Redline opens, race in progress and my mouth stretches wide with a wicked grin, eager to sing its praise over the rooftops of the world. My buds need to see this. There hasn’t been something this balls dipped in awesome in years. At last, I have something new I can lend to Mr. Likes anime, but would never wear an anime girl head as their fucking Twitter avatar. And then, the opening Yellowline race ends and that enthusiasm starts to bleed out slowly.

It is a fantastic piece of artwork. I’m in love with the visuals. The pacing, direction, editing, is efficient, lean, and doesn’t waste time on useless or distracting information. It breezes through introducing the racers. It is a tribute to the direction and character designs that all the racers feel distinct with minimal exposition. Redline gives exactly what anyone riding shotgun needs, a destination, a fast car and gorgeous sights to see.

Unfortunately, Redline fails to set the stakes for the main character, Sweet JP. For all the ruthless planning and editing that must have occurred to get Redline into top racing form, that Redline neglects to establish the stakes is like a Ferrari without gas.

Other than winning the race, what happens when JP wins Redline? What happens when JP loses? None of the answers have much consequence nor are they that much different. Either way, it’s not a big deal. There are no stakes, no tension or conflict among the characters. Even for the Robo army trying to blow up the racers, who wins Redline doesn’t matter. Even if the Robos blow up all the racers, nothing changes, no stakes were lost and the Robos don’t even gain anything from it. It’s a tragic flaw.

I really wanted to love Redline in the end as much as I did in the first ten minutes. The opening Yellowline race made anime feel cool again. What could have been one of the great racing movies of all time winds up being just pretty sweet eye-candy. I’d still lend it out when I get the occasional, “I’m in the mood to watch some anime” and K-On won’t do.

English Dub Notes: Reminds me that I really miss hearing Patrick Seitz (JP) and Liam O’Brien (Frisbee) in anime. The director nails a cohesive mood here with all of the various side and incidental characters, which often drag a dub down, but here bring the crowd to life as another character. Setting aside adaptation discussion, the English version works very well as a piece on its own.

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Spice and Wolf is a curious show. At a quick glance through some of the art, it seemed designed for the viewer to fawn over a wolf-girl who doesn’t mind being naked. Anime character designs are usually a decent barometer of what a show aims to do. However, Spice and Wolf proves the rule that one should not judge the book by the cover.

The primary activity of the main characters, Lawrence, a traveling merchant, and Holo, the wise wolf-god is businesses. Buying, selling, trading and talking about it while they’re on the road in between towns in a fictional, vaguely European, world. After each trade, the two postmortem the transaction to find what they can use in the future, one of them usually did something which surprised the other during the deal. It turns Spice and Wolf into be a fine, dialogue driven story about the two drifters, off to see the world — and make some profit. Some of the dialogue runs a little far down the rabbit hole on the minutia of trading silver coins and currency manipulation strategies, but this dialogue builds an interesting relationship between Lawrence and Holo. Through conversations about how to succeed in business, each of them builds a bond of understanding and respect with the other. Neither character treats these lazy conversations idly and it’s through these conversations where the growth in their relationship takes place. They create value in their relationship, to extend the business analogy.

Conflicts in the story arise from the complications of doing business. Justice, saving the world, existential turmoil, freedom, peace, love, war, the standards of stories in a fantasy world don’t make much of an appearance. All conflict in the story stems from money, transactions gone wrong, and refreshingly, avoids any message condemning money. It’s not pro-money either. Money is just a fact and how people and companies deal with that fact builds relationships and creates conflict.

There’s a great scene where Lawrence is begging for money and the fact of money and what it says is thrown back into his face. It’s really an interesting show in how it utilizes spaces most fiction treats as prop and scenery.

All well and good, Spice and Wolf isn’t furry ecchi, is down to earth, plays with economics the same way other stories play with morality, love, etc., but is it fun to watch? Yes. While it’s a lot more sober than a show with a wolf-girl would suggest, the interaction between Lawrence and Holo is entertaining. They go through a subtle change from a sort of you’re there to a you’re important to me. And, they really are important to each other as partners.

The episodes do have a decent amount of tension. A couple of the transactions gone south lead to life and death situations for Lawrence, which as a result become vital to Holo in spite of the fact that she’s under no threat of physical harm.

Now, I’m off to order Season 2.

Dub Notes: One benefit of almost all the dialogue happening through two characters is both actors get into a nice groove. I wasn’t immediately grabbed by Brina Palencia’s take on Holo, but quickly warmed up to it once I began to feel the dynamic between Holo and Lawrence. J. Michael Tatum’s take on Lawrence strikes the right tone for where he is in life and as Holo’s verbal sparring partner. Most support characters sound stock male townsfolk in a fantasy series, which has that odd effect of drawing undue attention to itself for me than just becoming invisible like it’s probably meant to. On the plus side, Leah Clark sounds great as Nora, a young shepherd, one of the prominent side characters.

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Like most years, 2011 was a mixed bag, especially as far as watching anime and blogging goes. Spent much more time this year fiddling with tabletop RPG stuff. I still love anime and figures, which is why I can’t quite kill this blog, no matter how sad it gets.

The Good

On a personal front, something interesting happened to me. If you’re ever near Sydney, Australia, and find yourself at a Japanese restaurant called Sokyo (at The Star), head over to the bar and look up at the ceiling. It’s kind of hard to see the ceiling from the pics in the link (3rd and 6th slides), but if you’re ever there, look up.

Best thing I watched this year? I loved the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Saw it at Otakon, gaining the benefit of the collective *GASP* of a few hundred people, then I saw it again twice on Blu-Ray. Favorite single episode of anything was Angel Beats Ep. 3, for the funny way that it reminded me how as a teenager that a song saved me once and how now a song can’t have that power for me anymore. As far as streaming, the only things I watched to the last episode were Usagi Drop, Hanasaku Iroha, and Fate/Zero. I liked each of them enough to finish. I also like the much maligned Guilty Crown, but at this point I’m just going to wait for a release to finish it.

Favorite figures were Ritsu with Drum Kit by Alter, Trunk Girl by Native and GSC’s Rin Tohsaka. I was quite happy with almost everything I got this year. Maybe only 2 or 3 out of (20+) that I wouldn’t have ordered if I had the chance to leap back in time, which is better than previous years, where the number was closer to 5 or 6.

The Bad

Blog content has been pretty bad. At best, a post every other month. That’s not likely to change much, so I’ll still be bad there.

And as someone who mostly watches anime via physical media, Bandai shutting down sucks. Probably means less choice when it comes to what gets on Blu-Ray and looking like another set of anime voice actors who I’ll not get to hear anymore.

The Ugly

I have a DVD/BD backlog that would occupy me for the whole year if I didn’t start something new. It’s been out of hand for a while. I mean, I still haven’t cracked open Gurren Lagaan, Summer Wars, or even the Rebuild of Evangelion discs. There’s a lot of good stuff waiting on the pile. I’ve watched shows with less reputation and hype in the meantime, so I guess I’m afraid of being disappointed when I finally do attempt to watch these. On the other hand, it means I still have some good stuff to watch at some point.

Apocalypse

Also might not be a bad thing to assume the Mayans were correct. Don’t hold yourself back in 2012.

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Daikichi is a single, never married, thirty-something male who takes the responsibility of raising Rin, a five year old girl who was in the care of his grandfather who passed away. Nobody in the family wanted her, so Daikichi took responsibility. The setup of Usagi Drop sounds close to a Hallmark Hall of Fame type of thing, a family drama produced by a greeting card company.

The premise is convoluted enough to move it a step away from standard family drama. Usagi Drop isn’t describing an emerging social trend or playing with nostalgia for a bygone age. Rin’s birth is unclear during the 11-episodes of Usagi Drop, but it leaves us with 5-year old Rin is 30-something Daikichi’s aunt. It’s a deliberately unusual and obfuscated birth situation, which is a fantasy staple and in a way Usagi Drop plays a bit like a fantasy.

There is just as much attention paid, if not more, to how Daikichi changes than on Rin, but the magic of Usagi Drop happens when both of Rin and Daikichi move at the same time. Early in the series, there is a scene where a tired Daikichi carries a tired Rin on his back as they trudge home long after both of them should have been there already. Rin tells Daikichi that the moon is following them and he runs with it. There’s a lot going on in that scene and I’m not going to ruin it by pondering on it for too long, but Usagi Drop has a handful of these cornerstone moments that move their relationship into new places. The writing pushes movement and scenes, no matter how mundane or meandering, don’t go to waste.

Other than the unusual birth situation, the humor and light drama of Daikichi and Rin’s situation is played straight, as in the humor that arises comes from normal child rearing situations that would occur from a single man who didn’t have the luxury of coming up to speed with the realities of raising a child and taking the responsibility for raising her seriously. The humor is not wacky or creepy comedy. The reality isn’t gritty. It has a hopeful glow.

Now, that’s how these 11 episodes play out. Apparently, the manga takes the story further into territory that some feel wrecks the story. I don’t know what that is, though looking at the pieces I have a pretty good guess, but hey, the eleven episodes we have of Usagi Drop are worthy of a view. Enjoy it.

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Worlds change in an instant, mused Rin Ogata as she danced on stage. She was a rising star in the ballet world, but when her ankle gives way it changes what she had thought would be the rest of her life, following her mother’s path of the prima ballerina. Now that the dream had slipped away, there was a void in her life; something was missing which left her aimless.

An aimless existence carried over into college, where she resigned to coast through life. However one day when Rin was caught in the rain, she found something to love and gained purpose in her life. Rin found a rideback, a motorcycle with arms, a mech on wheels. She hops on it and the rideback sweeps her off her feet. Like falling in love can sometimes be, the first contact was scary, thrilling and transforming. Madhouse’s choreography and animation execution of Rin hanging onto the rideback gave me a taste of that transforming moment. RideBack has a couple of mesmerizing action sequences where the animators took glorious advantage of Rin’s background in ballet to do some coolness with motion, time, and music.

In some ways RideBack’s story and characters belonging to a college racing club feel like an anime from a recently passed era, at least during the first few episodes. It looked like Rin’s story would be a magical rookie story. She would quickly rise above the level of seasoned riders as the journey of self-discovery, but about a third of the way through the series, the plot shifts from what looked like a tournament anime into a story of rebelling against an increasingly dystopic status quo.

The plot shift is telegraphed during the first few minutes of the show and we’re shown news clips throughout the early episodes about the maneuverings of the world military type government, called the GGP. Obviously, this was to come up and be part of the main story. The buildup and transformation of Rin, the eager magical rookie racer, to Rin the reluctant rebel on wheels felt right, rather than coming from right field. However, watching the last leg of RideBack felt a bit like a letdown.

What proved most problematic with RideBack’s political conflict was an incongruent Big Bad Evil Guy. Rin was written and thought out well, but the enemy, the GGP, was not. The GGP seemed less like an oppressive world-wide regime and more like douche-bag foreigners led by an incompetent dick, which might resonate more with a Japanese audience. Still, it relied a little too much on disliking Romanov, the face of the GGP and filling in the blanks by thinking about it and understanding that nobody really wants to be occupied. Even with that understanding, the GGP did not feel like an opponent on par with the care taken by the show to develop their heroine.

That and the story put too much emphasis on the ridebacks as the instrumental technology in the GGP’s rise to power. While the rideback is the perfect vehicle for Rin Ogata, an absolutely beautiful pairing of character and machine, it’s a nonsensical vehicle for explaining how the GGP achieved worldwide dominance.

So while the rebellion against the GGP plot felt under achieved as a result of a poor BBEG, RideBack does resolve Rin’s personal journey in the end with a dance on her RideBack. Each time the animators cut loose to showcase Rin dancing on a Rideback it’s a treat. Rin faces the murderous drones and finishes what she couldn’t finish in the opening minutes of the show. The circle closes. There is satisfaction in watching her story to the end.

Who would I recommend this to? A number of different viewer types, with some sort of asterisk or hedge against a for-sure-man recommendation, but I think RideBack has appeal for anime viewers looking to watch something a little more sober than the more hyper-whatever’s that are currently being blamed for anime’s downfall. RideBack felt more like something I was watching ten years ago than what’s airing today.

The English dub was just okay.

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Every year since about 2007, I’ve been saying to myself on the drive home from Otakon that I’m getting too old for this shit and this is my last anime convention. Pretty much everyone else I know considers themselves too old for it, or you know, they’re just not into it enough to want to go. This year though, on the drive home, making the usual wrong turn onto 295 South, instead of 95 North, I decided I really didn’t care about being too old for this shit or not. I had fun doing the Japanese Figure Panel with VManofMana and his friend Andy, had the fun of a collective “holy shit!” with several hundred people during a screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, and got to go through my silly convention mini-games (buying a Cinnamorrol item, eating at the same place three times, complimenting a nice hat, etc.). The final Otakon weekend ritual includes DMing for my gaming group as soon as I get home, which turned out to be an awesome session.

Loot was light this year. A character design sketch folio for Shangri-la, the art book from the person who draws all of those awesome Persona things, Birth from the Aria artist, a bag of like 20 dice (frosted pink, blue, and colorless), a set of large K-On pins (these are pretty huge), and a dancing Cinnamorrol.

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Finally got to crack open my Eden of the East BluRays and marathon them. Totally was not expecting something as whimsical as a magic penis being the solution to a problem from a Kenji Kamiyama work. I expected something more subdued and restrained as a lot of this director’s previous works have been. It was great to see the director open things up a bit, adding to his directorial tool set.

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Jackie Brown was a so-so Tarantino. Okay, maybe it’s actually a decent movie, but after Pulp Fiction…it was a let-down. The main thing I remember about it was one of the character’s obsession with bikini girls shooting machine guns and kind of laughing at the guy for watching such cheesy shit. Being a too-smart for myself student at the time, you know, the kind of douche who looked down on plebes for getting all excited about Independence Day, the only cheesy shit I watched was watched ironically. Years later and look at me now. I watch anime and girls shooting guns is one of my favorite things.

As far as stuff released on DVD and BluRay is concerned, this was an okay year for kick-ass ladies, mainly for the first and last couple of episodes from Canaan. The gun fights and action sequences were really good. Unfortunately, like many stories in the genre it kind of feels like it’s stuck trying to work with the rules laid down by La Femme Nikita and over-commits to using the back story to do the job of the fore story. Canaan opened up with a potentially interesting front story dealing with bio-terrorism, but that pretty quickly turned into a means to link the the back story, dropping what looked like it was the main plot about two-thirds into it. This type of storytelling to frame the action is done all the time, but in Canaan it led to a dead spot in the series rather than fast times at blowing things up sky high. For what essentially is a throw-away, it took up way too much of the show’s time.

The main flaw in Canaan letting the background do the foreground’s job is it makes the villain impotent. It’s all about revealing the past, so the villain needs to wait for the good guys to get all the pieces together. This forces the use of one of lamest cards anime plays, the villain who lets the defeated good guys go so that the villain can continue to wait for the good guys to gather the pieces of the back story. This fails on so many character plausibility and storytelling levels. It killed Alphard, the main villain, for me.

So why am I writing about Canaan in a blog post supposed to be celebrating twelve anime moments I had this year? Canaan has no schools, no students late for school, no students transferring in, school festivals, or mentions school lunches, hot springs, beaches, no training of magic rookies, no one must try harder because everyone already does. Canaan has a slew of standard elements, so I’m not praising it for originality, just thanking it for telling a story that is missing the aforementioned elements and giving me a few episodes worth of truly noteworthy action.

Canaan was directed by Masahiro Ando, who also directed the fight-spectacle Sword of the Stranger. For a TV series, the animation during Canaan’s combat sequences is obscene. Most TV action sequences more often have me noting short-cuts instead of coolness. Canaan tallies more coolness points than really cheaty short-cuts. This show had to have had a high budget considering how great it looks, choosing wisely where to conserve and splurge and mostly hitting the mark. On that front it was satisfying to watch.

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Maybe the Endless Eight section of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2 works better as a condensed viewing experience, eight episodes in two sittings, as opposed to waiting two months, one episode a week, because I thought it was an interesting watch, which is far from the reaction that the people who were watching it had during the weekly broadcast in 2009. Seeing how things changed from one episode to another was fun to see and I respect the risk involved in the attempt, even if in the end it probably damaged the popularity of the series. It was a bit bloated and maybe would have been better served as Four Forever or something (just be glad it wasn’t Forever 21), but at the same time feel like something would disappear without the bloat of eight episodes. I totally understand why many people don’t feel that way, though.

From what I recall there wasn’t anything necessary or vitally different about the Endless Eight episodes. Most of the differences were trivial and that’s actually kind of what makes it interesting, that a trivial difference is all that really makes one day different from another and given the opportunity to do something different we almost never do. About the only scene that consistently bored me is the scene where Kyon is called to the park to meet the others to discuss the discovery of the time loop. I pretty much got up to refill my iced tea glass every time that scene came up since the scene is nothing more than Koizumi info-dumping. Actually, Koizumi annoys me since his primary function in the series is to info-dump, so he’s boring. The park scene is basically the Koizumi scene and even the first time it was a drag. That’s something that I would have liked to have been cut down or cut-out after the third or fourth time. Other scenes got dropped from some episodes, but this one seemed to make it in all of them. I guess it needs to stay in, because there was always the chance a viewer hadn’t seen the previous episodes and the info-dump scene spells out what’s going on.

I seem to like things about Haruhi that the vocal didn’t. Like in the first season, the episode I adore is “Someday in the Rain,” which seemed to have raised some bitching. I guess I like the melancholy part of the show, the parts where nothing seems to happen at all.

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Five years ago, anime releases in North America without an English dub were anomalies reserved for a Satoshi Kon film or two. Until this year, it was starting to appear that the anomaly would become the matter of course for anime released in North America. Fewer people buy anime these days and selling a number of units to recoup dubbing costs is more difficult. Selling fewer copies makes sense if it means reducing costs enough to turn a profit. This would seriously reduce the number of anime I’d watch any given year. I enjoy watching anime dubbed into English, or at least having that option when I’m paying for a disc. I don’t normally watch anime subtitled and sometimes just won’t. Not everything is as compelling as a Satoshi Kon anime or where specific dialog isn’t all that important like with Strike Witches, where you can understand what’s going on without knowing what’s being said much of the time, or something like Escaflowne where the English dub is ruinous.

When Section23 Films announced that they would have Seraphim Digital produce English dubs for a selection of their releases, it was positive news interrupting a steady stream of doom and gloom for anime. I don’t know if this move makes any financial sense. Their sister company wants dubbed anime for their channel, so I’m hoping that’s enough cover for this move to dubbing survives.

These new dubs are rumored to be low budget, which is probably true. The smaller the budget, the less time there is for retakes to smooth out performances or rework the dialog. I’ve watched Clannad, Canaan, and Xam’d dubbed by Seraphim. It’s good thing that they were able to retain a relationship with much of the veteran talent they used from their former incarnation ADV Films, actors who at least have a chance of making something with the limited time they’ve got. It’s a small step back from the dubs during the heights of the North American anime market, but I’m glad it’s here and that someone, along with Funimation, is still trying to serve a broader range of fans.

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