It’s Conflicting Views Theatre! On the one hand, Tenchi Universe is way too long and largely pointless, with some good story episodes; on another hand it was pretty charming and honestly, what could you cut out of it? I really don’t know. I probably own one of the last copies sold in the Northern Hemisphere (barring Japan, of course, which I think you’ll find actually exists in a continuity separate from our own), so getting it is largely a moot point until, say, Funimation picks the rights from the corpse of Geneon.

Tenchi lives with his father and grandfather on a huge plot of land with a Shinto temple atop it. One fateful day, a space ship crashes to Earth – aboard it the famed space pirate Ryoko! She is being chased by the incompetent Galaxy Police officer Mihoshi. When that’s all sorted out, both of them decide to stay, and then they’re joined by the usual crew of Tenchi cohorts: Ayeka, princess of Jurai, her younger sister Sasami, genius inventor Washu and Mihoshi’s partner, Kiyone. Around the halfway point, the crew ascends into space and kind of begin their adventures to a degree!

I’ll explain the pacing of this series to you. I had thought that it would be slightly more credible than the first OVA, which used four of its six episodes to introduce its characters – but I was a bit wrong! The first five episodes introduce the characters (Kiyone wasn’t in the OVA, so she gets her own introductory episode), the next three episodes feature antics of varying amusements, then there’s an episode which hints at mystery that’s not followed up on until a million years later, then an occasionally recurring character is introduced for good measure.

Then, get this (I didn’t), they spend three “special” episodes doing genre pieces because Washu has built a machine that affects the fabric of the universe. This might have been okay if the stories that were presented had visible endings, but they actually just kinda … stopped. Somehow at the end, despite the characters acting as their character of the piece (for instance, a bar owner, or a feudal lord, or a gangster), they remember everything they did in every continuum. It’s enough to make me scratch my head, although I can thank one of these “Adventures in Time and Space” episodes for the introduction of Pretty Sammy, who is still the best part of any Tenchi ever (and her transformation incantation involves the line “Sammy Davis Broiler Chicken!”, so she has to be great).

Then episode fourteen, they go into space! Sweet, right? Almost. Eight of these episodes are about the story, and they’re pretty good, and the other five just kind of fill in the time (I am really loath to use the word “filler” – I remember when I campaigned against the word, and you probably remember that that’s a lie). The revelations of the second half are very easy to see if you’ve seen the first OVA, because the fundaments of the story are exactly the same. I won’t go into spoiling them here.

The big complaint that I have read about Tenchi and its related series for years is that they’ve never finished any of it. While that is true of the originating OVA, despite its fourteen-years-later follow up, Tenchi Universe completes the story that it presents. I realise now that what people were complaining about is that it never resolves the Ryoko-Tenchi-Ayeka triangle. Well, who the eff cares about that? It’s not like it’s well developed or something that anyone needs to worry about: Tenchi Universe, for instance, is almost entirely lacking in romance. Fighting over Tenchi is just a small source of the series’ comedy.

The characters in this series are fun, and Kiyone gets to shine as the captain of their space expedition and as the only woman who can work in such close proximity to Mihoshi without dying a thousand horrible deaths. Surprisingly, the characters aren’t really written in broad strokes – a lot of the time it feels as if they’re hardly written at all. I mean, with the balance of the second half, the plot is all about travelling to point B. In the meantime not a lot is achieved and everyone seems to just service whatever’s happening. Now I’m making it sound like a totally negative thing but it’s really not, it’s just that maybe the show is a little too paradoxically simultaneously stilted and organic for such an artificial premise – and there’s really way too little of the Katsuhito and Nobuhito team. I’ll give the show this: on the occasions when it does give us the actual story, it actually is quite compelling, and the ending is very nice indeed, one of those sweet adventures.

The DVDs are just repackaged versions of the 2000 DVD release (depressingly issued in June 2007, which really shows just how recent the death of Geneon was), and that was a darker age for anime on DVD indeed. The subtitles are frequently awful, with completely unnecessary overtranslation. Part of the reason that the show feels like its missing something is because the translation is totally untrustworthy. I always feel lame complaining about translations but “Ryoko! Ryoko!” does not translate to “Ryoko, you’ll be all right”, nor does “bakayaro” translate to “You fool, good luck.”
The chaptering system is also among the daftest I’ve ever seen, with the first chapter for each episode encapsulating the OP and the bit of the show before the episode title. That means that, if you skip the OP, you have to rewind anywhere between thirty seconds and three minutes so as not to miss any of the actual content. I have to wonder how many people have been confused by Tenchi Universe these past eight years because they didn’t know that they’d missed the start of the episode (which sometimes is throwaway but more often is actually the seed of that particular show’s plot).
Next time this is available, it will probably be reauthored and retranslated. I doubt I’d rebuy it (and I didn’t pay that much for it, honest), but I’d like to imagine that these problems will be solved for future generations who wish to experiment in Tenchi town.

Tenchi Universe is nice, but there’s probably too much of it and it really illustrates how much of a sham it was that they used to sell 26 episode series on eight DVDs and expect you to pay $30 each for them. I know that that is still done to a degree but there is always, inevitably, the option of a thinpak on the horizon. I liked it but I’m not convinced that it ever quite fired on every cylinder necessary for optimum enjoyment.

After the apparent death of her unknown twin sister, Fujimiya Momiji is charged with becoming the Kushinada and protecting Japan from the plant monsters known as the Aragami. Being just an ordinary girl, albeit one who has had an Aragami detecting mitama forcibly implanted into her chest, Momiji receives assistance from one Kusanagi Mamoru – who technically is an Aragami himself – and the Terrestrial Administration Center.

Blue Seed gets off to a start that is, simply, amazing. It looks and feels like an old OVA, and draws you right in with its surprisingly large amount of violence, darkness and drama. Even in today’s world, a lot of the ultra violence is balanced by pink hair, but you don’t get any of that here. The supe the week affair, with many episodes in the first ten being devoted to the characters that make up the TAC. I’ve no problem with monsters of the week, and fortunately Blue Seed has an overarcing story hiding behind them. Only one of the characters seems almost completely shoehorned in, the Japanese/American hybrid miko warrior character. She gets a couple of episodes but she largely serves as a Deus ex America who splits her loyalties based on how the writers feel on any given day of the week. She doesn’t gel with the rest of the cast, which is a pity considering how well conceived the majority of them are.

The series, when it gets to its main point, boils down to conflicting views of nationalism and humanity. Is a country not made by its people? Who can say who is right and who is wrong? The rites must be performed, and those that are successful will determine the winners. The tone is never quite established, with panty print jokes occasionally recurring amidst episodes about solving the crimes of the dead, and general ditziness sometimes coexisting with bloody murder. The violence is significantly toned down after the first few episodes, and becomes more fantastic than visceral, but it is still there.

All of this is largely insignificant when the monster of the week conceit is completely done away with and the story stops wavering. The home stretch of Blue Seed is very satisfying, and it has one of those great epilogue endings that I can’t help but smile at.

Beyond the excellent cast, led by Hayashibara Megumi and Mitsuishi Kotono (Ohtsuka Akio! Sakakibara Yoshiko!), there’s also an absolutely hilarious series of omake. With only one dud episode out of the lot of them (it’s the “artsy” one), the omake alone are almost worth the price of admission into Blue Seed. You can actually see them all on Youtube, but you shouldn’t, because, you know. This one certainly can’t hurt, though:

Blue Seed is self contained, and a strong offering from Takada Yuzo. There’s an OVA, that came in the same set, but I haven’t watched it yet because I don’t see how it could possibly be necessary. I’ll come down to it some day, but until then I can keep the happy memories of one of the better efforts that have been made towards the saving of Japan.

The point is, Angel Links is the idiot quarter sister of Outlaw Star. It’s only thirteen episodes, and it’s one of those series for suckers: it entertains well enough in the first half, then turns into a giant incoherent mess in time for you to shake your fist but have to tough it out until the end. I checked my order history today, and Angel Links shipped November 23, 2004. Would I have been able to stomach it then? I honestly don’t know. I probably would have enjoyed the boobs more, I guess.

Oh yes, this is a show about a girl who keeps a winged cat that can transform into a sword in her cleavage. That’s all that really needs to be said.

Li Chenho’s dying wish was that a free space pirate protection agency be established as a side business in his burgeoning empire, and that the empire be run by his sixteen year old immodest granddaughter, Li Meifon.
By the end of the first episode, we can tell that not all is as it seems, because Meifon has flashbacks to a younger version of herself being shot in the head and her deputy, Kosei, sees her gravestone, given a future date (although, in their infinite wisdom, the fact that the date is in the future is not revealed until later in the series – the writers apparently having forgotten to tell us when the dang thing is set).

At only thirteen episodes, you wouldn’t think Angel Links would have much room for waste. What it does right, it does fairly well: it had some nice comedy villains, it had a guy who goes everywhere with a pig in his arms and, most of all, it had a really nice crew dynamic. However, around the six episode mark (because it has some dodgy moments beforehand, and a couple of good moments after), the whole thing gets shot to Hell. In our “character” episode quota, we have Kosei meeting a pirate girl who has a shameful crush on him – but it’s one of those artsy “ending is revealed at the beginning” deals, and there’s really no point watching this kind of story if you know what’s going to happen. It came to the point where I would predict a death every episode and I wouldn’t be surprised if it showed up. It would have been dang poetic, see, because she’s like … also sixteen! And a pirate! And … ah, forget it. The other “character” episodes fare little better, with Duuz Delax Rex (or, as I like to call him, Duuz Delax Machina), the resident Dragonite, facing up against Takehito Koyasu – a space racist political rebel with a stupid grasp on biology (“why can’t I see this cold blooded reptile on my heat monitor?!”), and Valeria, the tactician and vaguely Germanic member of a crew consisting of fake Russkies, coming face to face with an old flame and … blowing up? Or not being blown up?

The point is that the main story, while accommodating all of this, reveals the hidden villain to the audience. He then summarily decides to throw subtlety to the wind and just be point blank evil in everyone’s faces, and then he expects us to feel sad for his totally weak arse justification for his actions in death (yeah, the villain dies! Sorry about that!). Even a guest spot from Hayashibara Megumi, who clumsily reveals to Meifon her own secrets, can’t save the show.

I find it depressing that a lot of shows nowadays are out of print (I can’t get Maison Ikkoku? What is wrong with you, industry?), but I really don’t think anyone will suffer from an inability to procure Angel Links. Were it not for the Outlaw Star connection, I know I wouldn’t have bothered to look at it. You can get boobs elsewhere, so there’s no real reason to watch what ultimately amounts to a mess.

It’s really difficult to imagine it being possible, but “Chapter of the Fledgling” was approximately one billion times better than “Chapter of the Egg”. Princess Tutu speaks volumes about the strength of 26 episode series made up of two thirteen episode series: they tell two stories while telling one, and they have a pace to match that. Naturally in a thirteen episode series you’ve got less time to waste, or to go on tangents, which is why a good thirteen episode series can be so rewarding. So, strangely enough, take that idea and double it and you’ve got something insanely tight, and the second half doesn’t need to bother going to the effort of set up and can just rock your face off right from the start.

Princess Tutu: Chapter of the Fledgling, ends up rocking faces around the world clean off. You won’t even miss your face when it’s gone, it’s just that good.

The second half of Princess Tutu begins where the first ends, which would make you think there would be no conflict, right? This is entirely the wrong tack to take: Mytho’s heart is not completely restored, and the Raven has had some bastardly schemes in hand.

The first half of the show had to spend time introducing its characters and shrouding them in vagaries so that it was difficult to tell whether they were villainous or helpful beings. Here the characters are well established and can continue their astoundingly well developed arcs (I’m not exactly talking about Mr. Cat here): the true stars of the series turn out to be Rue and Fakir, who caused such consternation at the start and ultimately prove to be the most interesting of them all. That’s not to cut Duck short shrift, but she’s mostly unwavering in her determination. Her own emotions evolve, but that’s only a reflection of the changes that manifest in Fakir, Rue and even Mytho. The only stumbling block for characters is Mytho, who is inexplicably loved by everyone – but he gets let off the hook on account of being the Prince of Legend. It really should not surprise me that a magical girl show can turn out to be an excellent character study, but periodically you need a series packed with vitality like this to remind you.

The whole thing becomes more and more meta as it progresses, and this becomes clearer with the introduction of half length episodes. I personally think that watching half an episode on a weeklong episode would not work but the only effect it has on the stitched together episodes is that you get double the amount of Drosselmeyer saying “Take that, Princess Chuchu!”. Even the previews for the B parts of the episode are simple matters of “will it be a happy story, or a sad story?” it’s not exactly helpful, but this is more of a curio than anything else.
It should probably be noted that Drosselmeyer and the Book Stoppers harbour different designs to everyone else in the show, probably because while they’re a part of the story they exist separately from it. They are the fourth wall breakers (and somehow before the end the show manages to break a fifth wall – the glass ceiling perhaps), and Drosselmeyer actually looks really good when they go to the effort of animating him doing anything more than standing around and laughing. Because the whole series is about story telling, one can examine the potentially sadistic behaviour of an author and why he would want to do that. In fact, so many clauses are invoked over the course of the series that the head spins.

The last episode is full of the sort of excitement that you normally get in more action packed series filled with turnabouts, sacrifices and high stakes. In a way, the stakes are incredibly high, but the lack of explosions accompanying them is a little offputting. This is not a bad thing, it’s just yet another example of narrative expectation being trumped by a morass of awesome.
The moments leading up to the grand finale are truly emotional that the inevitable epilogue can only feel strange by comparison. I’m not quite sure what I think of the ending, but it is more pragmatic than it is idyllic. I probably like it overall, but one can’t help but feel it’s a little bittersweet.

There’s an important moral to Princess Tutu: never think that you can’t do something. So never think that you can’t watch Princess Tutu and your world will be turned on its head.

Warning: Comments contain spoilers!

One could be forgiven for thinking that Princess Tutu is just another naked prepubescent girl show; indeed, to set up its conceit, its heroine has rather too few clothes in the second episode. Beyond that element, which is always covered tastefully enough, this is a pretty good, albeit quite different mahou shoujo program: rather than a monster of the week, we are confronted by an emotion, and rather than fighting it, our heroine dances with it. It’s an interesting experiment, to say the least.

Duck is a girl who attends a school for dance. But wait! Duck is also a duck, who had wished that she could do anything to make prodigious, yet blank, dancer Mytho smile! She is gifted with a human form and the ability to turn into the legendary Princess Tutu in order to restore the shards of Mytho’s heart, shattered long ago to seal an evil Raven. Some other people are privy to Mytho’s literal heartlessness, and don’t precisely approve of Duck’s scheme. Drama, naturally, follows.

Princess Tutu is presided over by one of the creepiest old men ever, Drosselmeyer. He wrote the story from whence Mytho and the Raven escaped, and he wants everything to turn out as he has envisioned it. To that end, he provides Duck with her pendant of (naked) transformation, and frequently grinds the gears in whatever land of beyond-death clock he lives out of, and makes suggestions as to how the story has to play out. Drosselmeyer is an ambiguous character, because he’s clearly not good but he’s not a conventional villian: he’s a master manipulator who cares for the form of things without considering that he’s dealing with actual people rather than fictional figures. I suppose that makes him malevolent, or at the very least sinister.

Like many good shows in the genre, Princess Tutu has ambiguous characters who grow into having clearly defined sides. The important cast members are kept to a minimum: four mains, two supporting, three supplementary, and a few guest characters. It was fun and rewarding to track who was a bitch, who was an ally, and who was simply misunderstood from episode to episode. It would be easy to misunderstand this series, naked girl show that it is. Duck’s teacher is a cat, aptly named Mr. Cat (or “Neko-sensei” if you will), but she doesn’t quite understand why: has he always been a cat? In the second episode, the “villain” of the week is an anteater. The piano in the classroom is played by a puffin, and when a travelling dance show comes to town, the lead dancer asks “was our stage manager an electric eel before we came here?” Drosselmeyer’s fairytale has corrupted whatever vaguely Germanic town that Duck and her comrades inhabit. I’m hoping that in the end we’ll get to see Neko-sensei’s true, marriage happy form, but this is perhaps not meant to be.

It takes a little while to get into it, and the “fighting” that Princess Tutu does is incredibly nebulous, because she literally simply asks her enemies to dance with her, and she dances while psychoanalysing them. When all of the characters are in place, which takes a polite and reasonable amount of time, it really fires on all cylinders and offers an interesting program that you can care about for the most part.

The Chapter of the Egg is actually the first thirteen episodes, presented as an almost self-contained season – albeit one followed one week later by another. The second half of the series was done in half length episodes, although they’ve been mashed together for the DVD release. The pacing will be interesting to see – and so will the story because, although Drosselmeyer promises that it’s not yet over, I don’t see where the story can go from here. This is all part of the adventure of discovery, and this series is worthwhile despite its totally fraught international release.

I’ve finally done it. 14 years later, I have completed the Robotech cycle in Japanese. It’s not really surprising to find that the only one that could really be justified in its endurance is Macross, with Southern Cross turning out to be a trainwreck (albeit one that was cancelled and then hastily concluded, so it feasibly could have been better), but Mospeada is an enjoyable enough romp that was, at times, laughably bad. But always in a good way.

In the 2050s, Earth was invaded by the Inbit. Some humans escaped to Mars, and in 2083 (oh my God! That’s one hundred years from now!) the Second Invasion Force descends to rescue humanity from the clutches of the Inbit. Unfortunately, just about the only soldier to survive is Stig Bernhardt. Not to survive: his freshly proposed to fiancée, and Earth’s hopes. Stig teams up with a group of rag-tag civilians, a cowardly army mechanic, and an earlier arrived soldier who gets around by pretending to be a female singer. Their goal: Reflex Point, vaguely defined as being in “North America”, and the operating point of the Inbit.

The title of the show isn’t pure nonsense: the “genesis climber” part accurately describes the Inbit’s goals, if a bit poetically, and the “mospeada” reflects the name of the bikes that our heroes ride everywhere. The two concepts don’t really meld, but then not every show that had “dimensional” in its name could justify it either, so there.

Mospeada is notable for the fact that it doesn’t really have a clearly defined hero: for some reason, despite Yellow (the amazing and frequently inexplicable dual-voiced soldier/songstress) being the senior soldier, Stig is the default leader. Stig is also the only character who has a stick up his arse about what it means to be in the military, so he doesn’t relate to the other characters that well. This is as good a time for a roll-call as any. A lot of this series is what I would call “proto”, because it gives early forms of what would later become popular standards:

Then, later:

The whole series is a logistical nightmare, with these characters frequently unable to use their vehicles for fear of appearing on the radars of the Inbit. They’ve got not just their mospeadas, but an increasing number of Legioss, combo-jet/robot fighters (hey! Just like Macross!). There are episodes where the characters are being on the down-low and so they don’t have the Legioss with them – yet they show up in the next episode when needed. This is the sort of stuff that I worry about, people!
Continuity was not king in 1983, though, and this allows dying characters to remove their shades in one shot, while still wearing them in profile in another. It takes our heroes sixteen episodes to reach “North America”, but only six after that to get to New York, which doesn’t even make any sense because Reflex Point is closer to the centre of America and they would have had to make a huge detour. The seasons also alternate between episodes, but … it’s not a good idea to pick nits. I mean, if you do that, the episode “Live-In Robbery” makes absolutely no sense and your head explodes. There are episodes where the characters will look at a place, and it’s deserted, then when the camera changes shots they are absolutely surrounded. My brain hurt several times.

But Mospeada has a nice groove, you eventually stop wanting to hit its characters, and all you can really ask for is a bit more depth. The whole show deals in surfaces, and a lot of important things seem to happen offscreen. The obligatory “disbanding of team oh wait we’ll get back together” episode is particularly forced because the characters flip out for no reason – and of course you have to wonder what Mint is doing there in the first place because she’s not even a proper loli.
You get to see some of the inner workings of the Inbit but there’s not really that much room to care for why they’re here because they really just seem like a bunch of patrol robots. The humans of Earth seem to have to obey the orders of the Inbit (which, honestly, for the most part seem to be “don’t be soldiers and try to kill us”), but it’s not until about episode 22 that you see an Inbit in robot form speak directly to a human. Even among themselves, the fiends mostly communicate non-verbally.
The series ultimately becomes one of those paradoxical war shows, the moral of which is “pacifism is awesome, let’s do that after we’ve beaten up our enemies”. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the whole show is just a journey to come to that conclusion, with some cool ideas along the way but a lot of repetition for a show where each episode is actually quite different to the last.

There’s just a vibe to Mospeada, I guess: I know I haven’t sold it well. That’s probably because I consider it far from essential, artificially boosted in the anime canon by its involvement in Robotech. It’s never criminally bad, has one really good (and pessimistic) episode conclusion, and it has a nice enough ending overall, but I like to think that since 1983 standards have lifted somewhat. Plus the music is awesome, and Yellow – the professional transvestite and singer, mind – tells Jim that he doesn’t want to hear any unmanly excuses. Surely that is worth the price of admission alone. Hells yeah.

Witnessing the horror that is the turmoil in the anime industry today, I came to a realisation about myself: my reason for watching anime seems to have changed. Having very little to concern myself with in my personal life at the moment (I mean that I have no inner turmoils, not that I’m a blank sack of potatoes), I realised that I’m watching anime to escape from anime.

With a DVD in hand – and I’ve got literally hundreds of them unwatched – I have a hermetically sealed universe: a pact between myself and the series, divorced from any outside influence. For twenty minutes at a time, I don’t have to worry about the fact that Geneon died in the US, and that people are killing each other over “dorama” on the internet (and the fact that they get a cheap thrill simply from the act of typing “dorama”). I’m living for the moment with my DVDs, feeling free to cry, yell, or shake my fists at whatever developments throw themselves at me. Obviously the internet has been fairly indispensable in the development of my direction, but I feel a disenfranchisement that cannot attach myself to it for too long. I like interacting with other anime people, but only to a degree. Going to a convention is rather akin to going to a horror show, except I’m not the one kicking people and performing “Singin’ in the Rain”. I think that the second my brain imploded, beyond all of the shouts of “yaoi power!”, was when I was in Melbourne for Manifest, either ’04 or ’05, and a fat girl in a costume asked to get by me by saying “sumimasen”. These are not my people. These are not people at all.

The reasons I don’t watch fansubs right now are transparently simple: discounting the fact that I really prefer having something tangible to show for my efforts, my computer presently isn’t strong (or conveniently located) enough to warrant the effort, and all of my favourite shows when I was on the circuit appeared to be the ones that would receive the least attention from the fansubbers. For example, Angel Heart has been over for more than a year but the subs are only up to episode 42. I like having an entire series on DVD to devour at my own arbitrary pace rather than someone else’s.
I loved being part of the “blogosphere”, much as I hated that word – and now it looks like it’s been overtaken by 4chan, and a common language has been murdered by bastardisations like “weeaboo”, “copypasta” and that ilk. These are concepts that remove the need for independent thought and encourage a hive mind of unpleasantness; scientific research has proven that people who use “lulz” in all seriousness are more likely to make me cry at the state of humanity – and also to threaten people with planted child pornography, ignoring the fact that they would have to have obtained it in the first place.
I know for a fact that there’s still a lot of good stuff going on, but even as I’ve emerged from yet another personal shell, I’ve regressed back to a man, a DVD and a TV when it comes to anime. I’ll share my results with you, don’t get me wrong – I know that some readers like the past, too! – and I’ll try, oh Lord, I’ll try … to participate a bit outside of my bunker, too.

So I’ve got no answers to the current quandary. Depressing though it may be that a good ship like Geneon has sunk (this site was started on Pioneer, dangit), I can only take comfort in the knowledge that I have my DVDs, and they sure as heck can’t be taken from me. That being said, I either expect a fire, flood, or DVD plague to hit my house. I’ll continue to report back to you from the battlefield that is paid-for anime, and I hope you’ll either start, continue or resume reading. Over the Summer, I will learn discipline in writing, and you will learn … love. Or double your money back.

Come sail away with me, you guys.

It’s a series about people who can manipulate paper! Is it action? Is it comedy? Is it slice of life? Is it a pleasant show about a school girl and her blossoming friendships? Is it a show packed full of barely repressed (female) homoerotic undertones?
Why, I believe it’s all of the above! Although perhaps not all at once?

Apparently the R.O.D. OVA isn’t quite highbrow enough for certain anime connoisseurs. I like to think of them as “weekend warriors”, who treat anime like a wine and cheese tasting: if the bouquet isn’t fruity enough, then why bother swallowing when you can spit it out in disgust?
The original OVA was a long held favourite of mine, because it was a fun action story that also invested a lot of stock in the relationship between the two leads, who throbbed with that special “female friendship” that you only get in anime. I really don’t see how you can fault it, although I admittedly have not watched it since 2003. I don’t care where you’re from, an incontinent, nuke happy President of the United States is funny.

So that brings us to R.O.D. The TV. Where’s Yomiko, you say? Where is the British Library, the “Last Literary Defence Line of the UK”? All will be answered in time: funky awesome time.

The Paper Sisters, Maggie, Anita, and Michelle, are hired to be bodyguards for hit author Sumiregawa Nenene. Nenene hasn’t written a book for four years, and apparently some fanatics hate her. After a spectacular aeronautical save, the Sisters go to live with Nenene in Japan … where they do less bodyguarding than they do nuisance making, school attending, and completing a few other jobs for the mysterious agency Dokusensha.

I think that a big problem that people have with watching anime is that they can’t get themselves past the concepts. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about “Paper Masters”: provided they have paper, they can bend it to their wills – beyond the generic barrier building and manipulation, the Paper Sisters specialise in familiars, archery and cutting. Seeing the ability put to practical use, it doesn’t seem stupid at all. While the OVA was pretty much a parade of strange powers used by stranger people, there’s less variety thus far: that said, I would argue that the first episode’s action defeats the entire three episode OVA straight off the bat.

Yet, given its 26 episode format, R.O.D. The TV has the luxury of not having to be endless action. While it may seem at first that we’re being subjected to a display of disparate yet ostensibly related personalities, including the “huge quiet girl” look that was inexplicably popular a few years back. The shifting of genre is a good deal of fun to watch, and the classroom scenes are reminiscent of Sugar (complete with Anita’s own “rival”) and some of Kuroda’s best work on Magical Project S and the like.

The reason that it can shift around so effortlessly is because of the grand idea of having characters exist as “keys” to the other characters. I’m sure that the Paper Sisters are designed to be annoying, initially, and that’s not difficult because Nenene, who is misleadingly presented as the heroine, is constantly annoyed by them.
Nenene, voiced by my increasingly respected Satsuki Yukino (I came into this directly after watching Planetes, and more on that later), is remarkably presented as something perhaps best described as a “shrew”. I wondered if I would be able to cope with all of these characters but, as I had half expected, they complimented each other well. Anita and Nenene were the two firebrands and therefore didn’t get along well, but they act as softeners to one another. Thus opened up by Nenene, Anita is given free licence to bring out the humanity of the mysteriously feminine “Junior”. Junior is blank and not incredibly interesting, but he makes Anita more interesting and works on that level.
Michelle and Maggie are closer to supporting roles – I’m giving this show to Anita – but they also become more fun to watch as the show progresses.

Despite the total change of focus from the OVA, R.O.D. The TV is subtly influenced by its predecessor. A picture of Yomiko (and a terribly illustrated picture at that) is featured from the first episode, and eagle-memoried watchers will recall that Nenene’s notes were plastered all over Yomiko’s building in the OVA. I know that the “Missing Yomiko” elements will come into play later on, but it’s worthwhile to plant the seeds of … growth … in these early stages. Just play dumb, please.
As I said, I haven’t seen the OVA since 2003, but the gradual introduction of further characters from that continuum sent excitement through to my very core. Seeing the same characters in extremely different contexts is a source of intrigue, which is something that doesn’t go astray in a series quite so diverse as this one. The “prior to halfway point” twist was actually fairly amazing to me – I let myself get surprised – and the excitement generated is both genuine and palpable. I’ll grant that some of this is fueled by four year old nostalgia, but it cannot be denied that the action and drama spawned by all of this is beyond reproach.

I’m hoping that the whole “girl love” leanings will warrant further investigation for another time, even if Hisa-chan is not returned to the fold. It’s a strange thing to see, and I’ve never understood how it got quite so ingrained in anime culture, but it’s interesting nonetheless. I know very well that the first major arc has concluded, but I cannot run on cynicism, I cannot believe in the law of diminishing returns; not for something that I bought and owned all of. R.O.D. The TV will continue to be subject to my scrutiny, and I do not believe that it will be found wanting.
Do not let your animated joy be fleeting, my friends: grow and nurture it, until it becomes a phoenix in your heart.

Is it possible to watch a show and absorb nothing? I think it is. I also think that Gundam mech designs are really ugly. They’re consistent, but consistency counts for nothing when you’ve got a terrible aesthetic on your hands. Ironically, I chose to give the series a bit of a chance because of the attractive female character designs and the cool OP. L’Arc en Ciel is still going? Who knew! I certainly didn’t.

I’m wondering if maybe it’s a trend that first episodes tell you nothing. Back in my day, we used to have a show stopping first episode, and then we’d chase it up with a few down time episodes to get the introduction rolling proper. We’d also have robots named for every month of the year, and we wouldn’t finish watching it because our eyes would glaze over because while we can pretend we’re having fun watching something silly for a time, eventually it’s going to overrun us.

So let’s look very briefly at Gundam 00 (That’s double-oh but heck, it’s five episodes into the season, you’ve probably seen it already). You know what a great way to ensure peace is? By waging war. This team of dudes, the Gundam Meisters, I believe they’re called, are against the (this is the problem with watching stuff on my PSP on the train, I can’t take notes of all of the stupid names on offer) … let’s call it the Amazing New United Nations, until I bother to sub in a real term if I keep watching this show, but they’re also against terrorists. So they stop a terrorist attack launched by some … other dudes (seriously, I don’t think these ones are named), against a newly opened ballroom … in space!

You can tell that the Gundam Meisters aren’t going to do any terror because their large breasted presumably Chinese cohort is enjoying herself at the entirely gravityless shindig.

So I know what this show is about. I know that it has characters who I assume are girls, but who then open their mouths to reveal deep and disturbing voices. I’ve read that people have also said that it’s full of homoeroticism. Well, I’ll be the judge of that: after all, a guy with entirely girly features with the exception of his voice does not a gay dude make.
But then, veiled homosexuality does not also a good show make. Let a couple more episodes be the judge of this morass of good and bad design!

EXTERIOR: Production I.G. Tower, a building that looms ominously against a cloudy and thunderous sky. A crow caws.
INTERIOR: ISHIKAWA sits at his desk, brooding. He is attended to by SHIROW and OSHII. OSHII is humming a jolly tune to himself at a separate table.
ISHIKAWA: It occurs to me, fellows, that it is our twentieth anniversary this year. I would like to do something to celebrate. Have you got any suggestions?
SHIROW: Bugs. Bugs are huge. Also dreams?
ISHIKAWA: Yes, it sounds good. Sounds like it could be shiny. Who can we get to work on the scripts. Oshii?
OSHII: Sorry, Ishikawa, I’m writing an epic poem dedicated to the memory of my dearly beloved cat. I’ll see if I can think of anyone.
ISHIKAWA: Well, does anyone know what Konaka is up to nowadays?
OSHII: I think he’s free; he just came away from writing a series of one off mind-fuck episodes for everyone who had a space going.
ISHIKAWA: Yes, it’s what he does best. Well, we’ll put this one straight to him.

Production commences. A few months later …

INTERIOR: Production I.G. Conference Room. The first episode has just been read, and the OP presented.

ISHIKAWA: What does any of this even mean?
KONAKA: I’m pretty sure it’s profound. Besides, it’s just the first episode. It doesn’t have to mean anything yet.
ISHIKAWA: Very well, I will commission it on the strength of the OP.
KONAKA: Thank you, sir.
KONAKA makes to leave.
ISHIKAWA: And Konaka, one more thing.
KONAKA: Yes, sir?
ISHIKAWA: Boogiepop Phantom had better music than Lain.
KONAKA: *inaudible*

There was a time when I used to welcome and embrace the name of Chiaki J. Konaka (I never keep his name in Japanese order because I don’t know how … danged initial). I used to think that his work was always cool and compelling. Then, after a while, some shows would have episodes that were pointlessly confusing or convoluted, and totally different to every episode surrounding them. Every time one of these came on, I would think “this feels like it was written by Konaka” and, lo and behold, most of the time it had been.
That’s not to say that I think Konaka is a no talent hack, because he’s done a lot of good things, but he is entirely capable of obscuring his point behind smoke and mirrors and burying it in stuff that I don’t care about. It was thanks to him that I gleaned almost no fun from Magic Users’ Club TV after such a glorious run on the OVA.

Anyway, to Ghost Hound. I’m not being indignant in saying “what is this?”, because I’m more curious than that, but I think that it’s simply amazing that we’re in a day and age when a first episode doesn’t really have to do anything other than feature a boy who dreams about flying, and recalls his abducted sister on a bed, a punk kid whose father was somehow related to the abduction, and a transfer student who is uncomfortably touchy feely with the other students. The OP is grand, and so far that’s all I can really say about it.

Also, the student psychologist is blatant in his evil looking. Does no one notice? Fortunately, because of my lack of smarts and punctuality, there’s a few episodes already available to ease myself into. The key to getting back into doing fansubs rather than relying solely on my burgeoning DVD collection is to pick good shows. I burned out last year from watching too much stuff that simply wasn’t very good, and the stuff that I did consider very good got abandoned as a result.

So, Ghost Hound: you’re looking okay.