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With the semester drawing to the end, I’m glad I took this class. At the very least, this class has led me to be more analytical of anime and manga, and see them as more than just entertainment. Much like the culture class, this class has placed a great emphasis on contextualizing works and trying to draw deeper meaning to moments. With looking back at my posts, I feel I was much more critical towards anime, but more deeply analyzed manga. I’m not sure why this is, but I think it has to do with the amount of time it takes to consume the media. To be honest, it would’ve been better if I watched every anime twice before making my posts. However with time constraints from work and factoring in other classes, this wasn’t a possibility. I definitely enjoyed the things we covered, but I had wished there was more modern choices, but perhaps it is easier to see important social events after they have happened, and letting for manga & anime to be seen through those established lenses.

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I think the whole point of psycho pass is as you said, you judging of the one versus the whole. In the first episode, does the guy snap because he knows he’s being constantly checked? He made it all the way to adulthood and was fine until one thing set him off. So does this hyper critical society breed criminals? Clearly it’s not a perfect society - there’s still slums filled with homeless people. I think this show just comes to same conclusion as anything else that deals with these topics. Which is to leave the watcher thinking - there is no true answer to those questions.

Psycho-Pass

It had been a while since I watched this show, so I honestly had forgotten most of what happens. I remember liking it though, and I wasn’t disappointed upon watching it again. I like the art style, and just the general feel of the show as a whole. It presents a world similar to movies like Equilibrium, which is also a movie that I enjoyed. The idea of a society in which crime is either eradicated or strictly managed through drugs (as in Equilibrium’s case), or through a computer system, like this show is something I find interesting. 

Two things stood out to me in watching this show. The first thing is that it presents this idea of the worth of an individual versus the needs of society as a whole. As in, is it worth it to potentially prevent the damage a criminal could cause by also maybe killing an innocent person? The other thing is just the idea of having to repress your emotions in order to not be judged by the people (and computer system) around you.

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Oh boy, another dystopian future story. To me, they’re all the same – and all so boring. Sure the idea of criminal prediction is cool – but it’s not new. And the weird cyberpunk Tokyo is cool – but it’s not new. Having ‘the worst of the worst’ work for the cops is cool – but it’s not new. Psycho-Pass is like a food dish someone tried to make by seeing what’s popular with other foods and putting it all together. It’s just… boring and comes across as unoriginal. Weird “bad guy” redemption stories and “oh no don’t trust technology too much, it can be DUPPED!” themes are played out and boring. Personally, I’ve never liked the visual look of Animes that have partially CG’d motion, it feels extremely out of place to me. All the characters dress like 1980s detectives. Why? Easy – because that’s how Decker dressed in Blade Runner. It took a lot of personal effort to make it through the four episodes, and ya know what? It’s aight. That’s about it. I don’;t plan on watching it again. It’s just... Aight.

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I feel like the visuals are some of the important parts of this anime. Especiallly color choice, the bloodlust of the teacher is literally represented with his red eyes, and it seems as though Satoru’s eyes are muc more blue as a child / during the confrontation on the roof. I think the show was pretty straightforward with its morals and messages otherwise, though.

4/23 Viewing

Erased

    I remember watching Erased for the first time, it was an anime that instantly captured me and made me want to binge watch the rest of the episodes in only a few days. It was nice to re-watch a few of the episodes for tomorrow’s viewing! It’s another visually beautiful anime, like the others we’ve seen for the past week. It tackles a lot of darker topics, such as child abuse, serial kidnappings and murder. I think there’s a really big contrast between the animation that is presented and what the plot revolves around. At first Satoru is shown to be an adult who is very laid back and trying to figure out his career, then by the end of episode 1 his mother is killed and basically everyone thinks he’s the killer…I’m still not sure why his neighbor’s first reaction is that HE killed his mom and to call him the killer, and I don’t think him running away from the police helps that. For the majority of the episodes we learn that Satoru is taken back to the past, which he decides means that he can change the future and prevent the future murder of the kids in his class and the disappearance of Kayo. It’s kind of hard to imagine that there’s all these terrible things happening in the world, and kid Satoru needs to help put an end to it, especially Kayo’s abusive mother. Usually you’d associate darker anime with adult characters, but Erased gives us children. I found it cute that all of his old friends worked together to make sure Kayo would be ok, which was also the plan of Satoru so that he could keep an eye on everyone so that no one would get kidnapped. Because of this, you could argue that friendship is really important so that everyone is ok in the end, which we see in the final episodes when Satoru is an adult again and his friends help get the teacher into custody.

    Something that I didn’t think about during my first viewing of this anime is the common motif of red. It reminded me of the girl in red from Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” and ironically Kayo also wears a red coat! Red isn’t just significant to her character, but you also see it show up ominously in the opening credits (probably my favorite anime opening song) and in Kayo’s mother’s eyes. It’s pretty obvious that it symbolizes foreboding dread and danger. Something not really full of deeper meaning, but it’s cool to look out for.

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Yeesh what a tear-jerker. This show was a good balance of thriller and light-hearted slice of life. I think it centers completely on the idea of courage, and doing what’s right when it needs to be done. Sure it gets a little philosophical and weird in the last episodes with the exchange with the villain, but I still very much enjoyed it. It’s an homage to Sherlock Holmes, with Watson coming to the rescue at the very end. The guy gets Scooby-0oo’d into revealing his evil intentions and all works out. It both is and isn’t a show about the power of friendship, I think because that’s often seen as so plain and boring – and yet here it’s a beautiful thing that is the most important element in the show.

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I agree with everything you wrote here. This film is just a ‘let baby birds fly’ film with dog-people - dog-people, because for half the film they don’t even look like wolves. Unfortunately I heavily associate this film with furries and furry culture so I went in already with a negative mindset, which this film just could not overcome. It was fine, but I don’t plan on ever seeing it again.

Wolf Children: I did not like this movie at all. The pacing was off and the characters didn’t really seem to develop far, except for Ame, but it just felt so boring to have to sit through. From an analytical perspective I thought the fact that the kids were wolves didn’t really matter, it felt more like an analogy for children growing up and leaving the nest. Another thing I thought this movie highlighted was the struggles of being a single mother. 

So there were a lot of things about this movie I didn’t get. Why did Ame not tell his mom he was leaving and instead just left, but then it seems like she understands really fast what’s actually happening it just seemed like a really quick resolve for how drawn out all of Ame’s story was. And most importantly: WHY DID HE HAVE TO BE IN WOLF FORM WHEN THEY BANGED?! Like could they not otherwise? Was that her kink? It felt like I was watching twilight or beauty and the beast but furrified. That kinda just killed my enthusiasm for the movie from the start and the plot didn’t really move strong enough to get me to care. Taking all into account, I can never unsee what I saw. I still feel a little confused and upset.

2/10

 尊敬しない。

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‘Wolf Children’ comes across as a pretty heavy-handed metaphor for raising children to find their own paths, and self-sacrifice of the parents. The concept is weird enough on its own, and it’s not exactly a new and unique idea – by having any kind of abnormality being very obvious in this case makes it seem rather campy. The whole “coming of age” aspect isn’t super interesting to me as a concept as it’s very common, and the “we’re wolf people” part was pretty meh to me. It just seems like “shift any disability here” and you have a story. Wolf Children has the classic Japanese biter-sweet ending, with both children leaving and the Mom getting to reflect on her job well done. Overall it was just entertaining to me, nothing too deep or original here – just a pretty movie with a generic message.

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Yeah I was really surprised how hard the tone shifted after we learn that Mitsuha had died. It suddenly goes to ‘let’s learn to save the day’ time trial. I think the unspoken cultural stuff is the actual focus of the film, especially the clash of ideals.

Your Name: So I really, really liked this movie. I thought the soundtrack was really good. The movie felt like Freaky Friday at the start and then it like turned into Bridge to Terabithia and then it turned into Back to the Future. I was really surprised when I found out Mitsuha died. It like completely shifted how the movie felt and went from being super funny and lighthearted to super sad. I also totally didn’t expect all the time jumping and I thought it was a really creative way to switch up the plot. I didn’t get much out of this from an analytical perspective. There was some interesting cultural stuff like the making of the sake but other than that I couldn’t find a whole lot. 

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I feel almost cheated when it came to watching ‘Kimi no Na wa’ for two reasons, 1) I hadn’t before seen this film (which is a shame), and 2) due to the nature of most things we’ve watched lately, I spent the whole film waiting for the uber sad ending. I was THANKFULLY relieved, because of course it all ends happily ever after. Although the pacing was slow, and there was a lot of tropes, mainly the “wise old woman that knows everything already” with the Grandma knowing about the body switching stuff, I still really enjoyed this movie, partially due to just how visually stunning this film is. I think there’s an underlying commentary on modern and ancient customs in Japan with the contrast of Mitsuha and Taki’s places in society, especially with noting the locations of the two characters, though basically everywhere is a sharp contrast form the concrete jungle of Tokyo. Even down to contrasting the ways of leaving notes – hand written notes versus phone messages.

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I hope it gets better, but sadly the next episodes I’ll watch with the dub again soo I’m not holding my breath. I hope the show explores more about the culture of the aliens, and the struggles jinto faces in trying to acclimate. Although it’s teased there will be a huge war about to break out, so that’ll be fun I suppose. It’s weird that both the alien lady and jinto are royal or noble, but are in the military?

4/11

I really couldn’t pin down the mood or tone of this show, but to be fair i could only find the dub and the dub is extremely bad. I thought it was strange in the beginning when Jinto was taken to safety by a friend of his father, and the man commented that taking jinto to safety was a sign that he wasn’t trusted. I would think that a father asking you to go save his son would require a little trust. Again the dub was very bad in my opinion so maybe this wasn’t translated properly. 

Rocks closest friend keeps berating jinto about how Rock is doing all these bad things and not taking counsel from anyone. but maybe Rock hoped that someone would place a bit of faith in his decision; Rock may end up being a bad guy later in the story, but so far there is not much evidence for it. I would not expect the people to trust that perhaps Rocks motives were that of protection, but his close friend should maybe give him a chance. 

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I’m not entirely sure what to look for while watching these episodes. There’s the obvious politics as a solution to all-out war, but these episodes were just exposition. In all honest, these first three were kind of boring, and watching with sub-par English voice dubbing really did not help. It caused the dialogue to be delivered at a very odd pace, perhaps to match the speed of the original animation, but it just made everything feel unrealistic. The idea of peaceful existence with a different race in space, a space race, is interesting thing to explore with this show, and I really liked how the “regular” people spoke a language we did not understand. Granted it’s never explained why, and the main character was only gone for maybe 12 years, so that was odd. It also didn’t help the English dub did not translate the Japanese subtitles for the unknown language. I’m looking forward to the next viewing, but so far I haven’t noticed anything too extraordinary in these episodes.

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I completely missed the use of the black & white scenes as a reference to wartime photos. Also I like that Shuu still keeps some of his ‘too perfect Shonen’ attitude, even through everything Shuu doesn’t change as a person – he doesn’t bend from his ideals or morals. He still feels that life is worth living, no matter how difficult it has been. I wonder how much time separated all the events, as it seems there’s no change in the smoke stacks on Earth, maybe he was sent back to the moment he left? There’s a feeling of helplessness for Shuu, I think. The idea that no one will know what has happened to him, and that there’s no one he can talk to about his ordeal. In the end, Shuu is alone.

4/9

well out of everything we have watched for this this class, this somehow made the number one spot for me. Just to let every one that I have a bias towards the show. I was too involved watching the last episodes so i didn’t take any notes, but have a few points i noticed from the earlier episodes. None of the soldiers ever seemed happy or believing in what they did. Even the soldiers that planned to rape Sara just seemed to be doing another task. And there was a statement made “how you cant eat if you do not fight”, but this is strange since everyone there was kidnapped. That statement is some strong manipulation by making it seem like it was somehow a dishonorable choice not to fight, similar to when they called people deserters, like the people running had reneged on a contract or something. 

The black and white photo moment seemed like a direct comparison to the actual war. i feel like usually it is not always clear whether the director or writer is trying to make a statement, but that scene seemed to make it obvious. Shu seemed to be the overly perfect character at first, someone who’s convictions were just to strong, but he was starting to break down near the end. The show doesn’t span a great deal of time, if Shu had been there for a greater amount of time i do not think he would have made it out murder free. Before the little girl “Soon” shoot Boo, her eyes did the classic Fade out thing that shows loss of innocence. In short we can all agree nobody really won in this story.  

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Now and Then, Here and There was an extremely powerful show. Even now, I’m not sure what to reflect on. The main prevailing theme, I feel, is the Shonen philosophy of gaman – perseverance. Shuu’s entire ordeal, in terms of the greater world, was meaningless. He returns back to Earth to find his belongings where he left them, the only proof of his journey being the wound on his hand and his memories. What was the point, if only to leave? Sara decides to embrace her new life in the water-filled world Lala Ru created, but Shuu still leaves. I’m not sure if it was every stated that Lala Ru using her powers meant she would vanish? Likewise why she waited so long to do it, as it seemed she had her pendant in episode 6. I suppose she decided she had nothing left to lose in using her power and flooded the world, thus making her powers useless, only to sacrifice herself.

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Well, that was something. I enjoyed it a lot, actually. It was pretty heavy handed on the “Shonen Themes” though. At one point Shuu was literally “gaman-ing” against actual torture. I started to notice some serious “actual life of a solider” feelings in the show, especially relating to child soldiers being used. On the one hand, there’s boyhood rivalry with the two soldiers, and on the other they are fighting in a war, killing people, and trying to stay alive. It was powerful to say the least, and I’m definitely enjoying it. I’m not entirely sure what to write yet, but to what I’ve seen, this appears to be “Mad Max: The Anime.” Focusing conflict on limited supply is a very old theme, and I’m interested in seeing how next set of episodes will play out.

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I like how you draw attention to the clear views of the 21st century’s views really heavily conflict with the time they are in. A lot of emphasis is placed on human life versus the importance of the nation. It’s clear that the ship has logistically separates themselves from the idea of protecting their japan, and rather defending themselves from wartime ideals.

Zipang (Continued) Episodes 13, 21, and 25! 4/3/2018

Just like we predicted in class, the crew of Mirai was not able to stay away from the war and was pulled into the battle. At first, I was a little confused about what was going on in episode 13 but I soon realized that the Mirai had begun tampering with history, first by trying to save the American soldiers by threatening them to leave the camp. In episode 21 the crew of the Mirai finally learns what it means to be in a battle, in that if you hesitate to destroy the enemy the enemy will use any means necessary to destroy you first. It’s hard to show mercy and reduce the number of casualties in war because the other side is unpredictable, and the crew had to face the fact that they would have to kill people in order to protect their ship. I’m sure it was hard for them to come to terms with that since they never expected they would have to kill anyone or be part of a war. 

All the different perspectives in Zipang were really interesting because everyone was right in their own way, and it was hard to know which course of action was better for the Mirai to follow. Kodamatsu wanted to save the 3 million people who would die as a result of the war, so he basically threw away all his previous plans about staying out of the war and is now actively trying to defend all the lives that will be lost because of it. Kodamatsu definitely represents the opinions and thoughts of a person from the 21st century, in which he doesn’t think about the good of the country as a whole but instead thinks more about the individual lives lost, so he puts more importance on the individual than the nation. However, the future prime minister wants the Mirai to stay out of the war and only worry about post-war revival because he thinks in a more nationalistic way, in which sacrifices must be taken in order for the whole country to prosper in the future and learn from its mistakes. I think Kusaka is an interesting character since he is technically not supposed to be alive and should be dead at this point, so it was clever that the author chose him to have this crazy, idealistic idea of creating a whole new country “Zipang.” By allowing this one person to live, the Mirai caused a whole other possible path that history could follow, so we’re really starting to see a kind of “butterfly effect” happening. 

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I really enjoyed these viewings, although they are very scattered in terms of episode number, there is enough long term continuity for them to piece together. Also the show’s clear push of morals is obvious at this point, but there is still confliction on what the proper action should be. I like that they made clear call in episode 13, that by choosing to withhold full firepower, five men on board were lost. I’m rather surprised the journalist and the solider saved from drowning have made it this far, they should have just been pseudo court marshalled and put aside. Not sure why ep 25 ends with a child being run over? I’ll take the time to watch ep 26 on my own later if the ending of the show isn’t discussed in class. Zipang’s use of morality and human conflict is by far the most interesting part of the show. Seeing many views centralizing on WWII allow the topic to be open for discussion in a more thoughtful manner, I feel. Of course, that’s not including the confusion that is time travel in any story ever.

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I agree that I had hoped this anime would have recaps for previous episodes, as we continuously were put into action with no context. I like the archetypes of the characters in this show at least, and I think it’ll cause a lot of dynamicism when it comes to views on the war. Granted they do still have the ‘generic dissonance’ characters, like the crewman wanting to kill the solider in an attempt make it back to the 21st century. I hope there’s more character development though, as no one has really changed yet.

4/2 - Zipang

I wasn’t really a fan of “Zipang,” although the main reason for that is because I was confused by a lot of things. I guess that is partly due to the fact that we skipped around on episodes. This is the one time where I wished that the episodes included what happened in the previous episode. In the first episode I thought they mentioned that they were just testing out the ships, and then within the third episode they mention that they are in a war. It seems like there was some sort of time differences, but I couldn’t tell who was from the future and who was from the modern time or past or how that happened in the first place. I liked how Kadomatsu immediately jumped into the water to rescue Kusaka even though there was no direct order to do so. I also liked when Kadomatsu was talking to the journalist about how he is the same as him, the only difference being their clothing. I can see that Kadomatsu does not want to go into war or kill lives for no reason.