Looks like I made it to the second round of the tourney thing, but I’m sadly short on topics for writing thanks to the fact that my laptop is the only working PC I have right now. It’s able to cope with DVD playback though so I can at least rewatch old favourites; I’ve had Le Portrait de Petite Cossette for instance on my shelf for a while but only came back to it last week…and I’m glad I did.
The first time I watched this I felt a bit overwhelmed by the visuals so didn’t really grasp what it was trying to say. I guess it was slightly wasted on me at the time but watching the three episodes again, across as many days, worked better for me so now I really feel I appreciate it more than I did then.
I was also shopping around for music recently and picked up the OST. Oddly enough, the fact that it’s Kajiura helped a bit in understanding the message behind the story because the similarities in the music, and the aesthetic of the OAV overall, reminded me of my beloved Rakkyo and the themes surrounding it, in a roundabout way. The excessive amount of thought I’ve poured into that series in recent months helped get my analysis of Cossette into order at last.
Both stories involve an unconventional romance subplot and are accompanied by gorgeous blood-spattered imagery that reflects this (the fact that it’s gory but still beautiful is I think an achievement in itself). In both cases the main relationship is tested by the two protagonists’ inner conflicts and supernatural external forces that also influence how it progresses. I found the issue of self-sacrifice particularly interesting because Eiri’s suffering for Cossette’s sake reminds me a lot of what Mikiya goes through for Shiki by the end of the seventh KnK film.
Granted, it was a similarity in BGM that forced me to make the connection and the parallels are limited, but in both series the romantic bonds between the lead characters are very different from the feelings of friendship and/or infatuation that everyday life and more conventional pieces of fiction work with. The unusual idea of demonstrating your love by suffering on another’s behalf is another area in which the themes of both titles overlap.
Cossette emphasises this more perhaps, but I felt both that and KnK examine how far people are prepared to go in the name of love, and additionally demonstrate how such experiences affect their relationships with others. I also noticed that Shinbo’s story and Nasu’s portray the overwhelming, blinding effects of romance by leading an innocent, ordinary soul out of his own world and into harm’s way.
The Mikiya/Shiki dynamic is a wonderful thing and I hope I’m able to discuss it at greater length soon (hint: someone, get the full novel published in English already. I BEG OF YOU). I found Mikiya’s steadfast faith in her innocence to be deeply moving, and the way in which he was ironically the last to realise how deeply he’d fallen for her was realistically portrayed too. That business of declaring how he was prepared to bear her sins in her place was I felt Nasu’s typically idiosyncratic way of highlighting, among other things, how true love involves accepting the other’s faults.
Eiri’s bearing of his love interest’s sins is a little different, however. She superimposes her former fiancé’s soul onto him and redirects the curses that resulted from the betrayal and her tragic death, in the hope that the pain inflicted on him will somehow atone for the wrongs committed against her. This later takes a surprising turn as Cossette begins to fall in love with Eiri too: she begins to regret using him in this way and, as he points out, he may have inherited Marcelo’s soul, fate or whatever it is, but he isn’t Marcelo.
I initially thought Cossette was a tale of obsession, and given how disorientating the visuals often are it’s all too easy to be distracted (as much as I love Shinbo’s approach in this OAV, I will concede that this can be a problem for some). Now I believe that it’s more of a tale which asks us what true love means: Marcelo was supposed to be in love with Cossette but he selfishly killed her in order to prevent her growing old and becoming someone different from his image of her.
Eiri on the other hand is entranced by the story of Cossette as played out in the Venetian glass and later captivated by the enigmatic image of Marcelo’s portraits; I suppose you can debate the validity of an attraction based on what Eiri’s love for Cossette is based on, but the fact remains that Marcelo murdered her over an ideal while Eiri wants to seek out the ‘true’ Cossette and save her.
That twist in the final episode flew over my head the first time but now I’ve had a second chance, it makes the narrative more satisfying. The contrasting art styles of Marcelo and Eiri are a metaphor for their attraction to the heroine of the title because Marcelo wanted an eternal unchanging image while Eiri is inspired by a living, moving character trapped in an unlikely place. The most dramatic piece of symbolism for me is when Eiri paints a portrait of her - in his own blood for crying out loud! – which lifts the curse. I don’t know about you, but I thought that was pretty hardcore.
I’m still a little undecided over the effectiveness of the ending though, assuming the interpretation of Cossette’s spirit living on in Shoko is correct. The running time prevents much development of the supporting characters sadly, but from what little I saw of Shoko I liked her: she was the girl-next-door and crucially was, well, real. For that reason I was kinda rooting for a Eiri/Shoko End but after learning the full tragedy of Cossette’s backstory…who wouldn’t feel sorry for the girl trapped in the afterlife for being murdered by the one she loved?
Cossette is convoluted, unsettling, disorientating and obtuse…the fact that it’s intentionally so makes the sentiment of people who don’t like it all the more understandable. Perhaps because I’ve come back to it after watching several of Shinbo’s other shows I was able to go along with its more eccentric moments with less conscious effort. The music heightened my enjoyment a lot too, and I’m still amazed at how Marina Inoue produces such a deep, complex singing voice that’s so different from her vivacious dialogue delivery. Gem is a lovely song by the way.
As in quite a lot of stories like this, the overall aim of the OAV was to create something that looked beautiful and captivating as opposed to encouraging the viewer to dwell on the details, so in that sense it succeeds…but then, I always felt that way about it. Only when I caught one particular train of thought by chance thanks to the weird way my brain makes connections with certain things did I think beyond that. I suppose that’s the thing I really want to get across here…Eiri had to see past the superficial image to understand the depth of his fascination with Cossette, and I ended up doing the same.
I think wabisabi once mentioned that whoever wrote score for Cossette (dun think she knew who Kajiura was…) must have journeyed into hell, and that’s just how haunting her music is.
Cossette is full of imagery like you say, and this is very important because Cossette tells its story through imagery. Like when cossette’s painting smiles, or when Eiri sees a man’s shadow behind Cossette (right there his fears are confirmed; Cossette before him was actually ‘Marcelo’s painting’, or Marcelo’s soul as you put it).
I actually like your first interpretation about a tale of obsession, because that element is definitely in Cossette. Perhaps it’s just the case of obsession vs love, or the nature of love, what is the nature of your love (perfection and ideals? or accepting and loving person as they are) and how far are you willing to go for it (suffering, sacrifice).
Speaking of horror imagery, Soul Eater actually has an EXCELLENT collection…but for some reason they’re no way as near as affecting as the ones in Cossette. Not because they don’t look as good, I don’t know. Maybe it’s lacking Kajiura, or the lighting (cause Soul Eater has no lighting it’s all flat…), or character design, or the overwhelming shounen element hmmm.
Well, Soul Eater and Cossette are both definitely gothy, but in a different way. Soul Eater is more of a total mosh of styles, from goth styles to punk styles and street, hip-hop, and rock style, and it blends it all into a world that is like one giant Rorschach test for it’s characters. It’s trippy, and it’s gothy, but it’s all in a pot mixed with a huge helping of fun and energy.
Meanwhile, Cossette is more gothy in the classic sort of boroque sense, where everything is bloody, horrifying, and distinctly dead-feeling, yet beautiful, like the portrait of evil itself.
I cannot rightfully leave this post alone when it talks about my favorite anime, Rakkyo, and one of my favorite OVAs, Petit Cossette.
Pretty interesting to compare the amount of love felt by the two protagonists and what it led them to do for their respective girls. The biggest difference between the two is probably that Mikiya doesn’t sort of jump off the deep end like Eiri does, but rather has an incredible ability to rationalize and deal with whatever comes up, since he knows that he will have to give up normalcy to be with Shiki. Eiri has sort of the same realization as he spirals into madness and joins Cosette in that giant tower, though I’d say he has more of a classic gothic hero attitude about it all.
And yes, Kajiura, although the OSTs actually aren’t very alike – they are both a bit chilling, but KnK is more atmospheric and trippy while Coessette is more big dark gothy orchestra.
Sadly, beyond some of the imagery and the main characters, I don’t think there’s much else to compare the two series by, especially when you follow their intent. KnK was more about creating the light-novel style universe and using a heady, strange storytelling method to psyche-fuck you while unraveling a part-murder-mystery, part-lovecraftian-horror nightmare. Cossette’s purpose is actually stated in the screencap you took, which was the thought that pervaded my mind the whole time I watched the OVA and then very confirmed in the commentary by the staff on the DVD as they stated ‘we wanted to make something with the theme of gothic lolita.’ I think the plot was very deliberately ripped from gothic era tales, put with a modern spin, and then Shinboed the fuck out.
It’s interesting, though, to see that these series really do have things in common, but you also know that they don’t necessarily draw the same audience. Some people may like Cossette because they particularly go for off-the-wall arthouse shows or specifically love gothic tales. Someone could like KnK for the intense characterization, or the Nasu worldbuilding, or out of a love for dark light novel tales that may not necessarily coincide at all with shinbo’s style. There are very few people who I think are in the niche that would enjoy both of these shows, and to the extent that the two of us seem to, and I think that the connections between those series could only become evident to someone in that niche… which, perhaps, makes it all the more awesome and poignant. And exactly why, like I said, I couldn’t leave this post alone, because I feel like this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to know that someone else is watching KnK and Cossette the way that I am.
Still need to watch this myself. I think a point of comparison can be made too just in the tropes found in Japanese horror. Murderous love-obsession is far more common a motivator in the horror genre in Japan.
The other really notable thing to compare via way of Kara no Kyoukai is the colour palette. There is a photorealistic attempt at colour here that involves a lot of nuanced sepia tones. Consider Touko’s office in Kara no Kyoukai, and compare to your second screencap. There’s a sort of similar usage of light and colour, I feel – materials are stark, sheer, and highly reflective or at the very least, bounce a lot of light – the colours “glow”, for lack of a better term.
That’s another interesting comparison! Indeed there is an odd sense of semi-photo-realism in both series. It’s something you can really put together by looking at the city in KnK and then at the scene in Cossette when eiri is running through town. Nice catch.