Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

Kyoto Animation’s Endless Eight stunt has been turning a lot of (rather unintelligent) people sour towards their most successful franchise Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. I’ve already dropped my $0.02 about the whole thing some time back, so I won’t be treading any old ground here. What I do want to talk about is the latest cylce in this Endless Summer that aired just last night.

There is something especially notable about (what we assume is) this penultimate Endless Eight cycle.  It’s not the expertly executed animation as seen in the first, second, and fifth go-arounds. It’s something that lies more in the direction and scripting. Those examples I noted are also extremely well directed, but this seventh cycle is a notch higher. There is a strong sense of cynicism along with–dare I say–melancholy present throughout the episode’s 24-minute runtime.

The cynicism materializes mostly in the scripting and voice acting. While obviously similar to the rest of the episodes in this arc, there is more variation. Kyon’s surprised response to Haruhi doing her homeworking in three days is not the usual surprised 「三日！？」 and instead an over done “THREE DAYS??” Similarly, Mikuru’s terrible confession about how she can no longer return to the future is reduced completely to unintelligible crying, and Koizumi’s happier than he’s ever been to find out that he’s stuck in a time-loop. Kyon’s “Tell me about these discussions, then leave” quip was probably the best. While these examples in and of themselves aren’t cynical or sarcastic, the way in which they come together creates a very sarcastic mood across the episode. You can almost hear the voice actors, animators, storyboard artists, sound engineers, episode directors and script writers all yelling at you through the television that they’re about as tired of this as you and the characters are.

The sense of melancholy is less present, but does come to the forefront in a few scenes. In particular during the Bon Dance scene and the scene in which Kyon narrates–for the seventh time–all the other things they did that summer. A slow, sad sounding piano piece sneaks up on you as you’re watching Nagato buy another 800 yen mask, and does well to highlight the monotony of the whole affair. Later on during Kyon’s narration, instead of scenes of the characters engaging in their activities, we’re treated to a landscape shot of the sky slowly turning from blue to red, matched to another slow, depressing piece of music brilliantly composed by Kousaki Satoru. The episode ends with Kyon writing 無理 (impossible) in big letters across his notebook.

I hate making an ass of both you and me, but given the tone of this episode, I would like to think they’re gearing up to end it with the next one. The sixth cycle teased us with fast pacing, giving us false hope that there may be an extra turnaround at the end, and this episode has a real strong undercurrent of GET ON WITH IT ALREADY. I still think this arc is rather clever, and I did pooh-pooh people who didn’t like it in the opening paragraph, but it sure would be neat if ended next week.

But it probably won’t!

…despite its awesome cover art, the only other things different from my US edition are the cut scenes along with the very few times the characters speak, and I can just watch that stuff on YouTube! It was however quite tempting at a nice 250 yen. In the end, though, I had to buy both Intelligent Qube and I.Q FINAL.

My love affair with this game started when I was a wee lad–around 10 or 11–and I constantly played the demo on a demo disc sent to me directly from the PLAYSTATION UNDERGROUND. I kept playing that demo for like… years. Never bought the game, though. Couldn’t find it anywhere. It wasn’t until around sophomore year in college that I played the game proper by way of emulation, and it was as brilliant as I remember it being. In fact, what prompted me to play the whole game was when I found out about its awesome musical score by way of bored Wikipedia surfing one night. Until I actually got around to finding an ISO for the game I just listened to the soundtrack over and over.

Just a little while ago I was wandering around the local BookOff to kill some time. I had never actually looked in the games section before (I don’t often play games) and decided to look specifically for old, cheap, Japanese PSX games. I found these and had no choice but to buy them. I.Q was 105 yen, and I.Q FINAL was 500.

Man, I don’t get what’s with me and Intelligent Qube. It’s just so… INTELLIGENT.

There’s this guy living in my guest house. In fact, he may be reading this right now. Anyways, on Friday nights I usually come back home with takeout for dinner. Sometimes I come back with something from Mos Burger. This guy will typically have made some impressive feast of meats and vegetables for himself for dinner that night. I’ll compliment him on how good his food looks while holding my Mos Burger bag, and he always replies with, “Yeah, but…”

“…YOU HAVE MOS BURGER”

There’s not a lot of information about our boy Shinbo Akiyuki on the internet. Well, at least in English. I mean, yeah, there is this blog, which has some really informative translations and shitty everything else, but that’s about it! As such, one has to turn to the Japanese internet for information–with the first and most obvious place to stop being Wikipedia.

The Japanese Wikipedia article on Shinbo isn’t all that longer than the English language version, but while reading it last night to kill some time I did happen across some interesting bits of information which I would like to share very much with you, the reader.

I’d just like to note upfront that this won’t be any sort of kransom-esque translation of an obscure, interesting, ONLY IN JAPANESE UNTIL NOW interview or essay or anything. My Japanese is really bad, and I’m just sharing with you some of these random bullet points I found interesting incase you’re unable to figure out Japanese sentence structure and don’t really know how to work Rikai-chan. Of course, it goes without saying that what I write may be inaccurate. Anyway, here goes!

• Much like Outlaw Star director Hongou Mitsuru, Shinbo is bad with photos. Even though he does accept interviews, pictures of him in the mass media are few in number. (If that’s so, why is he smiling in that one Zetsubou Sensei opening!)
• Shinbo is acquainted with Yu-Gi-Oh! manga author Takahashi Kazuki.
• Shinbo is a big fan of film director Ichikawa Kon. The Tenamonya Voyagers ending theme is apparently a cover of the theme song for a television series directed by Ichikawa. The show was called Kogarashi Monjirou, and the song was titled Dareka Ga Kaze no Naka De. Also, episode 11 of Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Kuroi Juunin no Shoujo) was a parody on an Ichikawa film titled Inugami-ke no Ichizoku. This episode was actually made when Ichikawa died.

That’s it. Nothing really interesting to anyone else except me, but it’s there if you want it. The rest of the bullet points are either obvious or already covered in the English article. There is a section in the Japanese article on Shinbo’s stlye, but once again it’s all stuff that you can figure out just by watching the shows he does.

It’s going to be cool when this post gets no comments.

(Also, does anyone know where that photo is from? Seems like a TV show or DVD extra. Nico and Youtube turn up nothing.)

I actually meant to order Giant Robo OST 7, but since it was late I ordered this on accident. Still something I wanted, though!

I imagine the scene at the post office will play out something like this.

Comedy Dr. Strangelove option.

Those familiar with most daring hero of Japanese animation Shinbo Akiyuki through his works with studio SHAFT such as Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei are probably unaware of his other, lesser known works. There’s a reason for this, and that’s simply because these lesser known works aren’t terribly great. They’re directed fabulously, but often times Shinbo’s older work is just held down by some bad writing. Le Portrait de Petite Cossette, or the The Portrait of Little Cossette, or コゼットの肖像 is of a slightly higher pedigree than, say, Shin Hurricane Polymar, but it still suffers from what I will for now on dub as the “Shinbo OVA Curse.”

Cossette aims high, and at a place that I like. It’s a twisted love story between an older man and little, but kind-of-sort-of-ALREADY-DEAD girl. Our main man, Kurahashi Eiri works in an antiques shop and is fascinated by one of the antique glasses in the store’s collection. Within the glass he can see a figure of a girl going about her daily life–the titular Cossette. Through a series of crazy SoulTaker-like imagery, our cute Cossette comes to life by the end of the first episode, which is where their tragic love story spirals into pits of despair. There’s also some other characters who are really concerned with our main man–as they should be–but they really don’t do much.

I’ll go ahead and get the bad stuff out of the way. This writing is pretty confused. In the end, the story makes perfect sense, but there’s too many diversions. I think–on some level–the core plot is fine, but what takes away from it is all the extra stuff. While character dialogue tends to make sense, they do have habit of pontificating upon things that don’t really mean anything. Another thing that distracts the story is the existence of characters other than Kurahashi and Cossette–they do well to illustrate how people close to him feel about this whole thing, but the degree to which they get involved feels a touch pointless. On this same vein, the show doesn’t get to expand much on our cast of characters in its three, round-about-45-minute episodes, so they don’t leave much of an impression. Had the story focused more squarely on Kurahashi and Cossette, I feel it would have been better.

However, I don’t think that hurts the piece too much, as what really makes this is Shinbo’s direction. This is dark Shinbo. This is SoulTaker, and sometimes-maybe-if-you’re-lucky Tsukuyomi -MOONPHASE- Shinbo. It revels in twisted storyboarding, the old-style Shinbo colour palette (which is making a reappearance in Bakemonogatari), hard black shadows, and striking lighting situations, all set to creepy background music. It’s over-the-top. It’s good. What also helps is fairly good animation work. It’s nothing really spectacular, but it certainly does remind one of the days when “OVA quality” kind of meant something. There is some iffy 3D work here and there, which does cheapen the piece a bit, especially when the Golgo 13 skulls make an appearance. The character designs aren’t particularly memorable, but I like the realist look they have about them. Cossette herself is rather cute, in a sort of creepy, porcelain doll way.

Even though the direction is great, the writing does hurt because of what it could have been. Had the staff thought through the script a bit more, this show would have been pretty good, if not fantastic. It sadly gets distracted by too many weird, unnecessary things along the way. As I say in most of my reviews for these old Shinbo OVAs–watch it if you like the man’s work, as it’s pretty good in that respect. However, unlike Hurricane Polymar, Cossette’s decent enough that I’d recommend it with caution to certain people who may be into its subject matter. It’s not bad, but it’s not great.

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