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@uesp

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Mt Hiei

Kyoto 2024

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DAFT PUNK Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (2003) dir. Kazuhisa Takenouchi

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If you feel burned by the Amazon series, please please please give Ikebukuro West Gate Park (2000) a chance!

Ikebukuro West Gate Park (sometimes confusingly shortened to IWGP) is a live action drama that was adapted from a novel in 2000. There's also a more recent anime adaptation that I have admittedly not watched. I only found out about this series last year while randomly browsing Netflix. What I found was the most Yakuza-adjacent media I had ever seen; the closest thing to Yakuza without literally just being a part of the franchise.

Essentially, the show follows Makoto, a young delinquent who, along with his friends, becomes entangled in the crimes, mysteries, and strange problems of the town he lives in. While Makoto himself is not a criminal, he finds himself in the center of the local gangs problems. Most notably, Takashi, AKA King, the leader of the G-Boys, is a sort of friend/rival to Makoto, and has an unpredictable, yet likeable personality.

It's a bit difficult to adequately summarize the show; it has so much going for it that a basic plot synopsis doesn't do the show justice at all. Unfortunately, I can't find any trailers or clips on YouTube that sum up the show either, in English or Japanese.

The show's tone is incredibly similar to Yakuza; there's a fairly serious over-arching mystery occupying the central plot, but the show is almost just as much of a comedy as it is a drama. Each episode has a mostly self-contained subplot, usually involving Makoto reluctantly getting dragged into someone else's problem to help sort things out. When the show isn't being serious, it's incredibly goofy, and it balances this back and forth very well.

Beyond that, this is perhaps the most stylish television series I've ever watched. The editing, the cinematography, the music, the costumes... every bit of it is dripping with end-of-the-millennium style and intentionality, in the best possible way. I don't know how to describe it other than distilled late-90s underground subculture. The closest thing to it would probably be underground music videos from that era. There's just nothing like it.

The whole time I was watching this series when I found it on Netflix last year, I couldn't help but think that it had to be at least a partial inspiration for Yakuza. That might not even be the case, but it's indicative of how much they have in common. I would be surprised if anyone who loves the Yakuza games didn't find this show at least somewhat enjoyable. So please watch it. It's still on Netflix, and probably other Japanese drama sites as well. Just do it. Watch it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

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Tokyo

Tokyo 2023

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I did a proper track day for the first time ever last week. It was a bit surreal because I do a lot of sim racing and actually learned the track on Assetto Corsa, and all of that muscle memory and experience and track knowledge was 100% applicable to the real thing. It was really fun, and the circuit at PittRace is incredible to drive on.

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Hibike! Euphonium is still by far my favorite anime, and I think the final season was good, but man the pacing is all over the place.

They seemed to imply for a while that Season 3 would be the last, so going into it I assumed that would be the case. But the first half of the season has a pretty slow pace focusing on character relationships, mostly the new first year students. I liked that it felt like it was taking its time, but halfway through the season I started to wonder how they were going to wrap things up in six or seven episodes.

Then Episode 10 came out and they had only just reached the Kansai Competition, and I seriously started to doubt that they were going to try to wrap everything up in four more episodes, because I didn't see how they possibly could. I thought maybe they would be doing one more season, or finish it with a film or OVA. And then they didn't do any of that.

I'm just a bit conflicted. The entire final season was really emotional. I liked all of the plotlines. I liked that they were willing to not give Kumiko the soli, even though it would have felt better, it wouldn't have had the same impact on the final part of her character development. But. The pacing of the second half of the season led to so much being crammed into the final episode that I was on the verge of tears throughout most of it while also thinking welp, I guess that's it.

So it's just a bit frustrating, because I think this series is so close to perfection (for me) if it weren't for the obvious issue of Kumiko and Reina having this very intentional romantic tension only to be sabotaged so Kumiko can canonically end up with the guy who barely has any presence in the final season, and the pacing of the final season. The relationship thing happened all throughout the first two seasons so I definitely wasn't getting my hopes up for anything going into this. But I had the benefit of discovering the show just as Season 2 was finishing airing, so I got to watch the story of their first year all at once without having to wait a whole year for the second half. Part of what I liked about the show so much was how it took time to tell all of these character subplots while they were working toward trying to win at Nationals. There was such a good balance of character arcs while also progressing the main plot at a decent pace.

Then the second year stuff ended up just being two feature films and an OVA. And I think they're all great, but I just wished there was a bit more. I don't think there really needed to be since they didn't advance to Nationals, but I would have liked it.

And finally the third year is told in just thirteen episodes. Less than half of the first year. And this being the final year, their last chance to win at Nationals, the end of high school, the end of the series... I just wish they had taken their time with it. Season 1 ended with the Kansai Competition, as well as a bonus episode. Season 2 didn't even end with Nationals, because there was an entire episode after the competition to wrap things up. But in Season 3, Kansai is Episode 10, Nationals is Episode 13, that's it, end of series. What's more, the final episode at least took the time to include an entire performance, which has really been lacking in the final season, but half of the episode was just a montage of clips from the series during their performance, and a final credits sequence of still images. There was virtually no dialogue between characters after the their performance. No goodbyes. No real sense of closure. This is the point where the main cast of characters is finishing high school! When they all go off on their own to start a new chapter in life! And yet no time is taken to put any emphasis on the emotional weight of all of this, of winning gold at Nationals... We get credits with still images, and then a time skip of adult Kumiko struttin' down the hallway to introduce herself as the assistant advisor to the concert band. The End.

I know animation studios have constraints and commitments, and I'm sure there were numerous factors when they decided how they were going to make this final season. It just feels like compromises were made; maybe they didn't want to do a whole fourth season, maybe they didn't have enough content for it, maybe they had already committed to doing other projects after Season 3 and wouldn't want to wait multiple years to do another season or film and just decided to wrap everything up here an now. I just think it deserved more time. It's still my favorite series. I can't say I'm disappointed really, it was still a very good season. I think it says a lot about the quality of the series that I can feel so conflicted about the pacing while also not letting it spoil how much I enjoyed it. A couple years ago I didn't know if there was going to be a third season at all. I can't really say I'm sad that it's over, but I just wish it was given more time.

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daft punk

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2024.05.08

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"Do you think what we have together is special?"

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