Some of you may be watching this kdrama remake of a jdrama remake of a tdrama adaptation of an anime adaptation of a manga (OK it’s probably just an adaptation of the manga, but it’s way more fun to say that way). To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the manga; I dropped it pretty quickly and only know the basic outline of the plot. The thing that made me watch this version is simple: my undying affection for Koo Hye Sun. Sure, Pure 19 was sweet and all, but it’s her wide range of absolutely adorable facial expressions that endears her to me. With visions of her in my mind, I plunged into the first episode of Boys Over Flowers.

What I found was a new kind of rage inside myself.

The show begins innocently enough, with Geum Jan Di, daughter of a dry cleaner, delivering laundry to the most elite escalator school in S Korea, Shinhwa School. At the same time she is on her way to deliver the clothes, a boy enrolled in the school is facing a brutal attack by the hands of several students, so severe, in fact, that he decides the only way to end the ridicule is to take his own life. Jan Di, realizing that this man, Lee Min Ha, is the designated recipient of the laundry, tries to get him to pay first, before jumping (lol). Min Ha tells her to bill it to his family, then jumps, but it a daring move, Jan Di manages to catch him before he can fall.

The whole scene is captured on camera and film by a crowd of student onlookers, and Jan Di quickly finds herself at the heart of a national debate on bullying in elite schools, and the powerful Shinhwa Corporation decides that the only way to save face in this is to offer her a spot in the prestigious school.

Reluctant at first, Jan Di decides to attend Shinhwa. Soon after her first day, she realizes that the boy she saved was being bullied by a group of students known as the Flower 4, or F4. Apparently, these boys are the sons of the richest and most powerful families in S Korea, and they practically run the school. If you get on their bad side, they can make life a living hell for you simply by placing a card with their symbol in your locker. The would-be jumper Min Ha found one of these in his locker that fateful day.

Sounds great, right? Off to a neat start, with lots of promise. Let me tell you what I hoped might happen:

Strong-willed Jan Di, who was brought up to respect others and herself, is the first person ever to stand up to the sadistic and sociopathic F4. Galled by her arrogance, the F4 sets to make her life just as miserable as every one else who crosses them. As it turns out, the leader of the F4 is none other than the son of the owner of the Shinhwa corporation, and he is every bit as cruel and soulless as you would imagine. Though hurt by their cruelty, Jan Di refuses to be embarrassed by what she sees as the fault of the F4. Feeling sorry for them, she decides that they should learn a lesson in humility.

During the first few weeks, while dealing with constant ridicule from the other students, she finds a friend in Min Ha, the man she saved from a suicide attempt. Her bravery led him to find it within himself to stand up to F4 himself, saving Jan Di from a brutal attack by a group of beautiful but sadistic girls in the locker room. Grateful and impressed, they begin a journey to teach the students of Shinhwa academy that it is personal integrity and kindness towards others that is the way to get ahead in life, not birthright and pettiness.

Through many adventures together in the school, a romance grows between our heroine and Min Ha, who as it turns out is the heir to a modest but substantial fortune that his parents made in the textile business, leading to a partnership between Jan Di’s father and Mr. Lee, wherein Mr. Guem becomes the president of the dry-cleaning branch of the Lee empire. Jan Di and Min Ha fall madly in love, and together they are ale to turn the student body against the F4, showing them for what they really are: spoilt, cruel, unhappy people. Some of the F4 are able to find redemption, but the worst one, ringleader heir of Shinhwa, so disgraces his family that the show ends with him taking his own life, just a few blocks from the wedding of Jan Di and Min Ha.

What really happens:

Jan Di does in fact attend Shinhwa Academy, and her independent attitude does draw the ire of the sadistic and cruel F4. However, Min Ha is nowhere to be found, and is replaced by a weak-willed girl who drops Jan Di like a bad habit at the first sign of trouble, even though just days before Jan Di stood up for her in front of F4. The things done to Jan Di are more than most people could bear, but her can-do attitude allows her to stay on top of her emotions and not give in to the F4.

Here’s where the problem comes.

F4 is known throughout the school, and they are seen doing such unreasonable things are: pouring juice on someone’s very expensive shirt with little or no provocation, slamming a cake in a girl’s face in from of the school for simply offering them a bite, and strong-arming students into licking their shoes when they are dirty. Jan Di knows all of this.

The first thing the students do to Jan Di once she is marked for unreasonable cruelty, under the demands of F4 of course, is steal her desk. Fair enough; even the horrible things they write on her desk when she finds it are ok with me as far as pranks go. Then, though, they hit her with a barrage of eggs and summarily douse her with flour. I felt it it my soul when she started crying, and I really have to give it up to Koo Hye Sun for her excellent performance during this scene. Afterward, she goes to her quiet happy place on the school grounds, a stairwell she has visited every time she needs to vent about the harsh treatment handed down to her by the F4.

Who should be there but one member of F4, the kindest member Yoon Ji Hoo. Remember now, this is the kindest out of the 4 pricks, so he’s like the Mussolini of the Axis powers. He so kindly gives his handkerchief to Jan Di and tells her not to worry about returning it. Now I know from knowledge of the plot that this becomes her first love interest, but I have to ask: why? Why does this man, who though admittedly attractive failed to stop the abuse Jan Di suffered, appeal to her as a potential mate? Where is my spunky and strong-willed heroine? Who replaced her with a cowering, timid coward?

To make matters worse, Ji Hoo participates in the fouling of the school swimming pool; one of the only reasons Jan Di wanted to come to school at Shinhwa was their excellent pool and her desire to swim again. After she single-handedly cleans the pool, she it attacked in the locker room by a group of boys. The 1st ep ends with the boys engaged in a full-on sexual assault that looks to be leading to rape.

I have no doubt that the second episode will begin with Ji Hoo stopping the rape from happening, and that their romance will begin there. What the fuck, women of the world? How could you ever harbor any emotion other than repulsion and hate for a member of a group that basically organized and condoned a gang-bang on your ass? I fail to see how any one member of the F4 can find redemption enough in the eyes of Jan Di to be worthy of her, and I think that the horrible things they have already done precludes them from any redemption in my own eyes, so I can never be happy with a conclusion that pairs my beloved Jan Di with the cruel and heartless leader of F4.

Unfortunately, it is that very conclusion towards which we are racing in this show, and I wait with bated breath for my next glimpse of Hye Sun, though her talent is wasted in this psychotic fantasy. I leave you with a gallery of the only redeeming part of this show: Hye Sun’s adorable, exaggerated facial expressions ^_^

Also, after a longer holiday than I had planned, I’m back ^_^;;

Where the hell have I been? Stuck in a hotel with no internet for over a week! No excuses, I know, so I’ll get right to it. I did some thinking while away, and I have decided to give something a try. Rather than keep on with the episodic style I have been employing for my coverage of Clannad, I think that my writing style would be better served by focusing on the arcs as a whole; I often find myself wondering how to analyze the middle of a story beyond simple predictions. Though those can be fun, I much prefer looking at how the characters change over a little bit of time, even if it’s only 3 episodes.

I kind of started this with my last post, where I talked more about Youhei’s attitude in general than about the episode specifically. So, starting now, let’s talk about the last arc!

To be honest, I was underwhelmed by the conclusion of this arc. I felt that, despite Youhei’s triumphant return as the big brother hero, nothing about his attitude or demeanor actually changed. How was Mei able to return home? I though that she was determined to stick around until confident that Youhei was doing alright. The little show he gave when the soccer team was harassing Mei was nice, but showed only that he thought that he could trust Tomoya. Heartwarming, yes, that he trusted his friend so much, but completely separate from any emotional evolution on Youhei’s personal plane.

I’m not sure if KyoAni is purposefully using the “renewed friendship” device to obfuscate the fact that they had no real conclusion to this arc, but that ended up being how I felt about it. I admit, I did have a little tear in my eye at the end when Tomoya and Youhei started laughing at each other, just like old times. But when the ED came on and I realized the arc was truly through, I felt robbed of the closure I needed. I want the “after story” to start as much as anyone, but I need to feel good about every one else’s futures before I let them go. At the very least, I want to be sure about their future, even if it’s bad or contrary to what I would have wanted for them.

This is my problem with the latest arc: I have no clue what Youhei will do now. He has not changed – not even a little – and I am worried about his future. Will he give up? Lay down and become the bum everyone thinks he will be? At the very end of episode 4, Tomoya plays a little joke on Akio at Youhei’s expense, meaning that Youhei was still unaware that Sanae was not, in fact, interested in him. I’m sure that after all the talk of marrying into the same family as Tomoya, Youhei would be heartbroken that his new plans – ill conceived as they were – have shattered so soon. He never got a chance to think about what he truly would become, and it seems to me that now he has just as little incentive as ever. I know that this show has turned a bit to comedy recently, but at its heart it’s still a drama show, and I demand serious attention given to dramatic aspects!

So who is the victim here? It’s Mei, of course! It’s not just that I wanted closure about Youhei’s future for my own personal enjoyment, but Mei is as much a part of this show as anyone else, and I don’t think that she can be truly happy with the way things ended up. How can we be expected to let her just go back to her life without any change at all in her brother? I know I’m dwelling, but this is the most glaring omission I’ve encountered in Clannad – the complete lack of acceptable resolution to a major arc.

Allowing that Mei is gone now, there is still the business of Youhei’s future. Let’s assume that he gets over being played by Sanae. Let’s also assume that he and Tomoya have patched things up for good. What now? He said it himself, there is only 6 months left in the school year – and he has no idea what he will do. His personality has not matured enough to handle reality, and in all probability Tomoya is going to be too busy with his life with Nagisa to deal with him later. This goes back to Youhei’s lack of goals: the brief moment where he talked about his future life with Sanae remains the only time in the show that he has professed an interest in the future.

So what do I need to be happy? At the very least, I am going to require an “Animal House” style montage before progressing on to the after story part, but even them I won’t really be satisfied. I hope that Youhei remains a prominent background character in the next few episodes, with KyoAni subtly changing his mannerisms to reflect some kind of growing-up. I don’t think it would be too hard to add a minute or two of conversation with him, or an off-hand comment by another cast member that lets me know he is on some kind of path towards his future. I actually feel worse about his future than I did before this arc started – after devoting so much time to his well-being, the omission of development seems all the more glaring. Here’s to hoping the next arc is a little better.

Another week, another Sunohara-centric episode. I know that Mei has been on a lot of people’s minds, but I’m going to go ahead and skip that discussion, as it kind of weirded me out. I’d rather focus on Sanae’s insistence that, at heart, Youhei is a good person. I know that last week I was feeling sorry for Youhei, but the events this week have changed my opinion of him. I haven’t really seen this supposed good side, and though the flashbacks show a boy doing “what he should” for his little sister, everything we’ve seen of Youhei so far in the series suggests that he is a different person now – one who has grown up, essentially, into a bad person.

Can people, once down such a path, change drastically and instantly? That is apparently what Mei wants, though Tomoya seems willing to trick Mei into thinking everything is alright – kind of a shitty friend if you ask me. The choices made by Sunohara, his reputation, and his own acceptance that he will not further his education but rather assimilate into the workforce paint a bleak future for him, but with only a few months of school left, can we really hope that he will make a life-altering change, and that this change will have an effect on his prospects?

Yes, I think so. Such redemption is possible, but will be difficult to obtain. Sunohara is walking the path of lifelong unhappiness, because – as the whole of Clannad is testament to – family is the most important factor in lasting happiness; the realization that there is something greater than the self to which we must cleave is often regarded as the defining moment of adulthood. The authors of Clannad are directly pitting Sunohara’s disdain for his family, especially his little sister, against what he “has become.” More than any stupid pranks, fights, or social retardation, Youhei’s treatment of his sister, and by proxy all others with whom he has a relationship, is the reason that my attitude toward Youhei has transformed from pity to disgust. Tomoya was always a man looking for something, though he didn’t know what it was until he took a real interest in a makeshift family with the Furakawas. Youhei, in stark contrast to Tomoya, has never searched for anything other than a very temporary happiness – his problem is his short-sightedness.

This short-sightedness is evident in all of his actions, and is the character flaw undermining all of his efforts at even temporary bliss. It is what makes even the smallest effort on his part an unthinkable exertion – even at the end of the episode, when he was visibly angry with the situation surrounding a relationship between Mei and Tomoya, he refused to make a comment or reaction. This lack of reaction to such a forceful stimulus pains Mei and Tomoya as well, as they can see just how far removed Youhei is from his own emotions.

Youhei exhibits several other despicable traits, none so blatant as his complete failure to understand the mind of a potential love interest. The difference between love and lust, a major point in literature that can be endlessly dissected, is moot here. I would argue that Youhei has no actual desire for Sanae as an individual – she could be anyone, although the fact that she is beautiful certainly doesn’t hurt. Rather, Youhei is in love with the idea of himself as a part of a relationship with a beautiful woman, a relationship where he is cool, suave, and all the other things he assumes himself to be – but it is crucial to recognize that he knows that he needs another half. He is actually so in love with himself that he believes all this is not only possible, but actually happening. That he would be so clueless on a date would not normally be something that would make me irate – it can be quite endearing in the right situation. The problem is that Youhei is so convinced of his own merit that he cannot question whether or not someone else might have an opinion of him that differs from his own.

The day after the date – the one that went so horribly, terribly wrong – Youhei is in the best mood he has ever been in during the series. Totally lovestruck, it is one of the first times he is actually plesant to be around. However, we know that this happiness stems from a faulty assumption on his part – that the date went well, even exceptionally well. He has probably already forgotten that he was supposed to try and impress this imaginary girlfriend and has moved right along into thinking that they are an item. Hell, he starts talking to Tomoya about future plans – pipe dreams, as I like to call them – revolving around Sanae as a lifelong companion.

These plans, silly as they are, reflect the fact that Youhei is capable of thinking ahead, just that he doesn’t know how to do it properly. He has no idea of the work that needs to be put into a goal, probably because he has never had a real goal in his life. After leaving the soccer team, he lost his single focus and failed to find another. As we saw in this episode, he also lost a family – a group of people that relied on him and that even liked him. With Sanae’s help, hopefully he can regain that support group to help him through the time ahead, but more importantly I hope to see him regain a desire to do something, anything, with his life. Once that happens, I am confident that the rest of the pieces will fall into place.

Wear your hair like this all the time, please. I will love you forever.

After last week’s one-off baseball episode, it looks like the show is settling into a new arc focusing on Sunohara. It’s about time! He spent last season as the butt of every joke, and deservedly so most of the time, but with Tomoya’s attitude change towards the end of last year I was hoping for just a tiny bit more respect for his friend. Plus, with graduation just around the corner, I am curious to see what Sunohara does with his life. As anxious as I am to get to the after story portion, I would still have been upset if they had jumped right in and left the fate of all the rest of the cast in question. Thus we arrive at this week’s episode: Clannad ~School Comedy~

Summary

This episode starts with another look at the dream-girl’s world. The girl and her robot buddy are in the fields looking for junk, and the robot notices that there are some small sheep roaming about. The girl picks one up, but then lets them free, commenting on their sweet aroma.

When we get back to reality, it seems that Sunohara’s sister has come to visit, as she is worried about Sunohara’s life and the direction it will take once he graduates. Wanting more to appease his sister than actually get his life together, he latches on to Tomoya’s plan to fake a relationship in order to trick Mei into thinking he has some sort of direction.

He sets to finding a suitable candidate, someone “obedient” in his own words. After the requisite shut-downs, including a gut-busting one where Ryou startes crying just thinking about pretending to date him, Sanae decides that she really wants to help by pretending to be his girlfriend. Of course, Sunohara thinks that she is Nagisa’s sister, and also that he has a shot with her, which leads him to dress up in a ridiculous tux and act anything but natural around her. The last shot is of Mei looking thoroughly unconvinced…

Thoughts

Who the hell is this guy?

For the first few minutes of this show I was starting to get a bit down, thinking “why does it always have to start this way? Sunohara is kind of a douche, but he doesn’t deserve this.” Just when my pity was at its peak, the situation took a turn for the hilarious. The shift, subtle as it was, came just after Ryou’s waterworks and Kyou’s subsequent ultra-violence; Sunohara recovers immediately from Kyou’s abuse and nose-dives back into his usual, loathsome self. They say KyoAni has access to a /cry switch in our brains, but I think we can safely expand that to a switch for every emotion we posses.

Sunohara’s brush with Tomoyo was awesome, deepening my respect for her flippant attitude. I can totally imagine Sunohara believing they have a “rivalry.” The dream sequence where she comes to challenge him pretty much summed up his knowledge about girls. But these were simple one-liners compared to the joke that will be visited upon Sunohara next time, as the meat of this episode came in the setup of one very huge, very awkward situation. Not only does Sunohara think he has a chance with Nagisa’s “sister,” setting up some serious heartache, but Tomoya reminds us of Akio’s less-than-gentle demeanor. I wonder if he’s going to find out?

Foreshadow much?

Furthermore, how is Mei going to be fooled by a simple schoolgirl outfit and some glasses? Hasn’t she been staying with the Furakawa family every time she’s been in town? I think she should be able to recognize Sanae. This episode, though funny, has left me scratching my head in a few places. Under this comedy, isn’t there supposed to be a drama show? Where could all these plot points be leading? I am glad we got to see so much of the dream world at the beginning, but this episode seemed rather short in the end, like not much happened. I am expecting a train wreck next episode, so I’ll hold my tongue on the criticism.

As for Tomoya and Nagisa, their relationship seems to be coming along nicely. They are still in a rather “new” stage, and it was adorable to see Nagisa’s jealousy when she thought Tomoya might be attracted to her mom. She has become confident enough to call him out on things, like pointing out that he was taking the joke a bit too far with Sunohara. Also, did I mention how cute she was with her hair pulled to the side? I can’t stop thinking about it ;P

About the beginning dream sequence: I haven’t gotten to the big reveal in the VN, so please forgive my ignorance and indulge me for a moment as I try to guess what this is all about. As Nagisa chose that story as the play she would perform, it seemed obvious that this was a dream she had been having for a while. I think, though, that Tomoya shares the same dream with her, but he is the little robot guy. The metaphor of them being alone in the world, but needing each other fits, especially the bit where Nagisa creates Tomoya, but he wants to be born into the world at the same time. At the time in Tomoya’s life that he was at his lowest, hating school and life in general, this dream girl comes into his life, and through the choices he consciously makes, allows himself to be transformed into something new – though he is not yet able to express himself. This parallels the robot’s inability to talk, as well as his stilted movements. When I first watched this show, before I had heard of the VN or anything like that, the brief dream-world interludes infuriated me, but now they are quickly becoming a favorite part of the show for me. With each scene getting longer and longer, I wonder if the conclusion will clock in at a whole episode’s length, or maybe an OVA?

Next week: Hearts that do not converge

We all know that this situation is headed for conflict, and all I can say is that I hope this stays on the light-hearted and comedic side of the equation. Unfortunately, the preview images for the next episode show a very distraught, even depressed Sunohara. I like Clannad the Drama, and I like Clannad the Comedy, but I will be unhappy if the drama starts all of a sudden with the current situation – cruelty is never acceptable, and Sunohara doesn’t deserve any actual heartbreak :’(

And now, a few more shots of super cute magical clippy girl Nagisa:

I, I know, super late on this one, plus Impz already did a little writeup on it. However, I will be picking this up for the season, and I wanted to say a few small things about it before episode 2 gets subbed. Best not to fall behind at the beginning! So, I’m sure that most have seen this already, and Impz already did a brief summary, so I’ll leave that out and jump right in!

Well, the plot of this first episode was a bit generic, it was the main cast meeting for the first time and generally just meandering around the school, trying to find their way into class. Done before, yes, but if you were waiting on the plot to decide whether or not to watch this show, then you kind of missed the boat. There were a few things that made this show stand out to me, enough to make me want to commit to it for the whole season, so let’s talk about that for a bit.

The first thing that caught my attention was the promo image released several months ago. I absolutely love the color scheme of the outfits. I never really knew I liked orange and black so much till I saw it on a school uniform, I guess. The sharp design of the characters also stood out, and I was instantly curious about the look of the show. I was quite impressed with the animation on this first episode; I thought the scenes with the sky and the other backgrounds were especially well done. The animation can get a bit sparse around the characters themselves, but the clean, simple lines of the faces gave it a look of minimalism, not really low-budgetry.

There wasn’t quite as much music as I would have liked, several scenes being almost entirely silent. That being said, when they did throw in some music, the effect was much more evident and jarring – the scene where Ayumi is trying to decide whether or not to ask Tatsui if she is lost was scored by a classical tune that is the personification of Tatsui’s snobby, frigid demeanor. So hurried and cold, it sent a shiver down my spine and I fully empathized with Ayumi at that moment. (it was the first movement of Winter, fittingly enough, from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.)

Each girl seemed to follow a pretty standard archetype, and this grouping is as standard as fighter-thief-white mage-black mage, but you gotta go with what works. The girls fit their archetypes to a T:

The sweet, clueless new girl, Ayumi Nonomura

The queen bee, Tatsui Iizuka

The wacky one, Torako Kageyama

The Wild Card, Suzume Saotome

I laughed quite a few times in this episode; it’s just quirky enough to catch my attention, while different enough from the shows like this that I’ve seen before to keep me interested. I have heard a lot of people talk about turning the show off after the seemingly endless hallway scene at the beginning, but I honestly didn’t think it was too long – at least, not long enough to really bother me. Some scenes were quite funny – I was so surprised by the scene where Torako gut-punches the teacher that I spit beer all over the place.

This was a really neat slice-of-life, and I’m glad that it didn’t stray into parody or over-the-top annoying slapstick. I was genuinely surprised when the girls jumped out of the 2nd story window, and I found myself enjoying the ride along with Ayumi, which is exactly what I wanted from this show. I knew what I was getting into, and I’m glad to say that Hyakko delivered exactly what it promised. The next episodes is already out, so that’s all I’ll say for now, but I am looking forward to blogging this show. I think that this is going to be a fun little comedy, and I’m not expecting anything major or groundbreaking in the plot department. All I really want is some light-hearted fun, and think Hyakko has a lot to offer.

The first of many lectures, I’m sure

Another season of Clannad is what kept me going through the mostly lackluster summer shows, and I spent a good part of the summer trying to work my way through the Clannad Visual Novel. I didn’t quite make it to the after story, though, so if you want someone to predict the next episode for you you are going to have to consult another blog. I enjoy that love/hate relationship with weekly episodes, and I want to preserve that wide-eyed astonishment that comes from being truly surprised by the outcome of a cliffhanger. That being said, let’s talk about this first episode!

Summary

This episode starts off with what looks like a memory of Tomoya’s youth, a train trip with his father. Tomoya has been daydreaming about this while out with Nagisa’s family, watching Akio play some neighborhood baseball. After the game, when the family is talking at home, Akio lets on that there is a game coming up, pitting his shopping district team against their rivals from another neighborhood. After a serious losing streak due to an awesome new teammate on the rival team, Akio decides that the next game must be won at all costs. He tells Tomoya that he has to recruit players, and Akio suggests the team from the theatre club (Akio was impressed by how well they worked together during the school festival).

Reluctantly, Tomoya goes about the school recruiting his core group of friends, plus a few other notables from last season’s cast. They gather up on the day of the game, and after a pretty close game, the last inning comes down to Akio’s team lagging behind with Tomoya at bat. Performing poorly all day due to his shoulder, Tomoya has another daydream about how wonderful it would be if he hit a home run and won the game. He hits the ball and watches it fly…

Impressions

It’s been six months since the first season aired, so I guess KyoAni felt the need to re-introduce us all to the main characters. Better than the Samurai Champloo game, but not quite to Haruhi standards, this baseball episode ended up being pretty good, and it served its purpose of familiarizing the viewer with the main characteristics of the cast.

The first half or so of this episode dealt with the recruitment of the players, and Tomoya and Nagisa went around the school convincing all their friends, and a few acquaintances, to join their team. I thought it strange that Yoshino took the most convincing – after all, he did say he owed Tomoya after the falling tools incident in the first season, not to mention the fact that it was pretty much due to the efforts of Tomoya and Nagisa that Yoshino was even able to get married! Well, the level of enthusiasm the teammates had about helping was the first indicator of their personalities, so I’ll let it slide this time.

It was when the game got under way that the real exposition began. At bat, Kotomi calculated trajectories in whatever way nerds are supposed to be able to do to be good at sports, Tomoyo knocked the ball out of the park, but then on her next at bat decided to try to “hit the ball girly.” Tomoya reminded us that his shoulder still hurt and that he wouldn’t ask his father to come see the game (gee, wonder if they’ll reference the fight any more in the series). All in all, a quaint enough first episode, although I think that if the rest of the Clannad fandom is anything like me, they watched the whole series again last week, so everything is fresh in their minds.

The amount of recap was starting to be a bit much at this point in the episode. It wasn’t funny in a comedy sense, though I laughed at times due to the situations these familiar characters were being put into. There was a little forced drama in the uncertainty of Tomoya’s last hit, I say forced because I feel that the outcome won’t be important in the long run. The important revelation of this show came in Tomoya’s daydreams; the fact that Tomoya’s daydreams of winning revolve not around him as the hero/savior of the day but instead focus on the camaraderie of a victorious team shows that he has grown quite a bit as a person since starting to date Nagisa last semester. As he gets older and approaches the end of his academic career – and thus the end of his youth – he is starting to realize that the things that will make him happy for the rest of his life are not the same things he has been pursuing to this point. Even in his courtship of Nagisa he seemed to just “go with the flow” in life, but it looks like he is starting to learn not only the value of new things, but the importance of putting out effort for them.

Clannad, or family (what the author of the VN thought clannad meant in Irish) is going to be a major part of this season if the foreshadowing is any indication, and that is exactly why I will be watching this show. Finding a family for yourself is such a universal theme of transition to adulthood, and the authors did a nice job of including an archetypal family for each main character, that I am really excited to see where this season takes us as far as exploration of that theme. Though I do worry a bit about Tomoya, because with such a tearjerker show something is going to have to come and throw a wrench into his plans…

This first episode was rather light-hearted, though, easing us in to any future shocks. There were a few twists and turns, like Akio’s injury and subsequent choice of Nagisa to pitch in his place – a wtf moment on the level of Goku’s choice of Gohan as successor in the Cell fight. I was also surprised at how much screen time was given to Yoshino, but his scenes were some of the funniest in the episode – I hope this means that we will be seeing more of him in the after story. In the end, however, these elaborations rang hollow as obvious filler.

It’s nice to know this series hasn’t started taking itself too seriously.

The animation was very nicely done, as expected, but the fact that the show aired in standard def was a bit of a letdown. Get with the times, Japan! Aren’t you supposed to be leading the world in technology? Nonetheless, the show managed to remain as beautiful as ever. The imagery at the beginning, when Nagisa’s family is all gathered around the table at their home, makes the summer come alive. Everyone looks hot in their t-shirts, and a fan is blowing on them with the door wide open. If the subtle cicada song wasn’t enough to convince you, we are treated to a shot featuring nothing but a cicada against a blue sky backdrop, complete with fluffy mashed-potato clouds.

Sound, as well, was as prominent as ever. The familiarity of the leitmotifs was like Pavlov’s bell (especially Kotomi’s – that has been my ringtone for the last several months). When the clink of the glasses in Tomoya’s victory daydream turned out to be the clink of the ball on the bat, I realized just how powerful such a simple segue technique could be.

Final Thoughts

Although I enjoyed this episode very much, I concede that it was a fluff episode. It really hasn’t been that long since last season ended, and at the end I found myself glad to see these characters again, but wishing they’d hurry up and get to the drama! Several things hinted where this season might go – Nagisa expressed a real desire to meet with Tomoya’s father, and the emphasis placed on Tomoya’s injured shoulder foreshadowed a confrontation of some sorts. Yoshino had too much screen time not to have a bigger role to play, though I wonder what it could be. Akio, for his part, seems to be perfectly OK that the guy who is dating his daughter is living in their house.

For me, Clannad is trying to truly capture the insecurity of transition into adulthood. Most people do not live the perfect lives portrayed in most shows on TV and in films, and even though this show has quite a bit of fantasy in its harem undertones, the problems Tomoya faces as a boy about to enter adulthood with no clue how to proceed should be familiar to most viewers, and very poignant to a certain demographic. The reality of leaving the comforts of school without a support net are, I think, what subconsciously drew Tomoya to gravitate towards stable bodies in his environment. Though constant labor after school seems a bleak prospect, the things he has learned from Akio about sacrifice make personal suffering seem insignificant. Akio is probably the single biggest reason I was happy that Tomoya ended up with Nagisa – he has a lot to teach, and not in the manner that can be learned in a school environment. Hopefully we’ll see lots more of him as well, perhaps even a showdown with Tomoya’s father?

Episode Preview

Did he get a home run!?! The title of episode two, In Search of a Fake Dream, is very leading – whose dream is fake? Sunohara’s dream of a girlfriend seems far-fetched, but perhaps we are dealing with a larger failure – that of Sunohara and Tomoya after graduation (in a job, maybe?). Perhaps we will skip through the last semester of school and get to the meat of life after school. One can only hope at this point.

I’d like to reiterate my prior point that I have not yet played the after story of the VN, so:
If you tell me what happens next ep I will hunt you down
Till next week!

Today is the 50th anniversary of the day instant ramen went on sale in Japan – August 25th, 1958. You may remember January of 2007 when the creator of this delicious treat, Momofuku Ando, passed away and was given a huge send-off – Yasuhiro Nakasone, former Prime Minister of Japan, even delivered the eulogy at his funeral!

This meal, sometimes the only nutrition we can manage in between bouts of anime marathons at our computer desks, is easy to take for granted; it’s easy, cheap, and has always been around (sorry to our 50+ year old readers). So, I decided to do a bit of research on this subject, and thought you might be interested in what I found out!

"Ramen art."

I pulled this brief history from the Ramen History page at the Insant Ramen Homepage:

The Japanese have always loved to eat noodles and invented many unique varieties of their own, such as soba (thin, buckwheat noodles) and udon (thick wheat noodles). The history of instant noodles begins in the years after the Second World War: a time of intense food shortages in Japan. Inexpensive and full of needed calories, ramen (thin Chinese-style vermicelli noodles served in soup) became widely popular and long lines of hungry diners outside noodle shops and street food stands were a common sight. Obviously, what was needed was a tasty, safe and non-perishable type of ramen that could easily be cooked at home.

Enter Chicken Ramen, a brand of flavored instant noodles sold under the slogan "Just add hot water and wait 2 minutes." The Japanese in the late fifties were so impressed by the new food that they nicknamed it "miracle ramen". Before Chicken Ramen, this type of noodle had been called Chinese soba, but the runaway success of this brand made ramen into a household word.

The first ramen ever marketed: Chikin Ramen.

I also found that in a year 2000 poll, Japanese people voted instant ramen as the best invention of the 20th century! (it was followed in second by the kareoke machine ) Perhaps most surprisingly, I learned that its original price point was 6 to 7 times that of regular soba or udon, making it very much a luxury good in post-WW2 Japan.

After the death of creator Momofuku Ando, a museum was created in Osaka that shows how he developed the noodles, and how they have changed over the years. Momofuku, an immigrant from Taiwan, got off to a false start when he was imprisoned in 1948 for tax evasion, but he never let that stop him. He continued trying for his vision and finally achieved success at an age when most people are fully established in their fields, prompting him to later quote "I invented instant ramen when I was 48 and Cup Noodles at 61. In life, there is no such thing as too late."

"Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat."

So, whether you deck your ramen out to the max with veggies, meat, and whatever else, eat it simply with the flavor pack, or are somewhere in the middle like me (I usually just poach an egg in it), take a brief moment today to reflect on this amazing invention and celebrate its 50 years in existence!

Momofuku enjoying some of his creation.

This has been a slow summer for me anime-wise, with not much new that has kept my attention. So, I’ve been using this chance to catch up on some of my backlog, marathoning older shows and reading lots of manga. If you read our fall preview, you may have noticed that I have recently become a huge, HUGE Clannad fan, and seeing as how I have this new love and lots of free time, I have been working my way through the manga.

As you may well know (I am a bit late to the party ), after Key did the Clannad visual novel and the after story, they let their designers kind of run free with the universe, and one of them created another VN set in an alternate world where Tomoya ends up with Tomoyo, aptly calling this VN “Tomoyo After.” The manga that I want to talk about is a short work based on that VN, called Tomoyo After: Dear Shining Memories.

Premise

This manga is only 4 chapters long, and is basically a retelling of the VN, with the 3 major events of the story each getting their own chapter plus a brief intro chapter. The first three are relatively short, and the fourth – the ‘main’ arc – is twice as long as the rest.

The story is told from the perspective of Tomoyo, and it is revealed in the fourth chapter that the first three chapters are glimpses into her memories of the past. The first is more a snapshot of their life together, and the second and third revolve around the two new additions to the cast – a young girl named Kanoko who used to date Tomoyo’s brother, and a small child that has seemingly been abandoned on their doorstep.

The final chapter is where the drama really steps in. Tomoya falls ill with cancer amnesia memento syndrome an unknown rare disease that erases his memories every few days. He gets a really bad headache, and all his recent memories are wiped. So, of course Tomoyo sticks with him, and retells their love story to him every few days, while remembering the good times herself. In the end, they learn about a risky operation that would allow Tomoya to regain his lost memories, but there is a chance he won’t make it through…

First Impression

Who cares? You're 12!

I get the feeling that the target audience was people who have played the VN, and as someone who has not, I was very lost for the first 3 chapters. The writers really did a poor job of explaining the setting in a way that newcomers from the anime, or simply the first VN, could understand.

It felt very rushed, and it’s glaringly obvious that it was just a retelling of a story with which the reader is expected to be familiar. The fourth chapter is where it gets interesting, but the taste in my mouth was so sour by the time I got there, it ended up being very anti-climactic.

I did go back and re-read, which helped tremendously, but I still think that the story was thrown together for a quick cash-in, missing out on what could have been – and should have been – a moving experience.

Thoughts

An accurate representation of me after reading

Like so many others, I am holding my breath waiting for the Clannad TV After Story, and when I stumbled upon this manga, I could barely contain my elation. I felt it criminal how little time was given to Tomoyo in the main episodes of Clannad TV, and I was fond of the Tomoyo After OVA, if only because we got to see more of Tomoyo and her personality. I was expecting more of that, I suppose, which is why this manga ended up being such a letdown.

Being the huge fan of the source material that I was, I went into the reading of this with some pretty high expectations, and perhaps that is partly why I am so disappointed, but in truth, I am quite forgiving when reading “extra” stories about something I already like; for me to dislike it as much as I do says volumes about the quality of the work.

None of the charm of the series made it to the manga; none of the themes of family were present in any noticeable quantity. The strong focus Clannad put on the notion of what it means to have a family resonated very strongly with me, especially the notion that even if the hand you are dealt by fate is not the best, you still have a deep-seated need for a family - even if it means you have to create one yourself. After all – isn’t the reason people fall in love and get married that they want to have a family of their own choosing?

So, rather than expand on those universal themes – themes that are ripe for the picking by the writers since they were so brilliantly laid out in the first series – the writers of Dear Shining Memories chose to simply thrust new characters on us, and tell us point blank that we need to start caring about them, and about what they have to say about Tomoya and Tomoyo.

The chapters that dealt with Kanako, the girl that used to date Tomoyo's little brother, were so hurried that I barely had time to piece together what was happening. All of a sudden, she just appears in their lives and goes about telling Tomoyo that her "eternal love" is something that can never last. Is this a Naruto villain? Seriously, why the writers thought they could just thrust this child on me and expect me to care what she has to say is offensive. Furthermore, can I really be expected to believe that the thoughtless words of an insane child have to power to reduce Tomoyo to tears? She may be moe, but there are limits. At the end of her chapter, she is off again, out of their lives with as little explanation as to why she came.

The next chapter's addition is even worse. Some toddler wanders into their house, and rather than try to find where she was lost, Tomoyo and Tomoya just kind of adopt her:

How is this even legal?

After trying halfheartedly to find this abandoned child's parents, the mom comes around looking for her, apologizing for leaving her and asking for her back. For some unknown reason, Tomoyo tells her no, and then changes her mind and has to race to the train station to give this kid back. Oh no! The train station is 30 minutes away and they only have 20 minutes! Will Tomoyo's power of the ninja love be strong enough to see them through this tragedy?? I guess you'll have to suffer through 2 panels of intense running to find out.

The last chapter, where Tomoyo reveals that the first three chapters were her memories of her past life with Tomoya, before the accident/illness, was by far the most compelling; If I had known that these were snapshots of memories to begin with, I might have been a little more lenient of the story, but it did make a terrible first impression. I know that the chapters were called "memory 1" and such, but that was hardly clear enough to help. Since chapter four ended up being something besides just a mish mash of “memories” from Tomoyo’s life with Tomoya, it was actually interesting, but the emotional finale the writers were hoping for fell flat, due mostly to the horrible lead-up.

There was more than enough happening in the last chapter to expand upon and create a believable, interesting story, perhaps even taking things in a direction the VN did not. Unfortunately, the laziness of the writers won in the end, and we are left with half-baked plots and characters, as well as the the knowledge that this could have been so much more. In the end, this was really written for those that have played the VN. If you are like me and simply loved the anime series and wanted more, you should avoid this like the plague. I suggest spending the time we have left until October trying to find a copy of the VN and experiencing the story first hand, which is what I am going to do, rather than waste any more time with these terrible mangas.

So I missed Pale Cocoon last year when it came out, but thanks to phuzy’s review I got a chance to check it out last week, and I was really impressed. So impressed, in fact, that I googled the director Yasuhiro Yoshiura to find out what else he had done, and lo and behold I stumbled upon him at just the right time, because his new ONA Eve no Jikan just released its first episode earlier this month!

I wasn’t really sure what an ONA was (I had to wikipedia it) but apparently it is an Original Net Animation, which is a neat idea and something that I haven’t seen much of in the anime world. I don’t know if anyone saw the Joss Whedon net show “Dr Horrible,” but it was one of my first experiences with an online video being done by professionals and within the constraints of a “show” rather than some abstract. An excellent idea primarily because it lets a director tell the story he wants in the time frame he chooses. Time is so important to film, and pacing can truly make or break a series; doing a show online frees you from the constraints of episode numbers and length, and allows a director to express his idea how he sees fit. Too often a show will start strong only to give up halfway through its promised 24 episodes. For me, all OVAs with original scripts are my personal anime heaven. The newest slice of that heaven, Eve no Jikan, is a very promising start to what I hope will be a major force in anime production. Time of Eve, as it’s known in English, is another look at what happens when androids become so lifelike that humanity is forced to look again at what it means to be human.

Premise

A brief intro text sets the tone: this is a tale set in the not-so-distant future, and technology has progressed to the point that humanoid robots are starting to become common in the average home. This story is about Rikuo, a young man trying to discover why his female android, Sammy, has been acting strangely lately. After checking out her travel log files, he discovers that she has been going off-course in her usual rounds, and he enlists a friend from school to find out where she’s going.

The two boys find that Sammy has been going to a small, out of the way café where patrons are informed that there will be no discrimination between humans and robots. Normally, androids all have a glowing halo above their heads, and the two find out for the first time that at least some are able to turn it off. Shocked, they are befriended by a girl name Akiko who tells them about her views on android relations – making them wonder in the end who is really an android in the café.

Impressions

I am super excited about this series! I know that many people are tired of shows with a “can robots think” theme to them, but they are right up my alley. Some may say that this is ground we’ve covered before, but with the exponential increases we experience in the field of technology, Ghost in the Shell is just as far from us today as Asimov’s work in the 60’s is from Ghost in the Shell. Robotics as a field is progressing so quickly that I think it is increasingly important to deal with the issue as often as is possible, as culturally we need to explore our feelings on this subject before they become a reality.

A big theme is obviously dori-kei, or android obsession. Most people seem to treat their robots like trash, worse even than one would treat their car – shoving things in their hands and ordering them around like slaves. But the androids here are much more human-like than machine-like, making me wonder what disconnect the people must have to be able to treat them like they do. Even though they were created to serve, isn’t empathy for other human-like things ingrained in out very nature?

From birth we are conditioned to recognize human faces, and when we grow up we can see them everywhere. In fact, the reason that people find baby animals so much cuter as a whole than adult animals is because at birth, most animals possess skulls that are shaped more like a human baby’s than the parent animal. Why, then, in this future Japan are the people that empathize with androids, these dori-kei, treated like social outcasts? I think the director is making a reference to the Philip K Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, in which the only way to tell an android apart from a human was to administer an “empathy test” that measured whether or not they were capable of emotion for living creatures.

In fact, Rikuo starts at the beginning to talk to Sammy like he would any other person, but he corrects himself and addresses her as he would any machine. When his sister gets up and turns on the TV, she sees a news cast about the dori-kei, and an ad for fresh fruit that suggests very strongly that there is a stigma against robotically harvested crops, even though Japan’s self-sufficiency rate has climbed to 80%. This is not just treating the machines like machines; this is actual contempt – an emotion normally reserved for something else that can feel. Strange, then, that those who treat robots with respect, or who show an “unhealthy” interest in them are treated like so much otaku.

Conclusions

I will most certainly be blogging the rest of this series. There were a lot of other things that this made me wonder about, but I think that the way humans treat robots is going to be the main focus of this show, and hopefully it will turn into something that helps better explain our emotions toward technology. I can’t wait to have some of my questions answered, like are the androids starting to imitate what they think humans do when they feel, or were they made for a specific purpose. No mention has been made about to company that makes these, so it could go either way.

Another major question is, “What’s up with that E-Blend?” The next episode is titled “Sammy,” and I’m sure Rikuo will finally embrace his inner dori-kei and ask her all sorts of questions – like what the deal is with the coffee. Can robots enjoy coffee? I thought for a second that they were going to serve Rikuo motor oil. The barista was so convincing as a human that I think it obvious Akiko is also an android, but I could be wrong. And what about Rikuo’s sister and his friend, what will they think if (when) they catch him having a conversation with Sammy? Will he be shunned, or worse? I’m getting excited just thinking about it.

One last note – thanks to Pireze for subbing this show. It sounds like he had to jump through a lot of hoops just to download the video. Plus, I think that his open source fansub idea is really, really neat, and you guys should check it out. Way to go, dude!

EDIT

OK, new theory, since Acesoldia pointed out that I was wrong in thinking it was the barista who was the android at the end, I now think that she is some sort of super dori-kei who will be instrumental in acquiring android rights or starting the freedom-fighting, or something to that effect.

Genius party is a series of short films by several Japanese directors widely revered as ‘geniuses’ (hence the name). The seventh one is titled Baby Blue, and Shinichirō Watanabe, renowned for his series Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, is the genius director. The brilliant Yoko Kanno, who worked with the director in Cowboy Bebop, produced the soundtrack – always an import piece of Watanabe’s vision.

Although wonderful, the music is outside the scope of this discussion, as instead of seeking another strange juxtaposition of music and setting, drawing the disconnect into the forefront, the music here resonates with emotion from the background, allowing the viewer to focus on the action of a genre Watanabe hasn’t tackled before: a coming-of-age tale set in modern day Japan.

Premise

Always concerned with motion, Watanabe has once again made movement and stillness, and the contrast between them, a focal point of his work. This short film (clocking in at a little under 15 minutes) is an odyssey through space and emotion, as the two main characters, high school students Shou and Hazuki, spend 24 hours traveling throughout urban Japan, the beach their final destination.

The impetus for this journey is the fact that Shou will be moving away the next day, and he wanted to spend some time with a childhood friend from whom he has drifted away. Of course, he doesn’t let on to this fact until toward the end of their time together. As the two make their way to the beach, they reveal more and more about their personalities, their memories, and how the two things interact. In the end, this is truly a tale about what it means to grow up, accepting that it has been done a thousand times before and that it will be no different for them.

Impressions

It seems like being blown off course was a big theme here, the director taking from Homer’s Odyssey the idea of a simple and easy journey home constantly sabotaged by fate or coincidence. Shou and Hazuki’s journey, both the one trying to get to the beach and then to their actual home and the mirror journey of their emotional search for a foundation resonate with Homeric ideology – each victory is met with another, greater challenge.

Of course, feelings of not being in control are a huge part of what it is to be a teenager (it is poignant that Hazuki remarks, “We can’t go anywhere” right before they leave the beach, seemingly unaware of the dissonance), but Watanabe manages to escape the clichés the genre is littered with, evoking something that is new and exciting while being utterly familiar emotionally.

Throughout the film, Shou reflects on his own memories, and proffers that he has himself forgotten his own friends that have moved away. The loss of his memories is weighing on him – for one so young, he must be experiencing the fact that you can only remember so far back for the first time. This leads him to think, “will I too be forgotten?”

At the beginning of the film, we see Shou writing graffiti on his school desk. Strangely, though, he is writing in magic marker on a desk already littered with carvings. I think this is his first sign of acceptance of the transience of his existence, insofar as his classmates are concerned. As this takes place at the very start of his story, we can see that he has already started to accept this fact, and the viewer should note this when watching his actions during the rest of the episode.

“Forget about tomorrow, and go somewhere”

A relic from a shared childhood memory becomes the catalyst for many of the bad things that happen to them – a hand grenade they stole from a military instillation. Carrying that grenade in his backpack, Watanabe clearly wants to personify the volatile emotions bubbling just under the surface of most all adolescent boys. The desire to bury the grenade – symbolic of putting to final rest their time together – is the reason he wants to go someplace, anyplace, at all.

Afraid of having the grenade discovered by a policeman, Shou is forced to run as the policeman gives chase. Shou goes from the frying pan into the fire as he escapes, and the worst thing that could happen to him does – someone actually offers him the chance to save himself by giving up Hazuki. Another wonderful personification of emotion, this person is asking him to do what his parents effectively did when they told him he had to move. His emotion overflows as he puts the grenade to use, letting out all that built up rage in a spectacular display of fire.

I noticed that when they got away from the policeman, in that brief second before they were again accosted, Hazuka looks above her head to see a flock of birds seeming to personify her feeling of freedom. We don’t see the birds again until they are on the beach, and Shou looks up to see the birds again, echoing his feeling this time. Now, though, the meaning of the birds has changed from freedom to the complete lack thereof, insofar as the birds have no more choice as to whether to move to the next locale as does he.

Motion

Let’s talk about motion for a second. Anyone who has seen Watanabe’s prior works knows that his attention to detail is evident in his use of movement. The viewer can be sure that each motion the characters make, and the energy of each scene, was painstakingly choreographed to perfection. I can’t help but think that the action here is set to convey the constant false starts of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, as the scenes here constantly change from movement to stillness.

So much of the time in this film is dedicated to movement, the characters only have a few chances to actually talk to one another. The main talk they had occurred once they made it to the beach. Even though the show had been so great up to this point, I have to confess that I was worried the dialogue was going to degenerate into something campy or forced. Such little faith, I know! I love how respectfully they treated it, more realisticaly portrayed perhaps I have ever seen; Watanabe truly captured the emotion of the moment – treating universal themes of growing up in a grown-up manner without reducing them to trite clichés. Kudos to the great action director for writing such a moving scene.

The pacing comes to a head at the very end, in the climactic fireworks scene where Hazuki bids her final farewell as Shou watches on, with the director using a slow-motion so jarring I actually thought my video card was messing up. This farewell, so bittersweet, feels so personal I can’t help but wonder if Watanabe is allowing us a glimpse into his own soul.

Conclusions

The ending, continuing the theme of life going on, was so well done that I could barely contain my elation. The decision Hazuka made not to go to the train station and have an awkward conversation, and the acceptance of the realities of life led Hazuki to give a much more memorable send-off than some sappy I’ll-write-I-promise conversation. They understand that the chance for their love has passed – she has already moved on to another man and Shou is moving on to a new life. They know that eventually they will both be forgotten, but she wants to try to help him hold on to their memories of each other for just a little longer.

People always grow up and move away, but this film was one of the most realistic depictions of the emotions that go on inside, and the imagery used fit so perfectly that I continue to be amazed that they could pack so much emotion, so much meaning into just 15 minutes, when other productions can’t hack that in a whole season. Baby Blue took me back to my adolescence, making me feel all those thousand emotions that go along with the transition to adulthood, showing them not with the nostalgic patina that time puts on memories, but with the fierce intensity of the moment.