FLCL

I don’t watch much anime anymore but I still like to check out my old favorites now and again, along with whatever next big thing is floating out there. So I was pretty excited to revisit FLCL which was just released on DVD and Blu-Ray at a non exorbitant price for the first time in forever.

Just what FLCL is is difficult to verbalize if you’ve never seen it. Incomprehensible and strange don’t quite do it. About as easy to summarize as any given stretch of Inland Empire and assaultive come somewhat closer. And if you’re one of those people who have absolutely no affinity for anime I can imagine FLCL easily being one of the most intolerable pieces of media ever created.

The show is filled with Imagery of Divine Robots, giant creatures made of hands, oedipal patricide, hypnotic eyebrowed secret agents, a giant cat’s swinging testicles and a scene in which the evil blue glove from The Yellow Submarine throws a giant interstellar bomb in the shape of a baseball at the planet. All combined in what Perhaps is the most torturedly elaborate and obvious puberty metaphor of all time. If there aren’t moments in it that make you feel deeply conflicted and uncomfortable I worry about you as a person.

Yeah it’s kind of like that…

The show follows a young boy Naota, coming of age on the cusp of junior high. Melancholy from the departure of his brother and general ennui, Naota’s world is rocked when he is assaulted by a pink haired girl riding a moped who bashes him in his head with her guitar. Now giant robots occasionally erupt from his forehead and get into giant kauji battles over the city.

Yeah it’s kind of like that…

And while the above might make FLCL sound bog standard (or at least bog standard as far as anime goes) as anyone who has seen it will tell you FLCL is anything but. Exuberant, stylistically bold (or somewhere beyond) and filled with that strange irreplaceable energy that comes from artists doing whatever the hell they want to do. If you’ve been reading me for any amount of time I don’t need to tell you that audacity counts for a lot with me. And FLCL is one of the most audacious experiments in style that I’ve seen in any medium.

By the time the time the series reaches its apex in an episode long parody of/tribute to the absurdity of The Heroic Bloodshed genre during which more rounds are fired in twenty minutes than in the runtimes of The Killer, Hard Boiled, A Bullet In The Head, and A Better Tomorrow 2 combined. Said episode ends with our principles fighting a sky scraper sized robot made out of guns. All while cutting across so many mediums that it positively shreds them.

I’m sure that one day people will be able to beam inexplicable imagery and sensations directly into our heads, driving us past the point of madness. Until the madness gun is invented FLCL will have to remain the next best thing. Watching FLCL is like snorting a line of pixie stix. The initial reaction is of course to grasp one’s face in pain and terror, yet there can be no denying that there is a certain exhilaration to it.

The 25: Part 18: Ghost In The Shell

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider the best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)

“Incorrect I am not an AI. My code name is Project 62501. I am a living thinking entity who was created in the sea of information.”

-Ghost In The Shell-

I assure you that shit blew my mind back in the day.

Some movies stick in the mind just by virtue of getting there first. Had been I exposed to the idea’s of replication and the implications it has in terms of identity, particularly in the digital era, by William Gibson, Stanley Kubrick, Phillip K. Dick, Neal Stevenson, or hell even Steven Spielberg first, I may have not reacted so strongly. But the fact is that Ghost In The Shell DID get there first, and those ideas DID connect with me on a very primal level. Shaping not so much the way I view the world as the questions I wanted to ask about it.

But it didn’t just affect my ideas about life, but filmmaking and genre. Ghost In The Shell transcended the ideas of genre as thoroughly as Katsuragi and The Puppet Master transcended the ideas of consciousness. Ghost In The Shell taught me Genre has upon it only the limitations the creator’s of it, and you as a viewer set. You’re restricted only by the story you tell and the strength of the metaphor you create.

Ghost In The Shell tells the story of a government black operative who is caught up in a battle between dueling government agencies to control, contain or destroy an entity called The Puppet Master. A sapient being that spontaneously generated from “The Sea Of Information.”

What is truly amazing is how prescient and fresh Ghost In The Shell still feels fifteen years later . Both in style and ideas. Like William Gibson our world has simply caught up to it.

The film is in a sense built around two set pieces, a chase through and gun battle in, a crowded Farmer’s Market that creates a future world as vivid, believable, and immersive as any I’ve ever seen. A sprawl where people seem to actually live, rather then a simple Neon Depository. All this while delivering a running gun battle worthy of Woo at his very best, which makes good use of the rules and physics of the world it has established (note the metal roof crumpling under the weight of The Major's cybernetic body).

(I've always loved this insert shot of the assassin bracing himself with his foot before opening fire. Such a small detail but adds so much realism and danger)

The other involves a long dreamy montage at the center of the film. At the center of which comes this series of shots.

















The above series of shots is engaging because we don’t know how literarily we are supposed to take it. Is the sight just a consequence of the heroine’s disconnected fugue state, or is this the ultimate result of the cheapening of identity that this film prophesied and the digital era promises. It’s worth noting that Joss Whedon won plenty of accolades for essentially copying this film’s technology and moral debates verbatim.

This is a more visual piece then I’m usually do, if only because the movie’s strength’s rest so strongly in them. And I’m not simply talking about empty style, but the communicativeness of the images. This pathetic lost look of dawning incomprehension, the look of the damned, on the ghost hacked would be assassin, as he realizes just how little he knows about “himself” is worth a thousand wordy monologues about how fragile a construct identity is.

And I happen to know this because Ghost In The Shell actually does contain a thousand wordy monologues on that subject.

And here lies the rub for a lot of people with this movie. Ghost In The Shell plays long for a movie that just barely cracks the eighty minute barrier with the help of two long credit sequences. Personally I mean that in a good way. It’s a hallmark of Mamoru Oshii as a filmmaker that he takes his damn sweet time when it comes to pace. And for me his meditative evocative montages are highly affecting. The above montage has a “sister” of sort late in the film just before the climax that focuses on what are basically the action sci fi equivalent of pillow shots accompanied by a low atonal guitar. A striking moment of quiet before the gruesome finale that I always find beautiful and haunting.

Unfortunately long didactic monologues are also a trademark of Oshii which means that the film is filled with shots of the characters staring directly into the screen, delivering paragraphs of dialogue that seem like the result of an epic night of brainstorming between Hideaki Anno and Lana Wakowski.

Speeches like this...

"There are countless ingredients that make up the human body and mind, like all the components that make up me as an individual with my own personality. Sure I have a face and voice to distinguish myself from others, but my thoughts and memories are unique only to me, and I carry a sense of my own destiny. Each of those things are just a small part of it. I collect information to use in my own way. All of that blends to create a mixture that forms me and gives rise to my conscience. I feel confined, only free to expand myself within boundaries."

-Delivered in a single uninterrupted breath by an actor who only seem to vaguely comprehend what she’s saying cannot help but come off as Hokey. Some of the problem probably stems from me watching The American Dub (I’m normally a sub purist but considering that the dub was the version I watched and rewatched after taping it off of The Action Channel at fourteen it seems only fair) But all the blame can’t be put on the dubbing. A pedantic ranting monologue by any name…

It must also be admitted that narrative clarity has also never been Oshii’s strong suite. And Ghost In The Shell is no exception. Oshii is splendid at communicating his idea’s and action visually, but not his stories. True the task of condensing a long running manga series into seventy five minutes is never easy. But it might have been wise for Oshii to not place quite so much emphasis in the plot on the cloak and daggering of fictional bureaucracies whose function and relationship to each other are vague at best. It also carries with it (as those who have seen the above wildly unrepresentative poster that began the article) that special tang of gender confusion that only anime can have. The kind that makes The Major genuinely one of the most well rounded, capable, and interesting female characters in Science Fiction and yet has to strip down to her lovingly detailed skivvies whenever she wants to use her technology.

Still if the film is overly earnest in its ideas it is only because it is so obviously taken with them. The vibrancy of the world and the radicalness of its concepts and ambition won me over such petty flaws then, and they do anew each time I rewatch Ghost In The Shell.

Summer Of Samurai: Rurouni Kenshin Season 2

Out of the countless amount of Samurai anime that has been produced Rurouni Kenshin remains the most popular (Its title recently challenged by Samurai Champloo).

The first season of Kenshin was an unremarkable but fun action anime. The second season upped the stakes considerably, producing a run remarkable not for doing things differently, as much as doing them so awfully well. (It also produced a third series which was neither remarkable nor fun, but we won’t talk about that.)

The logline of the show wouldn’t be out of place in a Clint Eastwood Western (and indeed, hasn’t been) Kenshin once a ruthless killer has settled into an idealized domesticity as he does what he can to help with the modernization of Japan through its fragile Meji government. Interrupted on a weekly basis by ruthless young killers trying to make their name killing the last of the old guard, and old rivals from the days of the revolution intent on settling their final score. After some hesitancy Kenshin breaks out his reverse blade sword, reveals some heretofore unknown technique and then imparts a valuable lesson about honor, or mercy, or good dental hygiene. Its an effective formula and one can hardly blame the makers of Kenshin for sticking with it for nearly thirty episodes.

The second season hits the ground running with a mini arc so good I had to consider reviewing it independently. It works more like a film, then just a series of TV shows, and indeed much better then the show’s disappointing film itself.

An old rival from the days of the revolution returns to stir up trouble. Which lets face it, is nothing new. But the way he breaks down in a matter of minutes the hero to which we’ve grown accustomed to, revealing the hardened core of the killer within, is not.

I highly recommend that any who are curious from this review but reluctant to give a 90+ episode show their time, at least check out these five episodes. Like all good movies based on existing source material, it both sums up the appeal and narrative of what it adapt, and then builds on it. Both exemplifying and improvising.

From the opening scenes clever direction is used to cover cheap animation (new anime fans might be surprised by just how fluid even the most budget modern anime is, when compared to those of the pre CGI era). Take a look at the opening scene, which uses imagery shocking both in its content and expressionistic compostion to disguise the fact that not much is “moving” in it. We cut from the Blood Sprayed face of Saito to the kill of his young apprentice, silhouetted against a blood soaked moon. We pan from the move to the blade to the young boys face, and only then do we move from what is obvious a still to actual (minimal) animation as the boy coughs up blood.

Creativity will always trump limitations in any medium, and this particular arc is a virtual showcase for it.


The second season improved things via consolidation giving the show a master plot, as well as an improved rogue’s gallery, and a big bad who manages to feel like a genuine threat. Another assassin from the old days of the revolution has built a team of assassins and is formenting a revolution whose greatest motivator is spite. It’s a great inversion of the series, Kenshin’s a homebody? Send him on the road. Trying to aid modernization? Give him a villain locked in the past.



It’s a pretty damn good villain too. Charasmatic visually striking, cold and deadly, but with a wicked sense of humor, Shishio’s wallet says bad mother fucker on it. An assassin betrayed and burned and left for dead by the powers that be in the waining days of the revolution. Like in all the best pulp fiction the villains (and I don’t know if there has ever been a better rogues gallery assembled in anime before) he serve as dark reflections of the hero. Both physically and spiritually the worst case scenario for what Kenshin could become.

Even more perversely in terms of the form is Shishio’s cheerful apprentice who kills with an innocent smile on his face. A young killer formed by abuse.

If Shishio is a twisted reflection of what Kenshin was, Sojiro is a reflection of what Kenshin is. Someone who has found serenity not in a new form of morality, but by embracing immorality so thoroughly it has eradicated all that niggling human doubt.

Kenshin’s not perfect. Its melodramatic, paced in the strange (ie Budget effective) “Lets stare at eachother for ten minutes” style so commonly found in anime of the era, and to the modern eye the animation will look almost amateurish.

Still I can’t help but like this show a whole lot. Call it nostalgia but the second season of Kenshin is revisionist in the best way. Not merely tearing down legends that the creators fancy themselves above. But asking genuine questions about what it is that makes these legends work in the first place.

Summer Of Samurai: Ninja Scroll

Ninja Scroll remains a deeply fucked up movie. A fact that I find almost heart warming. As I get older and older I find that shock value alone no longer has much appeal to me in and of itself. When I hear about something like Bad Biology I don’t rush out to see it the way I know I would have if I was seventeen. So it was with a feeling of Nostalgia that I found oddly heartwarming that as I watched Ninja Scroll I could only think “God these people are sick and I hope they never get well.”

Ninja Scroll was one of the first anime to cross over as “anime”. While it never had the mainstream name recognition that Akira and Ghost In The Shell had, for fans of the form before it crossed over, Ninja Scroll was just as important a touchstone. A gateway title that far from being watered down delivered all the transgressive kick that anime was capable of giving in one shot gun blast.

No matter how “safe” and mainstream anime gets, Ninja Scroll will always carries that enticing whiff of the forbidden and the depraved. What everyone with a negative bias view towards anime told you anime was, Ninja Scroll actually was. Filled with lovingly rendered ultra violence, and even more lovingly rendered sexual perversion, Ninja Scroll remains the work of the deeply fucked up.

Ninja Scroll follows the wandering Samurai Jubei, who is pressed into service by a shady monk to take on “The Eight Devil’s Of Kimon” a group of demonically powered super Ninja, led by an immortal asshole who Jubei previously “killed” in a non quickening inspired decapitation. Part of the movie’s enduring charm is thanks to how Jubei is played. He’s written to have a “Kurt Russel in a John Carpenter movie” attitude to the ongoing. Getting through the challenges of the supernatural with a wry sense of detachment, occasionally feigned incompetence, and legitimately badassery.

They are joined by Kaigero, a female ninja, whose graphically depicted molestation, at the hands of the Rock Gobbler from The Never Ending Story can only be described as “Deeply unsettling”.

They spend the rest of the film battling the eight devils in some jaw droppingly beautiful, ingeniously choreographed, surpassingly brutal duels, that have earned the film’s legendary status among Eastern Action fans. Its basically the apex of the certain kind of villain gimmick based action filmmaking that dominated in the eighties and early nineties.

And yet even these fights are not free of the faint air of “Ick”. There’s a weird unhealthily erotic feel to almost all the fights. Almost all of the villains explicitly get sexual pleasure from their violence. Snakes come out of vaginas, everyone is feeling rapey, there’s weird orgasmic “I’m being electrocuted” screams. It’s all very John Waters. In all fairness this does give the action a more intense feeling then the usual “Fire Hose O’ Blood” anime violence. But it may also inspire the need to take a shower.

Ninja Scroll is a joyously unhinged freakfest of a movie. That might not be an endorsement from some. But it certainly is from me.

(PS. I'm heading down to the ole Whales Vagina this weekend (San Diego) so there won't be any posting until Monday. Have a good weekend all)

The 25: Part 5: Kiki's Delivery Service

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)



For the record I’m reviewing the dub of Kiki’s Delivery Service. I’m normally a sub purist, but for Kiki I make an exception. It’s the one I was introduced to, the one I admittedly usually watch, and the one I always think of. I wouldn’t be fooling anyone if I did not admit that for me, Phil Hartman IS Gigi.)

There is some but not as much overlap as I expected between my favorite films of all time, and the most influential one’s I’m writing about. Kiki’s Delivery Service is one of the few that makes both lists. The effect it had on how I view the movies, animation and the concept of narrative cannot be underestimated.

This might seem like an odd choice, as even fervent Miyaziki fans tend to dismiss Kiki, writing it off as either the least of the masterpieces, or the best of the second tier. It's my personal favorite of his films.

I saw Kiki’s Delivery Service around twelve, just at the time I was supposed to be outgrowing cartoons, let alone a cartoon about a cute Girl Witch. A notion I wasn’t all too eager to be dissuaded from. Kiki did to my dismissal of animation and my ideas of what a story should be what the tollbooths did to James Caan in The Godfather, shredded them beyond recognition.

Lets start with something that I don’t know if, my younger readers will be able to grasp, and that’s just how alien Kiki’s Delivery Service looked at the time. Anime has been more or less utterly assimilated into American culture, you can find it in our advertising, movies, TV shows, and breakfast cereals. But back in 1997 it was still a genuine other. You have to remember this was when VIDEO Games where trying to make sure, that their covers didn’t look like anime. Think about that. They where afraid that nerds wouldn’t like anime. That’s how weirded out by this people where.

(So This...)

(Becomes This...)

Sure Ghost In The Shell and Akira had played in US theaters, but these where both unabashedly cult films and hadn’t really crossed over to the genuine public. DBZ and Sailor Moon where both on TV, but I didn’t have cable, and hadn’t seen either of those shows in more then an isolated clips.

Of course Pokemon was only a few years away from rewiring everyone under the age of fourteen’s brain to accept anime as a set of aesthetics unquestionally, setting off the Manga Bubble. Soon Princess Mononoke would pave the way for Spirited Away’s theatrical run and Oscar win which was the first time that adult American film goers really had no choice but to pay attention to anime. But at the time I really can’t overstate how shockingly, entrancingly different from everything else Kiki’s Delivery Service looked.



Kiki’s Delivery Service follows a young witch who according to her family’s tradition leaves home for a year to live and train on her own, Odd perhaps for a film, that features a talking cat and a zeppelin crash, Kiki’s Delivery Service is a film I find so splendid for simply recording the day to day nature of life. Compared to the frenetic narratives of the film’s I’d been exposed to at the time (to say nothing of the down right spastic animated films I’d encountered) Kiki is calm. There’s no manufactured crisis, save the crash at the end of that film and even that isn’t some world endangering disaster but simply treated as something bad that happens and is gotten through. A nasty accident and one of many we’ll encounter in life. Like the sickness before it, and the temporary loss of inspiration this too shall pass.

Think of the things that happen in Kiki, the actual narrative events; Kiki makes a delivery, Kiki goes shopping, Kiki spends the night at a friends house, Kiki takes a bike ride down to the beach, Kiki buys household supplies, Kiki minds the bakery for a few hours, Kiki is nice to an old person and lets not forget Kiki accidentally stands someone up and then gets a cold. I like to think as he was reading that list Jeffery Katzenberg eyes began to bleed before he burst into flames.

And yet, never once does Kiki seem dull or ponderous. Far from the fantastical making the real world seem passé, Kiki takes the rhythms of every day life, and makes them magic. If Fellini ever directed a script by Ozu it’d probably go a little something like this. (Indeed one of my favorite little touches of the film is the way that Miyaziki sprinkles in Ozu like pillow shots throughout the movie. Unless I’m mistaken I don’t think it’s a technique that Miyaziki has used before, and it lends his film a subtly meditative air.



The film plays like a check list of the things that Miyaziki loves portrayed in their purest forms. Always a feminist friendly directed, Kiki’s Delivery Service almost plays like 8 ½ without a deep abiding fear of women. The cast aside from Kiki’s geeky would be beau, is almost exclusively female and represent the various ages and stages of womanhood; from the independent artist Urusula, to domestic Goddess Osana, and the elderly graceful Madame. These are idealized women to be sure, but they are idealized in their intelligence and kindness.

The film is grandly humanistic as the best of Miyaziki. Miyaziki has always been one of the great compassionate directors, with the effect of his gentleness aided, not impaired by the skill with which he is able to render humanities flaws. In this film he does portray characters as selfish, and occasionally mean spirited. But he also gives them the benefit of the doubt. In one scene a posse of mean girls, who've been showing up in the periphery of the film, interrupt Kiki's and Tombo's day at the beach with an invitation to tour the zeppelin. When Kiki turns it down one of the girls says something nasty. We cut to the car, for just a second, long enough to let one of the girl's friends tell her off for her rudeness. Kiki doesn't hear the comment, it has no bearing on the story, it's there for our benefit alone. The message is clear, people as individuals are often better then we take them as when they're part of a group. There's a quick shot in the credits of Kiki and the girl chatting, having apparently developed a friendship. Its the kind of touch that only Miyaziki would take the time to put in. And its just another example of what makes him so invaluable as a filmmaker.



No less lovingly portrayed is Miyaziki’s other great love, flight. The film is more or less devoted to flight, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the zenith of his love affair with the subject. The independence of Kiki’s flight lends it an intimacy allowing us to rise above the city or zip between its corridors with her. It’s a tribute to all things that break the laws of gravity really, birds, planes, balloons, even the absurd Wright Brothers like contraption Tombo’s built.



It all takes place in the stunning ideal Europe that Miyaziki portrayed so effectively in this period. This Mixture of Mediterranean Elegance, Parisian Cosmopolitanism surrounded by miles of Pastoral Countryside, is perhaps Miyaziki’s purest expression of the “Europe Of The Mind” which has been his muse. And its rendered in loving detail. Miyaziki’s artistry is of course unsurpassed and while he has maybe made films that are more visually arresting, I don’t think he’s ever topped himself here for sheer level of loving detail put into his world. In every frame of the film there is some detail that didn’t need to be there, moss growing between the paving stones of a courtyard, a carving done on the edge of the fountain, the reflection of passersby on the shop's glass window, boats bobbing the background. The flakes of bread on the bakery floor, that make Miyaziki’s world come to life.

Kiki’s Delivery Service has been since I’ve seen it, and yet remains a tonic of a film for me. I refreshing reminder of the beauty of life and the greatness of art both in its themes and in and of itself.

Soul Eater And The Slow Stumbling Progress Of Gender In Anime

Soul Eater is being touted as the next big thing in anime. Whether its because of genuine excitement, or the fact that the flailing anime industry really, really needs a next big thing I’ll leave it for you to judge. But even though I don’t consider myself an anime fan anymore I like to keep abreast of what’s going on with the medium, and when I hear something described as “Harry Potter ripping off Bleach with Woo style heroic bloodshed” well that’s worth a look.

Visually Soul Eater is tremendous, a showcase for fluid animation that blends traditional anime style with Graffiti Art (note the bold angular line work), while appropriating tropes and styles (Particularly the shading) from Western and European animation in a way I’ve never seen a Japanese show do before. The theme song gives a pretty good over view of its style.



Story wise there’s not a lot of internal consitancy to the mythology or set up. While most anime series take pains to ground themselves in the real world, or at least set up a counter mythology, Soul Eater takes about the same time explaining the world and the rules of it as Nickolodean spent explaining why Spongebob lives in a pineapple under the sea. This is both annoying and invigorating. There’s no logic in Soul Eater save internal logic, and the show tends to have the free form feel of a krazy kat comic.

Eschewing the well worn Shounen tropes of the competent mentor and earnest kid, Soul Eater bravely makes most of its characters incompetent nimrods. Defined by their egos and fetishes that are Suzuki like in their intensity.

I haven’t gotten a lot from Soul Eater so far (The end of the first story arc), but in all fairness had I seen this when I was actually in Jr. High, the target demograhic, I most likely would have flipped the fuck out.

Soul Eater is more interesting to look at from a sociological perspective nowadays. It’s a Shounen (boys action series) but its lead is a girl. Shocking I know but bear with me here. The leads for women in this kind of anime are pretty well defined, you got wallflower, tomboy, and shrew, usually all united by the fact that they’ve been secretly in love with the hero the whole time. If you’ve ever watched five minutes of an anime series you’ve probably seen one of these. There are exceptions of course, say Rukia in Bleach, but even these exceptions tend to be problematic (and the mishandling of that character deserves an essay of its own).

Soul Eater’s lead, Maka displays exactly none of these tropes. What’s more, its not some quasi formed marketer’s idea of girl power that makes her victorious it’s the fact that she’s the most competent. True she’s the most competent out of a gaggle of doofuses but competence is competence. Her gender is a defining aspect of her character, not the defining aspect of her character.

The success of things like Soul Eater, The Hunger Games, the work of Joss Whedon, the success of Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, and James Patterson’s Max series (hey I didn’t say they had to be good) are all slowly chipping away at the conventional wisdom that though a girl will follow a story with a male protagonist a boy won’t follow a female lead.

Soul Eater is not without its problems. As if in a panic that they’ve actually done something progressive, the filmmakers go out of their way to make just about every other female character on the show as regressive and fan servicy as possible. To be fair, this does fit in with the show’s motif, in which just about everyone is a complete moron, But around the twenty fourth leering revealing shot in any given episode you begin to wonder if they couldn’t have scaled it back just a little bit.

I’m not suggesting that the playing field is level, in terms of gender equality. But the popularity of these titles is encouraging. And that’s what’s really heartening about Soul Eater is if a series like this can happen in a genre as regimented and boy centric as Shounen manga it can happen just about anywhere.

Revist Evangelion: You Are (Not) Alone

You know its early in the New Year I want to do something fresh, something different something…



… I just can’t escape it can I?

For those of you who are newer to the blog, I did a feature last year where I went back and revisited the entirety of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. Though it had been some years since I had seen the whole thing, I recognized the series as one of the corner stones of my taste. Equal terms impressionistic and expressionistic, personal and played on the grandest canvas imaginable, a complete mess and quite moving, I was gratified to find that Evangelion for all its flaws was still an intriguing work of art. Here's the whole shebang if you're interested.

I was surprised by how gratifying revisiting the show had been. Rather then be sick of it I wondered what would happen when Anno did the same.

Around the time I was starting the series it was announced that Hideaki Anno and Gainix would be retelling the entire thing through four movies, neither a step by step remake nor a complete reinvention this was basically the animated version of what Michael Hanke did with Funny Games. For those of you unfamiliar with the series this is significant because Evangelion in its home stretch gets “Eheheheh Crazy as a Loon!”



Anno has already told the ending of the series twice, and has between the two versions been more or less able to piss off absolutely everyone. Calling the endings he’s cooked up so far controversial is like calling Antichrist controversial it just doesn’t quite capture the passionate emotion (either positive or negative) that people feel about them. There’s a lot of speculation over whether or not Anno’s revisitation of the series means he’s ready to pull together a conclusion that will lean towards sensible, or if he’s just gone completely crazy and plans in the fourth film to just animate sequences from Last Year At Martriband and show them out of order.

Whatever Anno’s endgame is, Evangelion You Are (Not) Alone is an intriguing start. While word from Japan says that the second segment begins to deviate seriously from The series, You Are (Not) Alone finds the differences in the grace notes, with just enough major changes to seriously intrigue.

You Are (Not) Alone retells the original six episodes in a ninety five minute movie (Which really isn’t that much of cut only losing about thirty minutes. The Change in pacing actually works quite well, cutting deadwood and actually significantly extending some parts. Though its by its very nature “episodic” it does feel like an actual movie rather then an epic “Previously on…” ), if you want a detailed plot description read these three articles where I cover it ad nauseam. Otherwise I’m mainly going to be talking about the differences. You Are (Not) Alone is strange to watch for someone who knows the series. Some sequences play out shot for shot the same, others completely different, others some mix of the two (For example the battles between the Angels and The Eva plays out 95% the same right down to the angles and camera movement, but adds some impressively icky Cronenbergian body horror in the details).

The first thing you notice is that Anno has taken the “Apocalypse Right Now” aesthetic even further. Like I said one of the things that made Eva such a unique series was it didn’t take place in a world that was about to end, but one that was ending. From the opening frames You Are (Not) Alone emphasizes this. While in the series it was easy to mistake the world as one on the mend, Anno makes it clear here that in the words of The Doors, “No One here is getting out alive.” The sea is a blood red already looking like LCL, the gleaming world of Tokyo 3 is nearly deserted, worn and overgrown. It works to make NERV’s purpose more understandable (Not to mention having the Geofront bathed in Malickian golden light make a greater impression). While The instrumentality of humanity looked as though it was mainly being done for shits and/or giggles in the series, its more convincing as a necessary step for survival of conciseness here.

Anno has made good use of having a film sized budget here, adding detail to his animation that wasn’t possible ten years ago on TV. When The Angel first appears the powerlines in the background start to whip up and down with his vibrations, when the UN fires it’s missles on the Angel the camera briefly goes out of focus thanks to the heat shimmer. The lighting effects are more subtle, for example when the Eva First launches its Night and only the highlights on it can be seen clearly. The animation on the angel itself is more quizzical, more alien. Most of the animation is frankly beautiful, and more importantly its innovative in the way that made Gainax’s reputation.

Interesting too that Anno keeps the shot of the phantom Rei. Its always been such an odd shot, and Anno keeping it here seems to lend credence to the fact that its important and deliberate, rather then just something Anno forgot about. I feel like the idea that entire movie and show are a flashback as Shinji experiences the next level of human conscience looks more and more to be a correct one.

Interestingly enough one of the biggest differences in tone is that the expressionistic elements have been toned down. I wrote about how surprised I was by how arch Shinji’s first meeting with his Father was, in the TV show. And while the emotional beats are still hit, its staged more like a real argument and less like an expressionistic hell scape this time. Rei’s subsequent appearance is also less abstractly pieta like and more real world (The fetishization that has always haunted the character though seems to have gotten worse if anything). A similar toning down is done on Shinji’s lone walk through the city. Again it makes it wholly more realistic. Shinji runs away he doesn’t “runaway”.

While I doubt this will mean a decrease in Eva’s trademark stream of conscienceness style (It in fact briefly introduces one such sequence after the first battle some fourteen “episodes” before the series does), it’s a significant difference and an important one.

This kind of downplaying extends to the characters are well, and in my opinion some really interesting fine tuning has been done both individually, and subtly deepening and complicating the relationships between characters. Shinji still has all the angst he’s ever had, but he’s less incessant and sullen about expressing it. His endearingly sheepish and vulnerable qualities have been emphasized as well, and he’s even a bit of a smart ass from time to time. Gendo is still cold and demanding, but now seems more like a character as opposed to just being a symbol for cold demanding Fathers. Unlike his TV Show counterpart he never seems to be making people suffer for the sport of it, he always has at least a nominal reason (The man even projects something other then absolute certainty for once which was kind of shocking). Misato plays more like her character in the rest of the show rather then the fan servicy giggle bomb she started out as (And the movie mercifully cuts the bizarre “Up Skirt” joke that the TV show introduced us to NERV with) the culminative affect is that all these people seem just a little bit realer, a little less like symbols. Not to mention cutting a lot of the “We’ve been here before” feeling that I complained about in the concurrent episodes.

The film’s fine tuning extends to the plot. Like I said you hardly even notice the missing twelve minutes. If anything the movie seems to fit MORE in thanks to some judicious edits. Gone for example is the bizarre “Council of Five Snide Guys” (Give Anno Credit for Recognizing a narrative Dead end when he sees one) SEELE just goes ahead and immediately shows up in its true form (And an offhand comment here adds a truly interesting wrinkle to the whole thing, as does a small new conversation between Fukuyuski and Gendo that’s queasy in its implication and hints at the bold new direction the films might take.) The “Human” Nature of The Eva’s and Lillith's role are also revealed early (And with everyone knowing it Lilith this time).

The film’s philosophy has subtly changed as well. The title You Are (Not) Alone originally seemed to be a pat, almost cute, but its actually very apt. While at this point in the show Anno had already changed Tokyo 3 into a deserted extenstion of the characters. Anno goes out of his way to show the people still inhabiting it every opportunity he gets. Loneliness seems no longer to be Anno’s summation of the human condition, but rather at least partially, self imposed. The film’s imagery often shows the characters separated from eachothe rin the frame by obstacles. But they’re always man made artificial obstacles. Eva has a reputation for having a rather adolescent philosophy, well against all odds it seems to have matured.

The film climaxes with, the battle with the third angel. And its is particularly improved. The tone’s much grimmer (The attack on Shinji is even nastier) The animation and design on the angel which takes some unexpected turns is impressive and detailed (The damage appears before the ray is visible) There’s a real apocalyptic feel to the whole sequence and it’s truly compelling even if you know how the damn thing is going to end.

The film’s flaws are minor ones. For example like I said the animation is more detailed, but occasionally to its detriment. During the launch sequence we get to see all of the graphs and bars and measurements in excruciating detail. Alright Anno I can understand that you’re very excited that your imaginary measurements are CGI now, but do we really have to see them all? Another detrimental change, the recorded sounds of The Beserker Eva I know it’s supposed to make it sound more feral and out of control instead it makes The Eva sound like a very pissed off Grover).

But like I said these are just details. On the whole and against all odds You Are (Not) Alone seems to be worth the time and effort put into it. Hopefully the rest of the series will be as well.