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Excellent round-up of the work of Yu Watase here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/coffee_and_ink/383313.html
If you read the comments, you will find one by me about how Fushigi Yuugi got me hooked on anime, and a promise to hunt down my initial comments on it, which I'd posted elsewhere when I first began watching anime last year in order to improve my Japanese listening skills. When I found that, I also found my comments on Akira, which I will reprint as well because they made me laugh.
Akira: A movie, considered a classic of the genre.
In a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, which is still highly urbanized and technologically advanced, a teenage boy from a biker gang is kidnapped by government scientists and experimented on. It's gradually revealed that some time back, a mutant kid named Akira went insane and used his psychic powers to destroy Tokyo. Scientists trying to recreate those powers in a more controllable manner are shocked, shocked when Tetsuo, the biker kid they give powers to, goes insane and starts destroying Tokyo. For the next forty minutes, everyone in the movie rushes around shouting "TETSUOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Often amazing to look at and certainly not boring, but I neither liked nor cared about any of the characters. It was impossible to tell whether Tetsuo had been driven insane by his mutation or if he'd always been a psycho. Whatever.
(Walter Jon Williams wrote in response to this, "I also found Akira disappointing. It's the equivalent of a live-action movie that depends on special effects rather than writing. (...)Anime has a tendency to bring up interesting ideas and issues, but then solve it all by having an apocalypse and blowing everything up. (The problem with Akira, if you ask me.)" Now that I've seen a lot more anime, this strikes me as very true.)
Fushigi Yuugi: A TV series.
Cut for length; no spoilers. I cleaned up the grammar and cut some musings on gender politics as they involve huge spoilers, but otherwise, if you read this before, there's nothing new beneath the cut.
First report:
Miaka and Yui are fifteen and best friends in modern Tokyo. Yui is the smart one, and Miaka is the gluttonous, space cadet, but good-hearted one. They come across a magic book, and Miaka is sucked into a fantasy land where she is proclaimed priestess of Suzaku, destined to save the land once she assembles the Seven Celestial Warriors.
So far she's got four: a handsome and very vain king who falls for Miaka, an even handsomer Han Solo type who Miaka falls for, a mysterious guy with a mohawk who can teleport, and a diva who's in love with the king. And Yui has just been sucked into the world as well, but she's landed in the rival kingdom...
An example of shojo (girls') as opposed to shonen (boys) anime, although I gather it's not like no one ever watches shows intended for the other gender. If this is any example, shojo fantasy is distinguished by having a female protagonist, handsome male love interests, romance, and a focus on character relationships. In other words, it's a fantasy soap, but with a good story, good characters, comedy, drama, and plenty of action. Wish fullfillment, but the kind that's appealing, not nauseating.
I wish I'd found this when I was fifteen, but I'm enjoying it plenty now. And I'm actually learning some Japanese, as a number of sentences are repeated often, which I am certain will come in handy: "Really?" "Are you all right?" "Pervert! Get your hands off me!" "I love you." "Bastard! I'm going to kill you!" "I am the priestess of
Suzaku."
(Second report)
I'm still engrossed in FUSHIGI YUUGI. Oh my God, I love that show. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Even though the music is really repetitive, the romance between Miaka and Tamahone is sort of sappy and melodramatic, and about one-tenth of the total dialogue consists of "Miaka!" "Tamahone!" "Miaka!" "Tamahone!"
The characters are great-- I adore Chichiri, the Buddhist magician with the teleportation hat, who wears a smiling mask to conceal the scar across his face, and tacks a cute little "no da" on the end of every sentence-- the story is gripping and has surprising twists and turns, and the emotional journeys are very touching and eccentric and human. And it's funny.
I LOVE it.
Third report:
I finished Fushigi Yuugi. What a great show.
It made me feel like I was twelve and discovering epic fantasy for the first time. It's not without flaws-- repetitiveness somewhat inherent in a half-hour structure, plot elements which didn't go anywhere, some minor characters not developed as much as they should have been, less ensemble work in the second half which relegated some of the most interesting characters to the sidelines, and a somewhat rushed ending-- but overall it's really a terrific, moving, romantic story.
Unlike the couples in most Grand Romances, Miaka and Tamahone had such a nice friendly rapport when they were just normally interacting and not swearing eternal passion that one actually felt that they'd make a good couple after the adventure was over.
I was also impressed by a believably awkward first-attempt-at-sex scene which ended with him saying, "Don't worry about it, let's just go to sleep now, we'll have plenty of time later." Catch that happening in an American show for young teenage girls. Here, that scene would either not be shown at all, or the sex would have happened without fumbling, or it would have been sordid and awful and cautionary tale-y.
If you've never seen this, I have to warn you that it's a lot more awkward, clunkily animated, and has more jarring tonal shifts than something like X/1999 or Wolf's Rain. And Miaka really gets on some people's nerves. All the same, my original judgment mostly stands.
I should add that it gets a lot darker as it goes along. This is something that some people feel is jarring or weird, but in my opinion it adds to the power of some of the more serious moments later. There's a scene in the climax which reminds me of LOTR's Merry standing up to the Witch King, and in both cases that scene would not have been as astonishing if we hadn't first been introduced to the character in a way which did not suggest that the story would ever lead to that moment.
I also now think better of the ending. And of all the stories I've ever read or seen which have someone traveling from the real world to fantasyland, this contains one of the best and most integrated and imaginative treatments of the interaction between the two.
Another notable element, though not one unique to the show, is the astounding number of characters who are twins, impersonating someone, have several different names, have several different roles with different names, are cross-dressing, wear a mask, shape-shift, are in some sense living someone else's life, are wearing weird makeup, etc. Plus the way the two sets of warriors and priestesses are each other's doppelgangers in various ways, though not in neat one-for-one parallels. (In fact, there are four sets of seishi and miko, each corresponding to a sign of the Chinese zodiac, but we only see two complete ones. However, you can draw limited parallels between all four.)
I can see the papers now: "The Mask Makes the Man: Persona, Identity, and Appearance in Fushigi Yuugi;" "Who am I, Which are you?: Doppelgangers and Double Lives in Fushigi Yuugi."
http://www.livejournal.com/users/coffee_and_ink/383313.html
If you read the comments, you will find one by me about how Fushigi Yuugi got me hooked on anime, and a promise to hunt down my initial comments on it, which I'd posted elsewhere when I first began watching anime last year in order to improve my Japanese listening skills. When I found that, I also found my comments on Akira, which I will reprint as well because they made me laugh.
Akira: A movie, considered a classic of the genre.
In a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, which is still highly urbanized and technologically advanced, a teenage boy from a biker gang is kidnapped by government scientists and experimented on. It's gradually revealed that some time back, a mutant kid named Akira went insane and used his psychic powers to destroy Tokyo. Scientists trying to recreate those powers in a more controllable manner are shocked, shocked when Tetsuo, the biker kid they give powers to, goes insane and starts destroying Tokyo. For the next forty minutes, everyone in the movie rushes around shouting "TETSUOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Often amazing to look at and certainly not boring, but I neither liked nor cared about any of the characters. It was impossible to tell whether Tetsuo had been driven insane by his mutation or if he'd always been a psycho. Whatever.
(Walter Jon Williams wrote in response to this, "I also found Akira disappointing. It's the equivalent of a live-action movie that depends on special effects rather than writing. (...)Anime has a tendency to bring up interesting ideas and issues, but then solve it all by having an apocalypse and blowing everything up. (The problem with Akira, if you ask me.)" Now that I've seen a lot more anime, this strikes me as very true.)
Fushigi Yuugi: A TV series.
Cut for length; no spoilers. I cleaned up the grammar and cut some musings on gender politics as they involve huge spoilers, but otherwise, if you read this before, there's nothing new beneath the cut.
First report:
Miaka and Yui are fifteen and best friends in modern Tokyo. Yui is the smart one, and Miaka is the gluttonous, space cadet, but good-hearted one. They come across a magic book, and Miaka is sucked into a fantasy land where she is proclaimed priestess of Suzaku, destined to save the land once she assembles the Seven Celestial Warriors.
So far she's got four: a handsome and very vain king who falls for Miaka, an even handsomer Han Solo type who Miaka falls for, a mysterious guy with a mohawk who can teleport, and a diva who's in love with the king. And Yui has just been sucked into the world as well, but she's landed in the rival kingdom...
An example of shojo (girls') as opposed to shonen (boys) anime, although I gather it's not like no one ever watches shows intended for the other gender. If this is any example, shojo fantasy is distinguished by having a female protagonist, handsome male love interests, romance, and a focus on character relationships. In other words, it's a fantasy soap, but with a good story, good characters, comedy, drama, and plenty of action. Wish fullfillment, but the kind that's appealing, not nauseating.
I wish I'd found this when I was fifteen, but I'm enjoying it plenty now. And I'm actually learning some Japanese, as a number of sentences are repeated often, which I am certain will come in handy: "Really?" "Are you all right?" "Pervert! Get your hands off me!" "I love you." "Bastard! I'm going to kill you!" "I am the priestess of
Suzaku."
(Second report)
I'm still engrossed in FUSHIGI YUUGI. Oh my God, I love that show. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Even though the music is really repetitive, the romance between Miaka and Tamahone is sort of sappy and melodramatic, and about one-tenth of the total dialogue consists of "Miaka!" "Tamahone!" "Miaka!" "Tamahone!"
The characters are great-- I adore Chichiri, the Buddhist magician with the teleportation hat, who wears a smiling mask to conceal the scar across his face, and tacks a cute little "no da" on the end of every sentence-- the story is gripping and has surprising twists and turns, and the emotional journeys are very touching and eccentric and human. And it's funny.
I LOVE it.
Third report:
I finished Fushigi Yuugi. What a great show.
It made me feel like I was twelve and discovering epic fantasy for the first time. It's not without flaws-- repetitiveness somewhat inherent in a half-hour structure, plot elements which didn't go anywhere, some minor characters not developed as much as they should have been, less ensemble work in the second half which relegated some of the most interesting characters to the sidelines, and a somewhat rushed ending-- but overall it's really a terrific, moving, romantic story.
Unlike the couples in most Grand Romances, Miaka and Tamahone had such a nice friendly rapport when they were just normally interacting and not swearing eternal passion that one actually felt that they'd make a good couple after the adventure was over.
I was also impressed by a believably awkward first-attempt-at-sex scene which ended with him saying, "Don't worry about it, let's just go to sleep now, we'll have plenty of time later." Catch that happening in an American show for young teenage girls. Here, that scene would either not be shown at all, or the sex would have happened without fumbling, or it would have been sordid and awful and cautionary tale-y.
If you've never seen this, I have to warn you that it's a lot more awkward, clunkily animated, and has more jarring tonal shifts than something like X/1999 or Wolf's Rain. And Miaka really gets on some people's nerves. All the same, my original judgment mostly stands.
I should add that it gets a lot darker as it goes along. This is something that some people feel is jarring or weird, but in my opinion it adds to the power of some of the more serious moments later. There's a scene in the climax which reminds me of LOTR's Merry standing up to the Witch King, and in both cases that scene would not have been as astonishing if we hadn't first been introduced to the character in a way which did not suggest that the story would ever lead to that moment.
I also now think better of the ending. And of all the stories I've ever read or seen which have someone traveling from the real world to fantasyland, this contains one of the best and most integrated and imaginative treatments of the interaction between the two.
Another notable element, though not one unique to the show, is the astounding number of characters who are twins, impersonating someone, have several different names, have several different roles with different names, are cross-dressing, wear a mask, shape-shift, are in some sense living someone else's life, are wearing weird makeup, etc. Plus the way the two sets of warriors and priestesses are each other's doppelgangers in various ways, though not in neat one-for-one parallels. (In fact, there are four sets of seishi and miko, each corresponding to a sign of the Chinese zodiac, but we only see two complete ones. However, you can draw limited parallels between all four.)
I can see the papers now: "The Mask Makes the Man: Persona, Identity, and Appearance in Fushigi Yuugi;" "Who am I, Which are you?: Doppelgangers and Double Lives in Fushigi Yuugi."
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Incidentally, the Seiryu seishi ought, by that token, to represent aspects of war, but I never worked out who's what. I also can't remember what Byakko and Genbu are the Gods of, but I suppose we don't see enough of either of their seishi to work out a theory on them anyway.