Flag

FLAG is an ONA from mid '06 to early '07. It was handled by The Answer studio. That's right, the studio behind Golgo 13. It's also an original work. So, that'll be interesting. 

Story:

Our narrative takes place in a fictional war torn country named for a yoga pose. A young photographer named Shirasu Saeko manages to capture a strong moment of hope in a brilliant photograph. This results in the flag in the photo becoming a symbol of peace. There's just one problem, it gets stolen. Shirasu is chosen to work with UN's special forces in their efforts to scour Uddiyana and regain the flag. 

The biggest ... problem with the series is that it has two protagonists, for good reason, but it can repeat information from each of their perspectives with very little difference. Which just feels like a pointless way to pad the series. 

To its credit, the dual perspective does work well for showing the situation from the military-oriented perspective of Shirasu and from the more civilian point of view of Keiichi. Which serves to provide a broader, more nuanced viewpoint. The series also makes good use of its photography theme. Both with its aesthetic and by using short snippets for its scenes. The ending also has a strong narrative purpose that ties things together and is really well done. 

Characters:

The series does a great job of using snippets with characters to illustrate different parts of their personalities and flesh them out more than you would expect for a cast of this size in a thirteen episode series. It helps that the conflict has a strong sense of realism to it which gives them a grounding in reality. 

It also helps considerably that the side characters interact with the photographers, which provides some strong interactions for the photographers even though we don't see that much footage of them directly. 

Art: 

The only real downside of the art is that the CG shots of the mecha have pretty stilted movements and they just look awkward. Yeah, I have seen much worse CG but this still isn't good. 

Overall, however, the visual aesthetic is really good. Seeing everything through lenses, as either stills or video, gives the series a unique look and it really delivers the photography theme strongly. I also appreciate that the series shows warfare while using various tools to avoid making it graphic. It's almost like you can get the point across without going the sensationalist route and showing a bunch of blood and corpses. 

And even though the mecha look a bit awkward, seeing their blueprints and how the parts connect is interesting. Even if the engineering isn't realistic. If it was we'd all use these blueprints for our own killer robots. And almost as many people would die as anti-vaxxers have killed. 

Sound: 

The worst thing I can say about the acting is that Tanaka Rena delivers some of her lines a bit awkwardly. They aren't badly done but they don't seem to quite match the mood the series is conveying. In contrast, we get an excellent performance from Ishizuka Unshou and most of the actors do really well. Ike Yoshihiro's soundtrack is nicely done. 

Ho-yay:

About the closest we get is Shirasu commenting favourably on some of the women she's working with. But she does the same thing with the men and it's pretty obvious that it's not meant romantically. Romance, as a whole, is not a significant thing in this series. 

Areas of Improvement:

Cut down on the repetition. We don't need to see both Shirasu & Keiichi look at the HAVWC blueprints. We can see that kind of thing once. And it would make for a cleaner narrative. 
Animate the mecha more naturally. It would legitimately be better if these things looked more natural instead of sticking out awkwardly. 
Better direction for Tanaka Rena. Like I said, she's not bad. But the emotional core of the series would be stronger if not for those out of place lines of dialogue. 

Final Thoughts:

Ultimately, FLAG is a series that has a lot to offer. Including an aesthetic that's all its own. Do I recommend it? If you're intrigued by the idea of a narrative where photography is a central theme and an operation to suppress insurgents is handled from a human rather than a sensationalist perspective, I absolutely would. I'll give it a solid 8/10.  

Novel execution for an anime, but baffling premise.

Flag is probably most well known for presenting its entire narrative through first person POV shots, mostly through found footage by the two journalist protagonists' cameras or cameras placed conveniently on war machines. It's certainly an admirable approach and contributes meaningfully to the theme of journalistic importance, but this limitation can find itself in tricky corners.

The main narrative point of this story is for main character Shirasu to document a UN special forces team to recover a symbolic flag that she had previously taken a photo of. While the world-building may have been more appreciated in ... other contexts, the overt usage of decked-out killing machines, elaborately militarized religious cults, and clandestine operations to cover up the entire mission by the UN over a single flag becomes straight comedy near the end. Sorry, a cool photo of a flag does not simply quell a civil war.

While the documenting of soldiers as human via photojournalism is an interesting idea, the naivety of Shirasu (despite her being a lauded international journalist in a country engulfed in civil war) coupled with a reluctance to really deep dive into the corruption of Western military institutions, i.e. the UN, slowly devolves into a whitewashing of Middle Eastern neo-colonialism. Presenting soldiers as honorable people who failed to prevent the genocide in Rwanda and looking to redeem themselves doesn't mesh well with POV shots of them obliterating landscapes with mecha machine guns.

The animation isn't bad, but the CG robots are out of place aesthetically and narratively. Shirazu's voice actress sounds as out of place as the situations Shirazu herself is in 90% of the time (why are you in the middle of a firefight, girl?). The ending is a confusing neoliberal mess. But points for trying something new.

This anime had a good concept but terrible execution. I wanted to review it for a long time so here it is. There's spoilers in this review BUT you'll be warned beforehand and you'll be glad I spoiled it for you LOL! This anime was so misleading and bad that I just had to review it for you to save you pain and time.




Basicly there's some kind of war going on in some kind of 3rd-world country and some kind of war journalists (I think they are Japanese but that doesn't matter) go to this country to get pictures because that's their job or as ... they like to say, their ''passion'' or whatever.

So the entire show is told through a camera lense, which was artsy and original at first. It's a very detailed digital view but gets old after a while and serves less & less symbolic purpose as the show goes on. The main character girl who is holding the camera takes pictures throughout the show and we see these nice pictures. They are portrayed as nice pictures, which they are, but none of them are really meaningful. Beleive me I'm a photographer, filmmaker and cinematographer. Only a few parts of the show are shot normally (not through a camera).

The story is this girl war journalist got a lucky shot on the country's flag the moment a back-lit girl was praying and her silouhette could be seen through the flag. Suddenly this picture became the people's symbol for peace, or morality, and the flag became a symbol for.... hope i guess, for the war to stop.... Anyways some terrorists stole it and now a special U.N. team is assembled to retrieve the stolen flag. The girl who took the picture is recruited onto this team to document the mission(s).

What's supposed to make this U.N. team I mentioned earlier 'special' is a giant robot vehicle thing they have as part of their main arsenal. It transforms into a humanoid mode and a car-ish mode. The movements it makes sound more like a little toy than a war machine. Also it's only weapon is a machine gun, Big Whoop! At least give it a laser gun sheesh.... At least it sort-of looks cool.

You'll notice something wrong right away: the war-torn country is too clean. Even the destroyed parts of town are clean and lack any grim detail. The characters, whom most of which are either jounalists who put their necks out into dangerous situations, or soldiers who put their necks out into dangerous situations, are not dirty at all. This anime about the horrors of war, is just not graphic in any way. The only graphic part about this anime is the lack of vibrant colors, but even the washed-out colors that are present are solid and clear.

The graphic quality isn't only lacking in the art style, it's also lacking in the plot and narrative. You won't see much violence. (SPOILERS) The most violence you'll see (for 4 episodes) are one guy getting shot in the arm and bad guys getting shot in the desert with the desert sand getting kicked up to block our view. Then the soldiers return from the mission stone-cold and melancholy to show how terrible war is. Seriously, you'll see 1 blood stain after 4 episodes. I am dumb-founded that an anime like FLAG, which is supposed to be about the horrors of war, actually censors violence, and then follows-up with scenes like the soldiers moping around as if we just saw something truely horrifying that will scar the grey matter of our brains forever and give us post traumatic stress syndrome. There are comedy anime with more blood and violence than FLAG.... This is just unacceptable. Also the show usually prefers to show the aftermath of skirmishes instead of the battles themselves because the main focus is the poorly-implied conflict going on in the characters' minimaly-present souls.

Another thing disappointing is the intelligence of this so-called super secret team of soldiers. (SPOILERS) This is one of those spoilers that you'll be glad i spoiled for you: In one scene the team (I'll just call them ''the team'' from here on) thinks they know where the terrorists are hiding. They go in an unarmed helicopter to check out this fortress in a twisting valley. They stay at a safe distance and send out a small scout drone. It flies over there and discovers heavy anti-air defenses. So what does this super secret team do? Head back to base? Report this intelligence to command? Call in reinforcements? No. They fly this unarmed, non-armored helicopter straight into the hostile airspace. Guess what happens next? They get shot at and the pilot is hit in the arm and only Then do they retreat!

I could not Believe what I just saw! And nobody acknowledged this as a stupid move! Bunch'a idiots. It was at this point that FLAG lost all credibility and I stopped giving it chances (many chances were spent in vain....)

This show also tries to portray war journalists just as brave and valiant as a front-line soldier, which can be true sometimes, but this show fails to do even that. (SPOILERS) Maybe if they showed the main character being shot at or help an injured person or something, but she is never in danger. One scene shows the main character go to a building where a fellow war journalist was killed in an explosion. Her friend war journalist puts a flower in a cup next to the dead guy's camera and has a big monologue about how war journalists are to be respected and are very courageous and all that. Well sure but, could we at least see the explosion so we have some kind of remorse for the guy? We never even see this guy, therefor I don't care about him much.

(SPOILERS) Action scenes (of which there are very, very few) have no music whatsoever and like I mentioned, you'll only see 1 blood stain. I know I didn't see even a single dead terrorist! And you will only see (in the first 4 episodes) one far away terrorist as seen from night vision in only one shot. It's like the show can't wait to get these parts over with and get back to the boring-as-hell parts.

Another thing that REALLY bothers me is this girl was recruited to document the missions of this team, but guess what? (SPOILERS) They don't allow her to go with them on their missions because it's too dangerous! WHAT THE HELL?? The show makes itself redundant right from the get-go! So she stays at the base taking pictures of the scenery, I am not joking about this at all. She takes pictures of the sourounding mountians and wildlife while waiting for the team to return. You have got to be kidding me. All sense of risk, danger and excitement is swiftly extinguished right from the beginning.



So that's my review. FLAG was a good concept but they were afraid to show violence in a show about violence, they were unable to show intelligent characters in a show about intelligent characters, and they were unable to show graphic images in a graphic show.

If anything, FLAG should have been the bloodiest, most disturbing & grotesque anime ever created! Documentaries on the history channel are vastly more entertaining than FLAG. FLAG makes war boring (not to say war is supposed to be exciting in a good way, but you get my point)

This show fails to execute everything it sets out to do. I don't even know what country they were in and I don't care so they obviously failed to set the up the plot in such a way that I'd be interested. This only reviews the first disc (Good God there's more!?).

I give this anime a score of 1.5/10.




If you want to see a piece of film that best portrays the horrors of war (which FLAG tries to do) I reccomend Apocalypse Now. This film captures the essence of the Vietnam war (don't ask me how I know lol).

Or if you want to see anime with great character conflict (which FLAG tries to do) then watch Elfen Lied, or Higurashi (aka When They Cry).


I can sort of see why people would give this anime high-ish reviews; because of what it tries to do and tries to be. There is no show like it. It's one of a kind. Granted, it is a unique show and in a good way (theoretically). Unfortunately in my strong opinion which I will state as fact, it fails and somebody should remake it properly. It has potential, but that's about all it's got and did not deliver for me. I tend to be very critical so if you have second thoughts about my review, go ahead and give it a chance. Many people are happy with FLAG and you might be one of those people.