BEST NEW SERIES

Nozomi no Densetsu, without a doubt. I don’t think anyone quite saw this one coming, and in a way I’m glad we didn’t. GAINAX’s masterpiece was one of the best-kept secrets in years–which is made even more impressive by the fact that they chose to simultaneously broadcast it on American TV as well. Every aspect of this show so far has been a masterpiece. The manic enthusiasm of Gurren Lagann crossed with the emotional depth of Evangelion’s twisted psychology… This is very much an adult show, and embraces that. There’s a reason it’s skyrocketed to the top of the charts both in Japan and America. It’s the first anime since Cowboy Bebop to be really socially acceptable to watch in America, and is practically the talk of the nation these days.

And you know what the best part is? We’ve got the whole second season to look forward to next year. (But dear gods, what a cliffhanger! GAINAX are horrible people!)

BEST CONTINUING SERIES

There were some really fantastic series continuing this year, with FMA’s stellar finale and some of Naruto’s best arcs, but the real standout was Eden of the East. The announcement of a full second season at the end of the second movie was thoroughly exciting, and lived up to its promise. The world it painted was rich and fascinating, and extremely poignant. Everyone who saw it came away with a hell of a lot to think about, and deeper for it.

BEST MOVIE

Oh wow, Fuyu no Tobira, no question. Mamoru Hosoda has knocked another one out of the park. We all thought Summer Wars was brilliant, but it was nothing compared to this–especially given the turnout! And now the American premiere of it has opened to stellar box office results, not to mention the pundits saying it’s a shoo-in for Best Animated Picture. Not since Spirited Away has an anime movie been this widely-accepted. I personally think that Hosoda could well be the next Miyazaki.

BEST BLOG

This is gonna be cheesy of me, but… the entire goddamn blogosphere. You guys really stepped up to the plate, and made some amazing posts. The whole community seemed to really cohere this year, and swelled immensely in size. There were occasional bouts of drama, but nothing out of the ordinary. On the whole, you guys just fucking rocked this year. Mad props.

MOST INTERESTING BLOG

The OEG. We never figured out who exactly they were, but they sure stirred things up a lot. And, in the end, they were successful, on a much broader scale than even they intended, I think. We all underestimated how powerful our own viral marketing schemes could be, and… Well, frankly, we have the unofficial OEG panels at Fanime, AX, and Otakon to thank for a lot of the publicity. Sure, it resulted in a fuckton of trolling, but… go to any anime convention these days, and you’ll find a mind-boggling decrease in the quantity of idiotic narutard-style otaku. The fandom as a whole seems to be finally growing up, and the OEG may well have been the catalyst.

SADDEST MOMENT

The return of Jason fucking Miao. Goddammit. The one blemish on an otherwise glorious year. I won’t spend any more time on this cumdumpster than I need to.

HAPPIEST MOMENT

Do I even need to list this? I think everyone knows what’s going to be said.

Everyone was horrified when ghostlightning announced BusterBeamSlice’s illness. We all anxiously followed the hospital mess on Twitter, and were right there with him as he waited in anguish for the diagnosis. And when we heard the news…

Well, that’s when the magic happened. There wasn’t any one real leader to it. We all just kind of spontaneously rallied. And what resulted was a truly beautiful effort. I’ve seen fundraisers. I’ve seen charities. But this… this was something special. There’s a reason that baby is alive and healthy today, and the reason is every single one of you. You’re all beautiful people.

Fuck, listen to me! I got into this business to troll all of you, and here I am singing your praises! Shit man! This must have been one hell of a year, to get me talking like that.

And you know what? I have this weird kind of feeling, like 2011… 2011 might just be even better. We’ve got so much forward momentum. So much to look forward to. So much potential. All we have to do is… not fuck this up.

.lolikappa

It was essentially the same as the ending of Bokura ga Ita, with more sympathetic characters and better execution. But still, it’s the same: it’s just a moving on. Bokura ga Ita wasn’t a tragedy, and its ending wasn’t tragic. And I think the same statements could be applied to Honey & Clover.

Top: Bokura ga Ita, Bottom: Honey & Clover

Now, I understand that the entire premise of this post is a technicality. sybilant is welcome to enjoy what she enjoys and dislike what she dislikes, and if the ending of H&C is too sad for her, it’s too sad for her. But still, the thoughts started pouring out once I considered the question: “was the ending… tragic?” And now, I’m writing a post about a tragedy known as “the passage of time.”

Before we plunge too deep into H&C, I want to introduce you to the final scene of “5 cm/s.” First, an admission: 5 cm/s is laughable. The story goes something like this… a boy, thirteen years old, gives up on a childhood love and his soul is subsequently crushed. There is an extremely depressing sequence wherein this boy, Takaki, no longer a boy, expresses his dissatisfaction with the world, and it is followed by a long montage of past scenes mixed with the oppression of the working world. At the end of this montage comes the final scene: Takaki sees one final reminder of what he has lost, and as he walks away, he smiles.

It’s not a broken smile. It’s not a deranged smile.

Takaki smiles as he walks away. No, he hasn’t mended his rent soul; no, he hasn’t found happiness. But he has something to smile about.

Now, back to H&C: as Takemoto leaves Tokyo, forever abandoning his friends and love, he opens the sandwiches given him by said love (Hagu). He sees what they’re made of—honey and four-leaf clovers—and he begins crying. I will not equate his sorrow to Takaki’s despair, but the similarity comes as he puts the sandwiches back together and begins eating.

Takemoto eats the sandwiches, tears streaming down his cheeks.

To me, Takemoto taking a bite out of the sandwich Hagu made is equivalent to Takaki’s smile. The question, then, is what does it express? What does this equivalence mean? In pondering this question, I remembered another scene in which a character dramatically takes a bit out of something—and no, I’m not thinking of Yagami Light and his potato chips.

It’s another boring night in boring space and Spike and Jet have just been abandoned by their buddies Faye and Ed. After spending twenty plus episodes growing accustomed to having companions, suddenly they are alone again. They eat the hard-boiled eggs—a parting gift from Ed—in knowing silence.

What are Spike and Jet feeling? Why can Takaki smile? What is Takemoto thinking of as he speeds away from his happiness and toward an uncertain future?

One answer that makes sense to me is this: nostalgia.

It’s pretty clear to me that Takemoto isn’t thinking of the future as he cries into his honey and clover sandwich. He’s thinking about Hagu, and how his desires fell through. More important than his romance, however, is that the four-leaf clover evokes his memory of the river bank on the day that he, Mayama, Yamada, Morita, and Hagu all “looked for that one thing”—the four-leaf clover is everything that he did and was for years. That one moment on the riverbank was the purest moment for the group—peaceful and lacking in the usual tensions—, and possibly the most tragic, if only for the fact that it was never relived.

It seems realistic to me that as he eats the sandwich, Takemoto’s time in college is playing itself out in his mind.

As Takemoto cries into his sandwich, I see a wish for more time, a longing for the happy memories of the past. That’s what nostalgia is, and we see it in the other examples.

What Spike and Jet are exhibiting as they stuff themselves with hard-boiled eggs is more than resignation. Resignation is definitely part of it, but it’s not all of it. To an extent, they miss the boisterous days with Ed and Faye. Their reserved silence is more than an appreciation for Ed and Faye, however: as they eat the eggs, they are undoubtedly both remembering the previous time women walked out on them, and perhaps thinking back further to how things were before that “last time.” My dictionary has the word “wistful” in the definition for “nostalgia,” and “wistful” is an adjective I might employ if you were to ask me to describe the manner in which Spike and Jet eat those god-damned eggs.

Likewise, Takaki is doing more than merely steeling himself against depression as he smiles at the end of 5cm/s. All four of the shows mentioned thus far share the act of reminiscing and thinking back at the end; Bebop and H&C are simply more subtle about it (they don’t pile on the flashbacks like 5cm/s and Bokura ga Ita do).

But now a question: why nostalgia?

Takemoto has the answer to that one. In the final scene of H&C, as embedded above, he asks a question. “Is something that will disappear the same as something that never existed?” He asks this specifically in the context of his failed romance with Hagu, but again, I feel it applies to his entire time in college. The importance of this question is that it can only be answered in two ways. The response is a negative one. The other is a positive response—and that response resides in reminiscing. It resides in nostalgia. It can’t exist unless you think back on the pleasant memories.

Without nostalgia, Takaki would be an empty husk. Without nostalgia, Spike would have no reason to take the only real action he takes in Bebop (leaving to settle things with Vicious). Without nostalgia, Takemoto would be departing Tokyo with nothing but his architecture degree.

But wait…

Takemoto doesn’t just leave Tokyo with nostalgia. He arrives with it.

Here I am going to talk about something I will name the “Takemoto Lens.” We see through it many times throughout the show, too many times to recount them all. I’m going to make vague references to a few of them and you’re going to nod and say “ahhh.”

- the scene on the riverbank, when they search for the clover
- the last Christmas celebration with the whole group
- the last time the whole group parties together

We see Takemoto, again and again, making prophetic statements akin to “this is the last time we’ll all do x, y, and z together.” He says them with a bit of a sigh, but also with certainty: he is not merely speculating. It seems he knows the future. And here we thought he was telling the story in the present tense.

He’s not telling it in the past tense, either. Whether the information on which he bases his prophetic statements comes from the past or present or sheer clairvoyance is unimportant; what is important is that he allows us to have an emotional reaction we wouldn’t have if certain scenes weren’t seen through his eyes. If we watched the group search for the clover, and if the group didn’t find the clover, and if we never gave the clover search a second thought, would it have been the powerful moment it was? Hagu’s waterworks after the fact are hardly impressive; they’re bathetic to say the least.

Thanks to Takemoto’s lens, we can appreciate the future consequences of things in real time. We feel something like what Takemoto feels, perhaps some combination of dread, celebration, realization–and in some cases, an overflowing of love.

Feeling the consequences of the present in real time: is this not what Spike and Jet both feel as Cowboy Bebop diminuendos toward its ending? Their final scene together, reminiscent of so many melancholic Sengoku Basara yaoi tributes, is one in which nothing needs to be said. Both see the present unfolding into the future, and are reflecting on that future in real time, though neither is omniscient or Mikuru.

Spike and Jet are mere humans. This adds credibility to Takemoto’s prophecies, and, with that, credibility to the emotion behind them. It’s human—it’s real.

And with reality comes the axiom that there is a spectrum of grays between black and white.

And with that axiom, the proposition that the ending of Honey & Clover isn’t tragic.

This has been a couple months in the coming, and I apologize for its tardiness (and for the roughness of the last few paragraphs). Up next: “That one Episode of Morita’s Past wasn’t Compelling: You Fail at Analysis” and “Akari Mizunashi isn’t a Character, she’s a Lens.”

But then it was some new anime that was shitty through and through. It felt a bit like Jojo, what with all the extremely buff and disproportionate dudes being buff and disproportionate. There were some nice jiggle physics, I guess, but they didn’t make up for anything.

I made it all the way through the first episode of Needless, surviving off my masochism, and then…

… I was rewarded.

The ending animation entails three lolis kissing each other, rubbing each other, licking each other, rubbing against each other, and so on and so forth and doing all the things that three lolis normally do whilst removing each other’s clothing, and I went to heaven, dying a million times and coming back to life a million times.

Then the preview for episode two replaced the loliyuri and I cried a million times and died and didn’t come back to life.

Verdict: shit.

More seriously, though, it’s true that I have not blogged anime in a really long time. My last post on here, in fact, was to the effect that I was totally swamped by that oftentimes elusive, oftentimes painfully-in-your-face thing called “real life.”

But enough of that.

It’s time for a casual and relaxed account of my 2009 anime experience thus far.

Maria+Holic 1-2
I have another five episodes to watch, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. This has nothing to do with the death of subtext; this show is the most blatant thing ever. I think it has more to do with the Shaft style. Bitches need to know when to cut back. I don’t want to watch ef a third time.

Maria-sama ga Miteru Season 4 1-4
Episodes 1 and 2 were awesome; 3 and 4 were terrible. I have 5 and 6 with me but haven’t watched them simply because I don’t have the time. I do want to, and quite badly at that. This show is part of the definition of lolikitsune; it won’t remain unwatched for long.

Aria the Animation 1-3
As one of my New Year’s Resolutions, I restarted Aria. It’s so good.

Toradora 15-18
Slowly, slowly plodding through this. It reached a point where I said “indeed! This IS H&Cesque!” because all the characters seemed to have their own depth and they were all good in very human ways. The only problem is that these characters are like, the pre-H&C good humans, and as such their trials and tribulations all seem painfully immature. I’ll be honest: I’m tired of the mediocrity.

Cowboy Bebop 23
I want to finish this show someday. That’s all I can say.

Aria the Animation 1-3
One of my older brothers (who had seen no Aria previously) decided to try the show out. It’s so fucking good.

Xamd 20-26
The show really petered out in the end. It did the Darker Than Black thing, where there’s lots of unexplained nonsense—and, instead of leaving it unexplained, the creators try to put it all together and come to a conclusion. Like in DTB, this resulted in a lot of stuff not making sense. Shows need to know when to just leave well enough alone.

That said, emotional captain was emotional, cool animation was cool, fun show was fun. I just have no idea why Nazuna got on that bus in the first episode.

Munto TV 1-4
It’s just the OVAs all over again so far, right? Not too big a waste of time, and I’m looking forward to the new material.

Suzumiya-chan 1
I vomited, and couldn’t finish the episode.

Churuya-san 3
I vomited, and couldn’t finish the episode.

Clannad After Story 14-18
Good stuff. Unfortunately, no, this does not redeem 36 episodes of garbage. A couple good moments do not a good show make. No matter what anyone says. I’m not going to argue this at any length right now because I have better things to be doing with my time than engaging in internet debates, but let it be known that that is my opinion. I think the movie did a better job overall. Of course, AS 18 made me want to become a dad, but that’s just because I’m a moron.

Aria the Animation 1-3
Saki, the one-time anime-lover, decided she wanted to give my favorite show a try. I accompanied her. She liked it enough to watch more than one episode. Woot? Incredibly fucking good show.

Aaaaand that’s pretty much what my animescape has been since getting into the UC Berkeley dorms. What, you want more from me? A convention report on AODSF2009? It sucked! Anything else? Satire? Humor? What are those?! I hear the ABAs weren’t happening a second time! I don’t need no fucking awards.

I just want love.

Oh, I watched Coraline, and it scared me shitless more than once. I’m so easily creeped out :(

It’s an opportunity to reinforce ignorance.

Reverse Thieves read Kodomo no Jikan and Scott reads Yaoi. If you want a lolicon manga that touches on taboos but delivers a touching and meaningful story nonetheless, KnJ is not the right way to go. Sure it’s got some DRAMA in it but it’s mostly comedy and fanservice. It’s not going to convert lolicon haters. Similarly, manga chock-full of gay rape isn’t going to sit well with someone who hates… gay rape.

I’m not saying it’s bad to challenge your dislikes. I recently managed to make myself enjoy avocados and mushrooms, and I wouldn’t have come this far if I hadn’t forced myself. But my attitude approaching mushrooms wasn’t “fuck, I hate mushrooms… I really fucking hate mushrooms… fuck, I really fucking hate mushrooms… maybe there’s some chance I’ll like this mushroom more than the last, but it’s extremely unlikely… FUCK I fucking hate mushrooms.” It was more like, “hmm, I hate mushrooms—but I want to change that. Other people like this shit. Other people enjoy this shit. Why do I hate it?”

So while eating the vile fungus I taught myself to contemplate why exactly I disliked mushrooms. Once I figured out that there was no good reason, I began liking them more. Same with avocado.

Same with anime.

I used to be horribly prejudiced against any show that featured space. So much so that I refused to watch more than five episodes of Cowboy Bebop, back a few years ago when it was within my grasp. After a while, I came to terms with the fact that my hatred was irrational, and I overcame it, and all was well with Infinte Ryvius, Starship Operators, etc., through today’s Tytania.

So I think that Scott’s challenge is flawed.

The approach is all wrong, in my most humble opinion.

But all this is backstory.

Here we get to the interesting part: Scott’s blog post is, for lack of a better word, wanting. He calls rape a horrible plot device (which I disagree with). He says that yaoi can only be a guilty pleasure no matter who’s watching (which I disagree with, as someone who enjoys (without guilt!!) just about any romance, regardless of who the participants are). He blames his prejudice on his upbringing (again, I disagree—humans are free to feel however they want about whatever they want, and one’s upbringing is merely a nest from which to soar after spreading one’s wings). These are three big errors. His biggest error? He has his comments closed.

That’s right. If you want to weigh in on the stuff he writes, you need to resort to pre-WWW technology (e-mail).

There are other people who do this, but it’s not so much a problem there because their sites are less interesting. (j/k Author, <3 u) My main issue here is that Scott says interesting things, things that beg for discussion, and he shuts that discussion down before it can even come to be. But, I’m a whore. So I let him ram his method into my ass, and I e-mailed him.

Below is my e-mail. Scott had a fairly negative reaction to it, saying that I acted like an asshole, so for the sake of clarity I have identified all the contents of my e-mail as either me being an asshole or me being something else.

Now, the only two places that can feasibly be construed as me being an asshole are circled. I sheepishly admit that I did not address my latter properly (it should have been “Dear Scott:”, and I opted for a more friendly approach). I also proudly admit that I didn’t use euphemisms to cover up my opinion of his statement regarding the viability of rape as a plot device. Both of these circled spots are marginally rude. Scott, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.

And now, apologies out of the way, I’m done with being sorry.

I’m not going to paste Scott’s e-mail here (my PR guy taught me not to do shit like that), but I will discuss its contents.

First, he says that I have a bit of an attitude problem. I’d say that that’s not news to me, but it actually is. You’re talking about the guy being inappropriately revered for laying the verbal smackdown on random e-passersby. I have a huge attitude problem (yes I am compensating for something). The other shocking thing that Scott says is that he doesn’t appreciate my attitude. The man loves Kodomo no Jikan and he doesn’t like my attitude? Shocking!

He then gives me advice: he tells me not to call people idiots (something I didn’t do in my e-mail) and he also tells me not to tell people that I find their websites boring. Well, fuck. I can’t tell him that his website is boring to me, but he can tell me that my sexuality is abhorrent to him?

He goes on to say that he disagrees with me (without any discourse) and finishes by telling me that I shouldn’t bother with that second e-mail, oh and by the way he’s blocking me on Twitter and putting my e-mail address on his blacklist. I thought that he was a pretty censor-loving guy when I discovered that his comments were closed, but this is straight-up self-delusion and isolation from reality! Refusing communication altogether, boxing oneself up…

Scott of The Anime Almanac is an adversary of freedom.

Scott of The Anime Almanac is Public Enemy #2.

P.S. his post was the best possible advertisement for Gerard & Jacques. I will make it my new goal in life to go out, purchase, and consume as many volumes of this masterpiece as I possibly can.