While i lie to everyone that i couldn’t care less about the great annual event that takes place in less than 2 hours, i bide my time by blogging instead of biting my nails and rendering myself powerless to practice piano afterwards.

On episodic blogging, or rather the pressures of being an episodic animu blogger

It surprises me that even while i’m 2 episodes behind, weeks after the end of Xam’d Lost Memories, that the bulk of my hits still rely on searches related to it. But this wasn’t the trigger for this post. The search ‘how does commander kakisu die in xamd’ most certainly was.

The lucky suckers who manage to find my blog (and who are responsible for keeping my stats at 20-30 hits daily) will have noticed that i tend to take a long hiatus every few months or so. Kicking out RL factors (such as exams), the main reason is simply weariness. Episodic blogging that is also substantial and meaningful is a physically and mentally exhausting process. If you also happen to have excessive OCD tendencies (like me), weighing every typed word carefully, revising your post even after publication, plus agonizing over additional errors (that your OCD brain suddenly realizes 30 minutes after you’ve shut the laptop), the whole process becomes very hellish indeed. It takes about 4-5 hours on average for me to churn out a post. Now, considering the fact that i only blog from 2-7am, and that i have to wake up at about 9-10am daily, this makes my sleeping hours a total of…2-3 hours. Panther can very readily attest to this, i guarantee you. What takes the cake is how i have to do this at least 2 times a week, given that i cover at least 2 series at a time (this stopped for a period of time during the Xam’d days). I haven’t even considered the time needed for meta-posts like this yet, although they take considerably less of it to produce.

All this gives me the urge to go the way of  The Animachronism or Anime wa Bakuhatsu da!, where blogging either goes (relatively) backwards in time, skips erratically through different time periods in different directions, or at best posts reviews on current series with a minimum of episodic indications. Additionally, being the spoiler whore that i am, i have to continually resist the urge to check other blogs before i do my own episodic posts to avoid the herding instinct that will almost inevitably follow. Most of the time, i fail to deter myself. Herding is a hideous disease that somehow never gets eradicated. Hell, it spreads like one, too. I find myself in a spot where i prefer to watch at my own leisure (i should), without the pressures of having to stay current – it’s episode XX already?!?! Quick, megapost!! - and give my unadulterated review, period.

And i now (almost) have the opportunity to do just that, thanks to my stupidity. I have almost missed out on the 2 greatest shows of Autumn 2008, God bless Veoh. By pure serendipity, i discovered how much of a mistake i made passing up Toradora and Casshern Sins: in the past 2 weeks i caught the momentous episodes 19 and 21 of each series respectively. I’ll log my deeply seared impressions below.

Toradora: Why we should hail Ami, and not as the Queen Bitch

Thankfully, i was not completely ignorant of either series (thanks to Omisyth), just ignorant enough to know what a dweeb i was. I’ve become extremely jaded of slice-of-life/school-based shows, but this one hit home base.

Interestingly, the impression i had of Kawashima Ami was that of an onion, like Peer Gynt. First layer: glib-tongued model; second: royal queen bitch; third: Ryuji contestant. The climax of Toradora can be summed up in 5 words: revealing true character under pressure. Everyone (excluding Kouji, who knows next to nothing in general) has their patience stretched to the limit, and all disintegrate in differing degrees. Screamfest galore. My onion impressions were pared away instantly, for episode 21 revealed not another layer, but the core of Ami’s character. To put it another way, her behaviour throughout the entire series is based on her frustration at people (in this case Minorin) not letting her in on their real feelings. It’s like a version of the attention-seeking syndrome: if i can’t get to you by being a normal friend, i’ll harass you until you show your true colors, screw it even if you hate me. The fistfight scene between Minorin and Ami was a stroke of genius, because we finally get a solid reason to sympathize with Ami and see her as an extremely misunderstood character. Dare i say the opposite for Minorin? RL has given me an extreme aversion to people who like pretending that everything is fine (this symptom applies to 3/4 of the people i meet) when it is most obviously not. Some say this is a coping mechanism. I say it’s an euphemism for self-delusion.

And of course, i’d be a fool not to mention Taiga’s confession to Ryuuji. It got me thinking about romance shows in general: In shows with plots like this, what are the odds that the characters actually do end up with the object of their initial desires? Very little, from my years of watching anime. Or maybe i’ve watched too little. But the general idea is, the more you get inside a person’s head, the more likely you’re going to have romantic tendencies towards him/her at some point in time. I suspect that Ryuuji was more upset by Minorin’s ‘everything is the way it was before’ charade than by her rejection, because he was pigheaded enough to realize his feelings for Taiga only when she fell down the slope.

Casshern Sins: I am a fantastically big liar

Speaking of odds and romance, i wonder how i had the good fortune to catch episodes that happened to be a major turning point in the series (actually, every week is a momentous week for Casshern Sins) and had to do with great romantic confessions and getting into characters’ heads. Lyuze finally hooks up with Casshern in episode 18, although i can’t say that’s entirely a good thing since the latter doesn’t appear to know ‘amour’ in its physical manifestation other than stoic hugging. Lyuze, or rather her brain, takes centre stage, complete with opium-esque fantasies, dream sequences and flashbacks. Does it help to mention that the color palette was even more hippie 60s than it usually is? My own head had to process things even faster and deeper than what i did watching Xam’d; a minimum of dialogue, plenty of allegory, which makes every word Lyuze utters a pearl too. I did lulz at the sex scene though, it overdid the job to me.

I should perhaps explain the above title. I caught the premiere of the movie version of Casshern at the not-very-intelligent age of 14, at a national manga competition i was sent to for lack of other victims. I was seriously pissed off with it. I couldn’t handle the color palette change (paltry compared to Sins!) from color to monochrome to sepia and back, or the X-1999-esque ending, or even the fact that they magically conjured robot army from bloody nowhere. Looking back, i think it wasn’t so bad a movie; in fact, since i was insane enough to buy the DVD even though i hated it, i’m willing to try it again sometime. And when i first came across Sins, i was publicly declaring to anyone who’d listen that i’d never watch the show. Let’s revise the title; i am not only a big fat liar, i’m also a hypocrite (because i generally practice open-mindedness elsewhere).

This makes me wonder exactly what other blunders i’ll make throughout the course of 2009.

Of Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness fame, that is. Ever since i picked up the former late last year (Kinokuniya sales, banzai), the more i associate with society, the more i get disillusioned and disgusted with it.

So much so that i get elated beyond belief when i have a job offer rejection. Those who fancy a good bitchslap, read on.

An explanation is obviously in order. Out of all the pursuits i’ve been quietly been engaging in since my latest absence from le blog, the latest has been working (or attempting to work) as a QCer for a scanlation group, the name of which i shall decline to divulge. (HOWEVER, if you’re smart enough you’ll be able to figure it out from various clues scattered around this post.) To begin with, let us examine what is required of the post according to the group:

Qcers/Proofers are responsible for making sure the scanlations read properly in English and are cosmetically sound. A QCer/Proofer is to scanlations what an Editor is to an author or writer. [Or what a beta is to a fanfiction author.] Not only are qcers/proofers responsible for basic things like grammar, spelling and punctuation – but they also need to be keen on flow, tone and for any graphical discrepancies the editor might have missed.

So far so good. Let’s read on:

Qcers/Proofers are the final say in whether or not reading a scanlation is an enjoyable process or a painful one. A project can be edited beautifully, but if it reads badly, it’s just as bad a reading a poorly edited scanlation. While you may not want to tear your eyes out, you will probably want to dip your brain in acid.

Ah ha. Jackpot. After getting accepted on probation, my first job was (relatively) easy. Here be a sample:

And the Head QCer’s reply?

Comfortable with it? A lot less time? IMAGES EASIER TO IDENTIFY, BUT USED TO FOLLOWING TEXT? Primo, that last statement blatantly implies stubbornness with regards to flexibility, and is absolute bullshit as far as i’m concerned. So you’d prefer additional wastage of your precious time in favor of a Platonic approach, while having the gall to admit in the same breath that other methods work better? Secondo, I use a Mac laptop, meaning all you have to do is Shift-Command-4 and voila, instant screenshot. I am surprised that Head QCer also happens to use a Mac laptop and yet is unaware of this simple little shortcut that saves time. Tertio, this sounds just like the people who say things like ’some members of (insert ethnic group) whom i know personally are decent people, but in general, members of (ethnic group) are (insert stereotype)’.

And they like sending things in .rar format. I tried iArchiver and many other things, all with a trial period of 12-20 days. I ended up having to do an elaborate dance of download (on Mac)-un-Rar (on desktop Windows computer)-re-download (on Mac), which takes an average of 10 minutes depending on decompression rate and file size.

My subsequent reply merely included ‘is there no room for “change we need”? Will follow format from now on.’ Infuriatingly, HQC automatically assumed that i was easy to take advantage of.

Thank you…for redoing?? Oh, the audacity of a boss. And sorry, i tried out FFView and it threw me into a state of hysteria because of its horrible controls, muchos gracias. They consist of…nothing. Literally.

The following week, i was in for the shock of my life. The translation was unrecognizable in more than a few areas (i say this lightly), and i thank heaven they actually bothered to send me the raw scans so that i could correct the mistakes, because the 6 hours (and probably more) that i spent QCing was mostly devoted to consulting dictionaries and the net. Compare pre-QC:

with my revision:

and my submission email (for which i tried extremely hard not to be a bitch):

Apparently they didn’t take my observation very well, and decided to drop me like a hot potato straight after that. (Censoring is in order, of course.)

Translation: MYOB and do what you’re told to do. Please note that the response was wholly avoiding the sticky issue of translation in my submission email. While ‘Good riddance!’ did not immediately come to my mind upon receiving this (semi-grammatically incorrect – oh the irony) email, ‘HALLELUJAH!’ did. Naturally, i did not reply with a shorter version of what you’re reading now; that reeks of ‘i’m in the wrong but i’m on the defensive’. Instead, i gave them the more insulting silence (meaning i didn’t reply at all).

Since the apparent problem lies with the magic word criteria, let us return to requirement 2, and one of the additional skills/requirements they added in as an afterthought:

•  Qcers/Proofers are the final say in whether or not reading a scanlation is an enjoyable process or a painful one. A project can be edited beautifully, but if it reads badly, it’s just as bad a reading a poorly edited scanlation. While you may not want to tear your eyes out, you will probably want to dip your brain in acid.
• Anal retentiveness and/or OCD tendencies. Basically you must have a very sharp eye for detail. You are a perfectionist when it comes to the work you do, however, not so much that anything you work on never gets done.

Conversely, take a look at the undesirable elements of a potential QCer:

• Unable to work in a team environment. Sometimes, you may have to put your ego aside and remember that you’re part of a team. Working with a scanlation group means working with different people. There’s nothing wrong with having strong opinions, but remember that in the end everyone has to think about what’s best for the group and not what’s best for just you.

Translation: put aside your ego to preserve the collective group’s ego.

Consider Viewpoint 1: I, as a troublemaking, unorthodox anarchist, threaten group cohesiveness. Ergo, i impede work progress as a whole, which is of course going to have a domino effect and harm everyone who reads scanlations in general.

Now this: If i am indeed an unorthodox troublemaker (i’ll leave out anarchy for now), but what i suggest/do is beneficial to ‘the finished product’ (i.e. the scanlation), and consequently the wellbeing of scanlation readers by not making their brains yearn for acid OD, why should i be obliged to forsake the very nature of my job as a QCer in order to uphold the status quo?

In other words, this implies that i’m not justified in being OCD because i happened to criticize my precious, unknown comrade who happens to be a completely BS and incompetent translator? Is this some kind of Gurren Lagann-esque duty vs. loyalty dilemma? Why don’t you just close down the job openings, for God’s sake? My job was to QC, and to QC means being anal about everything. Including translations. Doing a good job is one thing. Shirking 3/4 of your work because a) you know the editor/QCer is going to clean up for you, or b) you are aware that this is a payless, and therefore you decide to do just enough to float by – anyone who does this ought to be shot, preferably Soviet-style, and then unceremoniously dumped in a mass grave. The term ‘working for free’ implies one of two things: either you are a sucker, or you have passion for that particular job. People who claim no.2 as their joie de vivre in cyberspace and yet do a bad job are either self-delusional or hypocrites. And all this has absolutely Nothing.To.Do.With.Bleedin’.TEAMWORK.

What’s best for the group VS. What’s best for you? Why not try thinking What’s best for the community, i.e. those unwashed masses who read the finished product? The sad reality is that nobody cares about boardroom wars on Cadbury chocolate advertising when they eat it, let alone the manufacturing processes, or if you’d like to go that far, the exploitation of child labor back in the cocoa fields. Likewise, few people outside the scanlation industry give a damn about teamwork, but they’re going to be pissed off if the scanlations aren’t good work. ‘Free’ is not a term for you to hide behind; in effect your ‘job’ is just an unpaid version of what the good people at ChuangYi and other translation manga distributors sweat blood for, so i don’t see any reason to put any less effort in it. Bottom line is, if something other than your usual method works, are you going to stick your head in the sand and continue bleating ‘our tried-and-tested is still teh no.1!’?

To top it all off, let’s end this diatribe with the case of Dune in Casshern Sins episode 20 (hey, you thought there wasn’t gonna be any animu reference?). Dune, who i wasn’t exactly fond of due to his doglike devotion to Luna (who turns out to be the ‘gray Swan’ of this series), says the following as he dies trying to protect Luna (as if she needs any protection, actually):

And what does Luna say?

Substitute Dune for the suckers whose brains run around like little rats in the thinkbox they’re given, and Luna for the community in general, and you have a recipe for disaster. Society thanks noone for following the rules to get the desired results, at least not outside the classroom. In other words, why be a nerd?

Oh Kakisu. Why can’t you just let us hate you all the way. And lulz ‘big gorilla’. Couples sure come up with interesting insults for each other.

You know, ep 22 should have had a subtitle below ‘Tojiro and Ryuzo’ that says ‘Wish Fulfilment’, because that’s exactly what it deals with. It didn’t hit me until i watched it a second time; it’s precisely this little ingredient in life that everyone wants that brings them crashing together with the magnificent speed of a trainwreck….only it isn’t. Yet. Touch wood.

It doesn’t take a Humanform scientist to figure this out, actually. Ryuzo and Fusa are stuck in that Men-from-Mars-Women-from-Venus conundrum where each wants reciprocation of their  oft denied love for each other, but have typically and vastly different interpretations of how that reciprocation is to take form. All hail couple spats, for they be the light and salt of the relationship earth.

(WP is obviously being a bitch to me, because these lines weren’t meant to be struck out. Also, my picture uploading function has also screwed up, hence gallery format.)

Then we have Kakisu and Kanba, the exasperatingly tsundere pair that makes me grit my teeth each time they appear because then i will have to do pseudo-Jungian analysis on them. To save my agony, i will attempt to stereotype condense my thoughts in a few sentences. K&K are 2 sides of the same coin; both are second-class citizens desiring some sort of acceptance in their various social circles: Kanba by whom he deems Gods (or high priests, actually) aka Azami (we’ll get to him in a while), Kakisu by his mother and Prois?. I hated all the tacked-on revelations at the end, i felt they would have worked better before he got shot in the head…oops. At any rate, because i like to satirize Freud and his students, FTW the Oedipian vibes, although technically he needed a real father to make this theory work. Does it help that he also had a twisted SM desire to die (and tried to help it along by being neo-Hitler)? Not to mention creepy as hell when his corpse cried. Clean-cut deaths are always scarier IMO.

And Prois! How could i forget Prois? Suppressed love/desire for Commander = what drives her throughout the whole shebang, much like AkiHaru, though it’s unclear why they (implicitly) broke up in the past. It might also be read as a substitute for the love she never received from her father (seems that soldiers come from really shitty families here).

The complete bathos that came after that CS-esque break-in by our Three Musketeers was another sudden move that made for great dramatic effect (as well as bringing home the fact that Kakisu didn’t earn his stripes just for being a b/tard): the greatness in this scene wasn’t in the realization ‘in times of crisis, people are driven to do X and Y and Z’, but how ‘people’ refer to everyone in the show. It was somehow tragic and reviving at the same time to see Midori’s father bitchslapping soldiers left and right, only to find Midori gone (hell, he even forgot his vow to see them both get carted off) and Ryuzo mentally snapping (guess what they say about bottling it up is true). The exchange of words during the showdown between Kakisu and Ryuzo explores (in a slightly stilted way) the evergreen dilemma of duty vs. loyalty, much like Gurren Lagann and countless other anime have done.

The Jibashiri really got my goat this time, even though i should have seen this coming eons ago. Like Hao in Shaman King, their idea of ’saving the world’ just means ‘we do a Great Flood aka we try to be God and mess up the world order and start all over again with the survivors we deem righteous’, which sounds like and should sound like a complete shitfest which AkiHaru have been unwillingly pulled into. Speaking of AkiHaru, i’ve only just noticed how complementary their outlooks on life are. OGT did an excellent job of analyzing this long ago, for some odd reason i understand his tl;dr posts about 90% of the time compared to those on some other equally tl;dr blogs…

Here i find it necessary to compare all the Jibashiri we’ve been introduced to thus far, or at least those who do the most talking (Nazuna doesn’t count). Azami represents the truth most of us like to bury, the best example being his mindraep telepathic reading of Kakisu just before his death. This is foreshadowed by the conversation between Kakisu and Prois before he leaves for the war memorial; rather ironically, Kakisu the captain is steering his own ship of lies. Indeed, it is Kakisu’s unable to face the truth of his very being that causes him to murder Azami. (Conversely, Kanba seems to drink in it, but that’s another can of worms.) Whatsisname purple cloak appears to be like so, but more sinister agendas are clear as he snaps trying to preserve the status quo of Xam’d (Akiyuki). On the other hand, i still don’t have a real first impression of Sannova despite all the shit she’s been directing all this while.

Also to be noted is Ishu & co.’s offensive against the Hiruken Emperor, mainly for those pearls of Ishu retorts and Raigyo’s Xam’d pwnage and his immortal advice. Xam’d goes all out on the PEWPEWPEW when needed, which is very welcome for i sorely need my PEWPEWPEW fix. FIRE AWAY TO EP 23 AND BEYOND!

P.S. Haru is a Tamayobi, which means you don’t have to be a Tessican to be one. Keep on whacking the revelations, Xam’d.

Many thanks to Kitsune for this much-awaited info. As ANN (and Saishin Anime Jouhou) tells us,

The Fuji TV television station has posted a 14-second commercial that announces the January 15 premiere of the Genji Monogatari Sennenki Genji (The Tale of Genji: A Millennium-Old Journal: Genji) television anime series.

I wonder what took them so long. Perhaps this is a sign. An EPIC sign. Trailer here. Let the tiny screen fool you not, CG screams ‘WATCH MEEE!!’

ALSO, i forgot to update in my winter ‘09 post that the series will not be epic anime based on epic manga based on epic novel. It will be epic anime based on EPIC NOVEL. Now if that doesn’t get you to sit up during this long and dreary winter, nothing will and you will rot under pinecones of suck till spring comes.

Everytime i come up with a post is seem to preface it with non-exhaustive excuses reasons for my long absence prior to it. This time i’ve returned from preparing and performing a concert piece (this guy plays it abit differently at the last 2 movements though) that completely bitchslapped me till the end. In fact it bitchslapped me so much that i’ve suffered 1 purple finger and 1 strained tendon for it. To counteract the dry spell, i’ll ignore the fact that i have a Xam’d backlog and do this Team Blue RR instead. Most participants have already contributed greatly to the RR, so i’ll just add my pathetically short thoughts here.

First off, i think ‘team blogging’ is a rather pointless issue to discuss in relation to altering the surface of the moon blogosphere due to one operative pitfall. As lelangir on Impz’s post puts forth,

Realize that it doesn’t take a team blog to do team blogging. We’re so caught up in the farce of centralized content that we forget about the significance of the author which is not an inert entity.

To pick from accessible examples, don’t RRs constitute team blogging too (albeit in a delayed way)? If you think about it, most team blogs when broken apart are basically individual writing clumped into one big, central, accessible site. Although i should mention that THAT has put a new twist on the term by doing stuff like this and this and you get the idea. In a remoter context, perhaps that epic over 9000 meaningless words might qualify as well. The ‘team’ in ‘team blogging’ is the operative word, and anyone may choose to execute it pretty much however he likes, in whatever possible interpretation he chooses to see it.

That said, there has to be criteria that fits the word ‘team’. Let’s see what cyberworld’s lexical souces have to say about the word:

A team comprises a group of people or animals linked in a common purpose. Teams are especially appropriate for conducting tasks that are high in complexity and have many interdependent subtasks. A group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team. Teams normally have members with complementary skills and generate synergy through a coordinated effort which allows each member to maximize his or her strengths and minimize his or her weaknesses. (Wikipedia)

 A number of persons associated together in work or activity (Merriam-Webster)

A cooperative unit (Wordnet, citations)

And last but not least, my favorite one from Urban Dictionary:

Together Everyone Achieves More

It is evident enough from these definitions that an element of cohesiveness is required to earn the word ‘team’. Which leads me back to the first article i quoted back at the beginning (lelangir and Impz), they do the dissection reasonably well enough so i’ll let you read it in peace.

You can probably see by now that doing anything more on this note will descend either into continuum fallacy or dichotomy, so i won’t.

I joined. Does that signify progress?

I guessed as much, NO IT DOESN’T. That was just me being annoying.

Ga-Rei Zero

Production: AIC Spirits, asread

OP: Chihara Minori – Paradise Lost

ED: Mizuhara Kaoru – Yume no Ashioto ga Kikoeru

In a season where pretty much all of the awesome shows (except Xam’d) have been hampered by cretinously slow subbing, Ga-Rei-Zero stands out in the crowd for its compelling plot, strong character presentation, and of course the awesome fusion of sci-fi-exorcist action. Depressing, disturbing and violent you say? You ain’t seen Mouryou no Hako or Shigurui yet, so stop recoiling and let’s get with the program.

GRZ is a prequel to the manga Ga-Rei, chronicling the past experiences of the Exorcist Agency and providing a more extensive backstory of the relationship between Tsuchimiya Kagura and Isayama Yomi. Side characters like Sakuraba Kazuki and the Nabuu twins, who only appear briefly in the manga, also get considerable screentime here. What it really does, however, is tell the story of a girl’s growing-up years, a long journey from shy introvert to a mature, more worldly-wise person. As you immerse yourself more and more in the less (or more!) than ordinary events that are the daily work of the Agency, the sheer normalcy of the characters’ personalities is what really shines through. The relationship between Kagura and Yomi is explored to the fullest extent, and it is touching if not bordering on the idealistic. As the series progresses, Yomi’s sisterly love (i think some would conted that) and protective attitude towards Kagura transforms into a sort of mental and spiritual lifeline for her as she slowly loses herself to the Sesshouseki’s erosive power, ultimately resulting in her death at Kagura’s hands. Conversely, it is Kagura’s own love for Yomi that finally gives her the strength and resolve that Noriyuki was unable to muster, killing her in the knowledge that it is both her duty and Yomi’s better fate to do so. This relationship and how it breaks down between them gives us an unusual bonus: the process of how a protagonist AND antagonist are created. In doing so, GRZ drives home the ultimate proof of its ability to present multi-dimensional characters that defy ‘good’ or ‘bad’ categorization.

That being said, it was a bit of a letdown to see some supporting characters having a brilliant moment of screentime, then suddenly fading into oblivion to make way for Kagura vs. Yomi. My major gripe with the series is Nikaidou Kiri (not a biased view, my fave was actually Kazuki), who busted out her Fuuchoin skills in a battle with Yomi only to get herself checked into asylum for her efforts. There was also a little bit of a shaggy dog story going on with the exorcism team headed by Kanze Tooru in the opening episode – what was the point of making him randomly reappear with Natsuki for 2 seconds if you weren’t going to elaborate on him?? However, a good example of salvaging that problem is Garaku Tsuchimiya (Kagura’s father); typically seen as an emotionally detached man even to his daughter, he has a final heart-to-heart talk with Kagura before his death, revealing the reasons behind her forced acceleration of maturity (which sounds like an euphemism for deprived childhood).

Production-wise, GRZ chose to go the road less travelled, and by that i mean utter subversion. While most series of like nature would end with a wham-bam-everyone-dies, GRZ quite literally opens with it to brilliant effect. If you didn’t go ‘OMGWTFHAPPENEDineedtoknowmoar’ by the first episode, you must have either a stone heart or been through it yourself, in which case would be highly unlikely. It doesn’t end there! This series requires a higher than usual level of suspension of belief for the action aspect; from the weapons (Michael Douglas Iron and Michael J.Fox Boiler, anyone? Oddly enough, practically all of them are named after actors whose first names are Michael – i see no discernible link) to the fights themselves (rodeo-style motorbike pwnage and wheelchairs rivalling Cloud’s 7-sword bike in Advent Children) to the ‘kill you! KEEELL YOUU!’ scenes, all the stops are pulled out, paired with great animation to boot. Unfortunately, all this doesn’t blend very well with the less chaotic part of the plot where character development takes precedence, the worst being the Yomi-Noriyuki hookup attempt by the entire main cast in one particular episode. GRZ’s weakness lies in the inability to blend subtlety with frankness. They didn’t really need it anyway: as Yomi suffers one setback after another, it becomes increasingly evident that both of them are more than just arranged marriage partners, displaying genuine feelings for each other at various points in time. Still, the comedic parts of the show, while sometimes awkwardly placed like the previous example, are refreshing after back-to-back scenes of action, gore etc. They never did specify what ‘land’ Iwahata Kouji came from, he makes an excellent manly swing-the-other-side specimen if i ever saw one.

The soundtrack of GRZ played an understated but crucial role in really getting into the show. I’ve always thought that one defining mark of a good series is its soundtrack, and that theory hasn’t failed me yet. In the spirit of Gebrauchsmusik, it sounds well and good on its own but in context draws you more into the media it is meant to complement and elicits from its audience the apropriate emotions, be it gut-wrenching cartharsis, kooky humor or good ol’ horror suspense. The OP and ED perfectly summed up in music what GRZ was in animation: an action-filled character drama with elements of tragedy. (Case in point: if you noticed around ep 8 or so, the ED animation sequence changed from Kagura running up to Yomi to the latter walking away alone. BLATANT SYMBOLISM.) When Chinese New Year rolls around i will immediately rush to my anime store and grab the CD, provided they are so kind as to stock it so soon.

Overall, GRZ is definitely not perfect, but delivers a solid plot that is unusual enough to make you sit up, but not so far away that you get either repulsed or confused. I guarantees audience satisfaction. Or at least while you while away the dreary winter months of anime fail.

Geh! If i hadn’t looked at this i would never have known that GRZ stopped at 12. (Yes it sounds horrendously stupid and ignorant.) Since i’m too lazy to repeat/paraphrase myself, my general thoughts on this ep cluster shall be moved to the 10 min reviews section.

I’ll just put down what got my goat here:

Talk about having crappier and more tragic endings than Blassreiter for some characters. Yomi gets my award for Worst Life Experience. With the domino effect of father murder-adoptive sister biatch-will manipulation-getting disabled to near vegetative state circumstances, is it any surprise that she went ‘SILENCE I KILL YOU’ Sesshouseki mode? Not to mention not being able to commit suicide.

First you kill off Tooru, now you slaughter my favorite GRZ man Kazuki like a pig! AIC Spirits/asread, how could you!

Noriyuki and Kiri both lose their marbles in differing degrees,

Noriyuki becoming a hippie psychic (and a pervert, as the manga suggests),

and Kiri being shipped off to mental hospital. And this after merely 15 minutes in 2 eps of her battle awesomeness!

Also, while the words ‘anime’, ‘fiction’ and etc. automatically mean ’suspension of belief’, Ayame’s wheelchair battle with Yomi completely knocked my socks off. As biankita so succinctly put it, ‘Ga-Rei-Zero went where Sunrise didn’t dare to go with Nunally’s wheelchair.’ Amen. On the other hand, does anyone else think Ayame’s grandma looks like Yubaba from Spirited Away?

Ep 10 was so redundant that i was tempted on more than 5 occasions to skip the whole shebang and fill in the blanks for myself (and perhaps spare myself most of the Kazuki grief), and Ep 11 had some animation messup to the point that some faces looked conspicuosly skewed. And in the end, we never knew what was up with Tooru, Yomi, Kazuhiro and female corpse in the 3-years-ago ‘Great Event’.

Other than all these gripes, what i appreciate about GRZ is that aside from all the action pwnage, it really is a dedicated series that tracks the character growth of both a protagonist and an antagonist (can’t really say the same for some others though). Not only that, it presents us with the perennial moral conundrum of duty vs. love in ways that are..not so irritating. If they don’t make a season 2 based on the manga it’s fine with me, i don’t really want to see an ecchi Nori in animated action any more than i want to see creepy boy Kazuhiro again, who by the way also happens to be a sex fetishist who likes using Sesshouseki as sex toys.

The operative phrase here being ‘i want answers’. Indeed, ep 20 has offered a hell lot of them, along with more plot twists and other, er, interesting finds. Perfect gift for Christmas, this loot.

The bottom line for this week’s ep was ‘big change, mass movement’. Minor characters are taking greater action, protagonists have arrived one step away from their destination. I LOL’d at the mass resignations Kakisu suddenly found himself indunated with. Top-down bureucracy never works.

Midori is getting more pitiful by the week. On the other hand, there isn’t any excuse left for Midori to earn anyone’s sympathy now: she has progressed from Nazi fanatic to someone fully aware of what she signed up for. What drives her now to constantly ‘engulf’ herself in Kakisu’s ‘madness’ (Kanba’s sentence there was brilliant) is probably her desire to lead a life outside her disabled state, even if it’s more/less than what she bargained for. Since even her family (=Haru) doesn’t understand how to carry out that desire, she’ll go to whoever implicitly claims with vindication that they can fulfill it. Btw, i never really understood when or how she got that leg. The Hiruko planting or from the beginning?

Kanba normally doesn’t elicit anything more than bewilderment or disgust from me, but this week was absolutely hilarious for some reason. I never took much notice of all the gayness surrounding the scenes between him and Azami before this, but this scene takes the cake. What interests me more, however, is the fact that his quadriplegic state is ‘just a crutch for a vulgar body’.  What’s the significance? What would’ve happened if he didn’t disguise himself like so? His practically worshiping Azami also passed right over my head until the Tessik village episodes; compare the maidens’ admiration/awe of Nakiami, a supposedly ‘purified’ Tamayobi in the service of Lady Sannova. (The parallel is even stronger when you remember that Kanba is a Tessican.)

Which leads me to another point: the concept of Ruikonism as a religion is rather central to Xam’d on almost all levels. They oughta make it a college course or something, like Tolkenian Linguistics. This is apparent even in the tiny details like meal prayers (Sumako and Yunbo, for example) and word structure (language that is centred around nature – Kisel’s funeral speech; in this respect Ruikonism has a slight resemblance to Wiccanism). Further up the scale we see even greater religious reverence in the Tessican society, and at its height Sannova and the Jibashiri. The Great Pilgrimage (whatever it is) seems to be a relatively well-known thing, considering even Kakisu is aware of it.

Although Kujireika’s gone Xam’d-berserk, i can better understand her position as Queen Bitch de-facto leader of the Tessik village. Given her relationship with Nakiami isn’t blood-related, this raises even more questions about Nakiami’s origins as a Tamayobi (allegedly born of a common nursemaid). If i understood it correctly, Tamayobi are something like spiritually gifted people born once every few decades or just rare in abundance, subsequently chosen to participate in a purifying ceremony conducted by Lady Sannova. Still sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me, so i hope they’ll clarify this soon. If Ruikonism is central to the Xam’d society, then racism is a foundation block of the Xam’d connection to real life. Just flick through a random ep in the series and you’ll definitely find at least one instance of Tessican discrimination. Like American coloureds of old, they’re relegated to the worst places of ships, subject to daily bullying or being mentally wiped from public existence, and slapped with stereotypes (eating while cross-legged). So while Kujireika’s measures to protect her people are rather ludicrous, they’re at least understandable, considering the tyranny the Northern/Southern governments practise – FTW bombing villages just to get ship fuel! At the same time, Xam’d spares nothing in showing us characters who are as humanly flawed as they are multi-dimensional. Nakiami and kid (forgot his name) both demonstrated that, i thought that was a great scene.

Keep inventing those great outfits, BONES. I don’t care if they’re Eureka 7 imitations, Raigyo got me hooked.

Meh. Xam’d’s greatest strength has become its greatest weakness: the ‘what the hell is going on’ syndrome (WTHIGO). You can’t go ‘i dunno what’s happening, but FTW I DON’T CARE WOOHOO’ forever. Still, i think there’s a good chance of salvation, given the sheer amount of thought that’s clearly been put into this series. Although i’ve had issues with the frustratingly static motion in the past few episodes, Ep 19 serves to eradicate some of the irritation by speeding up some things. (At least Ishu and Raigyo have gotten a move on. Love his new outfit.) Not to mention the Ahm excuse-making, that was plain hilarious.

Ep 19 wrapped up the rather draggy ‘What’s My Name’ game Akiyuki was playing, as well as Haru’s escape from hell army prison to bring him to the Quickening Chamber. I never watched Eureka 7, but the general consensus in the anime community seems to be that the producers are banking too much on Eureka 7 reserves in terms of both design and plot devices. Still, Akiyuki’s dragonfly wings were an excellent sight to watch, and more Haru pwnage (this time with a rickety Kayak) is always welcome. How’d she change her clothes so quickly, btw?

More importantly, 2 very unexpected plot twists have appeared. What is UP with Sumako? Her unexplained telepathic interaction with Mr One-eyed Tadpole was freaky enough, now they tell us she’s Kakisu-creep’s mother? I can only assume that she must play a bigger role in the approaching climax in the weeks to come. Speaking of Mr Tadpole, if you bothered to watch past end-credits (and this is a MUST), you probably already know that he’s the elusive Hiruken Emperor we’ve been hearing about all this while. Incidentally, this kinda reminds me of Samurai 7 (is the numerical coincidence or a remote connection, i wonder?) of Emperor Amanushi. Useless/unawakened body, surviving in fluid chambers (although it remains to be seen whether one of the Hiruken Emperor’s subordinates will pull the plug on him). Same old, same old. Not to mention CUNNING and PURE EVILNESS in that cryptic command for Akiyuki to find and kill him.  However, i still can’t quite shake off how ludicrous his Mr Tadpole travelling form really is. He eats everything. He plays ‘Remember your name or DIEEEE’. He’s a portable floating radio. Go figure.

Also, Midori’s rather late revelation that she just sold her soul to the devils Kakisu, Prois and co. doesn’t really elicit much sympathy from me. The Nazi youth innocence just goes blah IMO. Midori is not a very well-developed character besides her repressed frustration at being crippled and being a younger, misunderstood sibling, which baffles me since now she’s a bigger pawn in Kakisu’s sick war game. On the other hand, i don’t quite agree with omisyth that Kujireika is NOT a Queen Bitch OR a less maniacal version of Furuichi (good lord, i’d all but forgotten about him), but the way she’s being presented seems haphazard, to say the least. I know 2 eps of screentime isn’t enough, though. On another note, Midori-Haru vs. Kujireika-Nakiami parallels, anyone?

Dr Kanba has irritatingly wobbly moral boundaries. I have given up trying to empathize with him.