FlCl sequels, this new one only succeeds in hammering home just how discreet and done the original FlCl was at its conclusion, in terms of story and idea, energy, and everything. Motherf*ckers, this had an ending.

[Michael Kerpan]

Sousou no Frieren has started off with a bang, with its first 4 episodes (25 or so minutes each) released yesterday (these were aired as one very long episode in Asia apparently). This will be followed by another 24 episodes. By partway through episode 1, I suspected this would be one of my top shows of the season. By the end of episode 4, I was pretty positive. The central character is an elf mage (young in elven terms, pretty ancient by human ones) who was part of a party of adventurers who put an end to a demond lord posing a massive threat to humankind (this apparently was the topic of a video game). The anime starts with the return home of the hero adventurers -- and Frieren (the elf) going off again on her own solitary explorations. We next see a 50th anniversary reunion -- and then the story continues from there (with shorter time skips). Its main focus seems to be Frieren's coming to grips with the nature -- and comparative evanescence -- of human lives -- and her willingness to take risks in engaging with humans despite the inevitability of (repeated) losses.

This show is visually gorgeous and very well-written, with excellent voice acting. The ending credit sequence is a work of art in its own right. I find it hard to imagine any other show this season will top this. Despite it more adventure-story-type setting, this has a feel not too different from Aria, a slice-of-life mix of delight and melancholy. Highly recommended.

Not sure what else the new season will have in store -- as I just check each new show as it pops up on each day's airing schedule.

[jazzo]

Naoki Urasawa‘s incredibly moving, Pluto, a brilliant reconfiguration of Tezuka’s Astro Boy, has been adapted into an anime, dropping on Netflix on October 26.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YSbHN6rbjHk

[Mr Sausage]

So I started watching Monster due to the sheer level of acclaim it's received. I'm not two episodes in, and I don't buy a moment of it. It's meant to take place in a German hospital in the 80s, but it feels exactly like a Japanese company full of office workers. First of all, the lead character is a hotshot surgeon so skilled that not only does his technique produce audible gasps and compliments during surgery, but the director hijacks him from cases to put him on higher profile ones to ensure their success. He's their miracle worker. So what's his personality type? Meek and subordinate, without a voice or say, and seemingly no power. He's pushed around by his senior fellows; he's ordered off his own research so he can help write up the director's research or something. And I don't believe a moment of it. Surgeons aren't meek; surgeons aren't without confidence; surgeons aren't their directors' office lackey; and if they're the top talent in the hospital, they sure as fuck don't lack for power. The guy behaves exactly like some salaryman. To make things more unbelievable, when he does finally stand up for himself, he's radically demoted and then told, point blank, that while he can stay with the hospital if he wants, he will never get any promotions and the hospital is generally through with him. It breaks all credulity. No hospital just tosses aside top talent like that like they're expendable. Hospitals fall all over themselves to hire and retain surgeons of the calibre this guy is shown to be.

Does the show get better? At the moment it's all hokey melodrama, plot contrivances, and the above nonsense.

[therewillbeblus]

I haven't seen it in almost a decade, but I recall the show taking over a handful of episodes for the plot to be revealed and fully start settling in. It’s a good example of how the long animes (not the 13 episode ones) don’t always establish the ideas (or even tone, necessarily) of a show with the pilot episode, or at least not the way we’re accustomed to in North America. It’s going to be a completely different show soon. Though, if you’re looking for a believable storyline, you may want to move on - the central conceit relies on a buy-in of spiritual forces in corporeal form to engage with more philosophically-familiar ethical and moral dilemmas.

I’m curious through what lens you’re basing criticisms on the realism of systems, though. I’m not going to pretend to be able to recite the syllabus of my Psychology of Organizational Culture and Cross-Cultural Communication undergrad class from almost twenty years ago, but I do remember we specifically reviewed Germany and Japan’s urban contexts as examples of cultures where intra-work power dynamics were radically different from what we are familiar with in the U.S. If the particular cultural context’s vantage point is being considered when judging how dynamics are ‘supposed’ to function, I’d love to get that insight - otherwise it reads like universalizing organizational cultures into a global monolith, which I don’t think is the intention but nor is it fair criticism. The behavioral subordination you describe actually does sound in step with the more rigidly-defined hierarchical customs of submitting to superiors in Japanese work cultures from my working memory. Anyways, it wouldn’t surprise me if the show was taking some absurd creative liberties to jumpstart its actual narrative - and either way, you won’t have to put up with hospital stuff much longer.. it’ll turn into a western-noir-horror of sorts. Only his identity as a doctor really matters.

I mentioned this before, but I really loved the first third of the show (once things got going). It can be a chore to sit through incessant and monotonous narrative-construction, especially when your time is valuable (mine wasn’t in 2014), but I’d say if you aren’t having any fun with the more episodic mini-arcs that kick in once he hits the road, you can safely throw in the towel

[Mr Sausage]

Sure, could be that 1980s hospitals in West Germany were closer to how hospitals are in Japan. They have some common roots (medical terms in Japanese are all from German for instance). But the context still read as very Japanese and not especially German. And I guess I had a hard time believing not only that the hospital's star surgeon and head of neurology would be utterly powerless and treated as a lackey at his Director's beck and call, but that his skills were unmarketable enough that his career could be ended with a flick of the wrist, as it were. That seems right out of Japanese business where, as a friend of mine put it, "you aren't working for the boss, but The Boss, and you aren't meant to have your own opinions on how things should be done", tho' I gather things are changing in Japan. But I'll happily admit I'm wrong if it's also in line with German experience.

Anyway, it's not that I have a low tolerance this kind of thing--Otomo's Steamboy often had Victorians acting like Japanese people, for instance, but it never took away from that movie's many pleasures. So far Monster has been nothing but unbelievable hospital melodrama and hackneyed narrative contrivances, which had me worried.

I'm not looking for a believable story line, but I do have to buy the reality of the world being presented at some level. Currently I don't. But you've sold me on sticking with it.

[feihong]

Having read some of Naoki Urusawa's manga, I approached the anime without expecting the level of authenticity Mr. Sausage is looking for. Most of Urusawa's material puts characters through these extremes of rising and falling fortunes, and he tends to read all of the adult world as systems of oppressive patronage and punishing hierarchies, which his main characters have to learn to transcend (20th Century Boys, Mujirushi) or force their way into, insisting upon themselves (Happy!, Asadora). There's also a frequent sense in Urusawa that the hierachies of the world elevate unworthy people to levels of ego and entitlement, and that competent, serious people on the lower rungs of these hierarchies are left to observe the Japanese sense of community which downplays individual achievement over group harmony. I kind of fell off of the Monster anime, but the relationship of the surgeon to his father-in-law to be seemed to reflect Urusawa's sense of social structures betraying the competent and rewarding the privileged yet undeserving. It is generally the set up for one of Urusawa's convulsive stories, where characters struggle, with their lives turned inside out again and again, before coming to be at peace with what has happened to them.

But Mr. Sausage's experience sounds to me a little bit like mine with Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher. Having been in the world of competitive piano, the film felt shockingly inauthentic. And yet, whenever I think about the film (I've never seen it again), it feels emotionally authentic to the experience of someone giving their life to the narrow focus of the piano, and the mania and the trauma that lives inside the person that pursues that goal. Or maybe Nashville, which I know is thought of as inauthentic by people in the country music milieu––but which I've come to feel is, whether authentic or not, a pretty incredible movie. I don't know if Monster delivers on the immersive experience of Urusawa's best manga––it seemed to be going in that direction to me––I could feel the convulsive pull of the a story wringing its characters inside-out––but I didn't pursue it far enough to tell for sure. I think I got about 14 or 15 episodes in?

Not at all related, but Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! showed up on blu-ray, finally––with dual Japanese and English language tracks, no less. I didn't know there was an English-language dub.

[therewillbeblus]

Sure, could be that 1980s hospitals in West Germany were closer to how hospitals are in Japan. They have some common roots (medical terms in Japanese are all from German for instance). But the context still read as very Japanese and not especially German. And I guess I had a hard time believing not only that the hospital's star surgeon and head of neurology would be utterly powerless and treated as a lackey at his Director's beck and call, but that his skills were unmarketable enough that his career could be ended with a flick of the wrist, as it were. That seems right out of Japanese business where, as a friend of mine put it, "you aren't working for the boss, but The Boss, and you aren't meant to have your own opinions on how things should be done", tho' I gather things are changing in Japan. But I'll happily admit I'm wrong if it's also in line with German experience.

Anyway, it's not that I have a low tolerance this kind of thing--Otomo's Steamboy often had Victorians acting like Japanese people, for instance, but it never took away from that movie's many pleasures. So far Monster has been nothing but unbelievable hospital melodrama and hackneyed narrative contrivances, which had me worried.

I'm not looking for a believable story line, but I do have to buy the reality of the world being presented at some level. Currently I don't. But you've sold me on sticking with it.

That's fair, and Germany is much different than Japan in terms of organizational culture, so you're probably right that it's extrapolating Japanese experience onto a German narrative. I'm struggling to recall specifics, but I think there may be a good conspiratorial reason why Tenma is suddenly cast into a world of chaos. I'm not sure, but while it may be contrived, I felt like it was fitting within an internal logic of noir (welded with Wrong-Man narratives) as feihong kinda alludes to, so I was able to buy into the reality of that kind of world.

But yeah, having very little experience with anime at this time of my life (in trying to build a relationship with the extremely introverted younger brother of my gf-at-the-time, who was obsessed with anime, I asked him what his all-time favorite was, and this was the answer so I watched it), I was surprised at how long it took for the story to fall into place. This was around the time that Guillermo del Toro was trying to develop it as a live-action series for HBO, and I distinctly remember spending a lot of time wondering how he'd be able to fit like six-episodes'-worth of information into a single pilot episode that would be captivating and also motivate the viewer to keep watching. Though because I haven't returned to this since I've actually dove into exploring anime (and film and genre) more thoroughly, for all I know I'd share these frustrations if I watched it today after a slew of other series.

I don't know if Monster delivers on the immersive experience of Urusawa's best manga––it seemed to be going in that direction to me––I could feel the convulsive pull of the a story wringing its characters inside-out––but I didn't pursue it far enough to tell for sure. I think I got about 14 or 15 episodes in?

I think it's worth aiming for at least the first 20something eps (whenever Johan reappears in a mini-climax, I forget which and the internet isn't helping). I remember finding the superfluous pitstops cool, like in episode ten, I think, when Tenma is 'forcibly tasked' to help give some robbers medical attention.

[jazzo]

A couple of other things to note.

It is a VERY literal adaptation of a very long manga, and it definitely has the rhythms of something that was serialized in 30 page weekly instalments over seven years. I love the book (and all of Urasawa’s work), have read the entire series twice, and I think the anime does a really great job of capturing its essence. The anime was created for a Japanese audience, and almost certainly for one that was already familiar with the story in printed form.

I will say that, sometimes, things work much better on page than when spoken out loud, and that may be where the anime may be failing you.

Naoki Urasawa’s comics occupy this special place in manga storytelling. His work is expertly crafted for the page, constantly ratcheting up suspense, and though it can get very very dark, there is a reverence for traditional Japanese values that almost come across as overly earnest and maybe even naive at times. It balances perfectly on paper, and it’s what endears readers almost immediately to his protagonists before he puts them through the wringer. But out loud, it can come off as melodramatic.

Honestly, I’d advise going to the library and experiencing the pleasures of his story in its original 18 volume form first.

Same with Pluto, which is much shorter at a mere 8 volumes (or 1600 or so pages).

Then move on to 20th Century Boys, which is simply extraordinary.

[Mr Sausage]

Having read some of Naoki Urusawa's manga, I approached the anime without expecting the level of authenticity Mr. Sausage is looking for. Most of Urusawa's material puts characters through these extremes of rising and falling fortunes, and he tends to read all of the adult world as systems of oppressive patronage and punishing hierarchies, which his main characters have to learn to transcend (20th Century Boys, Mujirushi) or force their way into, insisting upon themselves (Happy!, Asadora). There's also a frequent sense in Urusawa that the hierachies of the world elevate unworthy people to levels of ego and entitlement, and that competent, serious people on the lower rungs of these hierarchies are left to observe the Japanese sense of community which downplays individual achievement over group harmony. I kind of fell off of the Monster anime, but the relationship of the surgeon to his father-in-law to be seemed to reflect Urusawa's sense of social structures betraying the competent and rewarding the privileged yet undeserving. It is generally the set up for one of Urusawa's convulsive stories, where characters struggle, with their lives turned inside out again and again, before coming to be at peace with what has happened to them.

Yeah, that's something else about the show, its sheer bluntness. In the first episode the fiancee looks directly into the camera and says some people are simply better than others. And then you get a story about a cartoonishly venal hospital director, a nakedly gold digging fiancee, and a guy whose conscience is awakened by a minority woman literally pounding on his chest and screaming his faults at him. The show makes its point so thoroughly I don't know where else it could go with it.

I'm not sure, but while it may be contrived, I felt like it was fitting within an internal logic of noir (welded with Wrong-Man narratives) as feihong kinda alludes to, so I was able to buy into the reality of that kind of world.

The wrong man stuff is contrived to the point I rolled my eyes.

SpoilerShow

The mild-mannered doctor, who habitually approached trying circumstances with stoicism and quiet perseverance, suddenly acts out of character with a violent outburst, and soon after appears blackout drunk, murmuring how he wants everyone to die, despite never having touched a drop of alcohol thus far. Why? Because the show needs to incriminate him when his colleagues mysteriously die. No other reason. The show changes his behaviour without set up in order to contrive a wrong man scenario. It's bad story telling.

[knives]

I can’t remember, but does the anime make it clear that the doctor is Japanese? I think that might address some of the problems at hand. Certainly I always felt that these aspects of the story made sense as a distinctly Japanese person having difficulties working within a foreign culture with a lot of the later persecution being in part from xenophobia.

I’ll also co-sign the manga as being great and being more effective due to the awkwardness the anime can have with its adaptation choices.

[therewillbeblus]

I can’t remember, but does the anime make it clear that the doctor is Japanese? I think that might address some of the problems at hand. Certainly I always felt that these aspects of the story made sense as a distinctly Japanese person having difficulties working within a foreign culture with a lot of the later persecution being in part from xenophobia.

That’s the impression I got. And of course the Germany setting is mostly significant for reasons that become clear later.

[jazzo]

Both manga and anime explicitly state that Dr Tenma is Japanese, and that he had to work hard to navigate through prejudice within the German healthcare system.

[Mr Sausage]

I can’t remember, but does the anime make it clear that the doctor is Japanese? I think that might address some of the problems at hand. Certainly I always felt that these aspects of the story made sense as a distinctly Japanese person having difficulties working within a foreign culture with a lot of the later persecution being in part from xenophobia.

No, it doesn't address them, at least not in the first two episodes. He could be German and nothing would need to change. Everything is assigned to other motivations: Tenma is lauded for politicking well and told that's the real way to success in the hospital, not merit, and by a character who is later revealed to be on the outs for similar reasons. Tenma reflects that the paper that made him seek the director's mentorship probably wasn't written by the director at all, based on the fact he was going to get Tenma to do precisely that for him. All the other doctors are obvious bootlickers. So the director and hospital have always been this way, and the toadying and subordination are what's expected of everybody. It doesn't feel like a guy working under systemic prejudice, it feels like a guy thriving in a hierarchical system who has a moral epiphany that leads him to snub the hierarchy, precipitating his fall. Nothing about that needs racism to work.

You get a better sense of the low social status of Turkish people in Germany than you do of Japanese. I thought making the one family Turkish was a nice touch and the only thing in the episodes that approached subtlety.

[therewillbeblus]

I have a feeling that if you checked back in after, say, ten eps, even if you still didn’t like it, it’d probably be for different reasons. I think the whole development of the plot-kickoff takes a lot more than two, but it shouldn’t stay a hospital melodrama for much longer

[knives]

I can’t remember, but does the anime make it clear that the doctor is Japanese? I think that might address some of the problems at hand. Certainly I always felt that these aspects of the story made sense as a distinctly Japanese person having difficulties working within a foreign culture with a lot of the later persecution being in part from xenophobia.

No, it doesn't address them, at least not in the first two episodes. He could be German and nothing would need to change. Everything is assigned to other motivations: Tenma is lauded for politicking well and told that's the real way to success in the hospital, not merit, and by a character who is later revealed to be on the outs for similar reasons.

If I’m reading you correctly it seems like you missed something important about this scene. That doctor is assuming that Tenma got his success through politicking, but in reality he did not. The doctor is asserting the toadyism of the system onto Tenma.