Category: Anime

The Great Pretender

This was a good anime. Don’t want to call it a masterpiece, but, it is definitely a solid crime thriller to watch. The Great Pretender is about a group of individuals who call themselves “confidence men”, and are essentially people who swindle the rich and corrupt to serve their own self-interests. The show is known for having elaborate schemes and only revealing the plot twist that uncovers the trick at the last minute.

The animation style is also distinctly unique. The colors are saturated and the background is filled with unrealistic shading which gives the world a beautiful dream-like feeling.

Devilman Crybaby

Sex and violence. Devilman crybaby is a thrilling anime to watch with its simplistic yet beautiful animation style with pastel color pallets and well-defined line work. Also, did I mention sex and violence? Devilman crybaby indulges in the taboo as it explores themes of puberty, violence, human nature, and self-identification. This show is not afraid to include graphic scenes with sex and gore.

Overall, the show did a good job with the limited number of episodes that it had. The conclusion was very nihilistic, yet at the same time, the ending left me feeling satisfied with the show overall.

Code Geass

Code Geass did a lot of things right for a mecha shounen anime. It had excellent battles, well-developed characters, and character conflicts. But, most of all, I enjoyed this anime because it brazenly presented philosophical questions. What is justice? What is national identity? How does nationalism turn into racism? Should the powerful rule over the weak? Is it possible to end world conflict? Do the ends justify the means?

It isn’t even necessary to read too deep into the plot to pull out these themes because the characters flat out discuss these things. The opening commonly asks us to ponder these more philosophical questions about time, consequences, etc.

There is a lot to be said about the show. However, I felt like the development of the “F.L.E.I.J.A” super weapon is the most interesting. This isn’t the only technological advancement made during the show. The mechas are constantly getting new upgrades. This could be a cleaver plot device to level their power system, or it could be a illustration of how war typically speeds up technical advancements. This, leading to one of my favorite quotes in the show:

Well, you know what they say… war is the mother of invention.

– Lloyd Asplund

The introduction of the super-weapon changed the dichotomy of war drastically. No longer was it just people who were willing to fight that died in the war, but, millions of people as entire cities got erased. Both the power of the FLEIJA, and of the power of Geass could bend people into absolute submission. Which of these weapons is more unethical to use? Who shoulders the burden of responsibility for using such a weapon? The story later sabotaged the importance of the FLEIJA, by then creating a anti-FLEIJA weapon. But, the devastating effects of the weapon were already felt by that part of the story with two cities being destroyed– reminiscent of Japan during WWII.

If this type of plot development with the FLEIJA sounds familiar, it is because it is all over the place in anime. Think about how Netero Killed Meruem with the Miniature Rose [nuclear] bomb in Hunter X Hunter. Or, consider the Colossal titan in Attack on Titan. Or the N2 mine in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I can’t believe I waited this long to watch the legendary anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion–aka AVA. This anime was incredible. A pure masterpiece.

Although this shounen anime is about giant machines called Evangelions fighting biblically sized monsters, the action didn’t sell this show. What really sells this show is the incredible character development and the exploration of psychological trauma, loneliness, and depression.

The protagonist of most shounen anime is an energy ball of pure skill and talent ready to leap into danger to save the world. In AVA, Shinji is a shy, weak, timid 14-year-old boy who is always doubting himself. Although Shinji has the ability to sync with an Evangelion, that is only because his very own mother was turned into the Evangelion. We see Shinji crumble into depression throughout the show– and not the kind that shounen protagonists typically just pop right out of. Shinji has a hard time dealing with the pressure of saving the world. Shinji longes for admiration from his father, who is distant. Shinji questions his sexuality and desires with characters like Kaworu and Rei. And most important, Shinji fears hurting others and has a problem with intimacy.

SEELE presents the solution to human suffering as the human instrumentality project. A plan that will combine all of our minds into one entity to fill in each other gaps. The show presents two endings to the show. The first in the last two episodes of the anime explores Shinji’s mind after the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji learns the importance of individuality and what it means to be intimate with others and breaks out. The movies Death and Rebirth and The End of Evangelion present a darker ending to the story. Although Shinji concluded that individuality is important and breaks out of the singular being, he is doomed to repeat his past mistakes. The ending scene is of Shinji strangling Asuka.

There is so much more that could be said about this show, especially with confusing endings. After watching it a second time, I’ll come back and write a second version of this reflection.

Haikyuu!!

Never have I ever enjoyed watching or playing sports. A few months ago, I would have never even fathomed watching a sports anime. But, after watching Yuri on Ice and Haikyu!!, all my preconceived notions about sports and sports anime have changed. I still won’t watch real sports, but goddam does anime make sports really exciting.

Haikyu!! has been received very well by the community at large– and for good reasons. The characters have great banter and are hilarious, the plot moves at a good pace, the animation is great, and the plot is thrilling. It is effortless to get drawn in and feel the tension, heartbreak, and adrenalin during the volleyball games. It gives off the same energy and emotion that many epic shounen battles give. Yet, it is merely a high school volleyball game and not a battle to decide the entire world’s fate.

It is amazing the energy and emotion emitted from sports anime– and just anime in general. Dramatic storytelling, balanced characters, stunning visualizations, and cinematographic shots can make just about anything interesting. These are things that “regular” sports don’t have. Since anime can tell us the story focused on the characters, we immediately become invested in winning the game — like real sports fans. With sports teams, they try to do the same thing with interviews, press releases, and open practices, but these all pails compared to having the star athlete be the protagonist of a television show. Telling the story in this way also humanizes the characters rather than puts them on a pedestal, as we do with most professional athletes.

Although Haikyu!! is highly entertaining, I obviously can’t pull deeper or philosophical meanings out of it as I could with Fullmetal Alchemist. But, having surface-level themes is not bad, especially when the show is entertaining. Having a cheerful anime that teaches the importance of teamwork, hard work, and extracurricular activities is always a good thing. In fact, since this anime has aired, high school attendance for volleyball has increased.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nbKQTwQm-4

The Promised Neverland Season 2

Oh boy, Promised Neverland season two had great potential. But, it faced the same fate as the ending of Game of Thrones. Large swathes of the manga were cut, and the ending… Up until the final episode, I was fine with season two — having not read the manga. But the final episode’s ending was terrible. Most stories will either end with a cliffhanger or with a conclusive ending. But, the anime ended with multiple seasons worth of content included as a PowerPoint slide at the end of the show. The anime would have been better off simply not playing the slideshow montage and just ending with the two groups parting ways.

It is as if halfway through the season upper management decided that there wouldn’t be a third season or a movie so they tried to cram everything than a half-baked ending that spoils the manga.

My second problem with season two is the issue with Norman’s return. It simply didn’t feel natural or earned to the reader. Norman then placed Emma into a trolley problem where she either had to kill all the daemons or save their siblings. It upset me that serious consequences were not forced upon the characters at this moment. Instead, the solutions to all their problems just fell at their laps; no serious effort or price to pay was required to solve this serious morally charged geo-political conflict.

A lot of shounen anime often backs themselves out of a trolley problem once they present one. Personally, I don’t have a problem with this since it illustrates that not everything is black and white and that there is always a third solution. But, consequences must be had for large decisions. As a horror show, Promised Neverland could have easily used this as a reason to kill characters or even make a Faustian bargain. Since the show was paced too quickly, consequences were never felt for their decisions, and victories never felt earned. The show methodically used 12 episodes for the orphanage escape in season one; it is a shame that CloverWorks crammed overthrowing the entire demon world into a meager 4 episodes.

The Promised Neverland Season 1

Season One of Promised Neverland is the shounen equivalent of the movie Maze runner. A group of children have to escape an orphanage after finding out that they are merely cattle waiting to be eaten by monsters who rule the world. The plot a lot like Death Note, was driven by suspense, strategy, and plot twists rather than the action — which is heavily prevalent in most shounen anime. The way the story handles twists and turns makes it a great thriller to watch. The story was dark, and the characters were sympathetic.

I have mixed feelings about using CGI for most of the environments and 2D animation for the characters. This made for a really eerie watching experience like something is deeply wrong with the orphanage. The way the camera lingers through the orphanage reminded me of the way the Shining was filmed. Although, in The Shining, the camera rarely ever stayed still. Moreover, many shots were framed to gave us the feeling that the children were never alone and that someone was always watching them. The animation strove to mimic the camera effects used in lenses that are often used for horror movies. Scenes often shifted focus from foreground to background and using fisheye effects in some transitions to add an added sense of eerieness.

There are little gore or jump scares in this anime –unusual for the genre. Instead, Promised Neverland conveys the horror through the characters’ raw emotions and tension built up by how details in the story are revealed.

Many of the themes and deeper meaning of the show is similar to the Matrix. The question boils down to whether a blissful life of ignorance is better than living in constant suffering but being free. This debate can be summarized by an exchange between Isabella and Emma in episode 8 after Isabella finds Emma and Norman trying to scale the outside wall:

I love you all and don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want to be the cause of your suffering. You get to live in a warm house filled with delicious food and love. If you can stay oblivious to the truth, then you are able to die feeling satisfied… So how does that sound like anything but paradise?

Isabella Season 1 Episode 8

What’s the point if it is all fake! I’m going to live freely even if I suffer for it! Then I’ll decide happiness for myself!

Emma Season 1 Episode 8

This isn’t an easy moral question to answer. On the one hand, we all want to live free of suffering, yet on the other hand, everyone should have the right to know the ‘truth’ and make the decision for themselves. This show gives us a ‘give me liberty or give me death’ answer. Complacency in the system that systematically uses them as food is obviously not tolerable for the protagonists. But, it is understandable why so many humans go along with the system in hopes of living a normal life. But, what kind of life can you live knowing the nature of your existence? How do you live knowing that the people you love will die premature deaths for a cruel system? Is it possible to ever return to a life without suffering after they have learned the truth? That is why Emma’s question to Isabella asking her if she is happy struck an emotional chord with the audience. Or why Ray’s question to Isabell asking why she gave birth to him struck a deep chord of nihilism.

My Hero Academia

My Hero Academia. Everyone is watching it, everyone is talking about it. It is a great shounen anime. It really is worth watching.

Despite MHA being great, I can’t really give MHA all that much praise because it doesn’t feel unique or inspired. Being unique in the saturated superhero landscape is difficult. After all, everything in one way or another is inspired by other things; we are just making copies of copies of copies. My Hero Academia hits on all the shounen and hero tropes, making it feel familiar before you even start watching it.

What makes My Hero Academia great is the flawless execution of all these tropes.
It has a great story (albeit uninspired), the animation is great, and the characters are great. Watching the show is exactly what you would expect from a shounen anime. I said a similar thing about Black Clover being “un-original” but still a great anime since it did everything right.

My Hero Academia is slowly putting itself in a position where the story can make a deeper critique of Hero culture and our infatuation with it. MHA includes villains who rebel against the status quo of the Heros because they believe the Heros themselves have become corrupt and greedy. With the retirement of All-might, we also posed the question, what is a hero symbol? Do we need a symbol of justice? Who gets to determine what justice is? Do bureaucracies get in the way of justice? Is vigilante justice ever justified?

All of these deeper moral questions that MHA ponders suggest a story that is deeper than your typical Superhero story. However, the superhero medium has already become self-aware of its own tropes and is starting to address them. American superhero movies like Logan, The Dark Night, and Captin America: Civil War has done excellent self-critics of the superhero genre. All these American Superhero movies explore the complex social and political landscape and question how superheroes can fit into a modern society. So far, MHA has aligned closer with shounen tropes and only briefly alluded towards a more complex superhero theme in some of its villains– but not the main villain group, The League of Villains.

With all that said, I see this show becoming the closest thing that anime has right now of mainstream success. It will become a long-running shounen anime that should gain a large international following. Maybe it will become the next Fullmetal alchemist, i.e., the anime that gets new people hooked on anime.

Yuri!!! On Ice

Yuri On Ice is an amazing sports anime to watch. The anime follows Yuuri Katsuki, a pro-Japanese figure skater, as he deals with a painful loss at the Grand Prix Finale and how he comes back even better the following year with the help of his idol Victor. It has everything a good sports anime should: compelling rivals, beautiful animation, and funny banter.

Having only one season with twelve episodes, it’s a good binge watch. The ending was great but not fully satisfying. However, a prequel movie is confirmed, and a second season is rumored.

The show is an excellent sports anime. But it falls short of me saying it was a good shounen-ai anime. In fact, it would be a farce to call it a shounen-ai anime. The anime has constant sexual tension between Yuuri and Victor, yet nothing comes with it. Season one would have been perfect if it ended the Grand Prix with Victor and Yuuri kissing, but they didn’t.

Many people have accused the show of queerbaiting. IE: the show is just gay enough to attract a queer audience, yet not too “over the top” to deter the “straights” away. I would argue that the show provides more than enough “gay” scenes for it not to be accused of queerbaiting. Just because the actors’ sexual orientations are not front and center or that a romantic relationship didn’t form in the first season doesn’t mean it is queerbaiting. With that said, I would be highly disappointed if Yuuri and Victor didn’t start dating if the show got a second season.

Dr. Stone Season 2

Season 2 of Dr. Stone was shorter than season 1, consisting of only 11 episodes, where season one had 24 episodes. Overall, season two retained the same level of excitement, and I was enjoying the watch. Animation remained remarkably well.

Season one finished with Senku finishing the construction of the telephone, and season two focused on the fight against Tsukasa. This shift also leads to a shift in using science to make more destructive weapons. The most lethal thing that was made in the first season was gunpowder and swords, but in this season Senku ended up making both a tank and dynamite. Although Senku manages to have a bloodless coup d’etat, it hints at the destructive power that modern science enables. This is literally hinted at by Tsukasa who argued that science must be eliminated to return to a world without bloody wars. The fallacy with Tsukasa was in that he then enabled violence via survival of the fittest.

Senku’s stance on this debate over the destructive power of science was illuminated when Senku created dynamite. Senku mentioned that it was debated whether Alfred Nobel created dynamite to help mine minerals or wage wars. Senku proceeded to say that he didn’t care either way because it helped advance science– Alfred Nobel went on to start the Nobel prizes to celebrate advances in science. This is echoed in season one when Senku and the village built the telephone to wage information warfare, but, along the way, they ended up making a slew of things that helped the village out like glasses and furnaces to heat their homes.

Although it is noble to think that science, regardless of the motives, will eventually lead to a better society, that can lead us into morally tricky situations. Consider nuclear technology. It was initially developed to build bombs, but now it is also used as a green energy source. On the one hand, it is helping society with clean energy. On the other, it has put us in a dastardly situation where mutual destruction is ensured if any nuclear power were to go to war with each other. So, do the motives matter? If nuclear research got conducted solely for energy, it would have just gotten weaponized, the second a geopolitical conflict required it. In Dr. Stone, the Senku-Tsukasa conflict got resolved by Senku using science to defeat Tsukasa. When two sides are pitted against each other, they will use any advantage they can get, and in Senku’s case, that was science. TLDR: humans wage wars science can’t stop that, but if science can help humanity prosper, then let’ be all for it.

Fullmetal Alchemist is another anime that does a phenomenal job at exploring the ethical applications of science. Dr. Stone hasn’t yet crossed the lines of applying science to do morally questionable things, but Fullmetal Alchemist has done just that. Skipping plot summaries, FMA concludes that the pursuit of science for science’s sake is not a good enough argument since it can lead some people to do some truly horrific things– like human experimentation and human sacrifice.