Doctor who anime

^.^

Puella. The creepiest anime about magical girls I've ever seen.

So, on an earlier post of anime, I thought I'd step in and talk about an anime I've recently finished watching, that could BLOW YOUR MIND...maybe.

Oh, pardon my manners, I haven't introduced myself. Howell here, and yes, I could be all cute and talk about Howl's Moving Castle, but no. (But seriously, you should totally watch that too if you haven't.)

Anyway, creepy anime. Whereas in Gaf's post, he mentioned the creepy side of anime in Dance of the Vampire Bund's lolicon style, fear not, there's nary a tentacle nor underage scantily clad scene to see here. Except some of the transformation sequences, but that's more of a flash of light clothes change thing that most people have seen before. I mean, Sailor Moon got away with about as much.

Right, distractions. I should probably tell you what anime I'm even talking about. It's called 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica', also known as 'Mahou Shojo Madoka Magica'. Sounds innocent? And, looking here, it looks innocent. ((It's at this point that I mention, there will likely be spoilers of some description in here, but I'll try to refrain from character names (or descriptions) for the most part.))

Perfectly happy, colour coordinated magical girl anime, they're great for kids. Or not. Please don't show this to young children. They may have nightmares. As joky as I'm being, really, it scared me on occasion. And I laugh through most horror. So, what makes this anime so creepy? Oh, I'll get into that, but for now, I'll just show you an image from the first episode. Apologies if I'm putting a lot of pictures up, but in some cases, they're needed to give this anime justice.

Yes, that's right, thorns with scissors, and the most terrifying version of the Pringles guy I've ever seen. That's the thing with this anime, it lulls you in with cute characters, and magic, and then takes you to a horrible place, and breaks it all apart. It takes most of the usual tropes of Magical Girl Anime, and spits out pure terror. I should have seen it all coming of course. I mean, the opening theme begins as usual with a water droplet landing in the water, creating glowing ripples we've seen a million times in these anime, before the 'camera' shows that it's actually the main character crying. But aside from that, don't think of trusting that opening. It shows everyone happy (aside from the initial crying). And more importantly, it shows everyone alive. Yes, that's right, the first little spoiler. The anime is only 12 episodes long, I'll point out. So, you'd expect a death, if it were to happen, around episode 9 or 10 at the earliest. I'll keep you in suspense for a little bit, but I'll tell you the first death is in the first 5 episode. Oh yes, I said first death. And while I'm refraining from divulging the identities of the deceased, they are main characters. As in, one of the girls in the pictures seen in this post. And this isn't a namby pamby "they get better" death. They don't come back to life at the end of the episode.

I suppose much of the creepiness is justified. You see, the magical girls chase after witches, and the witches hide from the real world in these special dimensions. That's where all the creepy Pringles men, scissors, needles, body parts in jars, random cupcakes, and the monstrous witches are seen. Indeed, the witches aren't your pointy hat wearing warty women. Nor are they just carbon copies of the girls in darker colours (though they are linked). They are monsters that, in some cases, make the above Pringles men look normal. Apologies if this is putting you crisps for life.

So the girls become magical girls by making a contract with Kyubey. Everyone say hi to Kyubey!

Daww, ain't he cute? The little git. You see, everything seems nice. He even gives the girls a wish, and he'll grant it, in exchange for making the girls magical. Wait, isn't making them magical a good thing?

No. Not only does this mean they can hunt the Witches. It means they have to. They are given a Soul Gem, which contains their magic. They use it, and it get darker. If they kill Witches, they drop Grief Seeds, which can cleanse the darkness from their Soul Gem. If they don't cleanse them, the girls become Witches. I could go into more detail about the Soul Gem, but I shan't spoil that. Oh, and apparently, every good deed a ranger does, when they become Witches, an equal amount of bad happens. So there's that to worry about.

Next, I'll talk about one of the characters. Homura, for reference, is the black/grey ranger seen in the picture. Yes, I compared tis to Power Rangers, I really don't care. I might even just call them Homura Black and Madoka, the main character, Pink, to avoid confusion with Japanese names.

I should probably talk about the main character, but it's MY blog post, and I'll do what I want! I'll probaly just mix it up anyway. On that note, it's getting long, so I'll summarise. It might help avoid too much description in spoilers, so that's a plus.

Homura. First seen in a dream, then a transfer student in Pink's class. Then seen chasing Kyubey around to kill him. But he's all cute, and asks for help from Pink, who obliges. Kyubey is convinced Pink will be the strongest ranger ever. Black knows Kyubey's evil, tries to stop Pink from listening to him. So, she's seen as the series anti-hero. Later, you find out why she's trying to stop it. TIME TRAVEL. It's her power. Turns out, there's a big bad Witch coming, Walpurgis Night, who doesn't need to hide in the creepy dimensions, and is gonna destroy the world. And in every timeline, it wins. So Black Quantum Leaps back, and tries to stop her, fais, people die, leap.

Oh Boy...

And that's the basic tip of the iceberg. I won't spoil more. Go watch it. Enjoy. Be scared, feel sad, and all in all, feel more emotion than any anime has made me feel, even if the main one is 'creeped out'.

((NOTE: I've not watched Grave of the Fireflies.))

Anime on Netflix

So, turns out that crashing with the folks for the summer comes with a few perks. One of these perks is that my parents own a PS3 from their child-minding days, and that said PS3 comes with Netflix. And Netflix currently has a stack of anime available, so I figured I'd give it a whirl and see what was currently available.

I should point out that these are gonna be first impression reviews; tempting as it is to spend the entire summer sprawled on the sofa eating junk food, drinking beer and giggling at animated boobs and violence, it's probably not all that practical. So the following is garnered from the first episode or two, and is only a small portion of what's currently available.

Astonishing X-Men

Okay, so the first anime review isn't actually an anime, it's an animated comic from Marvel Knights. So sue me. The hybrid comic/animation thing takes a little getting used to at first, but once you do you'll be in for a treat. The three seasons cover most of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-men; Gifted, Dangerous and Torn, with only Unstoppable being absent currently.

Look, I was a total fanboy for these comics back when they came out and these animations are pretty much a direct adaptation. If you like Whedon's writing (of course you do), and you like the X-Men (duh), go read the comics. And then watch these. Even if you have some sort of savage personality disorder and only like one or the other of Whedon or the X-Men, you'll still like it. If you don't like either, get the **** off my page. We don't like your sort around here.

Oh, and seeing Wolverine psychically regressed to his childhood state is a total nerdout for anyone who's ever read Origin.

Sound of the Sky

Sound of the Sky wasn't exactly what I was expecting; despite the World War styling, this is the most peaceful anime that I've seen in a while. It follows the (mis)adventures of Kanata Sorami, a young girl who enlists in the army as a bugler in order to learn music, and aside from the setting it seems fairly standard anime stuff; she's clumsy but enthusiastic, and text-book cute. The only other character in the first episode to get much screen-time is equally as cut-out, a stern young woman who I'm sure, if you cut her open, would have 'mentor' written through her like a stick of rock. It's cut and paste stuff, you've seen it all before.

That said, there's definitely something here, something a bit slice-of-life. Like I said, it's peaceful; a quaint coastal town that's either Spanish or Fake-Magical-World Spanish (the later, I think), with adorable festivals and gulls overhead and sunshine and everything else. And the music is spectacular; heavy on the bugle and trumpet, but with flamenco and resonator guitars that made me want to doze off in a deckchair in the sun.

I'll be giving this one a few more episodes I reckon; given that I already don't want the wonderful peace and quiet shattered by the horrors of war it should have the potential to be genuinely moving. But even if I don't get into the show, I suspect I'll be grabbing the soundtrack at some point.

Dance in the Vampire Bund

First up, a confession; I'm a sucker for vampires (no pun intended). I grew up on Anne Rice and Vampire: the Masquerade, and while Twilight managed to kill most of my interest in the genre I still keep an eye out for decent examples.

Not sure this is going to be a particularly decent example, though. The first episode was shot interestingly enough to make me check out the second, but there it started to fall apart. Fairly typical teen drama, fairly typical supernatural fight scenes, and completely bloody creepy lolicon stuff. Mina is an ancient and powerful vampire stuck in the body of a pre-teen kid, but this isn't enough to stop the writers having her oiled up half way through episode two. 

Don't get me wrong, I like my vampire stories creepy. But not this particular flavour of creepy, as a rule. This sort of topic can be handled well; Lolicon takes its name from Nabokov's Lolita, for a good example of how to handle said topic. Anne Rice nailed it pretty well with Claudia too. But here it feels like any other kind of fanservice, which is just a bit squick.

And what the hell is a Bund anyway?

Emma: A Victorian Romance

Ah, Victorian England. Who doesn't like to pretend it wasn't all Imperialistic racism and floods of poo running down the streets of London? There's a reason Steampunk is so popular, and that's because if you take away a lot of the real-life bull you're left with a rather delightful setting of fabulous clothes and real, actual manners. Remember those? 

I'm always a fan of the Victorian setting, and it's actually quite nice to see it without vampires or giant steampunk mecha for a change. The animation is slick with a faint Ghibli vibe, and the soundtrack evokes the setting nicely. It is a little tricky to give a decent review for though, as you can't get a real feel for a romance series on one episode.

Currently it doesn't quite live up to its tagline as a story about crossing class boundaries, as the cast seems to be made up of the only three members of Victorian society with no sense of propriety whatsoever. Presumably that comes later; if it handles it in a realistic and meaningful way this might actually become a favourite of mine. If it takes the clichéd crap route, I'll be skipping it. 

Birdy the Mighty Decode

Everything about this screams retro-anime, so I wasn't surprised to find out the original manga ran back in the mid-80s. But the old-school concept is packaged in a thoroughly modern way, with an art style that put me in mind of a lot of Satoshi Kon's stuff. As someone who started off on old 80s anime, it's always pretty cool to see what it looks like with modern production values.

The story follows Birdy, an intergalactic cop who gets stuck sharing a body with a teenage boy whilst on earth. Just about all the old-school wacky conventions are here; cute robot sidekick, faintly demonic aliens, constant boobs. 

Actually, constant boobs is a little unfair. One look at Birdy's crime fighting outfit (seriously, she fights crime in a suit Katie Price would find tasteless) and you'd be forgiven for thinking this one would be all about the fanservice. But while there is a fair amount of it, it's a hell of a lot less than you'd expect and doesn't really detract too much. 

All told, this one is fairly middle of the road. I didn't find much wrong with it, but nothing much was particularly great either once the old-school/new-school shtick wore off. I'll probably give it another episode or two, see if something picks up.

Conclusion

So, halfway through the current selection and it's a fair mix of stuff. Nothing has completely leapt out at me yet (aside from X-Men, but that's sort of cheating), but nothing has been particularly awful either; even Vampire Bund might be more than just a squickfest given a bit more time. Anime fans who haven't seen any of the titles might be interested in checking them out, but there's nothing I've seen so far that's particularly likely to convert non-fans.