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midori

Midori

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MIDORI (1992)

地下幻燈劇画：少女椿 (ちかげんとうげきが：しょうじょつばき)

– Directed by Hiroshi Harada (Eternal Paradise, Lullaby to the Big Sleep)

– Also known as MR. ARASHI’S AMAZING FREAK SHOW.

– Based on the ero guro manga by Suehiro Maruo, which is subsequently based on the narrative of Shoujo Tsubaki, a character who emerged during the Showa era revival of kamishibai. Kamishibai is an 800-year-old form of storytelling used paper scrolls to illustrate spoken stories told to an audience.

– The story tells of a young girl who loses her parents and is taken in by a traveling carnival. She is then abused and forced to work as a slave.

– The film had somewhat of a troubled production and distribution history. Director Harada almost single-handedly created the entire film, due to a the film’s subject matter scaring off potential investors and severely affecting the project’s budget. The production took five years and all of the directors savings.

– MIDORI is considered a partially lost film due to being seized by the Japanese government when it was discovered that the movie contained illegal depictions for the time. The original master reel was destroyed.

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photo kano

Photo Kano

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Madhouse Studios

Dir. Akitoshi Yokoyama (worked on lots, PK is first head director gig)

Mus. Mina Kubota (Aria franchise, Kaleido Star, A Letter to Momo)

 

When Kazuya Maeda received a digital single reflex lens camera from his father, he was just sure the hand-me-down would irrevocably change his life. And boy, was he right! With a fresh membership to his high school’s photography club and a newfound love for the art form, Maeda gets closer to his female classmates by taking photos of them.

 

Photo Kano, based on the PlayStation Portable dating sim of the same name, gives us one of those is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-harem-show shows in the vein of Amagami SS that manages to do some things right without stepping into too many narrative potholes along the way. Our hero, Maeda, spends each of the series’s 13 episodes with a different girl, developing their individual relationships from ground zero to a full-blown mutual confession of love within the half-hour run time. The constant rotation of characters and the breakneck progression of each relationship manages to keep things interesting. I can’t say I ever got bored, which surprises the hell out of me.

 

Narratively, I have a few bones to pick. The show certainly implies that this story takes place mostly over the course of one school year, but the lack of perceivable time passage like the changing of seasons makes me assume that the entire show takes place over just the first semester or so. Keeping this in mind, the fact that Maeda dates almost 10 girls in this time implies some things about the character that I don’t think the show intends to say. He acts likes a playboy, but he doesn’t “act” like a playboy if you know what I mean. The girls don’t ever acknowledge that he has been courting all of them simultaneously or at least back-to-back — again, the show isn’t clear on the timeline. We learn through some dialogue that he dates one of the characters for three months, so I don’t fucking know.

 

The same inconsistency issue goes for his decision to join the photography club as apposed to the rival photo club. While the photo club is dedicated to beautiful landscape photography, the club of Maeda’s choice shamelessly pursues surreptitiously acquired risqué photos of female classmates. But despite this, the show never paints Maeda as a creep — just a nice guy cypher for its target demo.

 

Photo Kano says some fairly despicable things about female body image issues and relationships in general, including but not limited to a female character swearing to change so a male character will like them better. I took issue with an episode where Maeda blackmails a girl into letting him take some photos of her in a bathing suit, but he ended up getting blackmailed with some of his misplaced porno mags later in the series so I think it more or less balanced itself out.

 

The audience knows the character has a little sister from very early in the series, but as the season draws to a close, you realize that you haven’t seen his adorable sibling in quite a while. Now, the weathered cynic like me knows that when you get into something like this, you have to be ready for some kind of disgusting incest storyline clearly written by and for someone with no siblings. Watching episode 12 of 13, I was naively hopeful that I had dodged a sister-kissing bullet with Photo Kano. I was wrong. Episode 13 not only goes to the all the trouble of justifying the taboo with an awkward she’s-actually-his-stepsister-flashback, but it firmly cements Maeda’s sibling as his final choice for a girlfriend or sexual parter or whatever humans do with each other.

 

It isn’t a bad looking show. I guess it can’t be when its core offering as a piece of entertainment art is aesthetically pleasing girls. That said, it doesn’t have to worry about animating complex action sequences. The character designs are certainly attractive, but they save a corner of the budget for some CGI flourishes that aren’t quite out-of-place enough to make me physically ill. The effects shots in question occur whenever Maeda is taking photos of one of his girlfriends. Maeda sees the perfect shot and breathlessly gasps, “Shutter Chance!” The camera then pans around the now three-dimensionally rendered anime girl moving in slow-motion. Without ever playing the game that provided the source material or doing any kind of time-consuming research, I could almost guarantee this “Shutter Chance” thing was lifted right out of the PSP game. I’m going to go ahead and give a blanket recommendation of this show to all the fans of the game based on that alone.

 

My favorite thing about the show was the music. It was mostly pretty generic. At it’s worst you could call it a bit Animal Crossing-y, but at it’s best it was occasionally really great and reminded me of some of the electronic elements found in the Final Fantasy X and XIII soundtracks and the music of Owl City.

 

It’s no surprise that this isn’t my kind of show, but when it’s all said and done what the show attempts to do it manages to do pretty well.

 

2.5 beach episodes out of 5.

 

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nekomonogatari black

Nekomonogatari: Kuro

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Alternate Titles: Nekomonogatari: Black

Plot:

A second prologue to the overall Bakemonogatari series the story takes place between the original Bakemonogatari and Kizumonogatari.  Black is told from the perspective of Araragi-kun, our mostly-immortal, vampire-related, protagonist.  He owes his life to the seemingly perfect and perpetually put-together class president Hanekawa Tsubasa.  The world continues to be full of “oddities” or supernatural beings which tamper with humans at will.  Hanekawa has become charmed by a white cat during the golden week holiday and begins violently attacking people to relieve her built-up stress.

Production:

Staff ~

The staff is almost entirely different from the original series Bakemonogatari, but the new staff did an excellent job of blending the best elements from the two previous seasons.

The chief director for Neko is Akiyuki  Simbo who has a large number directorial credits to his name.  He was the director for Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Kizumonogatari – following this OVA, and Arakawa Under the Bridge, to name a few.

Naturally with a strong history behind it, the staff worked to be top-knotch.

Animation ~ 

Studio SHAFT continues to do an amazing job on the animation. Not only is it stylistic, smooth, and generally flawless, but it retains all the charms of the previous series such as striking landscapes, minimalist images, camera zooms, word splash screens, and stark color contrasts.

Visually Nekomonogatari is astounding just like any other installment in the franchise.

Music ~

The music is repetitive and that’s the largest flaw I find with it.  However, with the sharp pacing of the dialogue the repetition adds a necessary and creative monotony to the drill of the character’s voice that works with the feeling of the series.  What is there is quite well done.

Review:

The dialogue remains the star of the show.  The anime continues to channel it’s dark flares here and there with random acts of violence or a commentary that catches you off guard with the level of it’s morbidity.  But this show is not, and has never been, an action show.  The dialogue is sharp, quick, and delivered impeccably.  It is the entire driving force of the show and if a well-delivered monologue gets your gears going then this show will have you zero-to-sixty in the first few minutes.  However, if you’re a less-is-more person in the talking department than this show will likely prove more frustration than pleasure.

As a prologue, the barrier to entry to the franchise is low.  You don’t even need the series to the prologue.  A short (well done of course) narration at the beginning sums up important points introduced in the first series such as oddities and who these characters are.  They don’t bog you down with information either which for a first-time viewer should allow the show to be a pleasurable watch.  Of course, that being said if you were a fan of the original series but not a super fan I wouldn’t place this in the “must see” category to get an insight that you have to have for the overall story.  To be honest I never much cared for Hanekawa and while this arc helped me do so I would’ve been fine without it.

Nisemonogatari was a take it or leave it for fans and this series I feel Neko was a step back in the right direction for the overall franchise.  It does not live up to the original glory the series had, but that may be something that simply cannot be done as the original had been so ground-breaking.  One thing I have trouble deciding if it’s a fault, or somehow a glorious thing that works with the presentation of this series is the level of fan-service.  It’s relatively high and normally I would ream a show for walking around a cat girl in lingerie for the sake of it.  But, one of the things about this show is an element of sexuality and sexual repression.  That has been there since the very beginning.  They approach it a bit unlike general fan-service, or at least that’s how it feels.  So somehow you’re willing to forgive it a little more.  Yes, some is just not forgivable, but it doesn’t strike me as horrific as it would with other things where it exists solely as fan-service and little else.

I do praise the story for it’s directness.  Other characters are very much kept to a supporting role, and in a four episode OVA this would be necessary to maintain the integrity of a more simple story-line and get it done well.

Overall, this anime is a watch I think, it has it’s flaws but the Monogatari franchise delivers once again.  Four white cats out of five black ones.

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