October 20, 2021
Violet Evergarden
Kyoto Animation's gorgeously animated Violet Evergarden, based on the light novels by Kana Akatsuki, begins with a premise I didn't expect, then takes off in a different direction from that, and finally ends up in a pleasantly familiar place, albeit with an unusual main character.
The story takes place in an alternate universe Leiden (Holland) shortly after the end of a Great War. As revealed in brief flashbacks, Violet Evergarden was a kind of Wonder Woman during the conflict, a teenage super-soldier paired with her handler, Major Gilbert Bougainvillea.
Although a strategic victory, their last mission leaves Violet without her arms and Major Bougainvillea missing in action and presumed dead. Discharged and fitted with artificial limbs, Violet is handed over to Gilbert's friend and commanding officer, the affable Claudia Hodgins.
The first episode resembles the early chapters of Anne of Green Gables, as Claudia tries to get one of Gilbert's relatives to take in this odd and socially maladroit girl. Like Marilla, Claudia concludes that he is in a better position to look after Violet's interests than anybody else.
Also retired from the military, Claudia runs the CH Postal Company, a secretarial service that makes the most of the word processor of the day, the typewriter. But its real forte is not simply transcribing but composing correspondence for clients who can't write or don't know what to say.
This particular line of business struck another note of familiarity.
In the NHK drama Tsubaki Stationery Store, when her grandmother dies, Hatoko (Mikako Tabe) inherits her stationery store. The store never sold much actual stationery. Rather, her grandmother wrote letters for people who couldn't find the right words to write what they really meant.
For Hatoko, estranged from her grandmother in the years before her death, picking up where she left off results in an emotional struggle that constitutes the core of the drama.
The demands of such a job present a seemingly insurmountably high hurdle for Violet, not because of her prosthetic hands, with which she can type faster than any of the other "Auto Memory Dolls" (as the typists are known). But because of her complete lack of emotional intelligence.
She is basically a female version of Data from Star Trek. She interprets language literally. Common circumlocutions confuse her. She reflexively salutes her superiors and answers "Ryoukai" to casual requests (the military equivalent of "Aye aye, sir").
It's no surprise that her first attempt to communicate a client's intentions—and not her literal words—ends badly. So why does she insist on pursuing an occupation she is manifestly unqualified for? Because of Gilbert's last words to her, the words of the most important person in her world.
"I love you." And she has no idea what that means. (Yeah, I know, cue Foreigner.)
At this point, director Taichi Ishidate extracts the story from the stalemate with some narrative slight of hand. He basically hits the fast forward button and levels her up to experienced Auto Memory Doll mode in two episodes.
Utterly implausible from a mental health point of view. But Ishidate is correct that letting Violet "find herself" through work, by getting her out of the house and going on adventures, is infinitely more interesting than her spending the next half-dozen episodes in psychoanalysis.
Violet gets another Wonder Woman moment when she takes an assignment in the country of her old enemy and runs into a gang of insurrectionists out to scuttle the peace talks. (It's hard not to note a few resemblances to the ending of Ghost in the Shell.) But she's not going back to that life.
Her character arc thus takes her from a soulless war machine to a soulful Kwai Chang Caine with killer secretarial skills. Sort of as if Sandy in the classic British sit-com As Time Goes By had previously worked for Judi Dench when Judi Dench was M in the James Bond films.
I reminded of Kate's observation that Dean Cain's Clark Kent in Lois & Clark is his default self (in Japanese, his honne). Superman is the costume (his tatemae). Similarly, Violet Evergarden is about a superhero shedding the costume and finding her real "normal" self.
As noted, the setting is an alternate universe version of early 20th century Europe. The orthography is not recognizably Roman. The typewriters resemble the vintage manual I grew up with (before my dad brought home a used electric IBM Model D).
Violet's artificial arms are more sophisticated than any modern prosthetic.
That along with the anachronistic fashions that pop up here and there lend Violet Evergarden a steam punk ambiance that brings to mind the worlds of Masaki Tachibana's Princess Principal, Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy, and Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. It's a world with a lot of room for growth.
The special and the first movie serve more as additional episodes that fit into the latter third of the series.
In the special, Violet is tasked to write a letter to a soldier lost on the battlefield. As it turns out, the soldier's fiancée, a famous singer, intends to use the contents of the letter as the lyrics in an opera about the war she is producing along with the soldier's father, who is the conductor of the orchestra.
The two movies are wide-screen theatrical releases, starting chronologically with Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll.
An aristocrat hires Violet to tutor his illegitimate daughter (the war having depleted the family's pool of marriageable heirs). During the war, the daughter took an orphaned girl under her wing. Several years later, that girl tracks down Violet and asks her to reunite her with her "big sister."
The second movie begins in the present day with the descendant of one of Violet's clients from the series. This framing device takes us back to the events following the first movie, while reviewing all of the major plot points to date. And then concludes with Violet's search for Gilbert.
Both theatrical films are rip-your-heart-out tearjerkers. The former is far more effective in this regard than the latter, as the latter tries to cover too much material in too little time. Gilbert's inner conflict alone is so complex that doing it justice would require considerably more screen time.
Taichi Ishidate should have used the framing device to structure the entire story or left it out. Doing both doesn't really work.
So despite running over two hours, the ending feels rushed. Violet Evergarden deserved another cour. Nevertheless, it delivers an emotional payoff that (almost) persuades me to overlook its other faults, and both movies conclude on life-affirming notes (be sure to sit through the credits).
The entire franchise is available on Netflix.
The story takes place in an alternate universe Leiden (Holland) shortly after the end of a Great War. As revealed in brief flashbacks, Violet Evergarden was a kind of Wonder Woman during the conflict, a teenage super-soldier paired with her handler, Major Gilbert Bougainvillea.
Although a strategic victory, their last mission leaves Violet without her arms and Major Bougainvillea missing in action and presumed dead. Discharged and fitted with artificial limbs, Violet is handed over to Gilbert's friend and commanding officer, the affable Claudia Hodgins.
The first episode resembles the early chapters of Anne of Green Gables, as Claudia tries to get one of Gilbert's relatives to take in this odd and socially maladroit girl. Like Marilla, Claudia concludes that he is in a better position to look after Violet's interests than anybody else.
Also retired from the military, Claudia runs the CH Postal Company, a secretarial service that makes the most of the word processor of the day, the typewriter. But its real forte is not simply transcribing but composing correspondence for clients who can't write or don't know what to say.
This particular line of business struck another note of familiarity.
In the NHK drama Tsubaki Stationery Store, when her grandmother dies, Hatoko (Mikako Tabe) inherits her stationery store. The store never sold much actual stationery. Rather, her grandmother wrote letters for people who couldn't find the right words to write what they really meant.
For Hatoko, estranged from her grandmother in the years before her death, picking up where she left off results in an emotional struggle that constitutes the core of the drama.
She is basically a female version of Data from Star Trek. She interprets language literally. Common circumlocutions confuse her. She reflexively salutes her superiors and answers "Ryoukai" to casual requests (the military equivalent of "Aye aye, sir").
It's no surprise that her first attempt to communicate a client's intentions—and not her literal words—ends badly. So why does she insist on pursuing an occupation she is manifestly unqualified for? Because of Gilbert's last words to her, the words of the most important person in her world.
"I love you." And she has no idea what that means. (Yeah, I know, cue Foreigner.)
At this point, director Taichi Ishidate extracts the story from the stalemate with some narrative slight of hand. He basically hits the fast forward button and levels her up to experienced Auto Memory Doll mode in two episodes.
Utterly implausible from a mental health point of view. But Ishidate is correct that letting Violet "find herself" through work, by getting her out of the house and going on adventures, is infinitely more interesting than her spending the next half-dozen episodes in psychoanalysis.
Violet gets another Wonder Woman moment when she takes an assignment in the country of her old enemy and runs into a gang of insurrectionists out to scuttle the peace talks. (It's hard not to note a few resemblances to the ending of Ghost in the Shell.) But she's not going back to that life.
Her character arc thus takes her from a soulless war machine to a soulful Kwai Chang Caine with killer secretarial skills. Sort of as if Sandy in the classic British sit-com As Time Goes By had previously worked for Judi Dench when Judi Dench was M in the James Bond films.I reminded of Kate's observation that Dean Cain's Clark Kent in Lois & Clark is his default self (in Japanese, his honne). Superman is the costume (his tatemae). Similarly, Violet Evergarden is about a superhero shedding the costume and finding her real "normal" self.
As noted, the setting is an alternate universe version of early 20th century Europe. The orthography is not recognizably Roman. The typewriters resemble the vintage manual I grew up with (before my dad brought home a used electric IBM Model D).
Violet's artificial arms are more sophisticated than any modern prosthetic.
That along with the anachronistic fashions that pop up here and there lend Violet Evergarden a steam punk ambiance that brings to mind the worlds of Masaki Tachibana's Princess Principal, Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy, and Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. It's a world with a lot of room for growth.
The special and the first movie serve more as additional episodes that fit into the latter third of the series.
In the special, Violet is tasked to write a letter to a soldier lost on the battlefield. As it turns out, the soldier's fiancée, a famous singer, intends to use the contents of the letter as the lyrics in an opera about the war she is producing along with the soldier's father, who is the conductor of the orchestra.
An aristocrat hires Violet to tutor his illegitimate daughter (the war having depleted the family's pool of marriageable heirs). During the war, the daughter took an orphaned girl under her wing. Several years later, that girl tracks down Violet and asks her to reunite her with her "big sister."
The second movie begins in the present day with the descendant of one of Violet's clients from the series. This framing device takes us back to the events following the first movie, while reviewing all of the major plot points to date. And then concludes with Violet's search for Gilbert.
Both theatrical films are rip-your-heart-out tearjerkers. The former is far more effective in this regard than the latter, as the latter tries to cover too much material in too little time. Gilbert's inner conflict alone is so complex that doing it justice would require considerably more screen time.
Taichi Ishidate should have used the framing device to structure the entire story or left it out. Doing both doesn't really work.
So despite running over two hours, the ending feels rushed. Violet Evergarden deserved another cour. Nevertheless, it delivers an emotional payoff that (almost) persuades me to overlook its other faults, and both movies conclude on life-affirming notes (be sure to sit through the credits).
The entire franchise is available on Netflix.
Violet Evergarden (the series)
Violet Evergarden Special
Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll
Violet Evergarden: The Movie
Labels: anime, anime reviews, ghost in the shell, kyoani, mikako tabe, television
July 15, 2015
MacGuffin man
 |
| The couple in question. |
That's not an insurmountable problem in story like this (with so much else going on). But as Kate asks, "What on earth will they talk about for the rest of their lives if they can no longer talk about their growing romance?"
Pushing aside everything you know about the characters from the anime, the live-action movie makes this hard to ignore. On the plus side, it hits all the major plot points from the first season of the anime. The two-hour time constraint means much less angst to wade through.
But the deeper side-story about Ryu and Chizuru is reduced to about five minutes. Racing from conflict to conflict, the relationship among Sawako, Ayane and Chizuru--the true substance of the series--becomes a fait accompli rather than a nurtured and growing thing.
In the process, Shota ends up a conventional teen lead, little more than a "MacGuffin." That's Hollywood slang for "a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation."
What separates formula romance from, say, Jane Austen, is giving the heroine a reason to want the hero aside from him being the closest available white knight. Aside from being a nice guy, nothing about Shota convinces us that he is desired for anything more than being desirable.
Even in the movie, we learn far more about Ryu than we ever do about Shota. (The movie actually adds more backstory about Sawako than is in the anime.)
As Sawako, Mikako Tabe, in turn, has to lean more heavily on affect than acting. Trying too hard to match the look of the anime forces her to compete with her hair in the early scenes. Her performance improves considerably when she can finally wear her hair up or back.
Even then, she has barely any material to work with, other than her character's odd personality. The movie unintentionally makes it obvious that here are two kids who really need to get themselves a life, something more substantive than pining for each other.
Sawako at least has her flower garden. I would have liked to see this used much more as an outer expression of her inner self. Make her a budding botanist.
Kimi ni Todoke is a good example of how animation can be the superior visual medium when so much of the subject matter is internal or subjective. Manga artist Karuho Shiina can draw what she wants us to see (hair, to start with), especially if she wants us to see a state of mind.
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| Sawako and Chizuru in super-deformed mode. |
Manga and anime have rich repertoires of abstract effects and visual metaphors, such as the "super-deformed" style.(1) These effects don't interrupt the narrative and announce themselves precisely because they are drawn. We've already disassociated story from "reality."
Pixar has further proven the point with Inside Out.
I think a movie adaptation like Kimi ni Todoke would work better by addressing a far smaller slice of the original. A straightforward summation of events, however accurate, simply can't generate the same emotional Sturm und Drang.
 |
| They look and can play the parts. |
The movie does get a few things exactly right: Haru Aoyama and Misako Renbutsu are perfectly cast as Ryu and Chizuru. There's the better movie to make: flip the point-of-view around and tell the story from their perspective. All the necessary material is already available.
Related posts
Kimi ni Todoke (anime manga)
Here is a useful guide to the dating scene in Japan.
Japan's “Love Confessing” Culture
What It's Like Dating A Japanese Girl
What It's Like Dating A Japanese Guy
1. Although "super-deformed" is generally considered analogous to "chibi," I think it's more semantically useful to define "super-deformed" literally and "chibi" as a sub-category.
Labels: anime, japanese movie reviews, mikako tabe, movies, movies about japan, romance, social studies, thinking about writing
September 03, 2012
Fish Story
Starting only a few hours before a giant comet collides with the Earth, and jumping backwards and forwards through time, Fish Story documents a half-century chain of unpredictable cause and effect as it traces this trail of breadcrumbs to its near-apocalyptic conclusion.
A story that could have easily succumbed to art house ponderousness instead allows the absurd premise to play the straight man to the darkly comical cascade of not-quite-coincidences that follow. The result is a plot that is surprisingly comprehensible and thoroughly enjoyable.
By the time we get to the irresistibly cute Mikako Tabe, who resists being taken too seriously even when being held hostage on a ferry boat by a murderous doomsday religious cult, we're more than ready for a seat-of-the-pants solution straight out of Red Dwarf.
Despite its convoluted narrative structure, Fish Story never tries to be anything less than obvious. In the process, it quite cleverly points out how misunderstandings take on lives of their own, and how willing we are to read great meaning into literally nothing.
This is an important message for writers and politicians alike: what you wrote or said means what everybody but you thinks it means, not what you meant.
For those put off by non-linear storytelling, rest assured that a montage at the end knits the key incidents together into a single timeline, like the answer to a tricky algebra question at the back of the book. In any case, Fish Story just made me grin, and that's enough.
Labels: apocalyptic fiction, japan, japanese movie reviews, mikako tabe, movie reviews, pop culture, thinking about writing
August 08, 2011
The Bow-wow Detective
The prize for the police procedural with the goofiest premise goes to Deka Wanko ("Bow-wow Detective"). Based on a manga by Gokusen creator Kozueko Morimoto, it's about Ichiko Hanamori, a rookie cop who possesses a dog's olfactory powers.
For unknown reasons, Ichiko runs around in impractically poofy outfits and manages several costume changes an episode. Well the reason is that Mikako Tabe looks really cute in them. She's the moe version of Abby Sciuto (NCIS).
Tabe makes the whole thing work because she's an excellent comic actress and plays the whole thing with a straight face.
The show is flagged as a goof from the start. The give-away is that Ichiko carries a gun. Cops rarely carry guns in Japan. The entire country can go years without a single police shooting (Utah is lucky to go a month without a police shooting).
A nice touch is that Ichiko can figure out things with her nose that would never stand up on court. So she has to work with her "ordinary" detective partners (who don't necessary believe in her superpowers) to provide the proof that will convict the bad guys.
Hollywood could make a go of the concept, albeit toned way down, something like Lie to Me, which I consider more a superhero show (and perhaps is even better when considered in that context).
Most manga premises of this sort tend to turn the volume up to eleven, which might work when you're maybe doing a dozen shows, max. But in a continuing series, they end up burning out the actors and quickly burning through all the plausible plots.
Here are three more quasi-superhero shows based on manga that would make good Hollywood properties (again, toned way down and paced for longevity):
My version of Hellsing would be Angel, except with an only grudgingly good Spike in the lead (and who might actually be the devil himself, but got bored with modern evil). And I'd lose the whole X-File-ish backstory.
The last one is basically Ghost Whisperer, except the heroine works in an S&M club (because ghosts don't hang out in S&M clubs) and she hates dead people. She also has a head of hair that strangles people who piss her off.
She gets talked into working for the local exorcism agency that cleans up crime scenes after the cops are done (and ends up playing detective). Like Someday's Dreamers it posits the existence of the supernatural in a very workaday fashion.
The manga can be quite good (I haven't read the English translation). A hacked-together anime version is quite awful. Incidentally, the anime version of Gokusen is quite good. A live action television series was hugely popular and I loathed it utterly.
 |
| "Something about this case stinks!" |
For unknown reasons, Ichiko runs around in impractically poofy outfits and manages several costume changes an episode. Well the reason is that Mikako Tabe looks really cute in them. She's the moe version of Abby Sciuto (NCIS).
Tabe makes the whole thing work because she's an excellent comic actress and plays the whole thing with a straight face.
The show is flagged as a goof from the start. The give-away is that Ichiko carries a gun. Cops rarely carry guns in Japan. The entire country can go years without a single police shooting (Utah is lucky to go a month without a police shooting).
A nice touch is that Ichiko can figure out things with her nose that would never stand up on court. So she has to work with her "ordinary" detective partners (who don't necessary believe in her superpowers) to provide the proof that will convict the bad guys.
Hollywood could make a go of the concept, albeit toned way down, something like Lie to Me, which I consider more a superhero show (and perhaps is even better when considered in that context).
Most manga premises of this sort tend to turn the volume up to eleven, which might work when you're maybe doing a dozen shows, max. But in a continuing series, they end up burning out the actors and quickly burning through all the plausible plots.
Here are three more quasi-superhero shows based on manga that would make good Hollywood properties (again, toned way down and paced for longevity):
• Hellsing
• Someday's Dreamers
• Ghost Talker's Daydream
My version of Hellsing would be Angel, except with an only grudgingly good Spike in the lead (and who might actually be the devil himself, but got bored with modern evil). And I'd lose the whole X-File-ish backstory.
The last one is basically Ghost Whisperer, except the heroine works in an S&M club (because ghosts don't hang out in S&M clubs) and she hates dead people. She also has a head of hair that strangles people who piss her off.
She gets talked into working for the local exorcism agency that cleans up crime scenes after the cops are done (and ends up playing detective). Like Someday's Dreamers it posits the existence of the supernatural in a very workaday fashion.
The manga can be quite good (I haven't read the English translation). A hacked-together anime version is quite awful. Incidentally, the anime version of Gokusen is quite good. A live action television series was hugely popular and I loathed it utterly.
Labels: anime, hellsing, japanese tv, japanese tv reviews, manga, mikako tabe, pop culture, television reviews
October 21, 2009
Gang rule
Japanese television has a whole genre devoted to the revenge drama. It might more accurately be described as the "all your problems can be solved by beating the crap out of somebody" genre. The show must feature a bunch of loser teenage rebels without a cause and/or an ex-yakuza or ex-gang member who's "gone straight" but isn't above using his (or her) fists and past criminal connections to see wrongs righted.Gokusen is a high school melodrama in the Dragon Zakura vein, casting a woman in the in loco parentis role. Kumiko Yamaguchi, the daughter of a yakuza crime family, becomes a teacher in the roughest, toughest school in town. What make the manga and anime great are her efforts to "go straight" while not abandoning her past, and her ability to outsmart her scheming students as well as outfight them.
The television series, though, quickly falls into a repetitious rut where a bunch of teenagers—as mind-numbingly stupid as they are violent—get themselves into serious trouble every week and their teacher bales them out in an identical—and eye-rollingly implausible—fight sequence every week.
But, hey, what do I know—the third and most painfully tedious season was the year's highest-rated drama series. But the manga and anime versions give Kumiko a far more interesting character arc as she struggles to reconcile her yakuza princess and school teacher roles.
Salaryman Kintaro moves Gokusen into Japan's business world. Anybody who crosses Kintaro or his company gets whupped. And there's somebody crossing them—resorting to extortion, assault, murder, arson, bombing—every darned week. Beyond the absurd plot turns and scenery-chewing acting, Salaryman Kintaro distills down to something between adolescent cliffhanger melodrama and violence porn.
Seriously, I don't get this attitude where showing an attractive naked woman is verboten (Japanese television has actually grown more conservative in this regard over the past quarter century), but beating somebody unconscious is prime time excitement.
The Rookies wants to be the baseball version of Dragon Zakura, except that with all the teenage gangbangers (identified as anybody with spikey dyed hair and tons of angst) on the team constantly going off on each other, the question is how they manage to field a team. The lesson, as Salaryman Kintaro proves, is that with a big enough animal id, you can recover from any life-threatening injury in a week.
Period dramas can't resist the formula. The Killers is about, well, a bunch of "good guy" killers, a star chamber like the gang led by David Soul in Clint Eastwood's Magnum Force. It's got a decent cast (Masahiro Matsuoka gets to ham it up some more, though not as much as in Yasuko and Kenji) and great costumes. But what it boils down to is a bunch of nasty people being better off dead every week.
This is not a recent development. From 1962 to 1989, Shintaro Katsu made twenty-six Zatoichi films (including Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo) and a two-year television series. A well-received 2003 revival cast Takeshi Kitano in the lead. Each Zatoichi installment involves the titular character running into a gang of ne're-do-wells who need themselves some killin' and who get their comeuppance by the time the credits start to roll.
The movies are made watchable by Katsu's acting and the twists and turns in the subplots. The same can't be said for the dozens of B-grade copycats spawned during the same period (some of which were made by Katsu himself), which compensated for a lack of creativity with sex, nudity, and buckets of fake blood.
"Getting even" seems a sure-fire formula in Japan. But watch too many of these shows—practically anything from the insanely prolific career of Takashi Miike (a major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino)—or simply the nightly news, and you can start believing that Japan is a crime-ridden no-man's-land straight out of The Road Warrior.
When it's still one of the calmest countries on the planet.
Labels: criticism, japan, japanese tv, mikako tabe, movies, pop culture, television, yakuza