Ninjai the little ninja

If you're a fan of action, gore and independent animation, this is something you would want to watch.

Ninjai is a little ninja who travels around killing bad guys, with the ultimate aim of hunting down the head honcho of all bad guys. He's small but powerful, and a very composed and mysterious sort of kid (a full view of his face is never shown). The story is a simple and exciting piece, with good art, good music and good direction (read: highly recommended). Currently, though, it stops at chapter 12, and new chapters roll in extremely slowly. Still, it's brilliant for an independent work and deserves some show of support.

Ninjai was created using Flash, and all its music is original. It's great to see how software, that is not necessarily state-of-the-art, can combine with creativity to produce something enjoyable and of quality.

Proceed to the Ninjai chapters to watch!

God is in the details

I’ve recently watched two anime that I find interesting because of their simple expositions of the nature of God. It is refreshing that The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Kamisama Kazoku bring up this topic because I’ve never really expected to see discussions of the divine in anime.

Don’t worry – these anime are not in the slightest bit esoteric, and are based on familiar (some would say trite) themes like romance and boy-girl tension. The characters are middle and high school students, which makes for easily digestible dialogue and storylines.

In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Haruhi is a high school girl who attracts curious company – an alien, a time traveller, an esper and an ordinary boy – whom she gathers and forms into a school club. The members of the club seem like any other human being to the naked eye, but in fact have special powers unknown to the people around them.

Haruhi herself is God, but is oblivious to this fact. Her club members are the only ones privy to her true identity, and task themselves with monitoring her behaviour. This is an all-important task because when Haruhi feels upset or melancholic, she can bring about the destruction and recreation of the world. The club members take it upon themselves to keep her in a pleasant mood so as to pre-empt a new cycle of creation.

It is intriguing how God in this show does not know herself to be God, and further, that God is embodied as a female, with the accompanying feminine traits of emotional vulnerability and even whimsicality. Though clueless about who she really is, Haruhi is an omnipotent being who can control outcomes according to her will – she specifically wishes to meet an alien, a time traveller and an esper, and it transpires; but again, she does not know that her club members are such extraordinary beings.

There are also elements of Deism in this show, where Haruhi is cast as Prime Observer, observing humanity without intervention in their lives. The world operates according to natural law, and Haruhi is not aware of and does not receive human supplications in the form of prayer.

This is opposed to Kamisama Kazoku, which draws on Christian notions of God. In this show, God is omnipotent and omniscient, and intervenes directly in human affairs. Unlike in Deism which rejects the idea of miracles, Kamisama Kazoku is premised on the granting of prayers and miracles by God.

Other Christian ideas also feature in this cartoon. Samatarou Kamiyama, the main character, is the son of God. He has a guardian angel, Tenko, who looks out for him. Sins are washed clean through repentance, and God is benevolent and forgiving.

There, the resemblance to Christianity ends as God also has a wife called Venus, obviously alluding to Roman mythology. Besides his only son, God has two other daughters who are training to be Goddesses.

The sycretic constructions of God in both The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Kamisama Kazoku add creative overtones to their otherwise predictable plots. Here are some clips to whet your appetite:

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, part of episode 10


Kamisama Kazoku, part of episode 1

Anime = axe murder?

Some time ago, two anime cartoons were taken off Japanese TV temporarily because of the Japanese axe murder, in which a 16-year-old girl killed her father with an axe in Kyotanabe. You can read more about the murder in this Yomiuri Shimbun article.

A week after this incident, another teenager attempted to kill his father, also with an axe. The 15-year-old boy struck his father several times on the head, but failed to kill him. You can read more about his attempt in this Japan Today article.

The two anime cartoons that were either cancelled or delayed are the twelfth episodes of School Days (where two high school girls kill their victims with knives) and Higurashi no naku koro ni kai (the sequel to Higurashi no naku koro ni).

Chiba Television Broadcasting Corp. and Aichi Television Broadcasting Co. discontinued airing School Days, while Television Kanagawa replaced the cartoon with a nature programme called Nice Boat (you can find the Mainichi article here). KBS Television and Tokai Television likewise decided to temporarily cancel broadcasting the twelfth episode of Higurashi no naku koro ni kai.

Here’s the portion of the twelfth episode of School Days that involves some violence:

Some fan responses to the delay/cancellation of the anime were that of indignation, questioning how airing the anime might inspire similar murder attempts, or else how taking the anime off TV would prevent such attempts. The assumption underlying this view is that the power of media is limited, and that audiences do not fully absorb and mimic media messages but rather filter them and come to their own thoughtful conclusions about them.

While I wouldn’t be hasty to say that a single cartoon episode could trigger murderous intent, I also wouldn’t totally discount the impact of media upon its audience, regardless of age group. What I think is missing in the analysis is the cumulative effect of media – such cartoons involving violence in addition to the countless other shows featuring homicide. Perhaps gatekeepers and media critics should be thinking about the effect of the media in totality rather than singling out one show or another.

Something else to think about is the time and TV channel that violent anime are aired on. While older fans may be quick to dismiss the impact that anime has on them, the same may not apply to younger audiences. Besides being popular among the younger crowd, anime also simplifies reality in its 2-D world where gore doesn’t look as gruesome and the consequences of violence are muted. Just because content is in the form of cartoons does not mean that it can be shown indiscriminately to people of all ages.

Lastly, to indignant fans out there, another thing to consider would be sensitivity to the families involved in the murder and attempted murder. Sometimes the unfortunate “timeliness” of such incidents warrants some measure of sensitivity and sacrifice on the part of viewers.

Oh the lack of dexterity

It’s been about four months since one of the biggest PR fiascos of the year, but up till now Odex is still not being spared any heat from the anime community.

Those who’ve not been following newspaper reports and forum threads may be scratching their heads in wonder at the unrelenting anger and indignation of anime downloaders. It seems pretty clear that downloading full episodes of anime is wrong.

Yet people are pissed. Why?

Firstly, because of the draconian way in which Odex has chosen to enforce copyright – by demanding out-of-court settlements, or else. Settlements between $3000 to $5000 are hefty sums to pay, especially since no prior warning notices had been issued to the downloaders. The dizzying penalty, compounded by the abruptness and finality of its imposition, is Strike One.

Further media coverage on the issue revealed that Odex, being a sub-licensee and not the exclusive licensee nor the copyright owner, did not have the legal standing to bring action against alleged downloaders. The two Japanese distributors and representatives of two anime studios who held a press conference in Singapore did not strengthen Odex’s case either – the distributors had been appointed by undisclosed copyright owners, while the two studios had authorised the Anti Video Piracy Association and not Odex to act on their behalf. In 1999, Games Mart, an Odex affiliate, had sold pirated consoles and was raided by the police, but Mr Peter Go and Mr Stephen Sing had not been implicated. Both these incidents undermined the credibility of Odex – Strike Two.

Strike Three is the invasion of consumer privacy. Odex obtained court orders to get SingTel and StarHub to divulge their subscribers’ identities, though it did not manage to do the same for PacNet.

While anime downloaders could not make any robust legal arguments to defend themselves, they nevertheless launched tirades against Odex, not because Odex had wrongfully accused them, but because Odex had acted tactlessly toward them.

Odex has recently changed its frigid approach by issuing electronic notices through the ISPs, offering video-on-demand anime at $2 per episode within a week of its broadcast in Japan, hiring an auditor and giving any excess from its settlements to charity, and even offering not to take action on downloads made before the 3rd of September. But I suspect this has not helped to turn the tide of dissatisfaction as these moves were made only after the impassioned backlash from the anime community, and are likely to be construed as salvage tactics.

It seems to me that Odex did everything backwards, reflecting both a lack of thorough consideration of possible public reactions, and a lack of awareness of the importance that people place on privacy. If it had started with the aforementioned approach instead of settlements, it might have been able to win more sympathy for its cause.

A pity it didn’t, because goodwill once lost is difficult to earn back.

Black Cat

Synopsis
Legendary assassin Train Heartnet, alias Black Cat, kills villains in cold blood for the greater good. Young as he may be, Black Cat is skilled in his craft, eliminating his targets as stealthily as a fleeting shadow, and inspiring fear and awe in those who have heard of him. While Black Cat is faithful to the orders of Chronos, the paramilitary organisation whose employ he is under, he begins to doubt their methods when one of his missions involves killing a young girl. The girl, Eve, has been implanted with technology that enables her to shape-shift at will, turning her into a bio-weapon that Chronos deems a threat to humanity. Black Cat chooses not to kill Eve nevertheless as she has not harmed anyone.

As Black Cat deviates from Chronos, he finds alternative mores in a group of people called Sweepers, who likewise seeks out villains but only to incarcerate, not kill them. The Sweepers and Chronos never combine, but the two groups wage separate battles against a mutual enemy, terrorist organisation Apostles of the Stars.

Themes
Peace
This anime looks at different notions of peace through the lenses of the three groups tangled in conflict – Chronos, the Apostles of the Stars, and the Sweepers.

From the viewpoint of Chronos, peace is to be obtained in utilitarian fashion where “bad guys” should be killed on sight to protect the general law-abiding public. For the Apostles of the Stars, peace is only possible when a perfect society has been created via the elimination of those considered unworthy by the leader of the group. The Sweepers, however, believe in the value of human life and conceptualise peace as a philosophy of goodness and forgiveness, hence their practice of capturing criminals without killing them.

These three different views throw up some interesting questions:

What is the price of peace? Some, like Chronos and the Apostles of the Stars, insist that the price to be paid is the sacrifice of human life. But if this is so, does the apparent irony undermine the idea of peace?

What is a terrorist? Is it someone who kills? If so, then Chronos would be in the same league as the Apostles of the Stars, but in the show, Chronos is portrayed much more positively in comparison to the latter. The show then seems to suggest that a terrorist is one who is morally depraved, perhaps even mentally unsound to some degree, when in reality the line is much thinner since both Chronos and the Apostles of the Stars take innocent lives.

The paradox of modernity
Black Cat critiques modernity and questions its beliefs.

The first tenet of modernity that it debunks is that science and technology lead to human progress. Chronos uses technology in the manufacture of a virtually indestructible metal called orichalcum, which is used to construct the weapons it bestows on its assassins. Eve, the girl bio-weapon, is made part-human, part-machine through the technology of devious men who dream of world domination. In this way, science and technology, though progressing in terms of sophistication, take human progress many steps backwards as they are used as tools for destruction.

Secondly, Black Cat shows how science and technology weaken the human environment instead of strengthening it. The proliferation of weapons turns the landscape into one of danger and despair, resulting in alienation from society (embodied by Train Heartnet, who does not trust anyone) and alienation from oneself (Train represses his innate sense of community and chooses to work in isolation).

Finally, rationality, held by modernity to lead to progress, is not necessarily good in Black Cat as it can be wielded to evil ends. The Apostles of the Stars for example, aspire to a utopian society, but using rationality as their guiding principle, the solution they conceive is the arbitrary elimination of “inferior” humans.

Dawn of the cyborg
This anime is also an exploration of the human body and its potential in combination with foreign elements. In cyborg theory, the body surmounts rigid boundaries when it is supplemented by technology to achieve a more superior form. Black Cat contains many examples of this – Train Heartnet and other Chronos assassins are almost impossible to defeat when paired with their orichalcum weapons; Eve is a force to be reckoned with as her body is toughened by the infusion of nanotechnology; and the Apostles of the Stars, by ingesting an elixir called Shinkitou, approximate immortality.

Personally
I think this is a really well-drawn piece. In particular, I like the way the eyes are animated with specks of light. I’ve not seen this commonly used in other Anime so far.

Also, I like the way it’s directed – transitions are very smooth and logical, and sequences have an artistic quality to it because of the arrangement, juxtaposition, and the leitmotifs that are weaved into the narrative. The action scenes and the mounting of tension are fantastic.

Rating
Fabulous stuff. Watch it!

Prologue

I’ve never been one to snub cartoons (some people think they’re a childish form of entertainment, especially when you’re past 20), but for the life of me, I couldn’t wrap my head round the reason why there seemed to be a sizeable crowd who really love their Anime. Notice the phrase their Anime – you could say that Anime has a rather large and dedicated following.

This confused me on a number of levels. Firstly, Anime art was a far cry from being sophisticated. It seemed to me simplistic, 2-D and unreal – why were so many Anime characters endowed with impossibly long legs and tennis ball-esque eyes, not to mention androgynous to the point of being disturbing? Secondly, female characters all spoke in a shrill treble which made the ear drums quiver. And thirdly, the aforementioned factors combined didn’t look promising in the way of blockbuster plots. Even an impressive plot wouldn’t be able to save the disaster of shrill voices perched on stilt-legs.

Or so I thought.

My younger sister, an avid (read: rabid) fan of Anime and cosplay, sparked my curiosity with her unflagging passion for watching one series after another, and I soon found myself glued to the screen for hours on end together with her. My older brother followed soon after.

Though some Anime fell within my constructed stereotype, others were fresh and imaginative, with yet others even bordering on profound. At the beginning it was easy for me to write it off as insipid, but after giving it a chance, I’ve gained an appreciation for why Anime has appeal for people aged 13 to 30.

Currently, you could say I’m a big fan of Anime. Though they’re cartoons, their underlying themes can be surprisingly deep and engaging for an older audience. Taking this into consideration, its characteristic style of drawing becomes a non-issue and over time, will endear itself to the viewer as it comes to signify the imagination that is unique to Anime.

This blog will feature Anime reviews which will explore themes that older viewers may take interest in beyond Anime’s face-value entertainment, and hopefully spark interest in those who are thinking of watching Anime, but need that extra nudge to start.