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- BirthdayJan 7, 2005
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Dec 6, 2024
There are the times when you play a game, its roots gritty, dark, imbalanced but, overall, passionate and full of life. Then you come across a later entry of the franchise which was able to channel the old spirit, being only a bit more balanced and bit tweaked for the mainstream. Then you see the fond franchise of yours being cast into the 9th circle of Hell and become something that completely undoes the nuance and fondness of the franchise and sends you down a downward spiral of hate, your own Kaz Miller arc. The reason why I am singing the tragic ballad of Fallout
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franchise is because, well, I want to emphasize that Tokyo Revelations does not fall under this specific category. But is this a sole reason to love it? Nope. Just because it didn’t fall victim to one cliché doesn’t mean that it didn’t fall for another cliché. Hence here I am doing a post mortem session on an OVA which isn’t really anything. But I have this saddistic pleasure in shitting upon something particular in verbose fashion, hence I rest my case.
Shin Megami Tensei may seem synonymous to its derivatives, Persona, Devil Summoner and Digital Devil Saga, a whole damn genre which is pretty interesting and has its own characteristic countenance, but the entries which remains my favorite are the first, the second and Strange Journey. To start from the first game, there is a characteristic plainness that really complemented the game; plainness as in the sort you feel in the soft bops, that is, it gives enough headroom for introspection. For how it is bound to the technical thresholds of its time, it really transcended its potence with a streamlined gameplay design. The premise of the characters involved, especially the protagonist (Kazuya) are simple and clean, no complicated FFVIIR nonsense. You are a teen who woke up one morning and saw a new mail on your PC. And it doesn’t resort to graphic pompadour for its exotic feel either; its artistic influences and the implementation of them in specific troupes are pretty interesting to say the least. The over-the-top troupes of having Imperial Japanese vs Gen MacArthur is an obvious correlation, this isn’t the first time Japanese media used the victim complex card; but what is more amusing is that the analogy is rather a double layered meta humor, which when introspected, gives a better comprehensive study of humans ambitions and its consequences, regardless of political inferences. I can go on about SMT1, but I have to keep it simple: It is a game which makes you to experiment (like Half Life 2) as well as give you headroom to meditate over abstracts.
Now, onto Tokyo Revelations, remember the praises I was shovelling at SMT1? Wipe it off the slate, for none of the characteristic elements persisted to the screen. On one hand, I know that the characteristic features of SMT1 shines specifically as a game for it was intended for it, but who doesn’t love to make a cliché microwave spinoff out of a franchise to shill some bucks? A lazy nothingburger which took few characteristic factors from SMT, literally apes CLAMP’s X troupe and ends it like a Pokemon movie, in short, serves as a faithful adaptation of Trout Mask Replica. For a hour of runtime, it initiated too many stuff which was ignored the second it was thrown in; like me picking nuts and raisins out of a damn muesli; and the best part here is, they are either grafted shoujo fantasy troupes or the subject-matter in the games which the screenwriters are too busy to read between the lines.
The claustrophobic existential atmosphere, unique to the original game is compensated by graphic details for the sakeof. The plot is just as silly and factitious, the same way how I felt after watching the OVA of Tokyo Babylon to see its neat thematic beauty get overridden with watered down troupes. To be honest, I feel brave enough to call this OVA a neat “attempt” of bootlegging X/1999 but this time, it is Shin Megami Tensei Ediiton; its artistic primers are pretty synonymous to the commercialized Gustav cutouts in Skinner’s office in Ratatouille. To trace the degree to which it reminded me of X, I found the main love arc oddly reminiscent of Subaru-Seishirou, the issue here being the lack of narrative consistency (being gay is fine; but to kill to get your man, well, I’ll pass). Another instance is the scene where the summoners arrive to the school; I am lying if I say I didn’t get reminded of the Seals/Minions introduction in X/1999, a feel of overarching fear and ambiguity. One could argue that adapting a specific thematic style isn’t bootlegging, which I fully agree, but it doesn’t fill the vacuum of a watchable plot. You can adapt a specific style, and construct your own style from the influence. FotNS gave life to a whole thematic troupe, whose use served as a primer to other unique styles. CLAMP is still up there in terms of artistic influence, but this is not the one. In this instance, this feels like just another commercial souvenir born out of proxy artistic notions rather than actual narrative.
One thing I really liked about the originals is how abstract and interpretative the graphic description was; let it be the more simpler and normal ones, to very eccentric and chaotic subjects. The simplicity of the sprites went along well with this style. It is not that the game extras official art isn’t a thing, but still the design doc artwork kind of enriches the descriptions. Now, drumrolls please, the OVA did something polar opposite. Few graphic details are reinforced just for the sakeof. It is not that the original game didn’t have a whole arsenal of dark jokes and crude particulars, but it was well-executed and gives a primer for introspection. Here, cliché tagged plotpoints are shoehorned onto cliché tagged characters, using cliché surface-level thematics. A similar analogy I can put forth is Fallout 3, where, in order to reinforce the “mature” tag of the game, you see the unsavory characters use the word “fuck” for a dozen per second, in order to rub the “antagonist” character troupe onto our faces. Unsurprisingly disappointing enough, something similar happens here, for few scenes are present just to make it faintly reminiscent of a complete layman’s interpretation of SMT, deficit of quality, nuance and intent.
A shoujo anime adaptation for SMT sounds both richly potent or flaccid pompadour depending upon the decree of the bureaucrats, and unsurprisingly enough, it is a cottoncandy pink day-dreaming to assume the average publisher to market something which is incredibly niche and possibly controversial on surface level. Once we had folks in church preaching against Pokemon, today you have various groups blinded with mere hate. History repeats itself, once with pitchforks, now with either twitter Curry’s paradoxes or /b/’s . That pretty much explains my disappointment in regard to this OVA, for the potentcy is very verbose, but given the mess caled reality, something of that scale of disconnection from the mainstream troupes either dampens the returns due to extreme verbosity, or arouses surface-level false dichotomies and subsequent hostility. The last thing a bureaucrat wants is their net returns to decrease, which somehow supercedes the rationale behind actions.
So, well, given the whole shitshow, one may ask why I watched this OVA; well, two reasons persist. One being that I have this sadistic pleasure while kicking down on something and calling names on it, especially when it is a spin-off or a supposed “canon”. Or, a more sober and sensible reason, the English dub. I usually don’t watch dubs, but I kinda stumbled upon this one in its dub and I am genuinely happy I watched it dubbed; for it is yet another “Ghost Stories”-esque American humor appended upon a cookie cutter Japanese anime. I know this is not unique, for there are better instances, but I should admit the comedic timings are damn good and the jokes didn’t feel out of place or overwhelming, for it wasn’t shoehorned to be the crème a la crème. I enjoyed it, and if you like westernized-dubs, you will have a neat watch.
Tl;dr – A bland uninspired spinoff whose existence doesn’t mean anything, but it was blessed with a good dub.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 29, 2024
"You take my place in the showdown
I'll observe with a pitiful eye
I'd humbly ask for forgiveness
A request well beyond you and I"
- Joy Division in the song "Heart and Soul" from "Closer"
Maison Ikkoku may not be the best thing since Citizen Kane, but personally great enough to resonate in my heart, impart quite strong emotions from me, to the point where I nearly had a meltdown at one point. It's your classic romcom, with the male MC seeming even more plain and flaccid than his counterparts from other romcoms, but we see a metamorphosis of relationship, silent, quiet but very deeply entrenched. Godai could have
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just passed off Kyoko as a passing cloud of teenage infatuation which presumptously could not be achieved, and Kyoko could have just continued to revel in ressentiment or find a suitor for the saketh of; but that didn't end up being the case; Godai's immature infatuation and Kyoko's trauma hangover, which aged into resentment, brought upon something more beautiful, something which could not be put in words, something which makes little nuances in life seem expensive and rich, aged in a cask if to say.
Initially, I was fine with the raw and harsh comedic twists, for which I have no complaints, in fact, I am happy that there are media which acknowledge the fates of probabilities in real life. But the last 20-30 chapters are an emotional rollercoaster, quickly swinging from wholesome humor to heavy second-hand embarassment/pain which makes you throw the book onto a wall. Godai's circumstances may seem exaggerated from a layman's eye, but it seemed pretty palatable enough for me, for I have seen people who get repeatedly uppercutted but still remain standing in the ring. People often forget that people change with time, and the span of time required to be able to define the change is, bitter as it is, very long, as in the count of years. Godai changed from a ronin pushed only by societal pressures and teenage infatuations transitioned into a person who found himself a stable lifestyle and a sweetheart who passively lead him to that point, may it be however long it took to cement his stance.
People may think Mitaka's arc was wrapped up messily, but he got what he reaped. Mitaka is a guy who invested heavily into impressions and factitious countenance; and in the end, he got interwined into a relationship with a factitious bride by his factitious family, somehow by his poodle which he adopted purely for factitious ambitions. In the end, he is not cast into the deepest annals of hell, but he is able to live a happy and satiable life, however factitious it was. That is life. You can be a manipulative dickweed who is driven by pure factitious ambitions, but the repercussion of his countenance lead him into a series of events which he didn't anticipate, but he didn't dwell in resentment either.
Kozue and Yagami arcs may seem underdeveloped from the naked eye, but looking from a more reasonable and pragmatic perspective, it is, as far as I could phrase it, normal. Kozue matured into an adult and slowly withdrawn from Godai due to little vicissitudes of life. Yagami had to swallow the pill of her reality and had to put a stop to her embarrassingly romanticized endeavour. These matters may seem implausible in a simple sentence, but to quote a track name from The Jazz Crusaders, "Little Things Mean A Lot".
What I loved the most in this manga is the representation of Kyoko's resentment, and how it was handled in the end. Kyoko may not have amended her possessiveness and emotion-driven actions, but she was able to find someone to nurture with who can handle the "de-merits". People have flaws, at times, it's flawed to call those characteristics "flaws", it's what it makes us humans. Kyoko wasn't able to get over her late husband's death, but it aged into something more warm if you will. Soichiro's image not being fully described even until the end is a testimony of it. Soichiro as a human who happened to be a teacher may have ceased to exist, but Soichiro as a doting husband to Kyoko persisted, only that it became passive and more mature. The final monologue with Godai and Soichiro transcended into the realms of humane purity, indiscriminate of petty presumptions and conventions. The humility, the organic love expressed in it is just beyond human.
My descriptions may seem too romanticized or you may think I am full-on drunk or high on weed; but as for now I am only feeling high on caffeine, my mind too fast that it melts into a cloudy emotional mishmash. To roll out a conclusion, Maison Ikkoku has left some deep personal impressions which changed my perspectives over some matters, and despite being sad that it ended, I am happy that it happened.
"I wouldn't even trust you
I've not got much to give
We're dealing in the limits
And we don't know who with
You may think that I'm out of hand
That I'm naive, I'll understand
On this occasion, it's not true
Look at me, I'm not you"
- New Order in "Regret" from "Republic"
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Apr 24, 2023
I am not a big sucker for supernatural stories. I wasn't just amused by the genre, where it is about dragging in totally abstract and practically impossible elements and constructing a story over those foundations. But Tokyo Babylon does something the other way; it constructs the appropriate supernatural scenarios over the urban tragedies which happens in dense-populated settlements of humankind, often being the subject of amusement for the layman.
Tokyo Babylon is the story of a young exorcist Sumeragi Subaru who treats appropriate supernatural phenomenons, and in his act of doing so, he encounters a number of such morally complicated tragedies which often end up manifesting
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as the supernatural events he exorcises. The people he meets, the sorts of matters the people get entangled in, the morally complicated nature of such matters and the perception with which the supernatural event is getting resolved is an experience which pushes the reader into a roller-coaster of emotions and momentary reasoning. The premises are pretty grounded and realistic, the sub-plot characters having good character depth and premise. The solutions to some of such cases are bitter, painful and feels unjust, but that's the point, the puny insignificant lives we humans lead aren't destined like such in fairy tales, and this manga makes this point clear in the most dramatic yet rational point of view.
As for the over-arching plotline, its pretty clear that CLAMP was grooming it for the sequel "X" (which I am yet to read), leaving numerous untied knots for the reader here and there across the story, much of which is resolved in the climax, yet the remainders are indicating the sequel will explain the untied knots along with unraveling an even bigger and elaborate storyline. As for the main characters, Subaru, Sumeragi Hokuto and Sakurazuka Seishirou, as the plot goes on, the reader will realize the three characters reside in the three corners of the triangular character plane, each of them being unique in a fundamental level. Some character, and subsequent plot inconsistencies could be observed, but the sub-plots does a good job over-weighing them.
As for the art, of course, I jumped right in for the CLAMP art, and unsurprising enough, I wasn't dissatisfied. In fact, it over-weighs your expectations for a manga art style from the early 90's. But on the same lines, the art style fits the shoujo premise much better; it fits so good that I could hear Yukiko Okada and Iyo Matsumoto playing in my head as I admire the city aesthetics (which there isn't a lot, but for the ones available, you will damn have your jaw drop).
The only big issue I faced is the inability to get hold of a high quality edition of it to read online, and its paperbacks aren't as easy to get hold of either. For instance, each of the volumes in my region (3rd world) costs around $150 apiece. But if you are able to get hold of them, beat me not, the aesthetics are great enough to soothe your financial wounds.
In conclusion, if you are planning to read a cool shoujo set in Tokyo with surprisingly good premise and plot with great art, this is a no-brainer, and this manga would remain as one of the favorite things I read (which on retrospection, I don't read a lot, but whatever).
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 10, 2023
Ahh yes, Code Geass. The anime with so much circlejerking for the MC that any sane guy is surprised how did this fandom didn't get caught in the stereotype radar (both the circlejerker and sane guy is me). For one thing, I loved the original TV show so much; the narration is pretty dynamic, Lelouch/Zero's strategies putting down the opponents' tactics, Lelouch going through his existential crisis, watching the Black Knights grow as if its your child, etc, etc. But the first three movies didn't hit the mark, if anything, they are just recap movies with much of the vital points removed for the worse.
At
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this point of time, I am quite sure the people working on Code Geass sat around a table in the board room thinking about how to make things worse and pull a trollface on their fans. Someone must have quoted Evangelion 3.0+1.0 or Harry Potter: The Cursed Child and hence born the Lelouch of the Resurrection.
I don't want to drag it out too much, I will keep it simple and clean (and there are spoilers, so buckle up). The story should have been pretty long but the duration window is pretty short (shorter than their earlier movies). And the story had its significant flaws, like Lelouch's return and his reception by the rest felt so much of a 7 year old's work, like the fuck, I get that the Black Knights were a bit soft in the third movie, but this felt so rushed and untrue. The initial facade over the Zilkistan being so powerful turned out to be nothing, just being let flying in the alleyway.
To see the Black Knights and Brittanians living in peace and co-operation is pretty heartwarming, let you be how much of a Lelouch dickrider. But some characters like Kallen, Rakshata, Lloyd and even Lelouch felt too bent down for the benefit of the story. Kallen felt so much forced when she said "Its celebration time", Rakshata seemed too concerned over things than she actually used to be, Lloyd is the kind who wouldn't get involved into anything that didn't involve nuclear fusion but somehow is doing ground spy work and hacking shit (which is kinda stupid, he is a scientist, not your femboy pentester) and most importantly, Lelouch "giving up" scene felt so plasticky, not that he wouldn't give up, but the way he expressed as if he is gonna sulk is not the Lelouch we came across.
And one of the biggest mistakes rebuild/late-installments of franchises pull, unnecessary emphasis over the relatively insignificant sci-fi element and a undercooked technique to resolve the issue; this mistake was committed by Evangelion 3.0+1.0 and Cursed Child (and hence my pain) and now on this, which is just, whatever the fuck.
And the ending, I found the Lelouch rejecting Nunnaly's request part logical, but other than that, even as a Lelouch x C.C shipper, watching Lelouch renaming himself L.L, the scene is very badly executed that I wanted to rip my eyeballs out.
TL;DR Only good thing is watching people living a normal life. Otherwise, too many things cramped into the 1:50 hours, really undercooked sci-fi element which shouldn't need this much emphasis, bad character projection, so much fundamental flaws, I have many names to call this movie. Maybe a Marvel movie; or a doujinshi by CLAMP; or Disney princess movie; so many names I do have in store.
As the wise men say "Shrek 1 is the best, Shrek 2 is even better, Shrek 3 could have been avoided" (yoinked this from Pyrocynical)
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Feb 9, 2023
Cowboy Bebop: one of the favorite anime for the pretentious weebs, but on retrospection, its respect is valid and well-earned. This show has established a genre of its own, its pacing and narration, the storyline in each individual episodes, the backstories of the main characters and the fashion in which it was unraveled and elaborated. Its ending is neither "happy-ever-after" nor tragic but rather "bittersweet" or just the things which make you feel empty, getting sick with your own life because you know for a reason that the lives we lead couldn't even scratch the surface of the chaotic yet beautiful lives the main characters
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lead.
(few spoilers ahead)
I would like to compare it with Watanabe's later creation "Samurai Champloo", which is set in Imperial Japan and is also renown for its artistic merit, if not to the extent of Cowboy Bebop to the layman. In both the anime, the episodic narration and overall goal has the same vagueness and the protagonist group had the same chaos and tension yet a binding force between them, especially in the case of Cowboy Bebop where the binding force is in the form of Jet Black, who is clearly bearing the brunt in the ending, for him to behold the group fall apart in a rather painful manner. On comparison to Samurai Champloo, where all the MCs were given equal importance in terms of plot direction, in Cowboy Bebop, the conclusion primarily concentrated over Spike Spiegel, who had a rather artistic death, neither happy nor sad, his existence acknowledging its triviality in the course of time and space.
The setting, if anything, is practical and beautiful in its own ways; flashy, depressing, realistic and transient. It is the very manifest of how post-modern capitalist society ended up being; especially observed in Mars, Ganymede and Callisto; I am neither political nor critical in any sort, but I should point out the way how Cowboy Bebop was able to manifest it.
Talking about the plotlines of the episodes, they acknowledge the fact that everything we humans put forth in significance is going to end up being trivial in the grand scheme of events, yet it is the beauty of human lives. Each episode is unique and have their own experiences, own aftertaste, own triggers which lead to their own train of thoughts. An appreciable factor is that whatever is at their best left without much notice, is indeed left without much notice, which is something many media fail to accomplish.
In terms of unraveling the back stories of the main characters, I couldn't appreciate Cowboy Bebop more, for their vagueness of several details but their impact on the main characters being distinct enough. This is a practical and more realistic approach, hitting close to home. I don't think I would have been amused to hear all the rich experiences Spike had in his gangster days or the details why Jet was targeted by the Syndicate, it is not a shounen to go through all the details to piece it up and bring forth useless theories; it is best left vague and be admired.
As for the music, I have nothing to say much. Instead of just filling every scene with folk rock like what Hellsing did, Cowboy Bebop used Acid Jazz, Folk and especially Saxophone (smooth?) Jazz to its merit in appropriate scenes. I am no connoisseur in music (neither I am in anime) but I can say for one thing, Cowboy Bebop has utilized "bops" to its best merits.
As for the animation, it fits the goofy staging of appropriate scenes. And the aesthetics played a very BIG role, taking a big part of the anime's artistic merit. It is sad that a section of newer anime fans kind of avoid anime before 2000's because it is old, like dude are you fucking retarded?
Conclusively, Cowboy Bebop is a masterpiece which is kind of out of my scope to put forth a sound review explaining each and every merit of it. It truly deserves 10 and I am ready to fight back whoever critiques that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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