This was, first and foremost, a great Monokuma episode. His cosplay acting was a level up from normal, that back-and-forth between him and Naegi about the lack of cameras in the baths was solid banter, and the way he laughed when he found the kids snooping around the hidden room was spot-on. His character is probably one of the show’s 3 biggest achievements, unlike many villains who start to feel tired or experience character dilution, he still exudes the same threatening yet fun poise he’s had since day 1. And his declaration at the end shows two different kinds of astute villainy (depending on whether you see it as a bluff or not).

When Naegi was entrusted with the very deadly-looking (but really no more deadly than a kitchen tool) knife, I had a fair degree of suspicion it was getting taken. What I wasn’t expecting was the multiple video commenters who made the very pregnant “Knife ga naifu!” pun.

Reason #517 to get excited for Hajime no Ippo: The Rising. More Itagaki means lots more lame puns. Thankfull, it won’t be bullshit speed king Itagaki, but spunky rookie with something to prove Itagaki who’ll be showing up in Rising. But back to Dangan Ronpa…

What was less expected was the “death” of a Monokuma model and the chance to examine it in detail, an unexpected and, dare I say, explosive wealth of information.* But seriously, the group panicking over the ostensibly live bomb while Togami messed with Yasuhiro was fun stuff. More so because this might be the first attempt at humor Togami’s made to date.

This episode was busily dropping mysteries all over the place, truth be told. The dead Monokuma, which had apparently been there all night, also raised immediate questions about who gave Naegi his wakeup call minutes earlier (assuming it wasn’t recorded). Those were answered within the episode, but the corpse in the Arboretum floated a ton of plot threads. Who got the knife to stab her? Why did she have the missing key? Why did she explode on contact? This is what a mystery climax looks like; it tosses questions in your head like dice in a cup and lets those potential answers rattle around your skull before coming to rest. How strong the climax ends up being depends on that, the presentation, and the cleverness of solutions. So far, the show is 2 for 3, and it’s got 3 more episodes to stick that last point. 

At present, I have no solid grasp on who the murder could be. Kirigiri seems way too obvious, and they just did the suicide trial. Asahina, Togami, and Yasuhiro are fairly innocuous and have a collaborated alibi. My best guesses are that a) Naegi has some sort of second personality like Genocider, and ended up doing the killing himself, b) Monokuma did it himself, or c) Fukawa killed Mukuro in the incredibly short span of time she was offscreen, and Genocider not remembering will make the trial harder. These are all shots in the dark at this point, though. Which makes the upcoming trial something to look forward to indeed.

*See Reason #517 above. I’m getting into the spirit of things.

I’ve seen shows lead into their ED credits with the first few notes, (to nearly universally impressive results), but this is only the third or fourth show I’ve seen do so with the opening credits. Between that and the decision to plug Tomoko into class chat central, the second semester got off to a running start.

Most episodes of WataMote are all about Tomoki actually failing in interpersonal interactions, but this one seemed to focus a lot more on her own island world and the delusions that pervaded it, along with the pins that inevitably came along to burst her bubble. Of particular note were the too-long internal monologue about getting caught up in a Battle Royale scenario (as if she wouldn’t be the first to die) and her elaborate school-life fantasies.

Insofar as the show is still keeping itself to an episodic comedic approach, this was the loneliest episode yet. And I don’t say that just because of the deep-cutting words-free segment with the overturned chairs halfway through. Many of Tomoko’s delusions this episode were focused around the idea that she would fit in as a side character in most anime comedies. It’s something that’s possible in theory, but the reality of Tomoko’s character is that she’s abrasive, a poor communicator, and quick to give up, a combination of traits which might be charming alone but makes it fairly difficult to win hearts when mixed together in one pot. The fact that she was aiming for any sort of social life this week would be encouraging if she were just a bit more capable of recognizing the flaws that were keeping her from one. As it is, her disposition works best for the comedy that always keeps you on guard for the incoming nutshot; if you were actually rooting for her deep down, then you’d be taking far too many direct hits.

Free didn’t let up on the details as per usual. It might be only the second or third time I’ve seen an anime point out the poor quality of it’s written Engrish, a stickem take on a cliche that was further justified by it being written by a bunch of jock high schoolers. It packed in a little extra bit of realism by showing how information technology can be used to boost athletic performances. And it made the most of a nabe spill, resolving the subplot foremost in the minds of the viewers.

If I were her, I would have just picked up some non-corrective glasses

But the real reason Free sold out at the majority of online retailers is that it packs a good dramatic cast, and said cast was on display as well, approaching something that the show hadn’t really confronted up till now. The central arc of the show deals with the rivalry between Rin and Haru with roots dating back to when they were in the same swim club with Matoto and Nagisa. So where does Rei, the new kid who’s now friends with the latter three but just got involved 3 months ago fit into the equation?

9 plugged Rei into the Rin-Haru dynamic in a funny way. This ep showed a bit of the issue with carrying along long-term baggage; people get dragged in who have no idea what’s going on. When drama carries on past whatever generation started it, there’s a choice between forcing the new guy into it and letting him feel left out that nobody wants to have to face. The group explaining things to Rei did give the audience an opportunity to get a clearer view of the relationship as well (and the flashback at the beginning said a lot about Rin’s initial friendship with the three), but the effect it had on Rei was what ended up pushing the story forward. After that final scene that ended with Rei and Rin in a banchou-style staredown, I fully expect fireworks of some type

I’m hoping that whatever Rei ends up confronting Rin with brings a similar answer to Haru’s earlier in the episode; that their confrontation was no longer a dreaded grudgematch, but a rivalry of which he was eagerly anticipating the next installment of. Whether it is or not will set the stakes for the regional matchup.

Sorry for the incredibly late updates. I’ve had a busy time lately that I’d like to claim is all work’s fault, but it really has as much to do with Valkyria Chronicles 2 and the general greatness of Gatchaman Crowds. Which I’ve rewatched episodes of for hours episode 10 specifically, and is definitely the turning point pushing Kenji Nakamura past the ranks of very, very good situational directors into the tier of “watch me nail this magic trick I’ve never done before,” greats.*

Anyway, I’ll be getting back to writing over this weekend, skipping pics and just dishing my thoughts on the shows I was supposed to be covering** until I’m caught up. Also, look forward to some more crunched numbers; I’ve been running some data on anime adaptations of award-winning manga and the frequency of mecha anime pre- and post-3D mech animation techniques that should be ready relatively soon.

That said, let’s dive into the penultimate chapters of Dangan Ronpa, which didn’t so much take the premise and flip it on its head as they did show a vulnerable villain pulling out the cheapest cards in thier hand trying to cover their ass. Monokuma’s increasingly desperate scrambling was best illustrated by the moment where he pulled the plug on the pc right in the middle of the old principal’s video message. It’s been fun to watch how abrupt his panicking started; up until 3 weeks ago, he was holding pretty much all the cards. Naegi and co have really turned the tables, thanks at least in part to his terrible poker face.

The pseudo-execution in episode 12 was a neat bit of trickery. Since the executions have been rendered in a different style than the rest of the anime, those graphics set up the audience to expect a certain thing. So despite the main character being the one on the chopping block, I legitimately wasn’t sure what was going to happen. That’s getting some fancy payoff out of a move that seemed more than a little gimmicky at an earlier date.

I thought the series’ overarching plot was pretty stupid and convoluted when I was getting bits and pieces of the evidence, but lined up in a row, it’s actually pretty solid. If you can accept the amnesia, it makes a neat of sense. And the fact that it was delivered via a six-shooter of logic bullets straight to Monokuma’s face made it all the more glorious. My only complaint is that I’m not entirely sure what else is left for Naegi to prove, but I’m still looking forward to the finale of what’s been a solid show throughout.

*The fuller thoughts on this are in a review that’s been in editing since episode 5 or 6 started bringing in the show’s full-cash payoff, but the long and short of it is this; Gatchaman Crowds is as close to perfect as anime gets. In a genre and style markedly different from anything Kenji Nakamura’s done before. That’s a feat not at all common for anime directors. If you gave me an anime project and didn’t tell me the genre or format, there’s only 4 (now 5) guys I’m trusting to pitch the full 9 innings on resume alone; Takahiro Omori, Kishi Seiji, Ryutaro Nakamura, Taniguchi Goro, and now Kenji Nakamura.

I can name lots of people I’d like to see direct more in any one genre, but those are the guys who have killed it by making smackdown top-quality anime in multiple genres and situations. They don’t always hit home runs, but they aren’t held back by a fondness for one particular style or genre (look at how big of a departure Sakura Wars is from Serial Experiments Lain, or Koi Kaze from Baccano, or Kamisama Dolls from Astro Fighter Sunred). Each also has some ridiculously fascinating career arc (Kishi’s maximum-bro teamup with Makoto Uezu and Satoki Iida that turned an average career into a great one overnight, Nakamura’s getting getting his first career start from noitaminA and then coming back to resuscitate the timeslot after the Fractale debacle) that makes them an even more fascinating discussion prospect for an anime hall of fame. If it had one (not that it needs one, but you can’t deny it would be cool if one existed).

**Except for Space Brothers. It’s just talk to say stuff about that show every week without mentioning xenophobia or not sounding preachy, and it’s filibustering like a Senator in 2013.

Amidst all the vomiting and the awkward attempts to feign business to avoid attention, this episode probably had the most social incarnation of Tomoko thus far. Which led to some rather nice moments with her astoundingly not tripping over her own feet. But it also clarified some points that are preventing me from enjoying the show as much as I would otherwise.

It’s one thing to have a character who’s deliberately cast as alone due to her own shortcomings act accordingly. But the show takes Tomoko’s personality, especially the solo-monologue moments, a bit too far. I think the show shines best when it either has some double-misunderstanding laced interaction between her and some bystander, or just goes no-dialogue like that one scene where she locked her brother out of the bathroom. Hearing her call the more outgoing members of her class bitches or whatever over and over is markedly less funny material, and it’s a bit that’s gotten no less abundant over time. That and the subpar stretch in the middle are the biggest minuses I’m weighing on the scale as I decide how to score the show.

I give the general dialogue credit; it’s much less predictable than one would expect. Take the scene with the haunted house where Tomoko was trying to get Yuu scared. It’s a very common, tired cliche that the one who employs the haunted-house-fear-hug gambit is the one who ends up getting scared. Predictable, right? Except nobody did; the joke was that the haunted house just wasn’t scary. If I had to grossly oversimplify things, I think the show is a lot better at setting broad-strokes situations than it is pulling small-scale execution with its dialogue.

The background arc with the festival committee chairman who noticed Tomoko’s isolation was a neat feature, and a good example of what I’m talking about. She was introduced in a short scene, but was just a little more attentive to what Tomoko did after they bumped into each other than usual. As time went by, we saw her noticing Tomoko while on her rounds in just enough instances to get a good picture of what was going on. That was something that didn’t take a lot of time or internal monologues, but it still had a pretty smooth payoff at the end of the episode with the scene where she offered Tomoko an undercover hug.

Before the episode, a point: Free’s first volume posted a combined BD/DVD sales figure of 25,000 volumes. If this stays above 20,000 copies per volume (it will), it’ll log in as Kyoto Animation’s best-selling TV title since Houkago Teatime planted their feet in London. If it gets a decent second week boost, there’s a non-negligible chance it passes Clannad’s 24,808 average and goes into the studio’s all-time top 5 behind Haruhi, Lucky Star, and the K-ons. Oh, and that mark is generally good for somewhere between the 40th and 60th best selling TV anime of all time. Those are some legit numbers. By accounts I’ve heard, the farm-system novel that birthed Free, High Speed, is playing out fairly directly on the screen and doesn’t leave much room for a sequel. That said, if I were an exec at Kadokawa I’d be doing my best trying to see if I could finagle one in. Remember, ignoring whether or not the ending is open or closed, 50 percent of anime that sell 4000 copies per volume or more get a sequel. I did some garbage calculations with a smaller sample of the 27 non-sequels to sell 20k+ volumes, and found that all but 8 eventually got movie or TV sequels of some kind. That said, 2 of those 8 were Kyoto Animation products.*

Now that I’m done being a mid-level sales stats geek, the next obvious topic of discussion is how well-balanced the screentime was between characters. From their splitting melon breads at Rei’s house to their settling in at the hotel the way most high school athletes tend to do when at a hotel with no supervision (i.e. skipping the hotel and going out to have fun), this week offered plenty of opportunities to flesh out the cast. At this point, I think Free is pretty close to Ippo-swap theory territory; tell the story from the perspective of any other main character, rather than Haru, and the show is just as good. That’s not a knock, but a statement that they all have backgrounds and mindsets deep enough to carry a show on their own. And when your third-best character is strong enough to carry a show, you’re in pretty good shape.**

Nowhere was that strong breadth of developed character more evident than in the confrontation between Rin and Rei in the opening minutes. Rei was nothing this episode if not relentlessly hard-hitting. He managed to really dish it out on Rin, who didn’t have any answers for at least a few days after that talk where Rei somehow got extremely emotional (digging that triple-take on his mouth when he came as close to snapping as he did during that conversation) about the situation and managed to cooly bring Rin down several notches. The way he gave his own straightforward take – that he just wants to win with the teammates he’s got – so straight up undoubtedly forced Rin to do the same.
And it turns out, Rin does view his relationship with Haru as a rivalry. Despite his abrasive mannerisms, he drew fuel from his relationship with Haru in a way that not only restored his passion for the sport but made him a much better athlete. It’s just too bad he had to be Reggie Miller in 1994 to do it. I can gel with that approach, but it did come with consequences, stuff he’s going to have to deal with.

In light of the revelation of Rin’s using his rivalry with Haru as fuel for his passion, the ending was an (admittedly telegraphed) shot to the solar plexus. I can think of few voices better than that of Vincent Bold*** to deliver the disappointing news. It really ties back to the main theme of the episode; while Rin was ultimately using his enmity with Haru as fuel, he took his single-mindedness far enough that he ended up with not a whole lot left. The dude has my sympathies, but it’s a bit of self-inflicted karma after the extent to which he antagonized Haru.

All of which leads into the obvious question mark; now that the series has deprived itself of the poetic kinetic showdown finish, what angle do they take to close out strong? Actually, I’d tinker that question around a bit – I’ve seen plenty of sports anime/manga pull off the all-stars-in-alignment final showdown, but it’s much rarer for them to sidestep a physical climax.**** Free’s in comparatively uncharted territory, but that just means there’s a number of vectors to explore. I’d welcome a longer-term epilogue and the Rin and Haru resolving their differences in a good “I got you this burger so let’s sit in silence for a second so we can apologize to each other like adults” talk. So long as it doesn’t end on a Tiger and Bunny style sequel hook that’ll kick things ahead to whenever, I’m fine with anything.

*You could argue that Lucky Star got a sequel, but I could counter that it was an ONA which was a) directed by prima-donna and Fractale-debacle architect Yamamoto Yutaka with Studio Ordet, b) 4 minutes per episode, and c) near-universally panned.

**Cut to Kenji Nakamura nodding sagely while Toshiya Ono gleefully waves around paper cutouts of Hajime Ichinose, Berg-Katze, and Paiman in the background.

***I just realized the swim team captain shares his VA. So does the Class F’s sad sack teacher from BakaTest.

****Except for Touch, where manga’s patron saint of Baseball Romance Adachi Mitsuru took about 15 chapters after the last instance of the former to build up the climax of the latter. Yet another reason Touch is the greatest baseball manga not to feature performance-based contracts.

The ending for this series was very much its twelfth episode. It opened with a recap and ended with a loop to the beginning, showing a main character who made no real progress as a person. It wasn’t a conclusion that was difficult to predict, but it does again highlight the biggest weakness of a show that expects one character to carry the entire show on her back with only a bunch of situational humor as a sidekick. As it is, it’s a fun show, but by no means the best comedy of the year (or even the season).

Aside from the one almost-moment with Imai at the end, the meat of the episode were a few skits highlighting Tomoko’s attempt to get attention in the class: using a hidden mike to try and figure out why she was so indistinct and squashing a cockroach (as if that would turn things around in one swing). With her rocket-high expectations in the cockroach scene and her cutting off the daily talks with her brother, it seems she’s no closer to realizing that being popular will take constant effort than she was in episode 1. Too, the Another reference in the mike scene, one of the shallowest references in the show, didn’t help the humor content of that skit.

To top it off, the beginning and ending of the episode were a low-pizazz clip show and a looped running sequence (to be fair, Yuu getting distracted by the cat at the end was pretty neat). Not exactly the kind of thing that’ll put me any higher up on a show that I was still trying to decide how I felt about.

WataMote’s ending may have been climactic when judged against the rest of the show, but it was a fairly typical one structure-wise. As much as I liked the show, I feel it would have worked just as well if it were half the length. In a way, the irreverent premise that is its biggest selling point (one loner character taking most of the spotlight), is also the show’s biggest weakness; it ultimately lacks the second gear that a comedy with multiple characters can get by playing them off against each other. Compare it with Joshiraku, Full Metal Panic, or even Servant x Service this season, where the characters don’t have amazing amounts of depth but make up for it in a number of ways, and it falls short of the upper tier of anime comedies. It probably would have been able to get away with that in a 4-6 episode OVA, but it comes off as a show with a solid opening kick that spreads itself thinner and thinner over time.

Final Scores:

Character Designs: 1/1 (Tomoko’s design, the most critical one, is a smooth fit, varying between bushy-cute and clearly a little ugly depending on the situation.)

Soundtrack: 2/2 (Tomoko’s voice actress nails the antisocial bent of her character, and the music is well-fitted to the awkward situations the show provides.)

Writing: 1/3 (Creates clever scenarios and has a suitable main character, but is handicapped by the lack of any real consistent second banana cast members.)

Direction: 3/4 (Probably the biggest plus of the show. It’s visually clever with plenty of pop, and never tells a joke the same way more than 2 or 3 times.)

Overall: 7/10 (Being well-made makes the show worth watching, but don’t expect it to flip the switch and kick into a higher gear.)

The two biggest unresolved plot threads of Free going into the final episode (Rin’s suspension from the relay team and the effects on his and Haru’s burgeoning rivalry) closely shadowed one of the show’s bigger strengths (its strong cast) but weren’t exactly playing to the show’s big strength; its kinetic visual sense. Given that, the direction the ending went wasn’t a huge shock. Though it was admittedly not one hundred percent something that I had anticipated, it still went down the right pipe.

Rin taking his benching as hard as he did, with his subsequent Rich Tenenbaum-esque meltdown, set the stage for Rei to decide things and get everybody on the same page. It was very big of him to let Haru and the others know where things stood between them and Rin (i.e. a rivalry rather than a cold war), even knowing he was losing his chance to race this time. That explanation makes what the guys did next, running out into the streets to look for Rin and get him in their lineup so they could be dq’ed together, work as a plot point.* It’s the right sentimental 80s sports movie decision, but it needed that degree of justification.

Once the four got to the blocks, it was all whipped cream for Hiroko Ustumi and staff, who’ve already done good swimming scenes without having excess Kyoto Animation last-episode budget to blow. Not much to say about the race, which combined smooth, high-quality animation with split-second enhancement cuts backed by a narrative blowout win, except that it was a thing of beauty.

With everything now forgiven and the battle lines of the rivalry drawn, I think the stage has been set for a second season (the one hinted at in the credits) that makes use of the cast and their relationships, rather than a rival out of nowhere. All the more reason to look forward to a year from now. Here’s to sports anime that sell like hotcakes.

Character Designs: 1/1 (Characters have expressive faces that display a wide range of emotions, from embarrassment to anguish to joy. Too, each guy has muscles that makes him look every bit the athlete.)

Soundtrack: 2/2 (The beats in Free are best described as a athletic, pump-you-up music that belongs in a stadium jockey’s default set. Oh, and add this to the growing list of modern shows that properly understands the conditional value of silence.)

Writing: 2/3 (There were times when the plot got a tad melodramatic, but by and large it’s a believable sports drama with a likeable cast.)

Direction: 3/4 (Succeeded visually at both delivering fancy when it needed fancy excess and delivering understated emotions when it needed understated emotions.)

Overall: 8/10 (If you like sports anime, Free is a solid one, with a likeable cast and more kinetic acumen than you can shake a stick at. If you’re purely into anime for school-life comedy, you’ll find it scores on that front as well.)

*Even if it is improbable how quickly they were able to exit the arena, locate him, and make it back in time for the race. Small potatoes compared to, say, Wild Tiger’s Hundred Power, but stuff like that does irritate me.

Based on the formula it had followed thus far, I felt I had a pretty good idea of where Dangan Ronpa was going with its ending. I was wrong; the ending packed a genuine twist that flipped the premise on its head, tossing a bunch of huge endgame plusses for the show into the pot.

Initially, I thought the amnesia plot was just a shoddy pull to justify some of the looser parts of the final mystery. With a few strokes of a pen, the script quickly changed it into something much more relevant – a layer of poison on top of the kids’ much sought-after freedom. Without knowing whether the world was actually a crapsack cesspit the way Junko alleged (and goodness did she make a convincing case; consider how hard it would have been to fabricate a story like that on the fly), they faced a choice not between freedom and imprisonment, but freedom and safety. Obviously a big difference there; even before the “murder Naegi if you want to live” factor got tossed into the equation.

All of that layering on the final dilemma made it all the more critical that the ending was open-ended the way it was. If we find out it was either a lie or the truth, it’s a simple case of “oh, they were right” or “oh, they got snookered”. The ambiguous ending shifts the discussion, making it less about the decision’s outcomes than about the process behind it. Which is a debate with much deeper potential, since there are legitimately compelling arguments to each side. They went over their reasons to vote to escape in-show (an obligation to try and help the world, plus the possibility that Junko may have been lying), and the reasons one might not want to enter an outside world full of psychopathic Monokuma-masked mobs are fairly self-evident, but I can imagine kicking around this topic for a good 20 minutes or so and getting pretty far with it. Definitely had more impact than a flat-out sunshine and rainbows ending.

One side note, I was really impressed by all of Junko’s persona-shifting this episode, and the attitude she took once the kids all chose to leave and she was enforcing her own execution. That high-energy personality is a pretty close match for the sort of person I would actually imagine were controlling Monokuma. Towards the end of the series when Monokuma was sweating it out and losing his cool, I fully expected the person behind the curtain wouldn’t embrace their villainy in shameless Dio Brando style. The finale would not have been half as good without her deliberately milking every line of dialogue she got. Even if she wasn’t controlling Monokuma after all.

When I cracked open Dangan Ronpa back in July, I had it pegged for a game adaptation that knew its limitations and enjoyed being flippant and cheesy with its source material. That was more or less the flavor it had, with each arc using more-developed characters to tell a more advanced story while also dialing up the high-energy acting. It was also a fairly well-built mystery, splitting each murder trial into one week of clues and one week of answers, letting ideas percolate in the interim. And it came on strong at the end, tying the plot together in a nice neat bow. It may not be a perfect mystery series, but it’s damn good.

Character Designs: 1/1 (For a series that makes excessive, elaborate murders its bread and butter, shock is the one emotion that needs to be done well. Guess which one DR’s characters are particularly good at showing.)

Soundtrack: 2/2 (Not often a noticeable part of the show, but only because most of the time it blends in with the scenery to passive support what the rest of the show is trying to do.)

Writing: 2/3 (While some of the case setups are a tad rudimentary, it’s always possible to guess at the answer from the clues given in show. The cast of characters is a fun one and become more so as the cast is culled of the fat leading up to the ending.)

Direction: 4/4 (Embraces the excess nature of the script with a very campy, game-esque sense of presentation. Particularly good at hiding vital clues in plain sight without interrupting the flow of the story.)

Overall: 9/10 (One of the fresher “kids abducted and forced to kill each other in some survival game” genre stories out there. Definitely worth a try if you think the genre’s getting a little stale.)

When anime franchises get rebooted, it’s fairly typical for the new staff to take it in a new direction and make something extra-special to celebrate the anniversary of a classic product. For examples of this done incredibly well, look no further than the 2012 Lupin III series or the 2009 Mazinger reboot. For the example of this done perfectly, take a gander at Kenji Nakamura’s take on the decades-old Gatchaman franchise and watch him take an already stellar skill set to a whole other level.

Meet the show with the year’s best villain, the year’s best protagonist, the year’s best two-person dialogue chain, the year’s most relevant-to-society themes, the year’s second-best opening (got Jaeger’d by the number one), the year’s best panda, and the best one-word BGM track in anime.

Meet Gatchaman Crowds.

At its core, Gatchaman Crowds follows a story similar to the core premise of the original Gatchaman franchise; a powerful, capable calamity from beyond the stars is bringing his A-game trying to bring humanity to its knees, while the titular team of chosen heroes tries to stop him. GC takes that core and builds off it. While keeping in mind the old precepts of Gatchaman, the show presents an alternative type of villainy (the not entirely unprecedented playfully aggressive manipulations of Berg Katze) and an alternative type of counter-scientific ninja (the very unpredictable Hajime Ichinose) that calls for a new approach to heroism.

Have you ever watched a show where the hero-villain dialogue seemed like it came from a can about 2 days after its expiration date? There are only so many ways to package conversations between heroes and villains when their personalities are ones that have been matched up hundreds of time before. Scriptwriter Toshiya Ono doesn’t so much sidestep that problem as judo slam it smack onto the pavement. From open to the very end, every single conversation between Hajime and Katze is two separate games of verbal speed chess: the in-show one where Katze tries to knock Hajime off balance whilst she dodges every barb he throws with confounding but assured finesse, and the out-of-show one required to sluice the floodgates and let the dialogue flow as natural as water from a steam geyser. It helps that, as the show begins to hit its climax, these conversations happen while buildings are getting blown up.

The show’s approach to using CG models is also a bit different from the norm. The first episode reveals a bunch of snazzy 3D effects: armor suits, transformation sequences, big freaky monsters, the works. The show then proceeds to use them very sparingly. The show isn’t about the Gatchaman team fighting villains with violence, but winning a war for the soul of humanity. Katze wants to destroy the earth, but he delights in having the planets he crushes self-destruct. So the majority of the villains the team fights are humans. And the majority of trials the team faces are not explicitly villainous, but rather natural disasters or broader social problems stirred up by Katze’s influence. Especially when facing these broader social issues, the team plays up to the challenge, swapping methods to suit their needs like some sort of politically-motivated Black Jack. They use social media, make PR visits to kindergarten, and enlist the help of a Prime Minister who starts out as a stock whiny bureaucrat and ends up acting like a character straight from the mind of Kaiji Kawaguchi. These outreach efforts connect them to the rest of the cast, a lineup of professionals who don’t get a ton of screentime but come across as believable cogs in the world where the story takes place.

All of the above is a list of the biggest reasons why Gatchaman Crowds should be at the top of your to-watch list (and looks a respectable commercial success, to boot), but there’re plenty more plusses in this math equation. There’s a gay guy and a crossdresser as part of the cast, and the aforementioned traits are not their most distinctive feature. It knows how to be really, really slick cool with the camera angles and the bgm. It pulls a trick with a lighter and a cigarette that’s straight out of one of Futakoi Alternative’s golden moments; a whole Gatchaman bgm sequence in episode 10 where they play the full song for the first time to give a certain debate heavier dramatic weight. It does the little things as well as it does the big things, and the result is a fantastic superhero story that is as engaging to watch as it is to consider afterwards.

Character Designs: [Kinoko]

1/1 (Each member of the gatchaman team has a coordinated look that matches their personality, to say nothing of Berg Katze.)

Soundtrack: [Taku Iwasaki, SD - Yukio Nagasaki]

2/2 (In addition to the one awesome track up above, the ost features a smorgasbord of stuff, ranging from heavy dramatic to floaty futuristic.)

Writing: [Toshiya Ono]

3/3 (Phenomenal take on a superhero premise, mixing a host of disparate elements in a combination that works more or less perfectly.)

Direction: [Kenji Nakamura]

4/4 (Delivers action, inspiration, and machine-gun brinksmanship dialogue with polished expertise, setting up a roller coaster that just keeps speeding up for the latter two-thirds of the show.)

Overall:

10/10 (It’s the best anime of the year bar none. Probably one of my top 20 all-time series, for whatever that’s worth.)

I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the show’s promise of more plot, and this episode was more or less what I expected in that regard. The worst part was the scene with Miroku in the car with Mitsuki. Is it really necessary for this show to force its title down my throat with a bunch of terminology? Do they really need to go that far out of the way to explain the concept of a super-S class demon to an experienced audience? Though, granted, a lot of that scene was the shadowy organization’s Miroku spewing bull intentionally to throw the protagonists into confusion. There have been many, many better monologues this year alone; his was just poorly presented, opaque foreshadowing.

Still, at least it was more subtle than the imagery surrounding Akihito’s flashback sequence.

But I do continue love the extent to which Akihito’s glasses thing hasn’t been expanded upon. It’s really common, though avoidable, for shows to get caught up describing the particular fetishes of certain cast members at length and ad nauseum seemingly without realizing that their jokes are much less funny than the writers seem to think. In this case, not only is the comedy showing a bare amount of variety, but it’s not taking up way more space than it should for the level it’s at. Though the joke of the episode has to go to Ayaka for that little bit of businesswoman’s acumen.

Back to the larger point, I think the problem is less that the plot of this portion has been bad and more just that the villains lack anything compelling. They certainly aren’t likeable enough to root for, and they’re far from hateable enough to root against. I’m not saying I need them to murder a bus full of orphans, but I need them to do something more than present threats of a vaguely specified nature against one or two of the protagonists. At the very least, doing that well is a strengths of shows well outside KnK’s genre bracket. Mid-tier battles series work better when the opponents are easy to lay into, not when they’re putting the hero into a temporary coma for unspecified reasons. As it is, I’d rather the show be putting the screentime into the “spirit warriors hunting incredibly vulnerable game” subplot that the calm has brought about, or any given loose world-thread introduced previously. There’s a limit to what sort of plot you can introduce based on what type of characters you have, and Jukki Hanada seemingly wasn’t in his element there.

That said, I did like how they linked up Mirai heading to Akihito’s bedside with Miroku’s fairly obvious, though still unspecified, aggression. That’s the sort of setup for a last-minute save that good battle series thrive on. That, and this breed of likably-hatable facial expression:

I was expecting a more straightforward head-on confrontation after the arrangement of battleships opposite one another last week, but this show surprised me again. It was a sense of surprise that went from cautiously neutral to pleasant, as the cast just ended up in a scenario that was equal parts smooth-talking negotiations and beach party. There’s certainly an appeal to the way Gunzou picked, the subversive-diplomacy-verging-on-bribary option. It’s just a shame the ship he was trying to lull ate the peppers first, disarming the live charm-offensive grenade Gunzou and the crew tossed out. The slight expression of realization from Iona when she looked at Kongou’s plate was beyond priceless.

Beyond that, I gotta say that I really liked the beach party portion of the episode. One of the pleasures in anime with even decent casts of character is just watching them bounce off one another in goofy freestyle, and the beach party was just jam packed with that. In addition to bulking up the charming aspects of them all, it also doubles as a bonding experience for everyone on team Gunzou, as they hadn’t really had time to hang out as a group and gel before now. It should make the next episode, which will presumably contain a straight-up blow-by-blow with the now guns-blazing Kongou, worth the wait.

It’s a testament to the chemistry the show’s been building between the main four that the drama over Akihito’s transformation this time felt as real as it did. I particularly liked the scene where Mirai found his notes on her birthday gift; that was a nice, quiet package of emotion.

Unfortunately, that was one of the few things I liked about this episode, the rest was full of irritating, bush-league cliches.

For starters, the fight between Izumi and Miroku had a textbook bad fight trope that’s always bothered me. It’s a really cheap dodge when someone gets hit by an attack and it’s an illusion all along; if it wasn’t previously established that it was possible, the guy comes off less as a strong character and more as one the writers will allow to pull powers out of their ass. I know this wasn’t the main focus of the episode, but these little things are still important.

Miroku last episode was shallowly manipulative, and Izumi doing the same routine this week was little better. I mean, it’s pretty clear to the audience that Izumi manipulated the current situation as well, so her attempt to pit Mirai against Akihito for real feels like a very shallow plan. It’s more frustrating than compelling to watch, and while I like how the rest of the cast took it, these two have pretty consistently been the low point of the show. This whole plot would have been a lot worse if Hiromi hadn’t spotted her machinations pretty quickly.

And in the first place, isn’t it weird that characters shown to have been pretty freakishly strong and outclass Mirai for much of the series aren’t just setting up a favorable battle for themselves? That wrinkle just makes the transparent manipulations seem even more forced. I’m not at all sure the ending is going to be satisfying at this point.

If I had to list of things I really like about the show at this point, after putting down the whole “you can’t stop the future” attitude behind its production, the next thing immediately on the list would be that awesome battle soundtrack. It’s nice to feel like every part of the show is bringing the big-drama gear to the table, and nothing says unshakeable like the way the music maxed out and the camera zoomed around when Hyuga opened off the combative festivities.

This battle was a lot more conversation-heavy than I expected. While there was a lot of nicely done SFX going on, complete with some mega-cannon versus mega-cannon action, it did lack the feeling of grit and desperation that characterized the earlier battles in the show. I probably would be harsher on it if the effects of the continued probing of Kongou’s philosophy on the part of Gunzou’s team wasn’t part of a deliberate plan to put her off her edge. Still, the net effect of the way the battle was shown definitely cut out some tension; it was essentially a countdown where you knew that Iona and Gunzou were going to survive to see reach zero.

What I liked far more about this episode was the content of the conversations. Compared to last week, the raised stakes in the background lent an edge to the way they handled themselves, and made Takao in particular a bit more fun to root for. The dialogue first came off as a little bit too textbook teaching robots to love, but it branched out into a bit more depth once Iona (who’s been quieter and presumably left more unsaid) got talking. And, as previously mentioned, the punchline that it was all to distract Kongou was a nice sinker.

I-400 and 402 making their move after the end credits happened real fast. I doubt the main couple would actually die in such a manner, but it’s definitely a legitimate question as to how exactly they’re going to survive 50+ atmospheres of pressure. As always, it’s a cliffhanger that kept me interested in the action.

This is honestly a hard episode to comment on. Five minutes in, I was all ready to put on my hype hat and just shower it with praise for sidestepping the colossal, ill-conceived excess drama that pervaded the second half, opting instead for a three-episode aftermath, like a more extreme version of the twelfth episode of Ookamikakushi cross-bred with the final exam from Hunter x Hunter. Unfortunately, that decision wasn’t the one the writer actually made.

Instead, we got an an episode that was, among other things, a poorly placed and overly long downswing in pacing. I get that they were going for added drama by having Mirai turn out to be an assassin all along, but do they really need to show each meeting she had with the Nase family about that job? Every bit of information I needed on that I got through the initial reveal. With much more pressing questions (Mirai’s apparent death being one of them) on the table, the entire second half of the episode felt like a colossal waste of time.

What’s more, I’m close to 90% sure that Mirai’s death is almost certainly going to be overturned by some sort of spirit magic or deus ex machina. If she doesn’t, it means the show traded an opportunity to show a few episodes of characters interacting for a few episodes of characters angsting over naught, effectively swapping a chance to show off its strong points for a chance to have a “proper” climax. If she does die, that means the show killed off a heroine for a very weak underlying reason; three capable expert handlers can keep Akihito’s dark side in check, so it’s very implausible they’d need to resort to underhanded ploys requiring outside help to bring him down if they really wanted to do so.I mean, there’s a veritable standing army of exorcists waiting to profit off the calm. They could have been paid to finish off a major threat at any time if it was really important enough to require immediate attention.

A lot of this frustration on my part does chase back to the fact that the show’s titular demon really doesn’t seem like much of a world-destroying threat, but it also hurts that the shadowy-dealings part of the show are just so token and canned. I’ve seen really good plots about leaders having to do the wetwork to keep the world safe, but when the majority of damage caused by the supposed threat to the world they’re trying to seal is caused by their sealing efforts, it’s very hard to take their motives seriously.

Depending on how my schedule for next week goes, this might end up the last episode of the show I actually watch. It seems dead set in showing off its weak points, and the outlook for the conclusion is not particularly promising.

I have to admit, I was expecting a lot more of this episode to focus on the rest of the cast’s effort to rescue the now-submerged Iona and Gunzou. I wasn’t expecting, or even really hoping for, a focus on those two. But that’s the direction the show decided to go in, and it produced an outstanding piece of work as a result. There were a few moments where they went a little overboard with the drama (Takao’s sacrifice laid it on pretty thick), but the majority of this episode was quietly stuffed with character detail for Iona and Gunzou.

One thing that really stood out to me in this episode was the lack of noise all throughout the entire time Gunzou and Iona were trapped on the ocean floor. The merits of prolonged silence/lack of music as a scene design choice are many. It’s a really, really powerful tool, and it shows the staff trust their characters-slash-material-technique enough to stand out without what’s normally one of the key aspects of presentation. The better your OST is, the more guts it takes to ditch it.* This was, in hindsight, the perfect choice for the very isolated and quietly urgent atmosphere of that scene.

That sound direction by an uncredited staff member isn’t the only impressive technical part of this episode. There was also return on an investment Kishi Seiji had been making for weeks; Iona’s initially robotic motions and expressions have become much more human. One of the central points of the episode was that Iona had evolved as a character enough to prioritize Gunzou’s life over the fulfillment of the nominal #1 objective. To that end, it helped a lot that she was showing very real, if subtle concern on her face while she was finding out that cold temperatures are bad for humans.

I’m not entirely clear on where the show stand for the ending at this point. It would be anticlimactic if the crew just managed to successfully deliver the warhead, especially with so many loose threads (Kongou, the creepy twins, and the long-term outcome of the conflict) still out there. It feels likely we’ll wind up with another naval battle and successful completion of the mission at hand to close out the show, with a possible sequel hook mixed in.**

*Somewhat related tangent; it’s been a while since I’ve seen Figure 17. That series is notable in quite a few ways; it was one of the first series to adopt the one hour, once per month format later used by Katanagatari. Another way was that it pulled a version of what Arpeggio just did, putting in something on the order of 20 minutes of straight silence to honor a somber time in the lead female’s life. Which had the unintentional side effect of making it perfectly clear just how weak the series’ default soundtrack was.

**Not at all out of the question, given the fact that the amazon special edition of the show’s first volume sold out about 20 days before the release after getting something in the range of 4000 preorders. With another 1000 apiece for the regular BD (preorders have skyrocketed after the limited one cashed out) and the DVDs, the sequel probability equation predicts a 44% chance for a sequel if the show gets no license, produces no notable increase in manga sales***, and goes on sale today without getting 15 extra days of preorders.

***It quite possibly did cause an increase in manga sales; volume 7 didn’t chart in the May when the threshold was 19000 volumes, and volume 8 sold 33000 volumes at the end of October. That might be lowballing gains on that side, as I’ve found in the 2011 and 2012 data that gains in sales from volumes released less than two months after the anime airs are usually dwarfed by subsequent totals.

From the beginning, Kyoukai no Kanata reminded me of a mid-major series; the type of show laced with explosive potential and nuclear flaws for which execution makes the difference between all-time and forgettable. There are many of these types of shows, though comparatively few that I’ve followed this season.* And while they might not always end up being entertaining to watch, they’re always very enlightening to discuss, because they’re the easiest case studies for the difference execution can make for the same core set of ideas. This show fits that paradigm to a T; it has a very definite set of strengths and weaknesses, and does not understand what they are. An episode that stuffed in some questionable presentation choices with very genuine moments from the main cast served to underscore that core issue.

It’s hard to mention good ideas executed poorly without mentioning how the music terrifically clashed with the scenery at the end there. There’s no question that opening/ending themes can be used in a number of powerful ways; I’ve seen it work enough times (via Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Un-Go, to name two recent examples) to know it’s a pretty reliable tactic. What separated this from, say, Kuragehime bringing back the love, is that the opening isn’t very well-fitted to the scene in question. It reminds me of Zetsuen no Tempest earlier this year, which ran an upbeat happy ending song that did not at all sync with a scene that was unmistakably hoping to be tragic. I actually liked this scene because of how dynamic that hug was, so it’s a step up from the worst case, but that came the emotions behind it, a strength that came out in spite of the musical accompaniment.

While the show is going through the motions of an extremely forgettable dramatic plot, many of its enjoyable parts, the ones that popped out in the first episodes and continue to carry it as a whole. The non-antagonistic cast still has great banter routines. The fight choreography is still desperately great. It’s at the point where the finale could very reasonably dock or add a point to my final score depending on how the variables shake out. Depending, of course, on the execution of it all.

*By my count, the “least surprising surprises” mid-major slate this season consists of Outbreak Company, Arpeggio, maybe Kyoukai, and maybe Samurai Flamenco that’s it. All the others were ones you either knew what they were about from the outset (White Album and Golden Time with romance, Kuroko’s Basketball with guys playing supersports, Gingitsune and Non Non Biyori with their atmospheric everyday life, etc.), very heavily teased what they would be about, or were checked out of the game from week one. I call bullshit on anyone who claims to have cracked the rubik’s cube that is SF or the lottery that is OBC after one episode.

If it hasn’t been abundantly clear, I love the way this show just faces 12 o’clock down a straight line and does what it wants with supreme gusto. Lining up 22 frickin’ battleships in a row and sweeping them like bowling pins with a combination of Space Battleship Yamato’s wave motion gun and Initial D’s inertial drift was an excellent way to start the episode off. And that testosterone-pumping curbstomp was followed by a hilarious exchange; the two-second fade to a sad ditty when Takao was mentioned only for her to show up and point out she wasn’t dead was a great way to get mileage out of last week’s overly melodramatic sacrifice scene.*

Since the narrative’s not Onepunchman perfect enough to give us a full episode of curbstomps and witty banter, the majority of the episode was dedicated to the confrontation between Iona and her two sister ships. This particular battle got a lot closer towards the scrappy pragmatism the crew displayed while dealing with Haruna and Kirishima way back in episode 4, as they whipped out decoys with live ammo and a submarine-grade fishing net to pull out the victory. Iona’s emotional role in that confrontation was a bit less nuanced than her previous interactions with Gunzou, but it filled in some variety and kept the scene moving.

I didn’t have any doubt that Kongou  was headed for a breakout when we saw her in King Kong chains that were meant to be broken. All they had to do was make her angry and *poof*, Death Star.

I think the comedic and combat elements of the series, while individually satisfying, could have been integrated a bit more fully rather than split across more tightly defined arcs, with a lot more light material in the middle. That said, I have no real issue with the naval combat being used more to bookend the comedic parts of the series if the finale is a well-handled 3-way between super-Iona, a giant enemy fleet, and Death Star Kongou.

*Nostalgia tangent: For the record, the best time that happened was the midway climax of Dai-Guard, when everybody’s making mournful observations on the radio about the supposedly-dead Akagi Shunsuke while he’s in a truck on his way there, causing the guy driving him to double over in suppressed laughter. Good times.

I suppose I could wait until dishing on the episode itself to call this show a disappointment, but that is what it is. The shoddy serious plot handicapped a fun cast and a skilled director, and ultimately had no implications on how the story ended. There was a lot of pain and suffering to return to a status quo that would have totally still been maintained without said pain and suffering. Effectively, the whole of the nonsense that the people nominally trying to prevent a disaster caused resulted in the titular youmu being sealed (perfectly safely) right back inside of Akihito.And that wasn’t even the most bald-faced part of the script. The straight-up ass pull to revive Mirai at the end was considerably. In these past 3 episodes, she’s been dead, not really dead, dead again, and not really dead again. And that final example happened for no reason in the context of the story, beyond the meta one that the main heroine needs to be alive to bait people for a sequel hook.

I rag on Jukki Hanada for Mirai coming back at the end, but that’s ultimately a secondary detail. There was no binary choice that would have salvaged the show this late in the game. Regardless of whether Mirai lived, died, or died and was resurrected for no reason at the end, it remains a fact that the show spent a good half its run on a dramatic plot that was weakly justified, poorly handled, and not at all fun to watch. I’ll keep my fond memories of this show from the first half, but there wasn’t a whole lot in the second worth its weight.

There were some pluses to the finale. Akihito’s voice acting in the first two minutes may have been horrendous, but after that, the banter started to really flow between the two and the scene got progressively more comfortable to watch. The visuals were, as usual, well-handled; the ET shot with the motorcycle and the Lupin-esque climb up a 70 degree slope were a good deal of fun. I just wish there was even an average script behind it so I could remember it for those aspects.

Character Designs: 1/1 (Every cast member has looks that match their personality, and details in the design lend themselves to more elaborate fight animation.)

Soundtrack: 1/2 (The music is serviceable, but lacks either a strongly unique flavor or seamless integration with the scenes.)

Writing: 0/3 (Attempted a serious plot that was both generic and ultimately pointless, with extremely uncompelling villains. Even with the enjoyable first half, I can’t reasonably call what happened here a replacement level script.)

Direction: 4/4 (Showed off a great deal of visual sense beyond the stylish fight scenes, handling still-frame moments with care.)

Overall: 6/10 (Starts out as a fun series with potential and spends most of the latter half playing to its weaknesses.)

Before this episode I was perfectly willing to stick the show with an 8 or a 9 for an effective variation of comedy and combat that had a first gear that it wasn’t always in. Thankfully, this was one of those episodes that took the decision well and fully out of my hands. While the structure of the climax smacked very heavily of an anime-original story, the spectacle dial was cranked up to the highest level and we ended up with action scene after action scene that probably would have broken the show’s budget had it been a non-3D anime.*

What particularly did it for me was the once scene of Iona evading the missiles while airborne. I mean, we knew mental models could do superhuman things, but that was nothing if not a spectacle rivaling some episodes of Asura’s Wrath. To say nothing of the Unlimited Blade Works biz Kongou pulled out once Iona actually reached her. I’m gonna remember that scene for a long time. Forget what I’ve been saying about not being able to do full-body motion in 3D anime, and lump it in with what I’ve been saying about 3D anime in general; it’s demonstrably doable (Kishi & Uezu, 2013).

Two side notes before I finish up. First, if there was one thing I liked about Kirishima, it was the silliness of her being in a Teddy Bear while retaining her core personality. Nowhere was that more on display than the moment in this episode when the Bear started going Arrivederci all over the missile swarm readouts.

Second, aside from the first episode and one bit in episode 5, the show has been nigh-entirely devoid of flashbacks, opting to introduce characters by having them do things. This didn’t just mean devoting full episodes at a time to particular characters, but showing how both the crew and various enemies reacted to a variety of situations. Given the 12-episode nature of the anime and the fact that the plot was packed as tight as it was, that seems like an even better decision in hindsight.

Character Designs: 1/1 (Even characters that seemed robotic at first proved capable of a wide emotional range as the story progressed.)

Soundtrack: 2/2 (Well matched to both the tense naval battles and awkward social situations the crew found themselves in.)

Writing: 2/3 (Steadily built up a likeable cast, and set some very entertaining battle scenarios.)

Direction: 4/4 (In addition to building a generally solid alternating comedy/battle atmosphere, Kishi Seiji does an excellent job in covering for what was mostly the largest deficiency, full-body locomotion, of the animation style, liberally applying cutaways, reduced FPS, and other visual slights-of-hand to keep the show entertaining. Too, the action is an expensive display not to be missed.)

Overall: 9/10 (A very entertaining ride throughout, partially thanks to the aspects it borrows from 70s/80s era military anime.)

*A perfect time to stick in a reiteration of the point about how using 3D opens, rather than closes, doors for anime as a whole when it’s not being used purely to cut corners.