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Jul 21, 2020

3-gatsu no Lion 2nd Season (Anime) add

Recommended

The first season of March Comes in Like a Lion was already really damn good.

I feel like I need to say that up front so we can get a baseline of what we’re dealing with here. Sangatsu was a masterpiece right from the start. Gripping drama, compelling characters, some of the most intricate relationship writing I’ve ever seen, some of the most striking, emotionally affecting visual storytelling in all of anime, and a heartfelt sincerity that spoke to the best of everything that hope and kindness is capable of. It was a ten-gallon steam-powered shotgun blast right to my heart, speaking to all the real-life ...

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Jul 21, 2020

3-gatsu no Lion (Anime) add

Recommended

If you asked me to summarize my worldview in a single phrase, I would describe it as “radical empathy.” The world can be an awful, awful place, and too many people have suffered under the worst kinds of horror and suffering. But I’ve seen too much good in this world to write it off. I’ve seen too much of humanity’s capacity for kindness and justice to give up on us ever getting better. Just look at the state of the world now: after hundreds of years of systemic oppression and racism, people from countless different countries have come together in support of reforming the broken ... systems that leave too many black men dead at the hands of powerful white cops. Minneapolis, the city where George Floyd lived and died, even managed to outright defund their police department. Change is hard and progress harder, but we have the power to make it happen. We have the power to shift the world in a better direction, in the face of all its evil, and write a better future than the present we currently have. I believe in humanity’s capacity for love. I believe in out capacity to weather even the worst storms. Love in the face of hatred is a difficult, sometimes almost impossible endeavor, but it is worth fighting for every single time. Anything less is a betrayal of all that we’re capable of achieving.

I have always valued anime for its sincere belief in that same truth. But I don’t think I’ve yet seen a show that so perfectly captures the idea of radical empathy as Sangatsu no Lion.

(And yes, I am absolutely stealing the phrase "radical empathy" from the Pedantic Romantic. What can I say, it just fits too perfectly.)

Above all else, Sangatsu is a story about faith in people. It’s a story about a kid crushed by depression, wandering his way through a melancholy life, but finding the courage to keep trying every single day. Rei Kiriyama, age 17, professional shogi player, lost his family in a tragic accident when he was a kid, and in the years since then he's grown into a shy, repressed young man, crippled by doubt and mental illness, holding onto shogi as the one lifeline keeping him stable in an otherwise perilous existence, even as it's also a cage keeping him from finding his own happiness. But Sangatsu isn't really about shogi, and you don't need to know a single thing about how the game's played to appreciate it (the show will teach you all the stuff that matters, so don't worry). In fact, Sangatsu isn't so much about one thing as it's about, well, everything. It's about the entirely of Rei's life, his past and present traumas, his struggles, his triumphs, the people he meets and the people he lives behind. And it's about all those people as well, from the family of three sisters who become something like Rei's surrogate family to the many opponents Rei faces from across the shogi board. It's less a plot than a woven tapestry, depicting an entire community of lovable, well-realized characters, the ways their lives intersect, the ways they build each other up, the ways they give each other comfort in their darkest moments. And it's about how Rei grows in that space, slowly learning to process his trauma and value his own life.

To say the show doesn't have much of a plot might seem like an insult. But what Sangatsu lacks in tightly scripted story progression, it more than makes up for in sheer, raw emotion. Rei is an unflinchingly human protagonist the likes of which we so rarely get, a raw nerve of feeling so crippled by past trauma it can be almost impossible to watch. The show pulls no punches in depicting the deepest recesses of his darkness, the suffocating pressure that builds on him until he breaks, the voices in his head that tell him he doesn’t deserve to be happy. It’s devastating and intimate and painful in a million ways big and small, and the fog of his despair grows so thick at times you feel like you could choke on it. But just as Sangatsu forces you to suffer with Rei at his worst moments, it allows you to cheer with him at his best. It lets you bask in the joy of the people who care about him, the overwhelming catharsis of finding places he can belong, the countless tiny connections that refuse to let him be swept up and blown away by his inner storm. It has the courage not to shy away from the ugliness of the world, but it has greater courage still not to shy away from its beauty either. And its capacity for kindness is so awe-inspiring, so heart-stopping, that it’s enough to drive you to tears through sheer positivity alone. I cannot recall the last show I watched that was this agonizingly hopeful, this capable of reaching into the deepest pits of your soul and making you so utterly surrender to your capacity to feel.

And with the strength of that disarming radiance, Sangatsu no Lion embarks upon one of the most breathtaking, majestic, unbearably honest tales about the power of ordinary life I’ve ever seen. It weaves so many threads together, juggling so many characters with so many complicated, messy connections, and it makes them all soar. It’s a gut-wrenching intimate drama that slowly expands outward to a gripping ensemble piece, full of countless incredible characters who could all be the protagonist of their own story. It’s a pulse-pounding sports drama that takes a brutal examination of the perils of tying your life’s purpose to achievements you may not earn, how the things that keep us grounded can also trap us in place. It’s a gorgeous slice-of-life comedy, with some of the most consistently gut-busting cackles and most cheek-stinging smiles any anime’s wrung out of me. It’s a heartbreaking analysis of toxic and codependent mindsets that tears your psyche apart with its unyielding depictions of self-loathing and misery. It’s an explosion of sheer joy in its brightest moments and a primal scream of sheer agony in its darkest. And it’s all brought to life by an absolutely staggering production by studio Shaft, weaponizing their abstract expressionism more intimately and more breathtakingly than ever before. The way it layers symbolism and visual metaphor, the way the editing breathes with the chaos of the characters’ minds, the way it makes the real world feel so raw, not to mention the top-tier work from every single voice actor involved… it is UNSPEAKABLY beautiful. It effortlessly sucks you into the story’s unflinching honestly, forcing you to confront the extreme, devastating, overwhelming, rapturous emotions as if they were your own.

The end result of all this talent and effort is nothing short of magical. Few anime have been able to touch my soul this deeply. Few anime have been so capable of tearing my defenses down and leaving me a quivering wreck of emotions. Few anime have so thoroughly stunned me, amazed me, bowled me over, left me this tender and vulnerable and joyous. I love every single thing about this show, and that’s not always something I can say about even some of my favorite anime of all time. Sure, maybe the opening few episodes could’ve been a little more structured, maybe the plot’s overall aimlessness could’ve been improved, maybe there were certain characters I enjoyed seeing on screen more than others. But there’s not a single moment in this show I didn’t at least like. There’s not a single story beat in this show that didn’t work for me. There’s not a single character in this show who I don’t appreciate seeing on screen, and the vast majority of them I outright adore. No other show I've seen was flawless enough that I could say with a straight face there was nothing I’d rather go without. And the absolute best of these building blocks- Rei’s first climactic outburst, Mr. Hayashida’s guidance, Rei and Kyouko’s fascinatingly fucked relationship, literally everything about Hina- are among the most compelling, resonant, rewarding ideas anime’s ever given me.

Sangatsu no Lion gives me hope. It gives me hope for my capacity to overcome my own demons and forge a meaningful life. It gives me hope for humanity’s capacity to shake off our worst mistakes and let kindness triumph over fear. And it gives me hope in anime’s capacity to still give me the kind of experience no other medium is capable up, even coming up on three years watching it. It’s a restorative aria that hits you in the deepest parts of your soul, breaking all your rawest nerves apart and sewing them back together more lovingly than ever before. It is the soul of radical empathy itself surging across the screen like the waves of a tumultuous ocean. It’s devastating, uplifting, gut-wrenching, spiritually cleansing, and utterly, unflinchingly beautiful. And somehow, the second season is so much better it almost feels like an insult. Don't let this show pass you by: it's truly something to behold.

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Jul 12, 2020

Nihon Chinbotsu 2020 (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Japan Sinks 2020 has a lot of hype behind it. It’s an adaptation of a seminal disaster novel from 1973, updated to modern day by Masaaki Yuasa and his studio Science Saru. This is the same team that struck lightning by similarly updating the classic Devilman manga into the now-just-as-classic Devilman Crybaby, and Japan Sinks 2020 very much feels like it wants to recapture that magic. Here, again, is a ten-episode Netflix Original anime series with moments of intense violence and sex. Here, again, is a modernization of an old classic that diversifies the cast with all different skin types and nationalities, making extensive use ... of modern digital technology. Here, again, is composer Kensuke Ushio, turning in a very similar dark synth electronica soundtrack to the one he graced Crybaby with. Here, again, are characters who run track and field, with running and passing the baton both very prevalent motifs. There’s even a scene late in the series where the characters engage in a rap battle. This series wants to repeat the success of Devilman Crybaby so badly it’s palpable.

But there’s one critical difference that sets Japan Sinks apart: Yuasa isn’t the series director. That role falls to Pyeonggang Heo, making his directorial debut after a handful of episode directing credits across the past decade or so. The scriptwriter as well is different, trading veteran Ichiro Okouchi for the incredibly inexperienced Toshio Yoshitaka. I didn’t discover this information until after I finished this series, but in retrospect, it makes sense.

Because that’s the only explanation I have for why Japan Sinks 2020 is just as big a disaster as the one it’s named after.

The story starts out well enough: Japan, nation of earthquakes, is hit with its biggest one ever. Over the course of the first episode, we follow four individual family members as they find their way to each other across the city of Tokyo. It’s actually a pretty clever structure, as we’re not told why these four people are important until they start reuniting and we realize they’re all part of the same family, so we’re allowed to be introduced to them organically. But once they’re all together, the news drops: this earthquake is only the first. Japan is going to be rocked by seismic activity until the entire island nation sinks under the Pacific Ocean. And with most of the airport runways already rendered unusable, the entire population of Japan is left scrambling to find a way to safety. Thus, the Mutou family- dad, mom, older sister, younger brother, and a couple of neighbors- sets off to find a way off Japan before the whole thing goes under. Along the way, they run into all sorts of colorful characters and odd scenarios, lots of people die, and everything very quickly starts to fall apart. And unfortunately, the “everything” in that last statement refers to far more than Japan itself.

The issues start cropping up early once the death toll starts to rack up. I won’t bother spoiling who lives or dies (or tells your story), but it becomes clear very quickly that this series has no idea how to handle death. One of the family members is gruesomely killed right in front of the others, and it takes about six minutes for them to go back to acting like nothing’s happened. This will become a depressingly common occurrence as the show goes on. Someone dies, or something awful happens, there’s a moment of horror as our central cast reacts to it, and then they’re back to wacky hijinks in the next scene. No one in this show acts like they’re in a crisis situation; it feels like they’re just on a very long, very nonsensical road trip. Maybe the attempt was to try and lean into those road-trip sensibilities and just be a sightseeing tour of interesting people and places with the disaster as a backdrop, but it’s still so wedded to the reality of that disaster in its realistic presentation that the tonal whiplash becomes exhausting. You end up staring slack-jawed as these characters bumble through unnatural situation after unnatural situation, wondering why nobody’s reacting in anything close to resembling human pathos.

But things only get worse from there, as this show quickly reveals itself to have one of the most haphazard, unfocused plots I think I’ve ever seen. The story careens back and forth between completely unrelated concepts, tossing in ideas out of nowhere just to wipe them away in the very next moment. One moment we’re in a survival road trip scenario, the next we’re spending three episodes living in an Earth Mother cult while an old geezer in a wheelchair infiltrates a high-security complex with 360 no-scope bow-and-arrow shooting. No, you didn’t misread that, there is an old geezer in a wheelchair who shoots arrows at armed guards while spinning. What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck. Forget breaking suspension of disbelief, this is so utterly moronic it just about shatters the concept of disbelief itself. And the show just keeps tossing weird shit in with no buildup and expecting you to accept it. There’s a weird foreigner who somehow makes his eyes and ears bulge out like he’s doing magic tricks. How? Never explained. Why is there a random sex scene with the cult leader and her husband? Never explained. Why is there a random bank robbery involving two characters we’ve never met before and both die pretty much right after? Never explained. How the fuck is this cult leader somehow capable of actually speaking to the dead? Never explained. Why do so many characters just choose to stay behind and die despite having perfectly usable means of escape within reach? This isn’t even a case of not enough room in the boats or whatever, they could have easily survived with no ill effects. They just decide, nope, I’m cool with being crushed to death in the most ecological disaster of human history.

It is shocking how poorly thought out this entire show is. Nobody acts like a real person, nobody reacts like a real person, and every decision just makes less and less sense, to the point where I started slapping my forehead in stunned disbelief. One character gets a nasty cut on her leg and doesn’t bandage it for the entire show, despite having plenty of opportunities to do so. It ends up getting infected and turns into a big plot point, and none of it would’ve happened if she had just fucking grabbed some random piece of cloth and covered herself like someone with more than one brain cell. A famous Youtuber shows up out of nowhere and decides to pal around with this family for some unknown reason, which immediately gets their minds of watching yet another close friend die before their eyes. There’s an attempted rape scene that has no effect on anyone and could’ve been completely cut without changing anything. Characters find out information just because with no forethought or foreshadowing. There’s this whole running subplot about a mad scientist and his paraplegic partner who somehow predicted this disaster, but it’s so poorly explained that it feels like it belongs in an entirely different show. And seriously, take a step back and look at this rap sheet. Natural disasters, cults with actual magic, mad scientists with secret mountain labs, and fucking parachuting Youtubers? There is no consistency to this show’s world, and it doesn’t have the slightest idea what kind of tone it wants to set. The final episodes try to tie a neat little bow on things with this big montage about the Japanese people and the character of the nation, but if this show was supposed to be about the concept of Japan, then it owes Japan an apology for depicting it so fucking nonsensically.

Even more frustratingly, not even the technical merits are enough to distract from how godawful the script it. There are moments of great animation in Yuasa’s traditional loose and flowing style, but most of the time this show just looks ugly outside of the gorgeous backgrounds. Characters are constantly off model, facial expression warp and distort to inhuman shapes, so many key frames are dropped to the point where it looks like the characters are teleporting every other step at times, and there is no consistency to the blocking or editing of scenes. This is why I’m inclined to place the blame more on Heo than Yuasa, because the directing is just flat-out abysmal. There’s no shape to scenes or moments; they just come and go at random intervals, cutting off shots at the most awkward moments and randomly panning the camera across the screen with no consideration to what would best highlight the emotions of the scene. It’s a cluttered, unfocused, often confusing mess, and most of the scenes trying to be dramatic are instead rendered comical by unnatural dialogue, grotesque parodies of human movement and expression, and a complete inability to grasp the concept of dramatic timing. The one consistently excellent part of this show is Ushio’s score, and even that’s treated with so little consideration and precision that it all starts melding together into audio soup that makes the already unfocused scenes even more chaotic and tonally confused.

Japan Sinks 2020 is an unmitigated fucking trainwreck. For all the talent and pedigree behind it, it just keeps making the most wrongheaded, counterproductive choices over and over again until it suffocates itself. It’s the kind of show you don’t so much watch as gape at, wondering how any functioning human being could’ve possibly thought this would work. It almost feels like storytelling by Mad Libs, but at least Mad Libs is funny and random on purpose. This show wants to be a profound artistic statement to be Taken Seriously(tm), and that only makes its baffling incompetence all the more infuriating. If you’re eager for a “family survives an earthquake” anime, just go watch Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. That show is ten thousand times the show Japan Sinks 2020 will ever be.

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Jun 17, 2020

Perfect Blue (Anime) add

Recommended

Satoshi Kon is another one of those legendary anime directors that I need to get around to exploring their oeuvre in more depth. In a medium with so few genuinely great horror pieces, Kon’s work is legendary for its ability to get under your skin and scare the living shit out of you. At least, that’s what I’ve heard, because once again, I’ve barely watched his stuff. The only other work of his I’ve seen was Paranoia Agent, and frankly, I didn’t really care for it at all. Maybe it was a mistake to watch the dub and some of its bizarre decisions would make ... more sense with the subtleties of the original Japanese cast, but I came away from that show more annoyed than anything. And considering it was Kon’s only TV series before his tragic death, I didn’t know how representative it would be of his overall work. Point is, I went into Perfect Blue with no real expectations for what I would end up thinking about it. And now that I’ve actually seen it… yeah, the hype is justified. This is a spectacular horror flick and worms its way into your subconscious like a carnivorous worm. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t just stick with you, but latches onto your heart with a steaming-hot soldering iron and refuses to let go. Clearly, I need to make more of an effort to watch the rest of Kon’s work, because if Perfect Blue is any indication, I’ve got a lot of great movies left to check out.

The story centers around Mima Kirigoe, a former pop idol who’s just quit her group to try her hand at being a legit dramatic actress. She’s enjoyed her time on the stage, but being an idol is a stifling image she’s ready to shed. So she signs on to a “serious” TV drama, one of those lurid police procedurals with tons of dark subject matter and Serious Conversations that apparently Japan has in spades just like America. And then, slowly but surely, things start to go wrong. Her departure from her idol group is met with mixed reception from her fans. The staff on the drama start pressuring her into increasingly uncomfortable scenarios to capitalize on the exploitative thrill of watching a formerly “pure” idol “grow up.” There’s an internet blog that writes as if in her voice, with highly personal details that only she should know about… but it’s definitely not her writing it. And on top of all that, there’s a creepy stalker she keeps seeing around set, always showing up just for brief moments before vanishing without a trace. Her entire life is up for public scrutiny, and as time goes on, the places she can hide from all the watchful eyes become smaller and smaller. And as violent acts begin to occur around her, the voice of her former pop idol self starts whispering in her ear, saying this new, grown-up actress Mima is a fake. The “real” Mima is an idol, and if the real Mima doesn’t want to go back to that life, then the “real” Mima’s just going to have to take her place… through whatever means necessary.

The best way I can describe this movie is an exercise in watching reality slowly come undone. The more things start to go wrong, and the more pressure is heaped on Mima, the more delusions and dreams start to creep into reality. Whether this is all actually happening or if it’s just manifestations of Mima developing a psychotic break is unclear, and that’s entirely the point; you’re so trapped in Mima’s point of view that you’re never given a chance to observe reality from an objective distance. You’re just forced to watch with her, as one moment harshly cuts to the next, as the scenes of her TV show intersect with her normal life, as the lines between what’s real and what’s imaginary star to blue more and more. And the film’s editing does a fantastic job blurring those lines; the way scenes are cut together, it almost feels like Mima’s experiencing these events in real time instead of over the course of months that are actually passing. She’ll stand up and start walking in one location only for the scene to seamlessly cut straight into another location as if she walked straight from the one to the other with no space in between. Certain motifs and scene compositions will be repeated in increasingly surreal fashion until what once seemed like a fairly normal occurrence becomes a repetitive nightmare that just keeps distorting the more trauma is loaded on. And when shit starts getting really surreal in the film’s back half, it doesn’t take long before, just like Mima, you become unable to tell what’s even real anymore.

It’s by trapping you so viciously in this increasingly terrifying prism that Perfect Blue is able to sink its claws into you. Because you never know when a seemingly normal scene is gonna break into madness, you’re left increasingly on edge as you scramble for what vestiges of normalcy remain. It’s a terrifying experience, and the longer it goes on, the more vulnerable it makes you feel. Hell, even before shit starts going south, Mima’s already in an incredibly vulnerable position. As an idol, her fans feel entitled to her life. As an actress, her director feels entitled to stick her in uncomfortable scenes with countless cast and crew members looking on. One of the biggest triggers for her schism from reality is the TV show shoe-horning her character into a gratuitous rape scene, one of those exploitative, nauseating plot beats where a woman’s traumatized to show how supposedly “dark” the show is while also being vaguely titillating for audience enjoyment (The director even compares it to a similar scene that Jodie Foster was a part of). And the way the movie shoots the filming of that scene is exactly as invasive, gross, and degrading as the filming of the in-universe scene for the drama must have been. It’s one of the most viscerally horrifying sequences I think I’ve ever seen, in anime or otherwise. It makes you feel like despite the fact that it’s all just acting, Mima genuinely feels like she’s being assaulted in that moment. Her privacy, her security, even her very sense of self are all punctured long before the blood starts slowing in earnest. And the film makes no effort to disguise how gendered this kind of exploitation is; Mima’s former idol self mocks her for “dirtying” herself with that scene, as if her value as a woman decreased by being perceived as someone who’s undergone sexual trauma.

In that sense, Perfect Blue isn’t just a terrifying thriller about a person who becomes unable to determine fantasy from reality; it’s about a woman who’s snapped in half by the lack of privacy and autonomy she’s allowed. The reason she suffers such a breakdown is because of men who feel like they have ownership over her body, from the stalker who sees her new “grown-up” self as an impostor slandering Mima’s pure name- the worst of possessive fan culture personified in a single creep- to the showrunners and nude photographers who coerce her to offer her nudity up for millions of watchers. Her life as an idol wasn’t her own, but her attempt to free herself by jumping to serious drama only strips more of her privacy away. It’s like she doesn’t even belong to herself anymore, like she’s just an image to be consumed and perceived with no agency to shut out the countless intrusive eyes. And that’s the kind of horror that really sticks with you. That’s the horror that doesn’t just tense your heart up, but leaves you uncomfortable, gross, and even guilty. Watching Mima get stripped away from herself almost feels like you’re an accomplice to a crime, that by even watching this film you’re participating in the degradation of her personhood. But all the while, Mima herself is fighting like hell to escape this prison, refusing to submit quietly to the shackles placed on her. So as much as you want to look away, you know you have no choice but to keep watching and pray to god she makes it through.

I won’t spoil whether or not she makes it through, so don’t worry. In fact, if there’s one major complaint I have, it’s that I’m legitimately unsure what the ending implied happened to her, or what was really going on. This was an issue I had with Paranoia Agent as well, where fantasy and reality became so impossible to tell apart that the actual stakes are lost in the shuffle. And while that’s far less prominent here, it’s still an issue I found myself struggling with. But that doesn’t take away from what a profoundly chilling film this is. Perfect Blue is like experiencing a waking nightmare, where countless eyes devour your very essence until you can no longer tell who you even are. It makes you feel trapped, cornered and losing your mind, slowly descending into madness that only grows more and more suffocating. I can’t say it’s a particularly fun movie, but it’s definitely a powerful one, and I’m sure I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

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May 9, 2020

Koe no Katachi (Anime) add

Recommended

Kyoto Animation is my favorite anime studio of all time. Especially in the aftermath of the unfathomable horrors they endured last year, it feels more important than ever to re-iterate just what an incredible group of artists they are. They’ve consistently lead the industry on spectacular, high-quality animation. They’ve proven you can crank out profitable masterpiece after profitable masterpiece while still treating your employees with respect and dignity. They’re the rare studio that can actually make real life feel as magical, meaningful, and massive as it honestly is. In an industry that’s too often bound by its worst vices, they represent everything about what makes ... this medium so goddamn special. Kyoto Animation is a god among men, a shining beacon that defines the best of what anime is capable of. And while I don’t think A Silent Voice is the best work they’ve ever put out (hell, it’s not even the best thing its own director has spear-headed), that only serves as further evidence of just how fucking high they’ve set the bar. For any other studio, this film would be a crowning achievement; for Kyoto Animation, it’s merely one stellar A-tier accomplishment among many. That, my friends, is why they get to be the King.

The story centers around the relationship between two high school students: Shoko Nishimiya, a deaf girl, and Shoya Ishida, who bullied her back in elementary school. To be fair, many of Shoko’s classmates used her disability as an excuse to bully her; Shoya was merely the first and most prominent among them. But when the teacher caught wind of what was going on, the rest of the kids were content to let the crimes fall on Shoya’s head alone. Suddenly, HE was the one being ostracized, picked on, isolated and left behind. And the stigma stuck with him all throughout elementary and middle school, to the point where he grew scared to even look his fellow classmates in the eye. Flash-forward to high school and Shoya’s grown up into a depressed, reclusive kid, riddled with guilt over the harm he caused and starting the film by almost jumping off a bridge. Suffice to say, he’s in a bad state. And more than anything, he wants to make amends for all he’s done. So he seeks out Shoko, who’s since transferred to a different school, and offers her the one thing she always wanted from him back then: a friendship. Thus begins a tale of reckoning and redemption, as Shoya brings together all their old elementary school classmates- those who joined in the bullying, those who simply watched from the sidelines- to find closure for the lasting scars they’ve all carried with them all this time.

From that description alone, you can probably get a sense of how powerful this film can get. Bullying, ostracizing, living with disabilities, depression, suicide… there are all topics that most anime don’t dare touch except to exploit them for maximum shock value. But there’s no exploitation to be found in A Silent Voice, just a tender, often painful reality. It peers into the ways people can hurt each other, especially at such young and vulnerable ages, and how seemingly meaningless acts of cruelty can leave lasting trauma in their wake. None of Shoko’s former classmates are truly free from sin, whether they bullied her themselves or just sat back and let it happen. And as they’ve grown up, the full weight of what they did to her, and what they subsequently let happen to Shoya, has left them all scrambling for some justification or defense mechanism to avoid facing the full weight of what they’ve done. Even Shoya, for all his sincerity, can’t help but grapple with the question of whether he’s reaching out to Shoko just to selfishly assuage his own guilt, and not for her sake. It’s far from a tragedy or misery porn, and there’s plenty of light throughout thanks to the lovable camaraderie of the central cast (Shoko’s tomboy little sister in particular is frigging incredible, god bless Aoi Yuuki as always), but it’s steeped in a very real sense of melancholy and anguish

And the film takes its time getting you invested, building its emotional tapestry over the course of a lengthy slow-burn. In a way, it’s almost like a movie-length remake of Anohana, with a depressed loner protagonist bringing together all his old childhood friends so they can reckon with the memories of a wronged girl they haven’t been able to leave behind them. It lets you live with these characters, understand the ways they’re all suffering, see how much they’ve grown and how much they’ve stayed the same. It’s almost too much at points, which is the film’s one real fault: some scenes and sequences go by so abruptly that you can really feel them trying to squeeze the manga’s entire story into a deliberately paced two-hour package. But it’s a testament to the talent on display that they even pull it off as well as they do. For all its shortcuts, no character really feels shortchanged, no idea given the short shrift. It just lets you simmer in the complicated feelings the characters share, the ways they try to absolve themselves to hide from their guilt, how incapable they are of addressing their own hurt without hurting everyone around them all over again. It’s messy and uncomfortable and difficult in the way life so often is, and almost everyone has their own inner darkness to confront. It’s not always easy to like all the characters, but you can never not feel sorry for them.

But it’s the ending that truly pulls A Silent Voice together, that justifies all the densely packed character drama and slowly rising tension that dominates its lengthy second half. I wouldn’t dare spoil any of what happens, but suffice to say, when all that pain and desperation finally bursts to the surface, there won’t be a dry eye in the house. It’s gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, utterly devastating, but also beautiful, sublime, achingly hopeful. It tore my heart right out of my chest and left me a puddle of tears on the floor, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Christ, this is what makes Kyoto Animation so fucking spectacular. Their work is so human, so empathetic, so capable of reaching into the deepest parts of your soul and awakening your ability to feel. And their staggering talent is on display all throughout A Silent Voice, with stunningly nuanced character animation, evocative direction from the eternally amazing Naoko Yamada (her passion for displaying character through leg acting is on full display), breathtaking scenery and environmental storytelling, and a consistently captivating sense of place that grounds you in the reality of the world in all its watercolor wonder. And you can tell so much thought was put into how sign language and writing allow Shoko to speak when her own voice is too haphazard, how Shoya sees shimmering Xs across the faces of his classmates that keep him from connecting with them, all the myriad ways communication can succeed and fail when you’re speaking in such tentative, mismatched voices. This film is beautiful in so many different ways that I can’t even begin to quantify them.

And that’s really a perfect descriptor of Kyoto Animation as a whole isn’t it? This studio is beautiful is so many different ways that you could never list them all. All you can do is marvel at how consistently, and how extraordinarily, they let that beauty propel them to greatness. So while the truncated story beats might be enough to keep A Silent Voice out of the true upper echelon of KyoAni classics for me, they’re not enough to keep it from being yet another masterpiece from a studio who’s earned my love a million times over. It’s a heartbreaking, heartwarming, utterly breathtaking testament to the power and terror of forgiveness, and I know I’ll carry it in my heart for a long time to come.

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May 5, 2020

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! Movie: Kurenai Densetsu (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

It’s been a good two years since I watched Konosuba, and I’ve recently been curious what I would think of it if I watched it now. While I enjoyed it well enough at the time, I can’t say I thought it was that special, and it certainly wasn’t even close to the funniest comedy anime I’d seen. But after slogging through so much of the mindless dreck that defines the modern isekai genre, I think I’ve gained a new appreciation for Konosuba’s ability to take the piss out of it all. We need more shows with the confidence to clown on anime’s worst instincts, especially ... ones that do so with such consistently high-quality comic animation. It’s clearly an effort of passion and talent from everyone involved, and I’ll never knock that kind of creative drive. So when I happened to notice the recent movie sequel, Legend of Crimson, streaming on VRV tonight, I decided to give it a look-see and refresh my thoughts on the franchise as a whole. And now that I’ve done so, I think I can be confident in my assertion that Konosuba... just isn’t that great. Oh, I enjoyed it well enough, but after spending an hour and a half getting re-acquainted with Kazuma and company, I wouldn’t be upset if this is the last piece of anime Konosuba ever gets.

The story this time centers around Megumin, and it involves our usual gang of idiots getting roped into the ongoing struggle against the Demon King, traveling to stop his forces before they destroy the village of the Crimson Demons. And considering this is Konosuba, and thus the plot only matters as much as it exists for Kazuma’s antics to screw with, you can fill in the rest from there. There are hijinks, lojinks, ridiculous faces, even more ridiculous voice acting, and a bevy of surprisingly awesome action animation when it comes time for the big climax. You can tell the animators had fun taking advantage of the movie’s budget too, because this film is stuffed with great little moments. So many scenes will have a conversation taking place in the foreground while a couple other characters are screwing around in the background, keeping a constant stream of gags flowing. The sloppy, loose animation that makes the characters flop around like ragdolls is even sloppier and floppier, with nearly every pose and motion serving as its own little exaggerated punchline. And, of course, the action is an absolute blast; if you thought Megumin’s explosions were cool before, just wait until you see an entire army of Crimson Demons setting off similarly high-level magic all at once, against an honest-to-god hand-drawn army of enemy mooks. This film is nothing if not animation porn, and I don’t just say that because everyone’s tits seem to have taken on a life of their own as well.

But of course, this is Konosuba, and it wouldn’t be Konosuba if it weren’t as perpetually horny as a fifteen-year-old boy browing a hentai site for the first time. And I think that’s the best way I can describe my reaction to the franchise as a whole. Konosuba wouldn’t be Konosuba if it weren’t perverse and sloppy, if the characters weren’t all self-absorbed dipshits who suffer for our amusement, if it weren’t sarcastic and mean-spirited like a world-weary teenager taking potshots just for the hell of it. This film is every bit the show it’s building from, just blown up onto a bigger screen. But just as its strengths are magnified by the bigger budget, its flaws only become more apparent. This franchise has always walked a very uneven balance of having characters despicable enough that you enjoy seeing them suffer but also just likeable enough that you enjoy seeing them eke out a win every once in a while. And let’s be real, Kazuma’s lechery is gross beyond the pale waaaaay too often to earn any kind of sympathy. Plus, the plot itself once again runs out of gas once they have to start trying to take it semi-seriously by the end, and there’s only so many times you can watch assholes get dunked on before you want to find someone you can actually root for. And for all the hype around its subversion of dumb isekai trends, it’s still just as grossly indulgent with its fanservice as Every Other Isekai Ever. Seriously, poor Yunyun looks like she’s always just a few inches away from smacking herself in the face with her own floppy funbags. Get this girl a bra before she hurts herself.

None of this is to say that I think Konosuba is bad. Hell, I still enjoyed the movie when all is said and done. Megumin is by far my favorite character, so I can think of worse avenues this film could’ve gone that exploring her personal struggles. And it’s definitely a hoot to met the rest of the Crimson Demons and realize that they’re literally just an entire race of ridiculously chuuni idiots. Plus, that final moment with her and Kazuma (no spoilers) is no-bullshit the most sincere moment in this entire franchise thus far, and it actually freaking WORKS. That’s an accomplishment I didn’t know it was capable of. But there’s nothing I get from Konosuba I can’t get better elsewhere. I can get better sketch comedy from Nichijou. I can get better sarcastic assholery mixed with genuine sincerity from Gintama. I can get better isekai subversion from Re:Zero. And I can get less sexual assault played for comedy pretty much anywhere. So for all its passion and talent, Legend of Crimson only confirmed to me that Konosuba just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But it’s at least entertaining enough to pass the time, so I can’t complain much.

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Apr 4, 2020

Boku no Hero Academia 4th Season (Anime) add

Recommended

It’s always a weird feeling where I feel like I have to play defense for the most popular, widely beloved franchises on the market. But that’s the paradox of ubiquity: when an anime, movie franchise, TV show, book series, or whatever become so popular that pretty much everyone’s at least heard about it, it can be easy to take it for granted. They become so omnipresent that we forget what made them good in the first place, and we forget how to love them in the same way we used to. Small wonder the cry of “overrated” has become so prominent in today’s criticism; it ... can be so hard sometimes to divorce the most popular stories from that popularity and approach them as if seeing them for the first time. But it behooves us to remember: things get popular for a reason. Sure, there’s plenty of garbage that amasses a following by appealing to the lowest common denominator (Twilight, the Transformers movies). But when something becomes beloved enough to rule the conversation- the MCU, Miyazaki movies, there’s a good chance it’s because it’s good enough to actually goddamn deserve it.

Which is why I now find myself here once again, feeling the need to remind today’s anime fandom that My Hero Academia is still really damn good.

Yes, it feels like 2019 was the year the anime community finally got tired of Deku and company. With stuff like Promised Neverland, Demon Slayer and Doctor Stone taking up the mantle of hype shonen series for everyone to rally around, the first truly mainstream anime success story since Attack on Titan and One Punch Man felt like it was falling by the wayside. I’ve seen so many people lately who just seem exhausted with the whole thing, with heroes and villains, with UA Academy, with All-Might and One-For-All and All-For-One. And if no other semi-serious anime analyst is gonna step up in its defense, then it might as well be me. My Hero Academia isn’t perfect, and it never was, but at its core, this is still the best vanguard modern anime could possibly ask for. It’s inspirational and emotional, genuinely hilarious with great characters, packed to the gills with stellar animation courtesy of Studio Bones, and constantly striving to be a hot-blooded shonen with something to say about the nature of heroism and its place in society. There’s a reason why this show’s first season is second only to Naruto in MAL popularity for long-running shonen action titles, why this franchise is one of the rare few to break out of the otaku dungeon and achieve mainstream success in the United States and beyond. And I will be damned if franchise fatigue makes us forget why we fell in love with it in the first place.

All that being said, I do understand the lukewarm reception this latest season has received. Especially after the crowning achievement of awesome that was season 3, season 4 feels like a step down in pretty much every way. Like all of MHA’s two-cours seasons, it’s pretty evenly split between two separate arcs, and the first one is by far the stronger of the two. The Overhaul arc sees our plucky heroes confront villains in official capacity for the first time, using their fancy new provisional licenses to team up with established hero teams and go after the dangerous, mysterious Overhaul, the League of Villains’ latest uneasy ally. It’s the darkest the show has ever gotten, bringing Deku and company up to the big leagues with a truly chilling undercurrent of menace and brutality. Overhaul’s gang are all dangerous beyond belief, and the emotional and physical trials the heroes undergo to bring them down make for some truly nail-biting moments of dread. Not to mention how the arc’s emotional core is centered around Overhaul’s daughter Eri, a victim of the madman’s abuse who Deku and Togata have an opportunity to save before the battle even starts brewing... but fail. It’s a stark look at the realities of this show’s world that are bubbling to the surface now that the light of the Symbol of Peace is no longer around to blind us to them, and it kills.

The second arc, meanwhile, has a far more laid-back goal in mind: a school festival! I honestly kind of love this idea, just for the sheer balls it takes to follow up the series’ darkest arc yet with a tried-and-true staple of anime time-wasting. Why shouldn’t My Hero Academia be able to embrace the medium’s more slice-of-life elements? Certainly its characters are strong enough to carry it. Unfortunately, this arc definitely suffers from a lack of real meat on its bones; none of the conflicts that brew throughout it have any real legs to stand on. It feels like we should’ve been spending more time on watching Jirou come out of her shell and embrace being a punk rocker, or the flamboyant pair of villains Deku encounters trying to bust the festival up, or even the follow-up to the Provisional Exam arc that sees some fascinating developments for Bakugo and Todoroki. And it can’t help feel like a lot of this arc is just killing time in between the big moments.

Actually, that’s kinda this whole season’s biggest issue: there’s too much space between the really good stuff. At its best, My Hero Academia is a series of compelling, well-produced story beats that all build on each other until climaxing in moments so utterly jaw-dropping that they become the new standard bearers of what “that kind of thing” should look like in shonen. The big moments are still there in season 4, but the space between them is wider and less interesting. The Overhaul arc is plagued by countless flashbacks that drag down the pace of what should be a tense, propulsive lair invasion. The School Festival arc is full of dead air and underbaked time-filling. And the animation across the board is far less consistent than it’s ever been, with stiffer character models, flatter direction, and an overall lack of polish. One highly emotional battle’s climax is played out entirely in still shots, for crying out loud. In previous seasons, even a lot of the chill character moments were still given flair and style; I still remember how enjoyable it was watching class 1-A just hang out in training camp last season thanks to how snappy the direction on their interactions was. That spark is missing from season 4, and even if you can’t pinpoint all the little ways things feel off, the difference is noticeable all the same.

And yet. Whenever this season actually does get to those big moments, the moments where all the frustrations and limitations fall away and the production team pushes their effort to Plus Ultra and beyond... yeah, it’s still really fucking good. Kirishima pushing his hardening to the limit to protect the heroes he looks up to, Deku’s final showdown with Overhaul, the freaky wall-twisting powers of Overhaul’s right-hand man, a final-episode Endeavor-focused smackdown that somehow manages to rival All Might vs All For One in sheer hype factor, even the freaking music-video-esque concert that caps off the festival... when this show hits its peaks, it blows everything else out of the water. The best battles of this show are some of the best battles not just of the year, but of all damn time. The best animation isn’t just above-average, it’s the new standard against which animation deserves to be judged (well, not counting Bones’ other 2019 masterpiece Mob season 2). And man, everything related to Eri’s painful escape and recovery from her abuse is just goddamn spectacular. Forget Nezuko, give me this smile to protect any day of the week.

That’s why this franchise has become the new face of modern anime for so many: at its best, few things even come close. The truly great moments might be fewer and further between this season, and the overall quality might be more uneven than ever, and Mineta still seriously needs to, like, just die already, but it’s still far from running out of steam. You can keep the cringy lameness of Doctor Stone, the confused intentions of Demon Slayer, and the insufferable stupidity of Fire Force: when all is said and done, there is still no better vanguard for the face of modern anime than My Hero Academia. And I will continue to love it as long as that star keeps shining bright.

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Mar 24, 2020

Pokemon Movie 02: Maboroshi no Pokemon Lugia Bakutan (Anime) add

Not Recommended

It still astounds me just how damn well Mewtwo Strikes Back held up upon revisitation over 2 decades after it aired. How many films aimed at 6-year-olds explore such difficult themes as biological determinism, nature vs nurture and the lasting trauma of being denied personhood, let alone with such mythic scope behind them? Time and time again, this franchise has proved that it can go above and beyond the call of duty, pushing its toyetic critters and characters into works of genuine artistry. Pokemon’s first ever movie could have easily just been a dull lice of tie-in filler and it still would have raked in ... cash hand over fist, but the team at OLM decided to turn it into something really special. It’s that kind of dedication that made Pokemon take over the world, not just distracting kids with flashy colors but giving them something real and enduring to carry with them. And as long as it keeps proving capable of reaching those heights, I’ll have very little problem sticking with it for the long haul.

Unfortunately, just because Pokemon usually goes the extra mile doesn’t mean it’s completely immune to phoning it in. And Pokemon’s second movie, The Power of One, is every bit the mindless franchise vehicle that Mewtwo Strikes Back fought so hard to avoid being.

The story takes us back to the middle of the Orange Islands arc, with Ash, Misty and Tracy once again caught up in a potentially world-ending catastrophe related to a legendary Pokemon threatened by human malfeasance. This time, it’s the trio of legendary birds- Articuno of ice, Zapdos of lightning, and Moltres of fire, who in this continuity hang out on a trio of islands right in the middle of the archipelago. Normally there’s balance between them, but a preening Pokemon thief has shown up and started capturing them, throwing that balance into chaos. The birds are rising up to try and conquer each other’s territory, and weather around the world is going wild as a result as their fierce battle rages. The only thing that can calm them down is Lugia, the guardian of the sea, who swims deep in the waters below the islands and acts as the last line of defense to its inferiors. Unfortunately, Lugia’s also exactly who the Pokemon thief is after in the first place, the ultimate prize whom the legendary birds are just a means to an end for catching. Thus, Ash and friends must team up with some native islanders to set things right, island-hopping to fulfill a mysterious prophecy that will awaken Lugia and give it the power it needs to save the day.

There’s a lot of potential in that set-up for a tale just as resonant as Mewtwo Strikes Back. Unfortunately, whatever creative juices inspired the Pokemon team to make Baby’s First Francis Galton are not present here: The Power of One is the most bog-standard, generic Chosen One story you can possibly imagine. The prophecy is every prophecy you’ve ever seen in movies like this, and it casts Ash as the chosen one for no other reason than he’s this franchise’s nominal protagonist. The villain is so generic and meaningless that I don’t think we ever learn his name; he’s just some asshole who shows up, minces, and gets his ass kicked. There’s no effort to have our heroes naturally enter the story; they’re just dragged in by dopey convenience before they even realize the full extent of what they’re dealing with. And unlike Mewtwo Strikes Back, there’s no greater meat on the bones to give the story deeper meaning, so there’s nothing to distract from just how asinine some of this gets. At one point the bad guy just lets the heroes out of the cage he’s imprisoned them in and then leaves them behind, with nothing stopping them from pulling their Pokemon out and rescuing his other captives. Seriously, that’s phenomenally stupid, coincidence-laden writing.

Perhaps I am being too harsh in some respects; it’s not like Mewtwo Strikes Back was perfect itself, after all. It meandered in the midsection with a few too many side distractions before getting to that killer final act. But without that film’s genuine gravitas, all The Power of One has is those lesser elements. Instead of powerful emotional themes and plot turns that actually mean something, we’re left with Ash being told he’s The Only One Who Can Save The World through powers completely out of his hands and a groan-inducing subplot that pits Misty against another girl in competition for Ash’s affections and ugh, have I mentioned how much I dislike this kind of trite “romantic drama?” Thankfully, the animation team at OLM still knows how to pull off a hell of a spectacle, so we still get the super-impressive animation and background art that Mewtwo Strikes Back had. The world still feels epic, every shot is still intricately detailed, and whenever we’re just focusing on the epic storms whipping up on sea or the explosive battles between the legendary birds themselves, the chaos is truly beautiful to behold. It’s a shame that ugly CG also rears its head at points, which really does some damage to the otherwise great aesthetics; the bad guy’s flying castle, in particular, is basically just a low-rent PS2 Evil Laputa. And it really sticks out in a bad way when the hand-drawn stuff is still so genuinely impressive to behold.

Ultimately, Pokemon 2000 isn’t a disaster. It’s still an impressive animation showcase, and I think it utilizes Team Rocket better than Mewtwo Strikes Back did (their arc is the one genuine improvement over this film’s predecessor). But compared to everything that made this franchise’s first film so special, this is a major step down in every way. It lacks the meaning, it lacks the weight, it lacks the pathos, and it lacks the imagination I know this franchise it’s capable of.

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Feb 16, 2020

Kimetsu no Yaiba (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

I’m of the opinion that 2019 was a particularly dismal year for anime. Sure, I haven’t seen all the hugely praised stuff yet, so it’s possible I’ll warm up to the year as a whole once I get a fuller picture of it. But from what I’ve experienced thus far, it’s been really miserable. Disappointment after disappointment, promising show after promising show failing to live up to its potential, and even lots of the 2019 anime everyone fell in love with really didn’t click with me. Fire Fore wasted oodles of talent on some of the worst writing and directing I’ve seen in a long ... time. Dororo was pretty great, but also uneven as hell from start to finish. Dr. Stone won everyone else’s hearts but I couldn’t ignore the obvious flaws in its presentation, and honestly, I think my opinion on it has only soured as time’s gone on. One Punch Man’s second season was probably the biggest second-season downgrade since Psycho-Pass, and then Psycho-Pass one-upped it right back with its worst installment yet. Not to mention the conversation and marketing hype that made a smash hit out of Shield Hero, one of the most viscerally unpleasant, harmfully selfish occurrences I’ve seen befall this community. Even the still-reliable My Hero Academia feels like it’s downgraded substantially after its masterpiece of a third season. And, of course, there was the utter tragedy that befell Stars Align, a potential masterpiece that could have truly placed a new landmark for anime, crippled by corporate bullshit and forced to air only half-finished. You couldn’t get more existentially depressing if you tried, especially after the utter triumph of a year that was anime in 2018.

So in a way, Demon Slayer letting me down too makes a very sad kind of sense. The biggest breakout hit of anime in 2019, a massively popular show with everyone’s well-wishes and the efforts of an absurdly talented studio behind it, a shonen smash that’s promising to become just as much a mainstay of the popular conception of anime as MHA in the modern era, that only just last night went so far as to win Anime of the Year at the Crunchyroll awards? Of course it was never gonna live up to the hype. Of course it would fall short of truly being special time and time again, stumbling over its own two feet every time it looked like it was actually gonna pull through. I’ve wondered in the past if I’m turning into an anime hipster, but man, I’ve never felt as disillusioned with the state of the community at large than I have with Demon Slayer. I can only hope this feeling doesn’t last, because I don’t want to ever stop loving what this incredible medium is capable of.

To be clear, I wouldn’t go so far as to call Demon Slayer a bad show. Far from it, in fact; the only reason it’s able to be such a crushing disappointment is that you can easily see all the ways it comes so damn close to working. The action is consistently kickass, with killer kinetic camerawork and eye-poppingly gorgeous stylistic effects that make each clash of steel and blood feel like a painting in motion. Plus, the extra visceral kick from the body horror of the demons themselves can be giddily nasty, loading each fight with a real sense of tension and menace. Ufotable’s crack team of animators keeps the production consistent all the way through, with few dips in quality to speak of. And at its core, the story of Tanjirou’s incredible empathy against the forces of darkness is really fucking solid. There’s genuine gravitas to his journey, powerful emotion behind his determination to never give up on reaching out and believing in the best of everyone, no matter how painful it gets or how difficult it is to believe in. Sure, the mechanics of the story are fairly boilerplate shonen- A kid in early-20th-century Japan has his family slaughtered by a demon and trains to become a demon slayer to fine a cure for his now-demonified sister- but as shows like Blue Exorcist and My Hero Academia have proven time and time again, a well-worn formula done well can still delight and amaze you no matter how many times you see it. There are all the making of a classic in Demon Slayer, all the potential to be something truly special that would earn its astounding popularity a million times over.

But as much as I want to love this show, as many of its pieces speak to me, it just doesn’t hold together with the polish it needs. As beautiful as the action is, the disconnect between Ufotable’s photorealistic backgrounds and the hyperstylized characters and effects never truly goes away. The moment-to-moment pacing can be awkward and stilted, making the already-unnatural dialogue feel even less genuine. There’s no marriage between its light and darkness, no moment where the over-the-top attempts at comedy, snarling villains, and pop-art sensibilities exist in the same world as the sorrow of Tanjirou’s empathy and the sadness he fights to overcome. As a result, you’re constantly getting tonal whiplash, thrown between moments of genuine pathos and attempts at gags so poorly integrated it feels like they take place in an entirely different show. Every scene is full of a million little distractions that add up and cripple your ability to truly immerse yourself in this world, and the writing on its own just isn’t strong enough to cover for that deficiency. And when it sucks, it really fucking sucks. I still can’t get Zenitsu’s mind-numbing screeches out of my head no matter how hard I try. And all that wonderful emotional work and haunting spectacle can only crash up against this impenetrable wall of imperfection, trying so hard to break through but never having enough power behind its punches to truly do so.

Demon Slayer isn’t a bad show. Compared to some of the worst shows of 2019, it might as well be a masterpiece. But it’s perfectly indicative of what a sorrowful dead zone for anime 2019 was, a mediocre attempt at greatness that just can’t pull together no matter how hard it tries. Thankfully, it ends strong enough to give me hope for the franchise’s future: maybe there’s still a chance for it all to matter in the end. Maybe as we leave 2019 behind and step into the already-lightyears-better 2020, this show can finally come into its own and become what it always had the potential to be. Frankly, far stranger things have happened in the anime world, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up genuinely liking Demon Slayer as a whole when all is said and done. For now, though, its first season remains a frustrating, tentative, almost-remarkable experience that leaves me eternally sad at what might have been.

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Feb 8, 2020

Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight (Anime) add

Recommended

Theater has been one of my biggest passions for a long time now. I started performing in fundraising cabarets my dad would host for our local theater when I was ten, and when I finally started acting for real in high school, there was no going back. I have a deep and abiding love for the stage that surpasses pretty much every other hobby I indulge in, even writing about anime. I love acting, I love directing, I love playwriting, I love the process of watching a production pull together, I love watching a performance grow from the first tentative rehearsals to opening night, I ... love the struggle, I love the success, I love the chaos and nerves and catharsis, I. Love. Theater. And I’ve been so bummed for the longest time because as much as anime has to offer, I could never find an anime that was really able to explore that feeling. Japan clearly has a very different theater culture than the US; there are so few plays depicted in anime, and those few are rarely more than spectacle performances, broad depictions of broad stories that don’t really intend to dig into the meat of what makes this art so rewarding to explore. Sure, Bloom Into You has a pretty rewarding theater subplot, and Rakugo Shinju captures a lot of what makes performing so fascinating to me, but those are clear outliers. Ever since I started watching anime, I’ve been dying to find that one show that truly captures what it means to love theater, in all its impossibly high highs and unbearably low lows and everything in between.

Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, the wait is finally over, and it was 100% worth it.

Revue Starlight is the celebration of theater that I’ve been longing to get from anime ever since I discovered this medium. It’s a soaring, audacious testament to an art form that’s been near and dear to my heart for over a decade now, a riveting exploration of what drives people to reach for the stage and how the pursuit of the spotlight changes us. This show gets theater more fundamentally than I think I’ve ever seen. It understands the ambition that drives actors to compete for the spotlight, and the ways that ambition can both inspire and destroy us. It understands the importance of performance as a transient art, something that must constantly evolve and re-invent itself in the moment of its inception. It understands the fear of feeling like you don’t measure up, the despair of falling short to the standards you set for yourself, the thrill of building a story with your own hands, the numbness of feeling your passion start to sap away from too many false starts. It understands what makes creating for the stage such an exhilarating, terrifying place, the reason so many egos are drawn to speak their piece under the blinding lights yet struggle and break before the pressures it brings with it. There is so much that can be said about theater and those that pursue it, and Revue Starlight captures every single contradictory, chaotic aspect of it.

The story centers around the girls of Seisho Music Academy, a private all-girl's school dedicated to training its students in the art of the stage. Their ambitions drive them all to seek the spotlight's glare, to prove their merit and become the brightest shining star of them all. But things take a turn for the weird when Karen Aijo, the good-natured spunky protagonist, discovers an unusual elevator hidden in the school walls and rides it down to an underground stage where her classmates battle each other in operatic duets under the watchful eye of a talking giraffe.

No, I don't get why there's a giraffe either, but it's awesome.

See, for those of you non-theater geeks out there, the high school theater scene- especially for musical theater- is one of the most cutthroat organizations you could be a part of outside the mafia. It takes a certain degree of ego to be an actor, a desire to show yourself off to an adoring audience and make them cheer as you command their attention. And when all those egos find themselves in conflict for a limited series of roles, ranging from leads to side characters to little more than glorified chorus members, the competition quickly becomes fierce, ruthless, and unforgiving. Revue Starlight’s genius central hook is taking that naturally competitive atmosphere and blowing it up into a full-on war for theatrical supremacy. The performance IS the battle, both literally and figuratively, and the egos that drive all these girls to want to be the Top Star mean that all their fellow classmates are now enemies to be overcome. Either you sing your heart out and take the center stage, or the curtain falls on you and shuts you off in darkness, forever doomed to lick the soles of the one true champion. There's a lot of commentary here on the Takarazaka Revue, a notoriously cutthroat Japanese theater company which similarly prizes the elevation of the leading role at the expense of everyone else, but the ideas here are universal enough to apply to anyone who's ever run the theater gauntlet. The desire to be The One, to stand in the spotlight and draw the audience's attention all on your own, is something that every theater kid feels deep within their souls, whether they want to or not.

But that's where Karen comes in. Because she’s already learned the most important acting lesson ever, one that I took far too long to internalize: the stage is made to be shared. Unless you’re in a very specific one-man show, you never perform alone; you rely on your scene partners, the rest of the cast, the entire stage crew, and they all rely on you in turn. The show only goes on with everyone working together, and Karen, unlike the rest of the Stage Girls, is determined to be a star not just on her own, but by the side of someone she cares deeply for. That person in question is Hikari Kagura, Karen's childhood friend who's been off in England for years but has just transferred back to Seisho Academy to take part in the Underground Revue. Hikari is desperate to win for Karen's sake, seemingly knowing more about the potential dangers of the Revue than she lets on. But Karen wants to win for BOTH their sakes. They made a promise long ago that they would reach stardom together, and nothing's gonna stand in the way of that promise. After all, aren't the best shows the ones where everyone is doing their best to make the entire stage shine that much brighter?

What truly lingers in my mind now that the curtain has finally dropped is how perfectly this show gets what makes theater not just fascinating, but meaningful. It understands how this art can truly shape the lives of those that pursue it; I see so many of my theater experiences reflected in these characters it’s terrifying. In Mahiru and Futaba, I see my admiration of my peers for all they’re able to accomplish and my desire to do them justice. In Junna and Kaoruko, I see my frustration at feeling outmatched by them no matter where I turn, striving to channel that burning envy into becoming a better actor and a better person. In Maya and Claudine, I see my desire to be more than just a solitary star, to balance my own ambition with the people I care for. In Nana, I see my desire to linger in my most rewarding moments forever, knowing that at some point I have to move on and keep evolving no matter how terrifying it is. In Hikari, I see my terror at losing faith in things I once believed so fully in, striving to find meaning when it seems to be slipping away. And in Karen, I see that spark alight again, that simple, excitable passion that drove me to the stage in the first place, still burning brightly no matter how many times it’s snuffed out. I see my fears, my hopes, my desires, my pains, my triumphs, my failures, writ large against this explosive backdrop of symbolism-drenched duels and literalized metaphors. Revue Starlight isn’t just a show about theater; it’s a show about what makes theater so goddamn important, and why it matters so goddamn much.

And it’s in drawing meaning from those truths that this show doesn’t just excite and delight, but becomes something truly transcendent. By digging into the heart of this incredible art, Revue Starlight weaves a narrative of ambition and despair, change and evolution, love and redemption, and above all else, hope. It’s a story that rushes unflinchingly into the thicket of despair, exploring the inevitable transience of life and the terror that makes us brace against it with clear eyes and a burning soul. It lets us feel every last ounce of the weight of the world as it bears down on us, the terrifying promises of the future awaiting us in the darkness and the fear that it’s already too late to change it. It presents life as the ultimate performance, one where the script is uncertain and the roles are ever-changing, where the stage lights are glaring and every performance rages on with no safety nets and no way to go back. It can be so easy to give in to the pressures of life, to rage against the rolling tides of change and conflict until they drag you under to drown. But Revue Starlight knows that no matter what, the show must go on, because this is the only “now” you’ll ever have, and you deserve to make every moment shine. It’s a stunning portrait of the power of choosing your own destiny, of rejecting the scripts of the past and writing your story anew, of strutting your hour upon the stage alongside the people who make it worth standing there and forging fate with your own hands. And whether you’ve spent countless hours sweating in front of an audience or have never so much sung at karaoke night, the power of that message is sure to make your future feel that much brighter.

Because this show- this incredible, awe-inspiring show- is a soaring triumph of everything that kind of brazen determination is capable of. It’s a riveting, exhilarating, exciting, giddy, spellbinding roller coaster ride, an endlessly entertaining action spectacle and an endlessly profound character drama that achieves every last spark of its own ambition. I marvel at its riveting direction, how flawlessly every scene flows into the next, how perfectly chosen every camera frame is, how spellbinding the action scenes are as they trumpet the show’s themes by way of an explosive musical theater bravura showcase. And I’m truly left speechless at the depths of its character writing, how fully realized and human its expansive cast feels, how quickly and deeply you come to understand and empathize with the stage girls who sweat it out for the honor of being chosen as top star. Every last one of them has more texture, nuance, growth, and personality packed into these twelve episodes than some full protagonists get in their entire run. I could spend ages hanging out with them and never run out of things to discover, or delight in, or marvel over. And the fact that they’re all so astronomically gay for each other is just the icing on the cake. This show really is Symphogear’s nerdier cousin, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Revue Starlight is a goddamn triumph. It sets itself impossibly high goals and achieves them with spectacular fireworks, seizing its own well-deserved spotlight as it weaves together countless threads into a single, astounding testament. I honestly have no major complaints to make; the only real nitpick I have is that a couple action scenes aren’t paced quite as well as they could be, and compared to everything else this show has to offer, that barely even registers. When all is said and done, Revue Starlight is a full-on masterpiece, a soaring tribute to the power and pressure of theater and a truly majestic rallying cry for the importance of forging the future with your own hands. Were it not for A Place Further Than the Universe, this would easily be the best anime of 2018, and it deserves so much more attention than it currently has. So if you’ve read this revue and haven’t yet watched Revue Starlight, now’s the time to fix that. Watch this goddamn show. Tell all your friends to watch it. Let’s give this incredible artistic achievement the attention it’s rightfully earned. I promise you, you won’t regret it.

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