Koi Kaze: Manga Review

Just so's ya know, I'm posting this on behalf of Turbo Weeaboo.

Title: Koi Kaze
Author: Motoi Yoshida
Volumes: 5
Released: September 2001
Genre: Romance, Drama



The Plot

Koshiro Saeki’s girlfriend has just broken up with him; accusing him of being a cold man and his calm attitude towards the news makes it all the more apparent.
The next day Koshiro sees a girl on the train crying while looking at a button. As she leaves he notices the girl has dropped her wallet and runs after her to return it, finding her smiling at the falling cherry blossoms. Later that day when leaving work with a co-worker Koshiro yet again sees the same girl, and having two free tickets to a local amusement park he offers her both of them, but is surprised when she asks him to come along with her.

While riding the Ferris wheel the girl confesses that she was rejected after confessing to someone she had a crush on and Koshiro follows suit by talking about his own break up, shocked to discover himself crying while the girl comforts him.
As they leave the amusement park they both greet Koshiro’s father and are soon shocked to learn that they’re siblings; thanks to his habit of staying out all night Koshiro was unaware that his sister Nanoka would be coming to live with their father because it would be closer to her school, and thanks to their living apart they were both unaware of what the other looked like.

Although he now knows they are siblings Koshiro soon finds that the initial attraction he felt when he was unaware Nanoka was his sister continues to grow, despite his own horror and revulsion at these feelings and his attempts to repress them. Meanwhile Nanoka is developing feelings of her own.

What's Good

The idea of incest is one that usually sparks disgust in the majority of people and although the subject matter is a bit uncomfortable it is interesting to see how well the characters’ reactions are portrayed. Koshiro’s struggle to deny his feelings for his sister and his hatred for them are admirable and (at least to this reviewer) allows for a sympathetic feeling for his awkward situation. The way his attempts to act like a normal brother are conflicting with his hidden attraction result in some seemingly realistic responses, becoming flustered and angry at some times, amused and doting at others. Nanoka’s own conflicted feelings are also quite realistic and due to her young age her confusion over matters of romance are typical of a teenager.

What's bad

The obvious thing here is if you’re not willing to abide the subject of incest then this is definitely not a story for you since it is the central focus of the series, essentially portraying it in a more sympathetic light than modern society might consider proper.
The series also ends on somewhat of an unresolved note. In the sense of keeping with the story this is more realistic, since in real-life situations (especially those so controversial and awkward) are rarely resolved to such a complete degree as shown in fiction. However it can still be frustrating for someone who seeks ultimate closure recipe “a la ‘happily ever after’”.

Conclusion
While the subject matter can be viewed as taboo I would recommend this series if you feel you can handle the controversial nature and although incest is not normally seen in a positive light you can still feel somewhat sympathetic towards the two main characters, who have been thrust into a situation neither planned nor wanted in the beginning, but are now stuck dealing with the consequences the best way they can. In my humble opinion it is a sweet and touching story, although ultimately that is up to you to decide.

Tokyo Godfathers: Film Review

Title: Tokyo Godfathers

Written by: Satoshi Kon & Keiko Nobumoto

Directed by: Satoshi Kon

Year: 2003

Before we begin, I feel it's probably worth noting that there are probably spoilers in this review.

I wanted the review to go a bit more in depth than just outlining the plot, so it is perhaps unavoidable that some aspects would be revealed in order to explain my points.

If you're reading this review in order to determine whether or not you should watch Tokyo Godfathers, here, in short, is your answer: Yes. It is good.

The review beneath is less critical and more analytical than is usual for reviews I think, but that is, on this occasion, how I rolled.

I will reiterate, slight spoilers below.

*****

I felt since it was Christmas I would do the right thing and make an offering of a Christmassy film as a review. Being a cynical individual, however, I felt it was necessary to stay away from offering that were morkish or twee. I feel I achieved this well.

Set around Christmas and the New Year, Tokyo Godfathers is the story of three homeless people who discover an abandoned baby and proceed to care for it and attempt to return it to its rightful owner. Sorry, to its parents. The three homeless protagonists are: Miyuki, a teenage runaway; Gin, a bearded man in late middle-age and; Hana, a slightly-too-masculine flamboyant transvestite.

The film flies in the face of conventional Christmas fare, as the overtly grim and bleak storyline often deals with neuroses and mental illness, featuring as one of the film's main antagonistic driving forces is a disturbed grieving mother who resorts to kidnap in order to resolve her manic misery. The film also features a raft of characters you likely wouldn't expect in a festive feature: a mafia boss, and by association, the mafia; agressive judgemental drunks; weapon-toting nihilistic youths and; homeless people as the main focus.

The conoisseur of all things Satoshi Kon will know that his stories often run along dark tracks, often with the focus on a mental illness or psychotic behaviour of some description. This is definitely present in Tokyo Godfathers, and while those may sound like awful ingredients for a Christmas film souffle, it is a delightful antidote for the often vapid and cloyingly hollow Christmas offerings. The film is, in places, a satire of the Christmas film genre, for example; in the faux-montage sequences where the characters are travelling around the city, with a relentlessly upbeat and claustrophobically chirpy backing track powering away throughout. This is but one of the ways in which the film is able to engineer an ironically harmless feel to a scene, where the reality of all of the characters is far from the sterile warmth that is suggested. Another technique is to use overblown bombastic gurning during arguments, suggesting a cheesy light-heartedness which the actual subject matter does not conform with.

Throughout the piece there are ludicrous 'magical' or 'miracle' coincidences which drag the story out of the fairly realistic portrayal of other aspects, such as living on the street, rummaging through bins and being treated with suspicion and distaste by the populace at large (for being homeless, and everything that brings with it). These 'miracles', however, often coincide, or are inextricably linked to, horrific and/or fatal goings on. In this way, the often highly improbably good fortune is portrayed in the foreground, while something far darker and gruesome is shown behind. For example: an argument breaks out between an aggressive drunk and the main characters in a shop, the drunks aggressive behaviour driving the group outside. No sooner are they outside than an ambulance careens off the snow-covered road and ploughs headlong into the shop, reducing it to glass and rubble as the group look on from mere yards away, shocked but unharmed. These bizarre episodes lend the film a delightfully offbeat feel, where each scene, as innocuous as it may appear, has a brooding tenseness to it.

Further contrast is to be found as the seemingly invincible cloud that covers the main characters is sometimes punctured, which is dramatically appealing, as there is no excitement in following the story of characters who cannot be harmed. In one sequence Gin, the bearded father-figure of the group, is assaulted by a group of teenagers, who seem to be trawling the area attacking tramps for their own amusement. It is unusual to find such a random occurence in a film, and it is an event which seems to acknowledge that however pressing and important the narrative you believe your are following is, there are often situations that arise that are out of your control. It is also an unusual thing to find in a Christmas film, which further adds to the subversion. I doubt there are many Christmas films where a bloodied and beaten homeless person lies on the cusp of death on bins in an alleyway. I suppose that is probably a good thing though, it is fresh as a change, but if it was a staple of yule offerings it would seem needlessly upsetting.

The messages I felt the film was sending were, despite its atypical nature, were fairly similar to those you'd expect of a Christmas film, albeit from a very extreme angle. The film promotes love and family, particularly working through hardship for your family, although it does acknowledge that the perfect family often depicted on-screen is a ludicrous fabrication. At one juncture the characters are discussing people having started a family, and the shot cuts away to a billboard atop a skyscraper which portrays a beaming pregnant wife with a responsible proud husband standing beside her, hand around her shoulder. In comparison, the main 'family' of the film is the infinitely unconventional unit that consists of homeless father, transvestite (and homeless) male-mother, runaway (and homeless) teenage daughter and abandoned (and therefore homeless) baby.

There is a steep arc of ridiculousness toward the end of the film, where, despite characters often declaring in self-awareness that they aren't action heroes, the plot does veer down an action-packed tangent. Strangely, this works well, and in no way does it undermine the integrity of the piece. It is as though following protagonists who are so cut-off from the world which the viewer inhabits (I am assuming here that the viewer isn't homeless) that turning up the level of surrealism in the film doesn't alter it's credibility. Although eventually the film feels as though it no longer desires your credulity, and is experimenting with extreme grotesques of overblown miracles that feels like a middle-finger-up to the Christmas film bourgeoisie (Home Alone etc).

The film uses Hana, the trampvestite (what?), to excellent use, using his/her tongue-in-cheek bombastic flamboyancy to deliver lines that are slightly too sincere to meld comfortably with the film, in a way which fits perfectly. My personal favourite is: "Being able to speak freely is the lifeblood of love". Suckle on that for a bit.

At the conclusion of the film, SERIOUSLY NOW SPOILERS, the pieces are all in place to allow an all-loose-ends-tied-up/happy-ever-after finale, which it deftly sidesteps by simply presenting the various jigsaw pieces needed, which while it is heavily suggestive, it requires the viewer to assemble them in their own imagination, or not to, as they see fit.

A powerhouse of a film. Funny, too.

Riding Bean: OVA Review

Title: Riding Bean

Author: Kenichi Sonoda

Director: Yasuo Hasegawa

Year: 1989

Back in those golden days when the Sci-Fi Channel had the presence of mind to broadcast anime goldies, there were certain factors that prohibited me from viewing them. The main factor was a bedtime. So in order to avail myself of these films, it was necessary to badger my parents, to ensure that they put a tape on to record at the end of the night, and all-importantly, that it was on the correct channel. It is in this way that I availed myself of many of the retro classics: Patlabor, Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Black Jack, Golgo 13, Black Magic M-66 and, slightly inappropriately, Violence Jack. I would often view the information tab on these shows, to decide whether or not they were worth recording, though in the end it likely boiled down to two variables upon which I would judge a film. These two variables were: running time and, more importanly, age certificate. It is for these reasons that Riding Bean was never taped, being quite a short film, and not having an 18 certificate. In a strange twist of fate, it is currently listed on imdb as an 18 certificate in the UK, so whether or not my memory is letting me down I may never know. I may simply have avoided it due to its title, imagining that it is a tale that centred around an anthropormorphised runner bean with equestrian tendencies.

As it turns out, I would very much have enjoyed it. So, I am glad that I have watched it now.

Riding Bean is a masterpiece of gratuitousness: gratuitous violence, gratuitous nudity and gratuitous chin.

The film (or one-shot OVA?) throws us into the midst of the action, with our hero, the daftly named Bean Bandit, waiting as a getaway driver for two goons who are committing a robbery and peppering the inside of a mall with shotgun shells. It is in this opening sequence that we also get to see pretty much all of a hostage, an inexplicably naked orange-haired lady, suspiciously too faithful in her representation with a corset-shaped tanline. Is it more suspect that they drew it, or that I found it worth commenting on?

So follows the film's first car-chase, of many, with obligatory police-car pile-ups. I like my sentences hyphenated. Using the term 'obligatory' sounds as though I am doing the car-chases down, which certainly isn't the case. As car-chases go they are very entertaining, but in reality those sort of sequences have never really been my thing. Though my mind was blown by some of the activities of Bean's wIkk3d k3wl car, such as when the wheels turn 90 degrees and send the car hurtling sideways instead of forwards. That is the sort of sequence that would've blown the mind of my 12 year old self, unfortunately only leaving my 22 year old self ruing that he hadn't watched the film a decade earlier. Since the film was released in 1989, it apalls me that this technology does not come standard with every car. The concept is at least 20 years old now! Henry Ford would be spinning in his grave! But no, the technology isn't there yet. He has to make do with doing doughnuts. It's just not the same.

Riding Bean is very much a product of the 80s. The anime of that era which made it to Western shores seems to share certain things in common: an over the top grotesque obsession with "cool" style, being set in a cityscape, nudity, and guns, specifically, a tendency to use them wantonly. Not forgetting a gloriously New Wave/Power Rock crossover of a soundtrack, to be drunk into your ears like a pint of the distilled sweat of Oingo Boingo and Stan Bush. Sound appetising? It is!

In my notes I have written that the film is, on occasion, "fucking vicious with blood", which is certainly an accurate description, and I feel omitting the coarse language of that description would be doing the film down. Its the sort of film which doesn't mind a character getting shot, and if that happens, it would be wise to expect sudden torrential hemoglobin downpour.

There is a vein of comedy running through the film, though the humour shies away from subtlety, instead favouring overblown shouting and gurning. One example is where Bean is rendered furious by an oafish gunman disrespecting his car, which prompts a hugely odd reaction. Bean throws a number of peanuts into his own mouth, straps himself into the car-seat and then chomps down so aggressively on them that his shades fall off. A strange, strange scene.

The car is a big focus of the film, named 'The Roadbuster', it is zehr fast, ludicrously armoured to the point of near-invincibility and red. It seemed to be Bean's main strong attribute, to the point where I had to wonder if he would be of any use away from the wheel of the car. Ohohohoho! I am glad you asked Mr Gilder. Bean is able to withstand bullets, punch through doors and lift a car up by its bumper. "How?" I hear you ask. Fuck knows.

This is the sort of inexplicably daft point that would usually anger me in a film, but Riding Bean somehow manages to be thoroughly endearing despite the ludicrousness of its plot. This is further strange as the dialogue is often banal, with the hilarious quips and witty badinage between characters lacking any wit. The film is probably helped by its relatively short running time, which keeps things punchy, and also by the fact that it is in some way an unofficial pilot episode for Gunsmith Cats, which the author was forced to rename it thanks to falling out with the production company. So I can at least hope that the issues of Bean's superhuman strength are explained in there.

If not, Kenichi Sonoda needs a slap. A soft one though. On the wrist. The other wrist, silly. Do I have to do everything myself?

I haven't really dealt with the film's plot, which was tactful of me as it is full of twists and duplicity which I would've ruined through explaining. So go and watch it and find out what they are.

Oh yes, and Bean Bandit has a stupid chin.

Psycho Staff: Manga Review

Title: Psycho Staff
Genre: Action, Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi
Author: Satoshi Mizukami
Volumes: 1 (7 Chapters)



“To Hiiragi Kouichi, I’ll be waiting for you after school behind the gym. Sakuragi Umeko.” This is the first time Hiiragi Kouichi has ever gotten what seems like a love letter. He goes to the meeting place thinking something exciting and extraordinary is going to take place that will blow all reality out of proportion. Well it turns out he’s right for all the wrong reasons.
Sakuragi Umeko is an agent of the Space Esper Corps from the planet R’lyeh looking to recruit Kouichi, claiming he is a B-Class psychic.
Needless to say he immediately rejects her invitation, ignoring her rambling and saying he wants to go to University more than he wants to go to space.
The series spans seven chapters, allowing the reader a glimpse into a brief but interesting sequence of events.

I like dry, serious characters. I say that, I like it when they’re done well. A lot of the time characters that are supposed to be blunt, witty and clever are nothing beyond a shallow, insensitive husk that barely resembles a decent character. A character needs another element to his attitude that off-sets these harsh characteristics, maybe through using some kind of personal information to justify them, or softening their effects by adding a layer of sensitivity or content that makes the dryness seem less harsh.
This is why I like the main character of Psycho Staff. Kouichi avoids nonsense and always has a serious, cynical outlook on what he does, but over the seven chapters you get to find out what he’s like underneath it all, and that is something satisfying to read.
Umeko is another great character, although her conviction and motivation is something you see in a lot of characters just like her, so as a person she is quite predictable, but the scenarios within the series are interesting enough that while the character is predictable the situation she’s in is bizarre enough to warrant different courses of action.

Fans of “Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer” (a.k.a Wakusei no Samidare) and “Sengoku Youko” will immediately recognise Satoshi Mizukami’s original art style. While the style is pretty simplistic, it has enough detail to make sure the panels aren’t bland but not so much that you can’t see what’s going on (one of the things I hate most in Manga is when you can’t distinguish one thing from another in a scene).

For all its merits it suffers the problem of being very short. While I was most certainly satisfied with it as a whole, the ending seemed a little rushed and a lot of pivotal moments are busted out in a short amount of time, leaving the reader to wonder whether the artist really did have bigger plans for the story. Rushed as it is the ending is satisfying, finishing the story while implying that more happens later.

While I am slightly disappointed by the short length of the Manga, it is still very much worth the read as long as you can let go of it by the seventh chapter.

J-MELO: Music Show Review

Title: J-MELO
Presenters: May J & Shanti
Director: Harada Nobuyuki
Year: 2005 –

We’re going off the beaten track this week as I have decided to go through with an old idea of mine and review J-MELO, a music program that airs on the NHK World channel. It features a mix of interviews, live sessions and music videos, and aims to promote Japanese music to the rest of the world.

The show’s unusual opening is an underwhelming CG affair, where a boat floats past a skyscraper-cityscape, where a golden star bounces into the ship’s pool, which retracts Thunderbirds style to unleash a pair of disembodied fluorescent pink lips, which themselves unleash a rotating love heart which shoots onto the mountain and makes a crotchet sprout out of the mountaintop. The ‘J-MELO’ logo then appears on-screen. The best kind of openings always have absolutely no relation to the show itself.

The show is currently presented by May J and Shanti, who I originally assumed were poppelganger clones, but I have since discovered that cannot be the case, as I dislike them unequally. Every week they appear in new outfits which seem to have been decided by committee, the difference being that the committee in charge of May J’s outfit seem to be slightly insane. This crazy-chic look is complimented perfectly by the fixed ‘forever and ever and ever’ smiles of the two, whose generic, forced enthusiasm for everything that comes up is about as sincere as a trout in the face

Luckily this inane faux-enthusiasm can be counter-balanced with the correct features or guests. I’ll draw examples from the most recent 2 shows to be aired. The first was a show completely focused on the jazz quintet Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions. It featured a number of live sessions performed in front a live audience in the studio, and was interspersed with interviews with the band, conducted by the cheer-duo May J & Shanti, as well as clips from various performances of theirs from around the world.

A 30-minute explosion of exposure is a surprisingly powerful thing, especially if the viewer has the ability to pause and has a notebook at hand. Thus I now not only know that I enjoy the energetic jazz of Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions, but I also know that my favourite member is the smiley drummer, who goes by the name Midorin. When I woke up this morning I was unaware of the existence of Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions, and I had no idea that at the end of the day I would have an opinion of their drummer. The rest of the group are made up of Shacho; a shouty/bouncy vocalist who does little singing but plenty of shouting into a megaphone, and also some miscellaneous percussion, Motoharu; a saxophonist who looks as though he should be in a 90s-punk outfit rather than a jazz ensemble, Akita Goldman; quiet and funky on the double-bass, Tabu zombie; decked out in a strange hat and a jumpsuit, he cuts an odd figure on the trumpet, and Josei; the only band member to actually look the jazz part, on the piano.

Having an entire episode dedicated to your performance is quite the exposé, and in hindsight anything else wouldn’t really do the band justice. Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions are quite eclectic, playing a mix of energetic and upbeat tracks, as well as more traditional piano-driven numbers. I felt that, having been given an episode to fill, they definitely shone and I will certainly be keeping my eye out for their releases in the future.

The second episode I caught was a less focused effort, and rather than showcasing one band in particular, it instead looked at ‘Autumn Releases’. It began with a montage featuring clips from a number of artists, and the diverse nature of the beast was a disorientatingly free offering. It began with some j-rock/visual kei from Sid, moving quickly on to some mellow rock from Nico Touches the Walls, then onto a piano track from Sambomaster, and then a pop love ballad from Nana Nishino. The unrelated goodness continued with quick bursts of grizzly hard rock from Rize, a piano and strings pop number from Ai Taketawa, onto a very old-school style melodramatic croon from Kenichi Mikawa, back onto mellow rock from Bump of Chicken, then to mawkish J-pop from Yui Makino, middle-of-the-road pop from Naotaro Moriyama, lovey hip-hop from Home Made Kazoku, straight to techno/dance-pop from Morning Musume, a classical number from Norimasa Fujisawa, finishing on some cheese-pop from Unicorn.

There was an odd duality to this mixed montage, it was refreshing to see such incongruous songs lined up together, as though the producers trusted the viewers to be open minded, but at the same time there was a feeling that the show was attempting to be as inoffensive as possible, and appeal to absolutely everyone. The latter idea was confirmed as they came out of the montage with Shanti addressing May J with: “Wow, so much variety there” before turning to-camera and declaring, in an un-expressably sinister way: “Something for everyone”. It must be a nightmare editing a show which is presented by pod-people, being drawn into a hypnotic trance at every turn.

It is hard to boil down my feelings for the show concisely, for as much as I take pop-shots at missuses May J & Shanti, I am actually in the thrall of their soothing mesmerism. The interviews they conduct can seem stilted and awkward, due to the fact that both the interviewers and the interviewees are often don’t have native-speaker fluency in English, but I feel this is more endearing, as they are willing to make the effort, and while I am a big fan of subtitles, I know that other, less subtitle-enthusiastic, individuals would appreciate this effort. Even the nasty habits of May J and Shanti, such as replying, as one, like satanic twins; ‘Mmmm’ to any information from the guests or shouting the name of the act in a mawkish fashion after they are done, can really detract from the enjoyment of the groups. The problem with this system is that it relies heavily upon your enjoyment of the act, and if you don’t enjoy their music then you’ll probably not enjoy the episode. The safety-net for this, then, is to often have a scattergun approach to billing acts, usually showcasing many various types of music in one half hour.

An enjoyable show for those interested in music, though I imagine it would be more enjoyable if the interest is specifically in Japanese music. Remember, though, an open mind is usually a good thing. I’ll allow Shanti (my favourite of the mesmeric/satanic twins) to sum up the program herself:

Shanti: (turning to camera) Something for everyone!