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First experiences with things are potentially revealing things. There's plenty of kid's shows I saw when I was young that technically were anime, English dubbing notwithstanding, but there's a difference between that and sitting down to something knowing it's a Japanese cartoon and it's not intended for kids. My first one of those, and thus the first thing I saw that was anime which I actually knew was anime was Orguss 2; I was fifteen and it was a hot afternoon in my friend's mess-strewn loft. I had no idea I'd still be thinking about what happened there sixteen years later. ... My continued fascination with Japanese animation was born right there, a product of the battering my preconceptions and expectations underwent, because Orguss 2 is lots of things, but it isn't a kid's thing at all.

Orguss 2 is (at least superficially) Mecha. The central conceit of a pre-modern world excavating readymade mecha to use them as weapons without really understanding them seemed really fresh to me back then, and in fact, while it's perhaps not as original as it once was, it's still a pretty unusual and striking idea. I say superficially because, well, it also seemed a pretty mature way of storytelling, to rustle up this grand concept but use it pretty sparingly for much of the time, not really focusing on the mecha at all, but on people. I suppose both of those things aren't really that amazing, but they definitely work pretty well. I have to see this in terms of my first impressions, though, and back then I was really surprised that a cartoon would do any of this stuff.

Orguss 2 is sci-fi, and like the best sci-fi, it's as much about ideas and allegory and making you think as it is about entertaining you with cool stuff. So the fact it's got this interesting carte blanche for ideas with all the time-bending, mecha-excavating, future-crashing setup that's gone on makes it a bit aggravating when you realise there's not enough time to really play with the ideas properly in only six episodes. It does develop, but not a great deal. Then again, maybe it's best that it doesn't overstay its welcome by pushing the idea too far; shows like Allison and Lillia are proof of how that can go wrong.

Orguss 2 is also big. The sense of scale here is very important to the plot, and the fact that it's done almost deceptively well is very impressive. Of course, it wasn't to my teenage self; I just didn't get anime at first, and I remember thinking 'wow, if this was live action it would be amazing!'. What a noob I was. Big mecha, big world, big events, big setpieces. It would be unbelievably expensive to do in live action, and it wouldn't work as well anyway, at least not with the current state of the art in terms of technology or creative artistry.

Orguss 2 is nicely visualised. The animation is good - as you might expect from relatively early-period JC Staff - clearly better than contemporary TV standards, and the design work in particular is very well executed, giving distinct looks to each distinct aspect/era/system of technology; it's always clear where things are, who people are, what things belong to which place or time. The look is particularly notable as, just for once, nothing is a clear pastiche of any single world culture. Elements from everywhere are pulled together for the rival cultures, but visual themes like architecture and machinery are consistent, creating a pretty convincing and original atmosphere. Character design is pretty good too; the Revilian royals in particular are appropriately opulent, decadent and memorable, with the real stand-out being the queen, whose revealing robes of state immediately prompted me to think of her as Princess Breasts.

Orguss 2 is relatively blessed by good characterisation, though. The main male protagonists are relatively unremarkable to look at, but well-rounded and developed in terms of personality. Lean is something of an archetype, a young hero making good after he is thrust into someone else's fight, but is pleasingly bright and resourceful. Manning is a great character, a charismatic, womanising, profiteering and rather ruthless officer who manages to constantly be genuinely unpredictable without seeming nonsensical or even particularly contradictory. I changed how I felt about him rather a lot across the series, which to me is the mark of genuine and well-realised character development. Nataruma, the female protagonist, is also a finely crafted character, a strong female character who is genuinely strong and independent, as opposed to the more common type who is ostensibly independent but frequently needs a man to rescue her. Nataruma and Lean, who spend a lot of the series together, complement each other well. Behind these three, a number of less prominent characters are also well crafted. Voice acting is good across the board, with special mention going to Sakakibara Yoshiko as the aforementioned Princess Breasts (actually called Miran, but never mind), who gives the role a superbly dangerous stillness.

Orguss 2 is surprisingly nasty. Not in a gory way, although some of it is rather gruesome, but in terms of the rules of the world. Oddly, having rewatched it recently I was struck by how similar it is, in a limited sense, to Game of Thrones. Sure, it's not got such a huge ensemble of characters, and in place of the unremitting medievalness there are mecha with axes and lasers, but the brutality of the characters and their general level of malice and malevolence, plus the internecine plotting, the epicly dysfunctional and depraved families, the sharply observed gaps between noble opulence, military severity and common desperation - it's all in there. Only two opposing sides here, but plenty of factions within them, easily enough to keep things relatively surprising. Perhaps a big difference is that while Game of Thrones tends to make human suffering rather incidental, not a lot more than a yardstick of what its characters want and how far they go to get it, it's really foregrounded here. The suffering of people in general because of war, and due in particular to the unworldly attitudes of those in authority, is kind of the main point. Come for the mecha fights and sexy blue-haired cover girl, stay for the realistically portrayed firestorms, intra-community betrayal, battlefield triage, nukes and chemical weapons.

Orguss 2 is something else, which rather gets overlooked: it's 2. The fact it's a sequel to something that so far as I know has never been available outside Japan in its intact form should, you would think, mean it's largely incomprehensible, but it's not. It is actually a side-story, occurring 200 years after the original series, rather than a direct sequel, and I suspect it's rather different in tone and focus; the fact that the title refers to a Mech which takes three episodes to appear and is only really important once rather supports this. No, as a stand alone work it makes perfect sense, everything is pretty much self-contained, and while I've no idea if any of the characters or indeed any other aspects of the series are carried over from the original, it transpires that the characters and the story all work fine without the influence of the original.

It's worth mentioning in passing that the music is largely dreadful, but probably Orguss 2's greatest problem is the structure. It establishes a consistent style and direction but starts to fall apart a little at the end (like this review, in fact); I suspect the makers intended to make another episode or two but had to end early, resulting in plot compression in the final stages - not an uncommon problem with multi-part OVAs. Too many things happen in too short a time, certain twists are made predictable and the somewhat thoughtful tone and pace of the earlier episodes evaporates in over-frenetic boss fights. Still, what exists is decent, and even with the guessable twists, it's certainly not without significant surprises. Perhaps most importantly, the series was in fact finished and the story resolved, avoiding the worst fate of any narrative, failing to end.

There's no way I can pretend to be even remotely objective about this OVA. One of the things I love most about it is how surprising that first watch was, on a number of levels. If I were to see it now, with all the knowledge of anime tropes I now possess, I very much doubt that much of it would still have that power. I know it's not as special as it seems to me, but as my first knowing encounter with anime it's specifically special to me, and despite its flaws I will defend it as a thoroughly enjoyable piece of work.

Watching Simoun seems like an exercise in how to discover and enjoy the latent sadist in yourself. You know that bit in the Shawshank Redemption where the old lags are betting on which of the new inmates will break down first, and the way Morgan Freeman says it, you totally get what he's talking about, even though you know it's horrible behaviour? This is kind of like that, but with gigantic eyes, inexplicably revealing pastel uniforms, unbelievably daft mecha and technicolour hair.

To explain (and there will be spoilers throughout this review, just so you know): we have this premise - ... that everyone is born female and can choose to become male at 17 - which is so outlandish that it's completely impossible to take seriously, but well realised enough to be a genuinely hook all by itself. Then we have the cast, who are a grab-bag of stock archetypes, and a plot which is also awfully familiar. And we have the characterisation, including the art, which by being almost aggressively shoujo seems entirely at odds with the action-ish setting, and the script and voice acting, which practically redefine "wet" in most cases. And the production design, a highly camp take on art deco which resembles the result of a collision between Last Exile and Escaflowne, particularly the made-of-spare-parts Simouns themselves. We have, in short, a show entirely built around an idea and a formula.

A Simoun is an aircraft of sorts. Its purpose is primarily religious, to draw geometric patterns in the sky which form complex prayers to the god Tempus Spatium, and it is piloted by two priestesses who have not yet made The Choice. Perhaps coincidentally, these prayers, called Ri Maajons, also act as a weapon; in fact they form the only real weapon the theocracy of Simulacrum has against invaders (apart from the army, who for unknown reasons are largely ineffectual). The invasion is due to other countries craving for the drive systems Simouns use, while they are forced to rely on polluting alternatives that poison their land and air. The practical upshot: naive, pampered, sanctimonious and hormonal young priestesses are the primary defenders of their country against devious and desperate, yet not entirely unjustified enemies, and experience the general destruction of their innocence as their friends, relationships, worldviews and lifestyles are placed under gigantic stress.

Basically, while the thing is wrapped in sci-fantasy window dressing it's a story of spoiled, obsequiously devout snobby teenagers getting what's coming to them, which in this case is a rude awakening. I couldn't help cackling with glee as one or other of the ensemble cast first sets themselves up and then gets knocked down a peg. This is where the audience sadism comes in; the story cannot truthfully be called one that easily permits suspension of disbelief, so since I can't quite take it seriously, I nonetheless rather enjoyed a lot of the series precisely because of the carnival of ghastly people suffering for my amusement.

But while this does have a fair amount of mileage due to the large cast composed of people whose suffering is highly amusing, it's far from enough to carry the series - and nor should it be. Once I came to terms with my newly-awakened sadistic side, I tried to take the story more seriously, but ran into trouble. For a start, this is supposed to be a war, and while there are odd interludes of capture by blood-vomiting enemy saboteurs among the snide carping about who's allowed to hang out in the ballroom, the whole thing tends to happen at this weirdly unworldly remove from the devastating war that appears to be happening. The use of religion, whether it's supposed to be or not, is a perfect cypher for the problems that hardcore religious attitudes create in reality; yes, people are dying in their thousands, but what about our rightful priveliges as members of the clergy? It's as if people out there on the front line didn't realise that prayers and love of god are much more important than their continued existence!! On numerous occasions, I started to get cross about the fact that people were being totally irrational, but then I realised that this series' depiction of religion correctly conveys that it is the most widespread form of irrational behaviour known anywhere. This is something which Studio Deen do deserve credit for, not least in that Japan is by and large not a devout country in any sense, and imparting to people raised in an atheist environment the sheer irrationality of religions in general is not easy.

Among the 12-strong main cast there are just three people I actually like, one whose pleasing "I'm not sure what's going on but let's do our damnedest to have fun with it" attitude exists because she's voiced by Mizuki Nana, and another who's interesting mostly because she appears to have wandered in from a role as manipulative femme fatale with a slight S&M twist in an H-game (not least because she's called Dominura; you can also see the S&M in the fact that among all the completely non-uniform variations of skimpy pseudo-lingerie that purport to be uniforms, hers is the only one to incorporate fishnet stockings). The other likeable character, thankfully, is one of the main protagonists, Aaeru, because she's the only person on the whole ship with real drive, who actually seems to have any idea what she is doing, what she wants and when to stop tutting and gasping and wringing her hands in ecclesiastical angst and take action; the fact she's not bothered in the slightest about religion and just wants to fly helps hugely here. The remainder of the ensemble cast are similarly familiar character archetypes, but less pleasing: several are neither objectionable, nor particularly appealing, but specially aggravating characters include a gossipy airhead called Floe, the sergeant-like Paraietta who is bossy, curt, indecisive and basically totally rubbish, and the sisters Kaimu and Alti, who are singularly annoying because of their insistence on not getting on with each other for totally absurd reasons.

These are however secondary annoyances beside the other main protagonist, Neviril. Being unnaturally talented at Simoun flying and thus particularly holy, everyone instantly forgives her inability to cope with stress, or in other words, her extended bouts of sulking. Adored by all, she is blessed with a life normally free from insight into anything
(allowing her poorly-written comrades to provide it to her, and simultaneously to viewers) and avoids the curse of complex sentences or outward displays of emotion that might make people think she's normal; nonetheless, she manages to come to some highly generic and familiar conclusions about
being true to her own feelings and so on and so forth. A poker-faced, monosyllabic protagonist almost never works, and this is no exception. However, while I generally found her bothersome, there's a certain amusement to be gained from how unrealistic a character she really is, for example a perfect moment of unintended comedy about halfway in, when Aaeru mentions the death of her former pair in characteristically down-to-earth terms, prompting a lollercaust of gasps, horror-stricken looks and emotional overload.

Her look is part of it. Character design varies massively across the series, with other primary heroine Aaeru for some reason resembling a manic Kyoto Animation character, to me at least, Floe looking like a castoff from Sailor Moon, many others looking like off-the-peg Gonzo characters. Against all this, Neviril seems inappropriately ultra-shoujo in style, her perpetually waving pink hair, pink lipstick and unusually round eyes putting me in mind of Nana (note: I've nothing against Nana, it's just a very distinct style that, to me, clashes in this context with the others around it). Moreover, relative to others, her undemonstrative demeanor is seemingly at odds with her supposedly emotional temperament - the above-mentioned unintended comedy moment is partly as funny as it is because by this point it's by far the largest display of emotion she has exhibited for something like a dozen episodes, and it just shows up how little she seems to actually emote most of the time. This lack of theme is beneficial in that it makes the whole cast easily recognisable, but it does nothing to make the series as a whole look coherent. This is also severely hampered by the inconsistency of the art; I suspect an in-betweener had some out of date reference materials, as in once instance the entire cast gain enormous noses for an entire half an episode, and in certain shots thereafter. This is the worst problem, but not the only one; at times the animation gets very cheap and undetailed as well.

A thing or two must be said regarding Simouns themselves, which sound like TIE fighters and move with the total disregard for G-forces that only CG can actualise. They are desperately silly things; imagine a cross between Escaflowne, an Mi-24 gunship and a flying snail, complete with incongruous gold ornamentation, twin bubble cockpits, chin cannons and silvery trail. Then there's the fact that they are variable geometry craft without reference to actual geometry at all, which is to say the pieces stay together and rearrange themselves without actually being connected together in the first place. And those chin cannons? They get used about once ever; I suspect they're a leftover from an earlier design stage where the concept still retained some plausibility. The silvery trail is the only true weapon, and it seems to work by producing blue light that makes enemies spontaneously explode. Oh, and they seem to be powered by kisses.

Music is a mixed bag. The opening theme is by Ishikawa Chiaki, and as such is predictably excellent; the ending is too anodyne and mediocre for me to have watched enough of it to catch who sung it. This excellent/mediocre disparity continues through the BGM, some of which approaches excellence while other parts reach annoying territory. Also predictably, there's no real consistency, flavour or theme to the music, mixing electronic pieces, orchestral pieces and things of many other stripes in a way that seems to want to be Kajiura Yuki and clearly isn't managing to be.

The central gender-choosing premise is, as I say, a major hook into watching; but it's mostly wasted, with the series becoming a sort of soup of mixed sexualities. There's a theme of putting off choice running through the series, as the protagonists are basically allowed to indefinitely postpone the normal gender choice if they'll continue flying a Simoun - but have to make the choice if they want to quit. Obviously, the gender choice is a half-allegorical single focus for all the changes in sexuality/loss of innocence/responsibility that adulthood represents. Credit is due for adhering to and emphasising the idea that, in serious relationships, people are naturally attracted to characters rather than to gender per se; however, on one level, all it really does is introduce an air of sexual ambiguity, making it an exercise in tame, vague sexually suggestive behaviour. It all appears aimed at the tastes of young adolescents who find themselves turned on by women kissing women, something that just doesn't match the seriousness with which the series takes this theme of taking choices seriously. On another level, it does tend to suggest that the gender a person finds attractive is your own free choice. Conversely, all of the gay people I know have never seen their sexuality as a matter of choice, any more than I can say I chose to be straight - they see themselves as having been born gay. I mean, I dare say some might disagree with this, but the point is, Simoun seems fairly invested in painting sexuality as a subjective choice, which seems a bit out of order to me.

To cap it all, there's plenty of unblemished femininity on display, with none of the dozen protagonists appearing at all masculine, even though some profess to have already decided to become male, but nowhere is there a masculine male to be seen - no facial hair, no muscles. All the young males around look highly effeminate, 'bishie' and Ouran-ish, and even the older male characters, who one might expect would be more traditionally masculine, possess some feminine characteristics, a delicate ear-stud or a flick of ornamental hair. Most of the voice actors for male characters seem to my ear to be female, too. Nonetheless, whatever the cause, the effect is of depicting a world in which there's actually only one gender, female, and various degrees of distance from it, the furthest people from female being termed male, without wholly qualifying by what I understand male to mean. It all seems like a careful and deliberat design decision, rather than simply the programme's style, as if there's a standing instruction to make all males slightly feminine, but having never 'got' shoujo, I can't tell if this is trying to make a point about men and women, or whether it's simply the design ethos of a heavily shoujo-minded art director.

The purpose of messing about with the significance of gender in Simoun remains, at least to me, unclear. Thought-provoking though it is, it does not end up explaining itself. Simply having all these priestesses face leaving the priesthood and becoming ordinary women, some gay and others not, if they give up flying Simouns, would surely work just as well. When you just ignore that side of Simoun, though, you start to see a funny thing (spoilers coming, so skip this paragraph if you wish); there's a war over resources, it escalates and the former superpower becomes the underdog when faced with military might, and then there's a highly unfair peace treaty, wherein the Simoun pilots are forcibly demob'd and the country demilitarised. What the gender-choosing thing is actually for, aside of acting as a fairly superficial gimmick, is to disguise the fact that the plot is an allegory of Japan's history, 1930-1945, as written by the ultra-nationalists who are once again on the up in Japan today. Japan, they'd contend, was the major power in East Asia in 1930, but an alliance of China and the US managed through a mix of sheer numbers and military superiority to turn the tables on Japan and force the country to accept a peace treaty that disbanded the Japanese military and demilitarised the country. While there are many inevitable differences, not least because of the difference between settings, the similarities are striking.

And therein, perhaps, lies the meaning of Aaeru and Neviril's superficially baffling disappearance in the last episode, and all the rhetoric about another world actually being the same one in a different time; they are the embodiment of Japan's fighting spirit, a mixture of Aaeru's plucky determination and Neviril's sacred inviolability, shifted through time to where they are needed - presumably, by this rhetoric, in the future. When you take this reading on board, and add in the highly defined and divergant masculine and feminine images and ideals that exist in Japan, one final possible interpretation of the whole gender choice mechanic is that it symbolises the emasculation of Japan, and that people must choose whether to become male and fight for their country or stay female and remain passive non-actors. Perhaps this is how the approaching war at the end of the series should be interpreted. I recall starting to watch Code Geass and being turned off by that series' overt nationalism, a trait that always rings alarm bells for me. This, however, seems like it could be construed as covert nationalism, which to me is a more out-and-out disturbing trend.

But enough politics; Simoun is supposed to be entertainment primarily, and for me, it succeeds in that aim to a limited degree - but not in the ways it originally intended to. It's serious moments are frequently hilarious, and its sense of importance is out of proportion to support its ideas with storytelling skills, but like many things that genuinely are so bad they're good, it tries earnestly. And there's the whole viewer sadism angle, which will doubtless appeal to many. I'm glad I watched it, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed; the expectations I'd formed by the halfway mark were not really satisfied at the end, and the faux-enigmatic ending was neither satisfying nor suitable. I'm not fond of using genre to create expectations, but really, a series that starts out as a story about combat pilots and makes a big deal of aerial sequences surely NEEDS an aerial battle as a finale, rather than four episodes from the actual end. As for the characters, at least none of my favourites ended up annoying me overmuch; the muted tone of the end and the eventual fates of the characters, including their shared lack of certainty about anything, also bothered me. One thing I can definitely say in Simoun's favour is that if, like me, you're given to compulsive analysis of whatever you end up watching, this series will certainly give you plenty to get your teeth into and chew over.

I started Soul Eater feeling fairly ambivalent, thinking that it would disappoint eventually and it was simply a matter of time. Real life got in the way for a bit, but I amassed a backlog, got a kendo injury and while immobile, I decided this was the time to catch up. That was a hell of a good marathon; in fact it's literally years since I was so gripped by anything and now I've finally cleared the decks and finished it, I am unusually satisfied.

I can't help comparing Soul Eater to Bleach on some level. Cards on the table: I lost almost ... all interest in Bleach when I realised it was basically going on perpetually, but I found the initial premise interesting, if silly, and to this day I see Tite Kubo's character designs as absolutely superb. Other than the fact that it's an action series full of Shinigami, there's not a lot in common that I can see.

Skipping the plot summary, I am most impressed by what I can only call the sheer completeness of the series - quite unlike Bleach, then. Something like this, an action series largely composed of single-shot episodes with arcs, is of a kind that fairly reeks of the incomplete, slapdash, on-the-fly nature common to the likes of Naruto, Bleach or their ilk. A tightly formed storyline and true plot resolution is not something I expected. Not only that, the series' look and feel are similarly rounded and fleshed-out.

The heart of the thing is of course the characters, and Ookubo's single best idea of the whole series is to pair up the protagonists, and have the pairs composed of complimentary characters. Not only does it mean you can have camaraderie, exposition and conflict without engineering ever more implausible reasons for two characters to be thrown into a situation, it also ensures that you can have a wide range of different characters and not end up hating a pairing or an episode devoted to one particular pair, because whichever characters you don't like (and you can be sure there will be some), they are accompanied by one who is generally speaking opposite in most respects. For myself, I initially found Black Star fairly insufferable, but I really like Tsubaki, so from being an annoyance that accompanied Tsubaki, he gradually became bearable, and as he developed I came to realise that his constant self-promotion was essentially a coping mechanism rather than a terminal case of arrogance - a cause, rather than an effect - so I got more and more interested in him.

The closeness of weapons and meisters is in itself an engaging facet of the series, and makes a somewhat refreshing change from the constantly ambivalent trust/betrayal relationship many allies tend to have in action narratives. The only possible exception is Death the Kid, who I simply cannot like, thanks to his obsession with symmetry getting in the way of any sort of actual character trait, and Liz and Patty, who are too ill-defined to provide an effective character contrast to Death the Kid or to actually provide any opposition or conflict in their relationship with him (although I am somewhat fond of them). Then again, others I know really like him and hate Maka, who I rather like. Allied to this oppositional pairing, there is the fact that all the major characters are both flawed and powerful, and that they are more than simply the sum of those flaws and abilities; they seem much more plausible and sympathetic as a result. It takes all sorts to make a world, as the saying goes, and the characterisation of this series tends to prove that. An interesting side note: most meister/weapon pairs are of mixed gender, but not all.

While weapons and meisters are effectively immune to ambiguity, there are plenty of other characters who are not, and these are some of the best; naming names here risks spoilers so you'll have to find these yourself. The villains are also interesting; in fact they are at times much fresher and more intriguing than the protagonist ensemble, who for all their appeal do nonetheless represent a very familiar set of archetypes, remixed and covered endlessly in much the same way we keep hearing classic musical hits made over by new acts. The appeal of the antagonists is largely due to Soul Eater's mastery of the ability to walk the fine line between either overdoing things and hence obscuring a potentially interesting plot behind needless gore (c.f. something like Mnemosyne) or being excessively tame and not actually creating anything like a real sense of threat to drive the story (c.f. something like Heroic Age). Soul Eater's antagonists therefore come across as ruthless, psychotic bastards, but in the very best way, in that they remain somewhat sympathetic for all their carefully constructed nastiness, and everything is tastefully handled. The voice acting is universally praiseworthy; only the characters who are meant to grate on your nerves actually do, and everyone else's voice is natural and well-realised.

Art in this series is a peculiar mixture. The lack of a universal style, beyond an eyecatching fondness for arrows that tends to crop up a lot, I found really disconcerting at first, until it hit me that the blend of styles was in itself a style; the sheer diversity of styles across the end credit music, spanning punk, pop, rap/hiphop/whatever the hell you want to call ED#3 and rock, and in fact the eclectic mix of instruments and styles in the BGM, all fit this unexpectedly tasty gumbo of styles too. Accordingly, the light-toned action baseline episode format also frequently switches over into knowingly cheesy horror, engaging seriousness, pure comedy interludes (unique for a character who is simultaneously very funny and almost unbearably annoying) and a finale that contains enough of the Evangelion approach to be memorable without being either incomprehensible or tedious for any but the most attention-deficit watcher, who will probably have given up by now anyway. Ultimately, I stopped fretting about the fact that every character was drawn differently and had different visual quirks, and the music was all over the place, and the damn thing couldn't decide what it wanted to be, but it took a while to work out that what it wanted to be was a jack of many things and master only of combining those things.


As for the sheer outlandishness of it, what with the giant sun and moon and the total implausibility of Death City and sundry other locations, not to mention the whole conceit of humans who literally are weapons...if you were to describe it to me, I'd just not be interested. As things stand though, especially given the lack of concentrating on explaining all this and simply treating all these patent absurdities as givens, it makes the whole thing into an engagingly escapist piece of work - something that is pure undemanding fun.

Sometimes, in watching something excellent, you can see the way a whole studio has come together in realising a shared creative vision. Other times, what you see is something like Allison and Lillia, where you can see where various components of the production want to go off in different directions and it seems like only the director is the one making them all stay mostly within the same series, with the upshot that the series has very little idea what it actually is.

For starters, there's a remarkably gentle surface philosophy behind the story. Enough information already exists about the setting and so on, ... so I'll skip that and simply say that Allison and Lillia is fairly unusual in that it is a series in which all military personnel are politically aware citzens, truly there to protect something and solemnly do their patriotic duty, instead of being the people who enjoy the chance to blow shit up when the man in the suit says so; even the enemy in their various forms are ideologically sound, but simply misguided, for the most part, and all our protagonists are avowed pacifists.

However, the design department is resolute about using European technology from the first half of last century, including detailed and exacting depictions of various deadly firearms, aircraft and other military machines. More importantly, the word of the author dictates strict realism is the flavour of the month. What is the practical upshot? Despite marksmanship being a trait of both male protagonists and guns being waved about a lot, the baddies cannot shoot more than very occasionally, and when they do, either they miss unbelievably, or their bullet is deflected; the goodies cannot shoot any more often, and when they do, they are not aiming for the person but for their gun, which they invariably hit, even though they are firing at a moving jeep while jumping, or whatever. Worst of all, however, is the obvious thinness of the sugar-coating that is put on everything; life seems simultaneously precious and cheap, with all onscreen violence resulting in a very carefully specified lack of fatalities, and yet there are several references to extrajudicial execution, but it happens off-screen so it must be OK.

On the grounds that it's usually abused as a deus ex machina rather than explored as a system, I hate magic as a rule. Something like this, that recycles early 20th century Europe as a kind of fantasy setting but without magic I can really appreciate on a certain level. Again, this kind of backdrop is a great start - obviously it makes for lots of evocative and exotic (to the Japanese point of view) visuals, and a setting that makes deus ex machina hard to include would, you might reasonably expect, force the writer to avoid them. However, that implies that the writer is capable of avoiding them, which in this case they clearly aren't, as they simply rely on implausible luck, unexplained omission and completely incomprehensible concepts to provide them instead. There are interesting premises throughout the series, wasted time and again by silly errors and poor choices.

One such is the music. While the opening theme is a very nice piece, peaceful, minimal and rather beautiful, the background music manages to become very repetitive and tiresome in a short period of time, and more importantly, just doesn't fit. The setting would logically suggest some sort of blend of classical, jazz and swing, but, being synthesiser-heavy in exciting periods, overly simplistic in more sedate moments and insipidly unevocative throughout, the score just seems like it belongs in another show entirely. The end credits also sport an entirely inappropriate song, the singer of which is so obviously a modern star that it totally breaks the mood of the show.

The well researched and reproduced visuals and reasonably complex and fairly well-formed characters go a good way to creating a fairly credible setting. Voice work is generally of a high standard as well. However the protagonists, while interesting and somewhat multifaceted, are very familiar character archetypes, and worse, they don't ever develop. Essentially, the characters have some adventures, then after four episodes things are sorted out and they go home ready for the next four, without any of what they do actually visibly touching or affecting them.

There is an eighteen year gap between Allison and Will's half and Lillia and Trieze's, and the older Allison and Will are similar to but not identical to their younger counterparts - so the character development basically occurs offscreen. Smooth move there, Madhouse. The only real exception to this - which is a spoiler, so skip the whole next paragraph or be spoiled - Is Will at the end of the first half.

By this point I was sick of him being stereotypically, irrationally reticent and
inconsistent that I was already beginning to dislike him somewhat. Then, he is approached by Allison's newly-revealed dad, who is in military intelligence, and is offered the chance of giving up the woman he loves and the society of his birth to become a spy in the other main country, with no ties to his former life and on the very flimsy pretext of 'protecting Allison', even though his romantic relationship has only just begun, she is at least as capable of protecting herself as he is and probably more so, and it is now peacetime. Alternatively, he could lead a successful career as an academic
and teacher, true to his generally pacifistic outlook on life, and commit to protecting Allison directly day-to-day. OK, I thought, here's your chance to redeem yourself and put this ethically bankrupt suspicion-peddler in his rightful place by refusing his ridiculous job offer. Instead, totally at right-angles to what is sensible and consistent, and without any real explanation of his reasoning, he accepts. That, I have to say, is exactly how not to do character development. Will has spontaneously developed into a grade-A moron.

The lack of anything more unpleasant than what cinemas in the UK hilariously tend to call 'mild peril' tends to create the impression that this is aimed at a young audience. However, when you get issues like the above coming up, the sort of thing that I doubt kids who require bloodless entertainment would actually be able to comprehend, it does make the whole aim and tone of the series seem terminally misaimed. You have to conclude that there's a conscious effort being made to pitch this as a show for adults to watch and hark back to entertainment they enjoyed as children, and I'm certainly not the only one who picks up on this old-fashioned vibe. It's just a shame that the plot and writing and the issues it raises are not dealt with as befits drama for adults.

Indeed the issues that arise from the series - things like the futility of revenge and responsibility to parents, to children and to spouses, not to mention the distasteful nationalism that isn't explored, simply assumed - are remarkably complex. That the story tries to deal with them in such simplistic ways and makes the sort of mess of it that it does is a real shame. Lousy characterisation aside, the generally bright, idealised and sanitary world of the story also is very much at odds with the underlying tone, creating yet another disconnection.

I'm also slightly perturbed by the underlying agenda. Obviously, Will's choice is intended to be seen as the morally right one; taken along with the strong military presence, the power and influence the military wield in the story's world, the highly active role of secret paramilitary-police forces in enforcing national security, and the relentlessly positive treatment of absolute monarchy, this comes across as a very old-fashioned, rightist view of the world. Then there are the various terrorists that take the roles of antagonists at various stages, all of whom are portrayed, morally speaking, as unambiguously wrong for whatever reason, while our state military-allied protagonists are always right. This, to me, somewhat resembles the worldview of the Japanese state in the '20s and '30s, with its reverence for the Emperor, strong and powerful military, highly flexible attitude to the sanctity of human life and very active internal secret police, not to mention the idea that performing one's national duty through military service is a family obligation as well as a national service. But the thing that gets me more than all of that is the lack of any sense of negative consequences - everything seems to be perfectly OK as a default state, and whatever happens to spoil that is only ever seen as a temporary hitch, something to be dealt with and disposed of so that the pastoral status quo can resume. Nobody ever asks questions about whether there was a reason for what happened, or wonders if this is a mistake they should learn from.

This sort of attitude is very far from progressive, and the agenda highly suspect, and given Japan's rather unusual and stubborn national refusal to officially face up to significant parts of its wartime past, I worry about passing this sort of ethos on to the kids of Japan, who really should be allowed the latitude to form their own ideas, not be having highly biased and idealised attitudes like this shovelled at them in the guise of an innocent fantasy.

Maybe this is all too much analysis and I'm reading too much into it; I can only relate what was going on in my head while I was watching this. On a basic level, this is an adventure story that doesn't quite manage to be satisfying or consistent in any sense. The premise, art and characters belong in a teen fantasy, the music is from something far more modern and pedestrian, the mechanical design and several plot elements have escaped from a war story, and the underlying mindset is frankly a throwback to the good old bad old days. While lacking in several ways, it is pretty, it is engaging, it is curiously compelling, it is superficially quite gentle, and overall it is enjoyable - but on closer analysis, you may not necessarily find yourself very happy with the underlying ethical standpoint. Whether you apply that sort of analysis, and whether you're willing to explain it to your kids when they start asking what's going on, is of course a judgement only you can make.

Juuni Kokuki

If an anime is cancelled before it finishes, can you still hold its lack of completeness against it? This is a question that I am groping for an answer for. The thing is, I can see a huge spread of problems with Juuni Kokuki but I can also see some real plus points too. For a series in which a character says “half of life is hardship, the other half happiness”, it certainly lives by its word.

An oft-repeated phrase when you look at any halfway decent review of this series is ‘character development’, and to a certain extent this is ... true. The extent to which the characters change across the series, and the difference between them when they enter and when they leave the story, is in truth fairly striking compared to most other anime. However it seems a little bit like a mistake to call it development in all cases. With unfortunate frequency, characters stumble from one hitch to another and simply have total changes of their emotional alignment. First a character wants to meet the queen, then she decides that’s a daft idea, then she wants the queen to heal her friend, then she wants to kill her, then she decides she’s OK after all and supports her. All of this is very sudden and pretty much lacking in a rational grounding, meaning most of the characters come across as reactionary, incredibly irresolute and lacking in anything like consistency. Youko’s an exception to this, for the lamentably common reason that, since she’s the main character, everything revolves around her. Sadly this means it takes her the entire third story arc to finally decide to do several things that were such obvious solutions to her problems that I felt compelled to shout them at her when she failed to do them in the first episode of that story.

This development is also somewhat undermined when certain characters develop nicely, others develop and then abruptly fall out of the overall story permanently, still others have believable characterisation become a victim of storytelling convenience, and a pivotal supporting character throughout the entire series completely fails to develop at all, remaining resolutely reticent and daft in a way that I suspected (and was later proven correct in my suspicions) was occuring solely to make the story happen. Nonetheless, despite the problems, the development of many of the characters, especially Youko, is compelling, and remains so throughout the series.

Juuni Kokuki has four story arcs; the first and best is broadly a setup arc, but the second, while interesting, is not only almost entirely unrelated but also incomplete. The third picks up events shortly after the first arc by dint of transforming the story into a novel but tortuous take on the ‘unskilled outsider suddenly gains power, learns to deal with it’ type of story, and the fourth is both unrelated to the main plot and largely uninteresting, not to mention short. This basically means that filler episodes are avoided entirely, in favour of entire filler arcs, and seems a pretty unconventional treatment of narrative. This is of course not a bad thing per se, but given the huge gaps in subjective time for the audience, waiting as they are to find out how the story all fits together and ultimately not actually finding out, this comes across as a failed experiment, and the second and fourth arcs seem in retrospect to just be in the way of the ‘real’ plot. In actual fact, this is faithful to the novels, in which Youko takes a smaller role - for the anime she, along with many other characters, was promoted in importance. However you can't have it both ways, and in trying I feel the series suffers somewhat.

One further impediment to the series’ ability to connect with the audience is its shotgun approach to language. Most characters have two names at least (some several more), many names and terms are apparently established, then apparently discarded for large tracts of time, and suddenly reclaimed for use just as unexpectedly, and the audience is expected to keep up with this. Presumably this is why it was decided to make the first recap episode take the form of one character teaching the protagonist the meaning of many of these. Not only that, but most of these names and terms are Chinese-derived, so they sound and feel significantly different from Japanese and, since I have somewhat developed an ear for Japanese thanks to anime, for me at least, they completely fail to stick in the mind. So when the Taiki sends a Kaikyaku through a Shoku from Kei to Wa because they are Taika (or something), you might have to give up on understanding and just say “whatever” to yourself. I’m sure this is a brilliant way to paper over logical cracks. If you find yourself loving this series, you might want to seek out Wikipedia’s list of Juuni Kokuki terminology and use it as a cheat sheet – I certainly wish I had.

Narrative structure is further toyed with by Juuni Kokuki in the unusual way it adapts a long story to an episodic format, in that it doesn’t. That is to say, at the end of the episode, the scene simply ends and the ending credits play; no attempt to create a climax or cliffhanger is made for the majority of the series. Next episode, the opening credits play, a small recap plays and the story picks up where it left off. This makes it pretty good for marathons or binge watches, and tends to instill that ‘just one more episode…’ feeling in a way that narrative buildups, which fairly often end up cumbersome and obvious, fail to, at least for me.

Fantasy fiction is hard to do well, and in my view requires a very solid systematic vision of the stories’ universe and how it all interrelates to actually work well. This generally is why I like fantasy novels but detest games with fantasy settings – narrative in games may be improving greatly, but it still has many a country mile to go to catch up with literature. The biggest problem fantasy game narrative has is its tendency to deus ex machina their way out of every problem with a combination of magic and arbitrary rules, while those are generally impossible to pull off without committing obvious fail in print. That Juuni Kokuki comes from novels, I thought, would work in its favour. This is indeed true for maybe the first ten or so episodes, the best part of the series in my opinion, until the giant deus ex machina silliness appears. This is fundamental to both the story and my opinion of it, so the next paragraph will discuss this in terms that cannot exist outside spoiler warnings.

The inhabitants of the Twelve Kingdoms do not have children like us. There’s basically a kind of tree that grows them whenever a couple make a formal wish. Yes, babies grow on trees. Animals too. The people, therefore, do not have babies, or make love in any way – yet there is still marriage and parentage, and the family seems to function in a very familiar way. There are even brothels for some reason. Procreation is such a giant part of living creatures behaviour, not to mention biology, that I just can’t let this go. When this appeared in the story, it was like a giant flashing caption saying THIS IS JUST A STORY had appeared; I knew then that whatever else this series did, by asking the audience to swallow this ill-conceived (ahem), wholly unnecessary and, frankly, bullshit story device, it wasn’t going to be able to dig itself out of the pit of Just Plain Ridiculous that it had dug itself. All the subsequent explanation of this as a world in which the gods take a much more active role than ours falls flat for me, coming across as an excuse, plain and simple.

I first began to suspect that this would happen when I saw the world map, but until this deus ex machina bombing occurred, I had some hope for this being credible. That being said, by comparison with most people I think I’m pretty harsh about stuff like this, so don’t necessarily take this as unequivocally bad. Perhaps I’m just closeminded in some ways. If you can tolerate outlandish ideas easily, you are far more likely to greatly enjoy this series, because it is fairly serious about telling an involved, interesting and gripping story, it simply hangs it on some pretty peculiar premises.

One thing that struck me while watching this is the lack of concentration on action in the traditional ‘clashing swords, crashing cars’ showpiece sense, in opposition to pretty much every other fantasy series I can think of. Juuni Kokuki is a commendably grown up series in this sense – it does have a fair amount of fighting in it, but it never becomes either a huge focus of the series, nor does attention become so diverted from it that it becomes a bore to watch. Instead the relationships between the characters, their ideologies, and their own opinion of themselves, as evidenced by their development, are the point.

Being produced by NHK, Japan’s public service channel, the prominence of ethical decisions over action is somewhat explicable, even predictable. The thoroughness with which this is covered, however, is beyond most such fare in both ambition and realisation, and thus a major point in its favour. The script is one way in which this series manages to score a major coup, especially in later parts where the story finally begins to flag. The phrase "I don't need a scabbard for my mind" in particular, struck a chord for me. Voice talent (Japanese; I have no idea about the English cast) is as good as I have come to expect from anime, particularly the ever-dependable Aya Hisakawa as our heroine Youko.

I was somewhat surprised when, during my research for this review, I realised that Juuni Kokuki animators Studio Pierrot’s best known works are called Naruto and Bleach, a couple of little-known shows you may just have heard of. This at least explains the look of the show, which is not very impressive, and appears far older than its 2002-3 airing dates might lead one to expect (it also explains the reliance on a massive web of obscure terminology, like both of those two long running shows, in all their Bankai-no-jutsu glory). Design philosophy focuses rather rigidly and uncreatively on the Chinese mythological aspect of the story, with a few fairly generic fantasy addons, some lacklustre creatures and what seems to me a very garish choice of colour palette. However, unless prettiness is of paramount importance to you, given that the focus is on narrative rather than visual aspects of the programme anyway, this is not as important as one might think and ought not to be a real disrecommendation. I have heard some praise for the series music, and that in my view is totally undeserved. I found it generic, intrusive and overly bombastic generally, with an uninspired classical style plus some token chinese overtones and inexplicable electronica from time to time (some of which I’m certain was sampled by Kajiura Yuki for her Xenosaga II soundtrack - but that’s another article entirely), a lamentable fully orchestral opening and an intrusive ending theme that grew from merely irritating to fully hateful over my watching period.

While I first gradually became interested in and then gradually fell out with the story as I plodded my way through it, to a point where I was actually moderately glad it was over, I can’t say it wasn’t an enjoyable journey. On balance, I am glad I watched it more than I am sorry, but not by an enormous margin. Action-lovers should steer clear, drama lovers should ask themselves how much preposterousness tolerance they possess, and fantasy enthusiasts should dive right in and enjoy the rather refreshing change of emphasis. However, prospective watchers should bear in mind that this is essentially an uncompleted story.

Giant Robo OVA 20.10.08

Fanfiction is not something I ever got into. I did try it, but the ratio of dross to quality was far too high, and even when you find something that is well written, it's almost never created in the spirit of the original; another person's vision and ideal has inevitably crept in and improved/tweaked/changed/adulterated/spoiled/messed up/ruined it - circle your preferred response.

Giant Robo OVA is, when you come right down to it, fanfiction. If I read wikipedia right, all that remains of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's original Giant Robo is Robo itself and its operator, Daisaku. Cropped from Yokoyama's highly ... varied other works and stretched or shrunken to fit are the entire remainder of the cast; to create a world that fits this elaborate homage is the basic reason for the shape and nature of the world that is created in Giant Robo OVA (as opposed to traditional things like the story dictating the setting, for example). What that world basically amounts to is a peculiar blend of retro sci-fi, superhero and chinese kung fu legend; any resemblance you may see to our world is purely coincidental, and fairly rare.

From a personal perspective, Giant Robo OVA is fundamentally difficult to deal with. The reason? It is trying to be something that I don't actually like but I can at least appreciate it, and at that aim it is succeeding spectacularly.

Let me elaborate. That this has not only been made in the first place but in fact hailed as a classic is a pretty amazing achievement for something that basically amounts to a gigantic cut and paste manoeuvre. However, the key thing to consider when pondering whether to watch this OVA is this: how much you enjoy this is likely proportional to how important consistency and logic are to you, or rather how important superpeople and giant robots fighting each other are over the former. This is because, looked at from one viewpoint, you can consider this a masterpiece of old-style giant robot action with a remarkably well-crafted cast and an epic yet affecting story, while from another point of view Giant Robo is a cliche-ridden, overblown mother of all messes, with a hodgepodge of ill-assorted and basically unbelievable characters, a formulaic and nonsensical storyline, and no sense whatsoever of its own ridiculousness. Both of these are right, neither is mutually exclusive.

The narrative approach, for one thing, is interesting, if basically a bit misleading. For something called Giant Robo, there is in fact remarkably little of Giant Robo. The scale is epic in the literal sense, with huge numbers of people involved, clashes of armies and chaos and destruction on an enormous scale. Despite this, in actual fact, character interaction is the soul of the thing, and therein lies the quality of the piece, and the trouble. The tone is unremittingly fantastical; all the heroes are death-defyingly heroic, all the villains death-defyingly villainous, harking straight back to classical heroic pulp fiction, the Golden Age of Comics or chinese Wuxia novels (Yokoyama's manga adaptations of which many characters are lifted from) when supermen were Super, had named attacks, needed to be killed at least twice, flew faster than a speeding simile, etcetera. All the values are old-fashioned and absolutist - good is good, bad is bad and the ethics gradient is a cliff.

There's a large number of people who will lap that sort of thing up. However, the reason that this harks back to classics, in the past tense, is that the prevailing style has moved on. Suffice it to say that I can see what the creators of this OVA are trying to do, I even think they've done it, but while it delights existing fans, this does nothing to convince non-believers of the fun they are missing out on. Logic or common sense is notable by its absence from the story; at no point did anyone give any kind of reason why the good guys don't simply destroy the piece of doomsday machine they have hold of and foil the naughty plot; nor is any attempt made to explain the soopahpowahs that the characters have. Now, the likelihood is that either you're reading that and going "Hmm, good point", in which case I suggest not watching this, or you're going "but who cares about that stuff?" in which case this is an OVA for you.

Characters are similarly problematic. You could argue the case for these characters being tried and true heroic/villainous archetypes fairly convincingly. But for me, the characters are unbelievable despite their careful construction, ridiculous despite their sincerity, and above all, anachronistic despite their archetypicality. A character driven story needs complex and credible characters; without them, in my estimation anyway, it's a basic failure. The script is far from genius, frankly, which doesn't help. I was unable to take anyone seriously, which made the whole thing fall down on the serious level it wanted to be taken at, and doing things like suddenly introducing characters called Mr Wonderful who splits things in half by snapping his fingers at them (I'm not joking) does not improve this situation. The world has mostly moved on from such old-fashioned, one-dimentional characterisations, and for me at least, Giant Robo acts as a regrettably faithful tribute to the bad parts alongside the good parts of the old days.

On the up side, however, I did feel that if I didn't already find the whole thing too essentially ridiculous to get over, I might enjoy the breadth and richness of the universe that was being shown to me. The villains, for example, were every bit as diverse and sympathetic as the heroes, and thanks to its good direction, unlike many such things, despite its flaws , it felt like a universe imagined as a whole system.

However one feels about the story or characters, however, one has to give high praise to the animation, which is of a consistently excellent quality, smooth and richly coloured. Direction is also thoughtful and highly atmospheric. Alongside this is the highly elaborate orchestral soundtrack, that rivals the best the world can offer. Here too, however, I have reservations; the art may be immaculate in quality, but I'm not really a fan of the 1970s art style, I find the design ethos unco-ordinated and incomprehensible, and while the music may be of the highest quality, it nonetheless sounds unpleasantly overdone and of a hackneyed and eclipsed style in my ear. Everything about Giant Robo, in fact, harks back to an era that began and ended well before I became interested in anime. However, the massive respect some have for this series is all that stops me from saying it is outdated - while I personally prefer more modern things in terms of style and narrative, it is fair to say that mine is not the only perspective.

Perhaps I'm suffering here from my constant search for an Evangelion successor; highly regarded mecha series are few enough, and while such a combination of cool stompy robots and grown-up seriousness as Eva gave us is unlikely to come around again any time soon, the continuing apparent inability of anyone or anything to compete with Evangelion on that ground and claim a slice of its pie is baffling to me. This is a fundamentally different beast to Eva and makes no attempt to cover the same ground.

So, getting back on track, for me, I don't much like it, to be honest. However don't go believing that I consider it a trainwreck, because I don't; I simply dislike what it is trying to do more than I enjoy the high standard of work it employs to achieve it. If you enjoy old-fashioned superhero stories, or want exciting without having to worry overmuch about logical, this is very much up your street. I may not like it much, but I am highly impressed by it.

I'm never that comfortable with films of series. Mostly, that's because all too often a film of a series consists of some kind of edited-all-to-hell clip show that tries and totally fails to boil down the story of a long series to a relatively much shorter film. Knockin' on Heaven's Door isn't that, which is very much in its favour. Rather, it's basically like a two-hour "lost episode" that belongs somewhere in the middle of the series - without spoiling anything, by the end of the series, there's characters missing who are still present in this film.

Another point in the film's favour ... is that it's pretty much equally accessible for existing fans and those unfamiliar with the characters. While there's plenty of details that might be lost or not fully comprehensible for new viewers, by and large the film stands up well as a stand alone drama, introducing its characters and their situation. However, this in a way exposes another major weakness of films of series. Series are, by nature, episodic. They devote an episode to introducing a character or exploring their personalities. Once this is done, they generally have plot episodes, in which the main thrust of the series is pursued, and then they have one-shot episodes that have our characters in some kind of interesting situation, but which is basically unrelated to the plot - if there is one. Films, by contrast, do all of this at once. The proceedure is totally different, and a director or scriptwriter used to a series format adapts less well to a film format. Knockin' on Heaven's Door exemplifies this - while the film as it is works, it's more obvious and cumbersome than a film directed by a director used to a feature-length format.

The storyline, also, suffers in this way. It's not that it's a bad story, in fact it might make a great two- or three-part episode, but as a film, the material comes across as stretched, holey and lacking in substance. It's also remarkable in that it's not half as quirky or original as Cowboy Bebop's famously eclectic mixtures of ideas: biological terrorism unleashed by a madman with a mysterious and sinister military past, fascinated by death and bent on destroying the world, with cod philosophical pretentions to fil gaps between action and a garnish of some fashionable christian mythology. It's all very generic really, and frankly the only things that make this Cowboy Bebop and not something much more generic are the familiar characters, who are luckily strong enough to make the thing hang together. The new characters are not much to speak of, either - Vincent the aforementioned madman, a hacker accomplice, a Moroccan information seller and, of course, Electra, a tough, wildcard femme fatale with a mysterious connection to our antagonist. Electra comes off as the best realised of these, and, perhaps not coincidentally, closest to a series character (though she's a dead ringer for a more mature version of BGC2040's Priss as well). Vincent seems very like main series antagonist Vicious stripped of his hatred of Spike, which is to say, not that special and a bit rabid and foaming for credibility.

The film drags. It's just too long. What this is primarily due to is unclear; maybe an over-developed story with far too much exposition (every character seems to need every other to explain nanomachines to them, it seems. We, however, do not), or perhaps the increasingly egregious and segmented action scenes (why are there spitfires on Mars? Who knows, let's cut back to Spike being pursued by military jets for no apparent reason!), or it could be the ponderous attempts to fashion some sort of existential aspect to the story ("I'm not insane, the rest of the world is." - oh really? You don't look thirteen years old, Vincent, but you sound it). Philosophical-minded action films are not especially uncommon; good and effective ones are extremely rare. Suffice it to say that I was surprised and rather disappointed when the apparent climax occured and passed with a good half an hour left on the clock.

As I say, the film hangs almost completely on the main characters. It would have been unthinkable to not bring the original cast in for this gig too (can't speak for the dub cast, don't know), and they all acquit themselves just as well as they do in the series. Music, too, such a central part of the series, is again provided by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts; while the styles used in and prominence given to the music may not be to everyone's tastes, the versatility and range Kanno's score covers while still retaining a high basic quality standard is nothing short of incredible. Visually, the quality seems to have been kicked up a notch; the animation of the series was never bad, but the film is sumptuous and extremely well detailed.

However, one of my main bones of contention remains. The art design is realistic, unapologetically multicultural and sort of grimy, very credible in its way, but under even cursory analysis, it's illogical in the extreme. Why is Mars covered in early twentieth-century New York-style tenement blocks and labyrinthine Moroccan markets? Has anyone remembered that it has one third of earth's gravity? Is there, in fact, any reason for this to be set on Mars at all, other than to tie in all these diverse elements? It's sci-fi doing what sci-fi does most often and least well - making half-baked stuff up to accomodate its ideas, with no thought for maintainance of disbelief suspension.

I was never as bowled over by Cowboy Bebop as many people seem to have been. Overall I liked it, certainly, in fact I thought some of it was absolutely excellent, but other parts I thought were pretty terrible, and it was quickly clear that the series was never going to be "a classic" in my eyes the way it is for lots of others. This was primarily because of its disjointedness and apparent lack of story direction, and the same is true of this film. Now, after watching it, I'm left with the same "...well, so what?" feeling a significant amount of the series gave me, but because of the length and the negative impact it has, I have comparatively more holes to pick at as well. Perhaps if you're a real fan, this film has more to offer, but overall, for me, while I'd not actually call it bad, this doesn't reach the already kind of saggy standard the series set.

Now and again, I find I'm being asked why I like anime, and what's so special about it. One answer you hear given quite often to questions like this is "it's not just for kids, anime is for grownups too". I used to say this too, but in the case of much of what's out there, after much thought I realised that's not really accurate. Sure, there's anime out there that's full of sex and/or death and/or 'mature themes', and a lot of things that are more complex than children are thought to be able to deal with, but not much anime, ... if we're being honest, deals with proper complex issues. Or at least, not in any more complex a way than your average US live action TV series like 24 or Star Trek; anime might not all be for kids, but precious little isn't primarily aimed at teenagers (which is an observation, not a criticism, of course). However, there are a handful that are; the odd thing that really stands out and can be held up as an example of how mature and subtle and truly notable anime as a medium, a style or a genre (call it what you will) can be. I'm happy to now be able to add Only Yesterday to that exclusive group.

First of all, Ghibli. I don't really believe in brand names as a rule, but if there's one name that I feel like I can safely and consistently associate with the highest standards and best quality, it's Studio Ghibli. In this case, the famous Hayao Miyazaki is producer rather than in charge, and Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) is director. In this combination, they are as good as one can expect, but not quite in the way one expects.

The resulting film isn't really as child-friendly as other Ghibli films, in that it's not full of the fun characters and exciting situations that kids will love as they do My Neighbour Totoro or Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds. A glance at the tags area will show you that "slice of life" is the most popular description of this film, and this is even more accurate than the label usually is; it's simply 27-year-old office worker Taeko's mixing of her working holiday on a farm with her reminiscence of her 10-year-old self, and the way this experience makes her question the direction her life is taking. It's also among the best implementations of such an approach I can think of; this slice of life is gripping, and pulls no punches, in its own domesticated but quietly gut-wrenching way. But it's a rare child that appreciates the drama of family relationships, and will stay glued to explorations of the niceties of urban versus rural ways of life and adult versus child ways of thinking. What I'm trying to say is, you may well bore your kids if you mistake this for typical Ghibli and stick them in front of it, but you yourself may be too wrapped up in it to notice.

For those who are striving to convince a sceptic that anime isn't just huge-eyed, twinkling Majikal Girls, spiky-haired swordsmen, giant robots, cutesy animal caricatures and the odd smattering of tentacled obscenity, this is a prime counter-example of "for grown-ups" anime. The acting is superb; Miki Imai as the adult Taeko, Toshiro Yanagiba as her friend Toshio, and Youko Honna as the young Taeko are all natural, believable and thoroughly excellent, and the rest of the cast all just about as talented. The script is possibly the best I've ever encountered in anime, one that's so good it makes scriptwriting look easy. It manages to use naturalistic dialogue to communicate a masterful grasp of the power and impact of memory, of the way tiny things stick in your mind like thorns years down the line, of the way things you learn now can change your personal history utterly at a stroke. This is very much a film that strikes a chord for me; I may be male, English and hate gardening, but as a 26-year-old, I see myself in Taeko, in that I too have memories of childhood that, for some reason, just won't go away sometimes - I think everyone with a little life experience does.

The visuals, too, are of a usual stellar Ghibli standard, with an interesting twist. As I watched, I was partly slightly bothered and partly wondering at the faces of the characters; there's something different, something out of the ordinary, just a bit odd about their depiction, and it wasn't until I watched the DVD's 'making of' extra that it fell into place. What Takahata and crew have done is concentrate on muscles; all the adult characters have realistically sculpted cheekbones and other facial contours that aren't usually present even in the most exactingly drawn anime. It manages to pick up tiny nuances of facial expression that give characters a much wider and finer emotional range than normal. The effect is one of hyperrealism; in this very rare instance, I found I was able to read faces as if I were watching live action, and I was forgetting this was hand-animated. Other details, such as the incredibly fine use of colour, are more like standard fare for Ghibli but none the less impressive for this. One standout scene is a sunrise over the field in which Taeko is working, which is both gorgeous and technically amazing. The slight but notable use of faded earthy colours and reds for scenes from Taeko's past and the bright, predominantly green-blue scenes of the present-day are very well executed; it's never unclear when we are seeing.

Music by Masaru Hoshi is, while not astounding, entirely pleasing, peaceful, and highly appropriate, but here to steal the scene from left field, please welcome the Hungarian folk choir! This odd, odd choice is...just right. It's haunting stuff, full of undertones implying the hidden, benign but huge power of nature (another often-encountered Studio Ghibli calling card) and even though it's not really relevant in any logical way, it simply works. The ending song by Harumi Miyako is a lovely bit of music, and for once, it really fits the film it's attached to.

You could conceivably criticise the film simply for being anime; even in 1991, making a live-action Only Yesterday would not be hard; there's no fantastic landscapes or technology, no gravity defying costumes or hair, nothing out of the ordinary in the film at all. But once again, part of the reason that this is impressive is because it's something of a risk that was taken and which paid off; because it would be easy to do as live-action doesn't necessarily make that a better stylistic choice, but that it works as animation by showcasing novel animation ideas mixed with great talent can do nothing but improve it. Also, the way anime creates its entire world gives an animation some advantages. Firstly, a story like this, all about details, draws attention to those details more effectively if you're watching with half an eye on the look out for art style, as many anime fans do - film a woman picking a flower and it's pretty, but animate one that truly compares, and it's stunning. Also, the way viewers suspend their disbelief constantly for animation allows the impossible to seamlessly integrate into the commonplace. This only happens once, at the end, but in practice it's so naturally and gracefully done, and so basically right, that instead of going "yeah, that was a nice idea", the impact of the scene and the emotional lift it gives you are much more pronounced.

If the film has any weaknesses, it would be pacing; for a film that's by it's nature leisurely and gradual, it is perhaps a touch too leisurely and gradual in places, and while almost all of Taeko's recollections are relevant, perhaps one or two are a bit spare and peripheral. While I'll admit I am sort of blown away by it, I also recognise that it's not perfect, hence a mark knocked off; and yes, you need to be in the right mood to get the most from this film. I've been waiting months since I got it for the right moment; this morning was finally it, and it delivered. Other than that, well, the only way you'll have any criticisms of the film is if, having read this, you decide it's not your sort of thing, then watch it anyway, expecting explosions, car chases or gritty hard-boiled action. That's not this film's brief. What Only Yesterday does is subtlety and maturity and real, proper grown-up drama in anime.

This is absolutely typical. Oooh, I thought, something about a post-war relief squad. That has some real potential, it's original, good setting, chance for some great stories, those shots look nice, and - Oh nuts, it's Gonzo.

Studio Gonzo have this amazing effect; I suspect they have some kind of quota system in effect. For each really good thing they put out, there seem to be a bunch of things about which you end up thinking "if only they'd just done that differently, that could've been so much better...". Every excellent series like Bokurano that they put out is outnumbered by flawed ... or downright shoddy fare like Strike Witches, Full Metal Panic and Chrno Crusade - and most often, the problem with Gonzo series is the story. Pumpkin Scissors is, sadly, not among the excellent exceptions, but part of the quota-filling compensation.

One thing that's hard to fault Gonzo on, by and large, is their art; true to form, Pumpkin Scissors is pretty good looking generally, with its well-realised and highly atmospheric post-war setting. Animation, while not exceptional, is uniformly fluid throughout, and high in production values. Its fictional war-ravaged state very much resembles post-WWII Europe in temporal setting, appearance and level of technology, and visually, it is credible and detailed. Having a small military unit as its main cast, there's lots of military paraphernalia around too, and mechanical design and animation is very good, appropriate to the period and highly credible. Military uniforms are also well designed and seem believable, while the ornate clothing of various nobles also seems fairly well designed, if sometimes a little risque for the women considering the setting and the series' audience (possibly; more on this later). Character design absolutely screams Gonzo; that's not necessarily bad, but in this case only the male lead, Cpl. Randal Oland, really stands out as memorable, visually, and that's mostly due to his resemblance to Frankenstein's monster.

Otherwise, characters are perfectly serviceable but by and large nothing amazing or charismatic - and that goes for both appearance and actual characterisation. The central cast are Lt. Alice Malvin, a manically enthusiastic, verbosely idealistic and stupendously irritating noblewoman who serves as Pumpkin Scissors' officer in the field, Hunks, the terminally laid-back old guy who is her boss, the rest of the unit comprising Oreldo, a serial ladies man, Lili and Mercury, a mascot-type girl and messenger dog pairing, and Martis, a quiet, nothing sort of guy with no notable qualities other than wearing glasses without a bridge. Add the hulking yet timid and pacifistic newcomer Cpl. Oland as a main protagonist and that's Imperial Army, State Section 3, Pumpkin Scissors Division. Except! Oland has this Special blue lantern, which is Special because it's a relic from his Mysterious Past, and when he turns it on, he becomes nigh on invincible. Sound like a familiar idea? Certainly it does, just like all the characters, who are, frankly, a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes who seem worn after barely an episode and barely develop across the whole series' run.

Now, with a theme and setting like this, even bearing such characters in mind, you might expect some fairly serious, complicated, grown-up sorts of stories. You might also expect that, with 24 episodes to play with, some kind of overarching plot might develop. And you would be right - in a way. However, here, the curse of Gonzo falls on Pumpkin Scissors hardest. I am forced to wonder if, at some stage in development, the powers that be suddenly decided to dramatically decrease the age-range at which this series was aimed; out goes the violence, out goes the complexity, out goes any scope for grittiness or ambiguity in keeping with the setting, and instead, in come the stereotypes, the boundless, unceasing optimism and the chirpy ending theme. For all its laudable efforts to tell serious, grown-up stories and ask serious, grown-up questions, the series cannot help but be heavy-handedly moralistic, predictable and universally pedestrian and preachy in tone and approach. Despite being armed soldiers, and contrary to what Lt. Malvin's incessant shortsword-waving might suggest, it's extremely rare that any of our heroes actually hurts anyone, let alone kills them, however hard their opponent is trying to kill them; not even when seven foot Darth Maul-style swords enter the picture is anyone actually harmed. It somehow always falls on Oland and the Specialness his lantern grants him to simply soak up the damage long enough for the bad man to be arrested by everyone else, the end. Worse, every time anything like an ethical question arises, it's always dealt with in starkly black and white terms that completely conflict with the setting; if ever there was a setting in which the morality of almost every action is shrouded in uncertainty and ambiguity, this is it. The Pumpkin Scissors unit, however, always does the right thing, and can always tell what the right thing to do is, and never, for example, has Malvin's unyielding idealism cause something dreadful to happen. It's spineless storytelling, the kind common in substandard things designed for kids, and the series suffers from it.

Most calamitous of all is the pacing. Episodes plod, by and large, with lots of unnecessary exposition and little by way of progression. Generally, most stories take only one or two episodes to conclude, with the effect that each fiendish, cut-and-dried plot by the evil noble to defraud the commoners out of what they rightfully deserve, essentially the thrust of all these mini-arcs, becomes the Monster Of The Week (or fortnight). It takes a long time for the main plot to develop into any more than a vague concept hanging around in the background, and development from then on is glacially slow - too slow, in fact, for it to actually come remotely close to a resolution by the end of the series. And what an end - never have I seen such an artificially stretched batch of episodes. Events that should take two episodes at best in fact take six; what occurs covers half, maybe three quarters of an hour of real time, stretches to over two hours in practice, and in the end, gives nobody any answers or resolutions anyway. No, the series carefully creates links between almost every incident Pumpkin Scissors have hitherto been involved in, weaves in an enigmatic antagonist that works behind the scenes to orchestrate these incidents - and ends. Worst of all, it does so twice; as well as not actually providing any end to the actual plot, it creates a huge anticlimax by slowly, piece by piece, revealing the truth behind Oland's Mysterious Past, then doing virtually nothing significant with it.

Even the music is disappointing. You could have all sorts of evocative, classy music in here - some classical or classical-based pieces, maybe, or some soulful folktune-based stuff. However, most of the background music is brassy and march-like or otherwise military themed, and adopts a peculiarly stiff, simplistic flavour of waltz for scenes dealing with the nobility. The opening theme is brash and not much cop, and the ending theme is completely inappropriate in its hyper, overhappy energy and nonsense lyrics.

So yes, this is one of Gonzo's lamentable also-rans. It's not impossible to enjoy, provided you expect little of it, but I'd find it very hard to want to watch any of it again. The fact of the matter is, you just can't help but think of Pumpkin Scissors as something that might have been so much better, if only... If only they'd decided whether this was for kids or for adults... If only they'd finished the storyline... If only the relentless optimism didn't grate so much against the setting... If only it had left some room for ethical ambiguity... If only it had somehow managed to dig up some characters with charisma and some motivations that worked in more than one dimension... If only it didn't wait until the tenth episode before it explained its amazingly contrived and silly name... If only...

There are a handful of things that truly stand out from their peers. Sometimes, just occasionally, a series manages to do everything perfectly, pull together all the strands that things before and since have tried and failed to do. Fullmetal Alchemist is one example from the fantasy field; Ghost in the Shell another among postcyberpunk sci-fi; Azumanga Daioh an example from slice-of-life comedy. And, among the fairly niche girls-with-guns proto-genre, Noir is another.

Noir isn't remarkable in its premise, in fact it's quite a patchwork of worn ideas; an amnesiac who is unsure whether her amazing combat abilities or complete lack of remorse ... is more peculiar teams up with a wronged and vengeful assassin to search for the truth about both of their pasts, and they find more than either of them bargained for. Take one part Luc Besson, mix in equal parts HKBO and spy thriller and a pinch of memory loss, and add anime. As the song says, though, "it ain't what'cha do, it's the way that'cha do it"; none of these various concepts are inherently bad, they each have the potential to be interesting, and Noir fulfils it all. The structure of this 26-episode series works as a perfect blend of the overarching plot and episodic formats, in that almost every episode our heroines have someone new to kill, somewhere new to do it and something new to factor into how they do it and how they relate to one another, but each episode a little more is revealed to them about the power behind the shadows - the pacing is slow, but perfect. Not a single episode is filler or side story, the plot is all. It also keeps you guessing, maintaining the atmosphere of mystery superbly; every new piece of the puzzle being put in place changes the picture a little, goalposts shift and new questions need answering. Noir's story is complex, meaty, demanding of attention and, in the final analysis, highly satisfying; this is by far and away the best assassin flick or secret society yarn I have ever seen, and I don't just mean anime.

The cast is small, and dialogue is fairly spare. Kirika Yuumura, Japanese schoolgirl and amnesiac, is a very reserved, very introverted girl, seemingly all but unable to engage with people. Her initial inability to fully come to terms with her own ruthless, cold-hearted lethality is a feature that her business partner, experienced Corsican assassin Mireille Bouquet, does not share. She is a much more outgoing person, yet in some ways much more vulnerable; their relationship is tense, fragile and fascinating. Terrific acting from Kotono Mitsuishi and Houko Kuwashima does a fantastic job of giving the interactions between these two a highly credible, extremely watchable air. Even this excellent dynamic cannot hope to last 26 episodes, though - so, just when you think it's going to get stale, up pops the knife-hurling, child-voiced Chloe. A completely enigmatic character straight from left field, she shakes up these relationships just right and keeps everything nicely off balance. Aya Hisakawa's ingenuous voicing, her straightforward attitude and her innocence bring her a marvellously odd aura, and scenes between these three very distinct characters are tense and electric. All dialogue seems natural, though scripting is, as mentioned, sparse, but every word resonates, and often what is not said is as clear and significant as what is.

The show adopts a very stylised-realistic look, with marvellous European locations and stylings, keeping things interesting, but art style and actual depiction imbuing the world of Noir with an empty, distant air to almost everything that fits the tone of the show perfectly. Character design is a similarly muted but stylised affair; no super assassin ninja suits or rainbow hair here, most characters, protagonists or enemies, simply look like everyday people (Chloe is once again an exception, with her maroon hair and billowing cloak - but that merely makes everyone else more ordinary). Mechanical detail like guns and computers are very detailed and accurate to reality, although some things such as cars are, while adequate, not quite up to the rest of the series' standards. It all contributes to a sense that this is something that really could be going on somewhere out there right now, a sense that I have never felt as strongly with any other anime. In a way, this seems a perfect candidate for live-action adaptation; but the fact that it is animation, in full control of the look of its world, is one of Noir's most subtle and brilliant tricks. Visually, perhaps at odds with its name, Noir is colour-drenched, from the opening credits to the gorgeous watercolour backdrops, but beautiful and bright though the world might be, it only goes to reinforce the darkness and evil that can dwell inside people. Its characters look like everyday people, but they are stylised enough that the amazing feats of agility and skill they accomplish seem like achievable ends, fully in keeping with the world around them. The sense of a visually familiar world is so well evoked that once the backstory begins to become clear, it slots right into the gap between constructed and actual reality with consummate neatness.

Action choreography is another thing that contributes to Noir's sense of credibility. Most episodes of Noir climax with a gunfight; such a sense for creating gunfights that, working within the stylised reality the visuals provide, are believable, yet remain inventive and exciting, I have never seen with such consistency. Not all are as good as each other, but action in noir is entertaining at worst, and at best among the best fight scenes I have ever seen. The lightning-lit, rain-soaked battle across the rooftops of Paris in episode 20 is nothing short of brilliant. One factor that makes them so enjoyable is held in common with numerous other aspects of the series; they are designed in such a way that what you don't see is as important as what you do. Like blood. While at first glance, the lack of any actual visible blood almost seems counter-intuitive, it ends up seeming a lot more real than the red-steeped approach the subject matter more usually elicits; a truly skilled hitwoman kills cleanly, surgically, without mess. The deaths of opponents, crumpling like automatons, also quietly reinforce the idea of an organisation whose influence is great enough to render people nothing more than its puppets, to be used and discarded.

Noir is not among the best-known anime, but by far the best-known aspect of the series is its soundtrack. While she had composed a couple of anime soundtracks previously, Noir's musical score is essentially the thing that catapulted Yuki Kajiura into the eye of anime OST fans, and on lists of the best anime soundtracks ever, Noir is rarely out of the top ten. By blending electronica, operatic grandeur and solemn church music, Kajiura created a unique sound that for me she has so far never bettered. The haunting massed choir chants, soaring, prayer-like Latin vocals and intricate, piercing violin and expressive piano solos are some of the most evocative, atmospheric music anime has ever known, truly a masterpiece. The opening theme, by Ali Project, is also excellent. Anyone interested in the musical side of anime should acquire and watch this series.

Indeed, atmosphere is something that Noir does phenomenally well. The engrossing story, the excellent visuals and the superlative music all conspire to connect the viewer much more deeply to Noir than mere dialogue could. You get a powerful sense of the lonely, isolated, doom-laden feelings that the characters experience; it's splendid minimalist storytelling of the highest calibre.

Obviously, Noir isn't for everyone. The slow pace and frequent flashbacks will frustrate some. The unremittingly serious and generally bleak tone will fail to appeal to some. The lack of any comedy or more than very occasional and mild fanservice will repel some. The spareness and minimalism will alienate some. The realistic setting will fail to interest some. The lack of explicitness and reliance on implication will confuse some. My experience also suggests that this series does not suit marathon viewing well, being more fitted to watching each episode individually. None of this, however, stops Noir from being a truly excellent series in all respects, worthy of the highest praise. Among its peers, Noir remains a series that exemplifies what outstandingly high quality even a story that, at root, revolves mostly around women shooting people can attain.