Anime and Manga - New Season

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

The second one looks better, no?

The 2002 OVA art style is...not completely horrible, but I find the character designs to be very off-putting and lizard people-like, which doesn't help with what already seems like creepy direction. The animation and background designs shown off in the outro in particular are really not all that bad on the whole except for that, especially for a random 1-episode OVA made in 2002 of a decades-dead show.

5 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Yes, is that a bad thing though?

Uh, kind of? Not necessarily how I wanted to leave the show off on, but I suppose it was easily the most memorable bit of that episode...

Edited December 13 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

That outro/the ending credits certainly have an undertone of, well, loss, I would say. I don't know if it references anything in the original series or the OVA, but by the imagery in the scene there are a few things that work. Loss of herself or her identity, loss of her alternate identity after growing up, loss of her family, or a more general loss of youth and childhood or innocence (like in the Minako-centric episodes of Sailor Moon where she wonders if being a Sailor Guardian is worth losing your hopes, dreams and teenage years over).

It seems like it would make sense in a series that is basically about a really young girl having the power to transform into a teenage magician who is the star of her family's magic outfit.

Perhaps she's lost the ability to transform in the ending scene where she's just sitting in her room staring - presumably vapidly - into nothing. A thousand yard stare after the loss of her ability (that she suddenly seems to morph back into her red-haired self while looking the same as her teenage magical variant seems to hint at that, at least) ruined her family, a steep fall from fame and fortune. With their family's savings gone and no future, her father commited suicide, leading to her mother having a broken heart and mind, and losing the brother to addiction and crime. She's blaming herself, wondering where it went wrong, and pining for happier times.

Spoiler

And you thought you interpreted too much into it, huh?

 

Edited December 13 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

  @majestic The original show does actually have a pretty feel bad ending, for what I think is perhaps an interesting lesson grounded in reality, and you could apply much of what you said about the OVA ending to it:

Spoiler

The apprentices of her family's troupe have been mastering their skills over the course of the show and are finally graduating and moving on to do their own act - all while hoping that they eventually become as "good" as Emi (the magically transformed Mai). Meanwhile, Mai realizes that in all her time goofing off as Emi and outshining the other members of her troupe by using real magic, she doesn't actually know how to do fake (i.e. sleight of hand) magic, the thing she wanted to learn since the beginning of the show and what was the impetus for receiving magic powers in the first place, and now she's sorely fallen behind while everyone else is leaving her: she'd wasted all that time she could've been learning alongside them basically showing off but not accomplishing anything. She falls into a bit of a depression and begins to question how in the world she can continue to lead a double-life where it'll be impossible to be in two places at once when "Emi" is supposed to go off and perform elsewhere. She finally realizes that using real magic didn't require any effort or training on her part and it's making her feel like a lousy cheat and a failure...so she destroys her own magic and swears to learn how to do the "real" (fake) thing on her own merits. Her magical companion that's been with her the whole show, the Kero or Luna equivalent, curiously tries to persuade her not to do it, but when she does, he immediately disappears. In the closing seconds of the final episode, she's sitting alone in the dark at her family's theatre, trying to perform a basic trick but failing, crying and upset that she didn't even get to say goodbye...before the older boy that she's close to (in a semi-siblings, semi-she-has-a-crush-on-him-but-he-obviously-doesn't-on-her kind of way) and who helps with her family's troupe, the boxing boy shown in the original outro I linked earlier, comes around and tries to cheer her up. They leave the theatre, and she looks happier and as though she knows she made the right choice...and that's it, the end. At least it's not Minky Momo, but it's still quite a downer of its own.

The OVA ending feels...quite different in its presentation, a bit more dark and sinister because of the stylistic choices they made for it, but yes, you can make it fit somewhere along those lines. The wilful loss of her magic and companion in the pursuit of a real life goal definitely feels like segueing into adulthood and losing your carefree childhood innocence in a manner pretty similar to Shizuku in Whisper of the Heart - not to mention losing that entire part of her identity and what she'd had with it. And hey, in a way, "Emi" *was* killed - by Mai - so the fact that I felt like I was watching a murder does track, . Still really threw me off, though...it didn't really feel wholly appropriate, especially with then showing the teenaged Mai sitting stock still in the dark and in silence while the credits rolled.

Now the stuff about familial ruin and addiction and suicide...um, not so much. Especially because her parents are bakers and weren't getting anything from Mai performing magic in the first place - they were just letting her go off and hang out with the family troupe for fun, basically. So yeah, you're not entirely off the mark with your more serious ideas, .

Edited December 16 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On 12/13/2024 at 12:10 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Uh, kind of? Not necessarily how I wanted to leave the show off on, but I suppose it was easily the most memorable bit of that episode...

Taken solely as the 2 minute clip you posted, I like it. It seems like the magician girl is realizing that she's just a dream of a young(er) child, one that disappears as the kid becomes a teenager in a much different reality than what she dreamed of. And then haunting refrain at the end of the girl at her desk invokes the kind of longing for her childhood dreams in the face of the reality of (young) adulthood. For me it hits like a more wholesome speedrun of Mulholland Drive, but I didn't watch the anime or OVA.

What I did watch was the most recent Dandadan. Boy howdy I wish other shows paid their animators better because it's nice to not see PS2 era CGI. Also the idea of an anatomical model from a science class coming to life to search a dump for a discarded anatomical model that it's in love with is honestly not anything I would have put on a bingo card but here we are. Not the worst surprise of 2024.

[Bartimaeus]

On 12/15/2024 at 10:10 AM, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Taken solely as the 2 minute clip you posted, I like it. It seems like the magician girl is realizing that she's just a dream of a young(er) child, one that disappears as the kid becomes a teenager in a much different reality than what she dreamed of. And then haunting refrain at the end of the girl at her desk invokes the kind of longing for her childhood dreams in the face of the reality of (young) adulthood. For me it hits like a more wholesome speedrun of Mulholland Drive, but I didn't watch the anime or OVA.

Yes, I do suppose it was peculiarly Lynchian in its presentation, even down to the bizarre credits...luckily for me, I already watched the entire show preceding it, so I didn't get the big mad like I might've otherwise, .

Who's Left Behind? AKA Kayako's Diary (1991).

You know, I always had one big complaint about Grave of the Fireflies: I don't like it when movies start out miserable. End miserably? Sure, great! But starting out when things are already terrible, before you ever even have a chance to get to know and like your characters and see what their normal lives were like before everything goes completely sideways, always makes it a bit difficult for me to care about and engage with the movie in earnest. I've mentioned...upon occasion...that I usually only make it a maybe a couple of minutes whenever I try any of those lousy modern anime drama films where the movie immediately starts out with playing sappy piano music, it's raining, and some sad sack I don't and won't care about is immediately laying into me with some pathetically whiny monologue. Grrr, I really hate the bozos who make those movies...but, uh, anyways, all of that is to say, Grave of the Fireflies succeeded for me despite that major issue, but it would've been nice to see an alternative film where there was a preceding, oh, let's say...30-40 minutes of cute and fun daily life where some bad things are kind of, you know, just vaguely happening in the background but not directly affecting our characters, before things really start to deteriorate. Well...thanks to this film, which so desperately needs a blu-ray or even just a good DVD instead of an awful LaserDisc transfer, I really don't need that anymore. Despite the quality being just terrible, Who's Left Behind? immediately shoots up to one my very favorite anime films.

Actually, I was initially - supposed to be - working while watching this, and I just wanted to check it out real quick on my third monitor to see if it would even be worth watching at all, and I kind of just let it keep running for maybe fifteen minutes before I realized I was either going to have to stop working or stop watching the movie, and I decided to stop working. I feel it was a wise decision.

Spoiler

Also, like Grave of the Fireflies, I'm fairly certain the movie is based off of a real story. There's so little information I can find about the film, I don't know that for sure, but it's definitely presented as if that were the case...and on imdb, the listed writer of the film shares the same name as the main character. So yeah, fairly certain.

Spoiler

Also also, I think the film might win an award for 'Most Realistic Wailing in Anime': I kept being genuinely surprised by how on point it was.

 

Edited December 18 by Bartimaeus

[Gorth]

Woot!

 

 

[Sarex]

Ah so they end it there? That's BS... Either way this is the creepy arc.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

28 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Ah so they end it there? That's BS... Either way this is the creepy arc.

At least it's coming back soon....still waiting on Chainsaw Man, Hell's Paradise, Dorohedoro, and One Punch Man.

@Bartimaeus

First of all, you have a doppelganger here under the name "Bartimeus". If you want help defeating him you've got my sword.

Less importantly.....I got to say I watched the magic emi credits again and maybe it's the more Lynchian vibe of the OVA but I don't like the first one very much. Based on what you've written about the show I can read a lot of stuff into it, but I think it does communicate Emi's sadness at not having gotten good at "fake" magic and struggling to do it instead of effortlessly doing it in her BRACK RADY slightly older magical girl form. On a more technical level, the OVA also seems to be more on beat with the song to me if that makes sense. 

Edited December 21 by PK htiw klaw eriF

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Less importantly.....I got to say I watched the magic emi credits again and maybe it's the more Lynchian vibe of the OVA but I don't like the first one very much. Based on what you've written about the show I can read a lot of stuff into it, but I think it does communicate Emi's sadness at not having gotten good at "fake" magic and struggling to do it instead of effortlessly doing it in her BRACK RADY slightly older magical girl form. On a more technical level, the OVA also seems to be more on beat with the song to me if that makes sense. 

They serve different purposes: the "first" outro that's used in the show is just the generic outro at the end of all 38 episodes of the show, whereas the "second" outro is specifically tailor-made for that 2002 OVA. The 2002 OVA is a short little prequel to the show that happens well before she ever receives magic powers (and in my opinion, the outro was by far the most interesting part of it - despite the fact that it has very little to do with what was actually shown in the episode). The first outro, although not particularly interesting or exciting, is really more appropriate for the show as a whole (which is largely upbeat, pleasant, and sincere), while the second outro...I still don't really fully understand exactly what it is they were trying to do. Especially now, because after my previous posts in this thread, I learned that I had previously overlooked that there's actually a 1986 movie (give me a break, this is a fairly obscure show and it can be difficult to find things...), which I just watched a couple of days ago.

The context given in 1986 for 2002's creepy outro and end credits was this: Emi's looking back at and reminiscing of when she could turn into Magical Emi...and at the end of it all, her old broken magical mirror gives a little flash of power, the camera switches to her face, and she smiles. See? It's simple, but now I know everything turned out alright and that she didn't get murdered or kill herself or something, and heck, maybe she can even still do magic...if she wants to. Phew, thank goodness writers and directors back in 1986 knew how to properly convey ideas instead of just being creepy and off-putting for no particularly good reason. After all, it's a magical girl show aimed at, like, 6-10 year old girls, not a David Lynch movie/television series. Why they tried to re-create this 1986 scene in 2002 without any of the surrounding context (and when the original audience would be long gone), I'm not sure, but if nothing else, it helped get me to notice that there was a 1986 version and receive better resolution from it. Not that much better resolution, since this movie was also quite strange in of itself and with the exception of the "looking back" scene partially shown above was neither a prequel nor a sequel to the show but rather took place right square in the middle of it with no apparent purpose, but better. I still don't know whether she ever accomplished becoming a magician like she dreamed of, but even if not, I think it's okay.

All of that is probably quite a bit more boring sounding than some anime director/writer randomly channelling their inner David Lynch for an early magical girl series, but hey, that's life.

3 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

@Bartimaeus

First of all, you have a doppelganger here under the name "Bartimeus". If you want help defeating him you've got my sword.

There can only be one...

Edited Saturday at 07:56 PM by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

18 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

All of that is probably quite a bit more boring sounding than some anime director/writer randomly channelling their inner David Lynch for an early magical girl series, but hey, that's life.

I mean in retrospect I have to say that Utena does hit great.....though the black rose stuff is still not the best. Kinda feel like rewatching it now.

19 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

There can only be one...

I think all of us itt should enter a pact where we will all work to destroy any doublegangers of said pact members.

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I mean in retrospect I have to say that Utena does hit great.....though the black rose stuff is still not the best. Kinda feel like rewatching it now.

I found Utena to be frustrating specifically because of the story and its awful presentation. The sillier episodes were good fun (who among us doesn't love Nanami drowning kittens, or Nanami transforming into a cow, or Nanami trying to lay literal eggs like a bird/reptile, or Nanami going on an African safari to find some super special curry only to get trampled by elephants and for it to be revealed they had some on hand in the school all along?), but the story episodes were awkward, boring, repetitive, yucky, completely disconnected from any sense of reality, and just generally hot garbage. I also don't really remember most of them, whereas I do remember Nanami! She was a good one. Well, no, she was pretty horrible for like 3/4ths of the show, but she did work pretty hard to make it fun, which is what counts in my books.

From what I remember, you've yet to watch the movie, no? I think @majestic at least implied you might find how much more ridiculous it gets to be more fun than the show, which is also just way too long for its story and much more concisely told via the movie. I think: I hated the movie, so I've purged most of it from my brain...but that doesn't mean you will.

Also, it looks like Bartimeus was already destroyed about ten years ago, so I think we're okay. There is somebody around here who I tried to @ one time that actually does for real have a doppelganger, with just like one different letter and who even went so far as to use the same avatar as the real member, but I can't remember who it is. It's possible they've been since removed, since I think I saw them like a year or two ago.

Edited Saturday at 11:24 PM by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

35 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

From what I remember, you've yet to watch the movie, no? I think @majestic at least implied you might find how much more ridiculous it gets to be more fun than the show, which is also just way too long for its story and much more concisely told via the movie. I think: I hated the movie, so I've purged most of it from my brain...but that doesn't mean you will.

The Utena movie is, in a way, a trinity: it is a sequel to the series, a parallel story and a retelling. It is well worth watching just for that alone, although without subjecting oneself to the somewhat overly long series that precedes it*, it is impossible to see or appreciate. I also expect that the film makes no sense without the context of the show, which is another achievement.

Spoiler

I mean, the movie has a scene where one of the main characters turns into a literal car for the other to escape a medieval castle on wheels chasing her and drive off into the sunset, and it makes perfect sense given the context of the series.

I think movie only watchers, in spite of the film being a retelling of the series' story (of a sort), would not really to be able to make much sense of that, unless they're very versed in the subject matter. I guess I liked the series the most of all who watched it here, but even then, I am not sure if the occasional moment of brilliance (and figuring out what is going on well in advance of the conclusion) was really worth the time investment.

It most certainly was not what I wanted to watch after I decided to try out another Ikuhara series, but then again... Utena is certainly not alone in that distinction. Out of everything I tried that the Sailor Moon creative team went on to make or was a part of, only Escaflowne ended up being really good - and we're talking about writers here who joined Sailor Moon relatively late (SuperS and Stars).

*Arguably, the length of the series and its repetitions are part of the experience and therefore necessary to truly appreciate and understand what is going on. That does not, however, excuse the pacing issues of the Black Rose arc.

[Bartimaeus]

It was worth watching for Nanami, at least. Those are fond/traumatic memories that are never going to leave me.