Back when I started blogging it was all about Haruhi Suzumiya…and that was the first season before everyone got upset about Endless Eight. For Madoka though the opinions I’ve seen so far have been overwhelmingly positive; while in the NoitaminA slot Fractale has met a lukewarm reception and Hourou Musuko has been excellent in a more understated way, Shinbo’s latest offering has set the fandom on fire…consistently and repeatedly.

To answer some of the comments on my first article I wanted – but possibly failed in the attempt – to clarify the difference between expressing pleasant surprise at the fact that I was enjoying a show belonging to a genre I didn’t have much prior experiencing in, and dismissing the said genre out of hand. Simply put, my lack of knowledge of magical girl shows prevents me from saying whether it’s normally capable of credibility and dramatic weight. I’ve read of Princess Tutu mentioned before as a particularly good series and given my appreciation of dark, slow-burning and well-written stories in general, I appreciate the recommendation and will look into it when I can.

My doubts really lie with the concept of magic in fiction in general. Has my science-based education given me an appreciation of SF stories at the cost of my enjoying fantasy/magical ones? It’s an interesting thought. The reason why I’m such a big SF fan is because the underlying ideas have grounding in something recognisable to me; it’s either a current concept or technology applied in a new way, or an extension of them. I feel ‘connected’ and ‘safe’ with science fiction because it has direct link – if even a tenuous one – with science fact. People die when they’re killed; matter cannot be created out of thin air. Writers can be creative and unpredictable up to a point, but they’re bound by certain laws and constraints.

I don’t get the same sense of security with magical stories, simply because the concept of ‘magic’ itself implies anything can happen so I worry that a dramatic cliff hanger or similar tight spot can be solved easily with a wave of a wand, rendering the tension or need for explanation meaningless. Fortunately I’ve experienced some applications of magical fantasy such as the Nasuverse, which mentions ‘equivalent exchange’ and even J K Rowling declaring that in Harry Potter stories “when you’re dead, you’re dead,” that don’t do this.

The best example I’ve so far seen is the magic portrayed in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, in which magic has its own laws, levels of influence and knowledge, and genuine elements of cause and effect. To me, it’s so thoroughly structured and has so many parallels to Real Life that Le Guin’s idea of magic is a science unto itself.

MINOR SPOILERS FOR MADOKA EPISODE 9 AND 10

How is this rambling relevant to Madoka? The most important recent development in the story is that magic is not a limitless power – it’s like mana that is measured in finite and dramatically significant quantities, or it’s structured in that there is a definite cause and effect (although it throws up the same paradox problems as any story involving time travel. I’ll let that slide for now). The idea that teenage angst reverses the very power of entropy and greases the axles of the mechanics of the universe was so unexpected! In a way, this adds a SF element to the show but it sets the premise into a tangible and structured form: actions have consequences and there’s a (very cruel!) semblance of order in the universe.

I'm assuming this is a visual gag relating to how it's not worth the cost. Or something

Whether it’s based on hard science or a completely fabricated system in the writer’s head, turns out to be irrelevant when you’re so immersed in the emotional impact. Half the appeal of Madoka is in the marriage of Shinbo’s visually arresting direction and Kajiura’s haunting soundtrack but, as one of my commenters pointed out another important factor is the writing, which can be attributed to Gen Urobuchi.

This is a name I wasn’t familiar with but those plot twists that hit us every week can I think be attributed to Urobuchi’s screenplay. I’m taking a personal interest in how he’s going about it because it’s his novel that’s forming the basis for the Fate/Zero anime adaptation this year but his input for Madoka is superb. Even when you can see a plot point coming a mile off, the relevance and drama still hit you like an express train.

This is a combination of creative talents that works wonderfully, and I wish had happened sooner (if Urobuchi had worked on Cossette, would the notoriously nebulous plot have felt more solid?). In Bateszi’s recent appraisal of the show, and Celeste’s comments that follow, some good points were raised about how Shinbo directs productions that superficially appeal to the latest otaku trends but have undercurrents that go further. Madoka is aiming higher than character archetype fan service or simple tearjerking, even if he steps close to the line at times.

I believe Kyubey is a poor choice for ‘sealer of contracts’ since he lacks the humanity that would allow him to emotionally connect with would-be mahou shoujo and more effectively persuade them to put their lives on the line. Whoever’s using human kids as fuel for a galactic power station clearly hasn’t researched human nature thoroughly enough if a demonic cat is the best sales rep they could come up with.

So yeah. I dig the SF aspects of Madoka but I’ve already been slowly trying to bring myself round to enjoying fantasy too. The direction shouldn’t be written off as just another example of a contemporary anime director’s fan pandering; the writing is excellent and I’m looking forward to more of the same. Most importantly perhaps we have the likes of Homura and Kyouko whose backstories are so powerful and compelling I find myself wide-eyed on the edge of my seat even when the futility of their situations are painfully clear.

The validity of employing scientific theory vs. fantastical magic is irrelevant: the fact that its universe is literally powered by pure, raw emotion is the clearest indicator to me as to where the series’ intentions lie.

“I am the bone of my sword…” and so on. Make of that parallel what you will

I have it on good authority that the magical girl genre isn’t always aimed solely at a young female audience and, if you look at how long ago the Cutie Honey franchise ran before Hideaki Anno did his live-action remake, it never was. In terms of premise and outward appearances Madoka is the sort of thing you’d expect to see kids tuning into on Saturday mornings but what makes it one of the first big pleasant surprises of 2011 is how much else is hidden up its frilly sleeve.

My mention of Hideaki Anno is quite deliberate in that he and Akiyuki Shinbo strike me as being remarkably similar…spiritual brothers almost. If Anno is the antisocial old-school otaku with a room full of mecha figures and 80s VHS tapes Shinbo is the tech-savvy kid brother with an extensive geometry set on his desk and a shelf full of textbooks that teach you how to use the colour filters in Photoshop.

To really put it into perspective, the magical girl genre is one aspect of the anime fandom I purposefully avoided completely from day one as a fan. There are certain things I have virtually no interest in: primetime soaps, most sports, owning a video games console, nightclubs…and magical girl anime is on that list.

Then there are the character designs: they have the innocent, harmless appearance of those in Hidamari Sketch, a show I enjoyed but for wildly different reasons, so I had no reason to believe it was going to ‘do’ serious at all. Simply put, I’ve never got any impression that the genre held any entertainment value for me; if Madoka Magica is just a magical girl anime with Hidasketch character designs, how then did it draw in a curmudgeonly snob like me?

Using the premise of great responsibility resting on characters who are really too young to fully grasp the ramifications of their actions is hardly new; because it retains so many of the tropes and clichés of the genre I’ve read claims that Madoka Magica is being cleverly subversive. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. For sure, the issue of granting wishes is taken very seriously indeed, and it’s weird that the title character hasn’t become a mahou shoujo when we’re at the halfway mark of the episode run.

The fights against witches, the Grief Seeds, all the weird and ‘magical’ bits strike me as a whole family of MacGuffins because the meat of the story – the stuff that keeps the attention of this cynical twenty-something male who usually couldn’t care less about kids with magical powers – lies outside of that. It’s a familiar type of entertainment (magical girl anime) that’s presented in a refreshing way (with Shinbo-isms and Kajiura’s music) and that is I think partly what makes it stand out.

I was intrigued by the idea that Kalafina were selected for the performance of the end theme and the BGM is quite simply superb. I wasn’t drawn to the show on that alone, but I was certainly tempted by the prospect of one of my favourite directors and one of my favourite OST writers collaborating again. The last time I experienced the combination of Shinbo’s direction and Kajiura’s music was the very experimental and decidedly un-commercial Petite Cossette, so what common ground could Hidasketch and Cossette, two such different productions, have?

I’m personally getting a real kick out of the sweet-and-sour blend of sprightly cuteness in the character designs and Kajiura’s haunting score combined with Shinbo’s nightmarish imagery. Some unlikely pairings pull a production in two directions at once with the end result of a directionless mess that doesn’t know what it wants to be; in Madoka’s case it’s a storytelling wolf in sheep’s clothing that turns around and gives you a vicious bite to the rear when you least expect it.

I believe it was the third episode when most of us following the show gave a simultaneous exclamation of “wow…shit just got real.” The dark undercurrents such as the so-happy-it-can’t-last setup of Madoka’s family, the quality writing in her mother’s sage advice and the fact that everyone finds Kyubey creepy aren’t what I expected at all. The whole idea of the magical girl genre – kids barely in their teens making Faustian pacts and fighting to the death – sounds hackneyed on paper but in this case it works. Not only that, it pulls it off with dramatic weight and palpable tension.

Shinbo has somehow made a magical girl cartoon that’s dark, gritty and unpredictable; I won’t go as far as a hyperbolic claim that Shinbo is doing for magical girl anime what Christopher Nolan has done for Batman, but I will admit that Madoka feels solid and its moments of emotion give it a degree of credibility I never expected it to have.

After a couple of big anime disappointments lately it was great to have my scepticism cast rudely aside and stop worrying over what I’m supposed to make of a show. It’s too early to say whether I’ll cite Madoka as a real favourite in the long run but right now I’m thinking of it as one of those titles that reminds me why I’m a fan and why I write for this blog to convey my enthusiasm: it’s inventive, deceptively meaningful and, well, just plain good at what it sets out to do.

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.

Arakawa Under The Bridge is very much in Shinbo’s comfort zone: it reminds me a lot of Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei with its pun-riddled wordplay, sketch-based storyline, zany characters and of course that artistic obsession with colours, composition and geometry. The source material of the two shows doesn’t share the same writer so I wonder whether the production team are being selective with the projects they take on. The similarities go even further, and mostly in a good way too.

The staff list unsurprisingly features Studio SHAFT’s usual suspects, right down to Hiroshi Kamiya and his Ararararagi-esque yelps of incredulity (which, by the way, he performs with great regularity) from the hapless Kou. How other viewers have taken this decision I don’t know, but I reckon it was quite a coup in landing Maaya Sakamoto in the other lead role as his would-be love interest Nino.

Thanks to Chaostangent’s recent reminder I’ve realised how I’ve been a subconscious fan of hers for ages; it wasn’t until her turn in Kara no Kyoukai however that I noticed that other dimension to her voice-acting skills. Before then I had her down as the sprightly girl-next-door figure what with her clear and bright singing voice but she also pulls of this fantastic husky deadpan delivery that’s so damned sexy it’s positively lethal with the right calibre of script in front of her. I melted.

Ouch. But yeah, this. <3

To my delight, more the same thing is going on here. Bakemonogatari had some delicious verbal sparring thanks to Chiwa Saito’s turn as Senjougahara but Nino’s peculiarities also give many moments where I’m grinning inwardly every time our hero is verbally knocked off balance. I’m finding this aspect of the show most enjoyable actually since Kou’s culture-shock is fascinating and Nino’s background is a mystery; it wouldn’t surprise me if the writers do the dirty by completely holding back on explaining her but this whole affair is so far too unpredictable for me to say for sure.

Unpredictability is one thing this show has in spades but that doesn’t always work in its favour. There’s a certain brand of Japanese comedy that must lose its impact in translation or something because it often leaves me bemused and bored rather than creased up or in admiration of its cleverness. SZS usually avoided this pitfall somehow, perhaps because the weird bits felt in context, but here it feels like oddness for oddness’ own sake. Perhaps there’s particular meaning in dressing one character up as a kappa and giving another bloke a star-shaped head but I can’t help feeling it’s the art department just messing around.

That gratuitous quirkiness and the gags that fall flat hold the show back at times, even more so than the frangmented sketch-based plotline (again, something that didn’t hinder SZS). Sometimes, they do work – Sister (who reminds me of the nuns of the Rip-Off Church from Black Lagoon) and Maria, the world’s most insulting farm girl, crack me up with every minute of screen time they occupy. I suspect all this could be an attempt at storytelling sleight of hand because, like SZS before it, Arakawa Under The Bridge carries a lot of dry satire and social commentary too.

This remedies some of the apathy I feel towards the supporting cast because they’re placing a strong emphasis on the differences between their community and the outside world, behind a façade of strangeness in an apparent act of self-deception. Certainly, being amongst this bunch of oddballs is bound to make you question your stance on a lot of things: they place little value on status or material wealth so are in stark contrast to the ‘normal’ conformist, consumer-driven Japanese society.

Much of the entertainment value I get out of this show is moving someone from the mainstream corporate world – is it a coincidence this series is being broadcast during a financial recession? – and seeing everything he stands by being mercilessly discarded. Interestingly, the flashbacks in which he recalls his own life, such as his childhood and dating ideas, are shown as being equally ridiculous as aspects of his life by the river. The clear message I’m getting is that, if the river folk are peculiar then normal society is just as absurd.

I’m also appreciating how the lead characters are somewhat older than the norm for romantic comedy anime shows: this means that many of Kou’s dilemmas are easy for me to relate to. His determination to be independent and never owe anyone got me thinking – in my time of life (in my 20s, out of education and on the lower rungs of the career ladder as Kou is) I’m also averse to relying on other people; it’s like some macho show of being grown-up, despite the fact that life would be a bit easier if I allowed myself to, say, borrow money now and then or accept people’s help when I’m in a jam.

Kou’s surprise at Nino washing his hair with – shock, horror! – no intention of asking for anything in return said a lot about his values but also a lot about the society that drummed them into him. Sometimes, people want to do things for their own personal reasons that have nothing to do with material exchange or personal gain. I doubt Nino is a real Venusian in the literal sense but perhaps it’s her roundabout way of highlighting how difficult men and women find it to communicate; many of us feel that members of the opposite sex might as well be from another planet at times…

Arakawa Under The Bridge is proving to be thought-provoking but more importantly one hell of a refreshing change, both in terms of having Shinbo-isms aplenty and in kicking sharp, dry satire out between the cartoonish eccentricities. If nothing else, I can quite happily sit back and listen to Maaya all damn day.

Where’s a Reaction Guys-style celebration when you need one?

The problems with the middle episodes were minor ones: mostly the general absence of Hitagi, plus the ‘higher class of fanservice’ (as I clumsily called it) starting to feel a bit exploitative. Fortunately episode #12 made up for whatever I’d felt unsure about earlier on with the only remaining concern being that of the final three episodes. As in, how could anything follow on from this without feeling like a let-down? It was as fitting as it was surprising – I wouldn’t have minded too much if the series ended there and then.

The Mayoi Snail arc had an excellent twist to it; both Suruga Monkey and Nadeko Snake were enjoyable too but the fact remains that I consider Hitagi and Koyomi to be the main characters. The supporting ones shouldn’t take a prominent role: each offers valuable bits of information or moments of character development but I felt they took centre stage for too long. Looking back, I can see that they were actually worth sitting through to get this far.

An important moment for me in this Hitagi-free period was a conversation Koyomi had with Tsubasa in the bookshop during the Nadeko Snake arc; namely her warning about how he wasn’t giving Hitagi the attention she deserved. This part of the series showed the flaws in Koyomi’s character quite well, although there is that exploitation aspect: I’m not comfortable with the way that Nadeko was portrayed. It made me feel distinctly uncomfortable, but maybe that’s just me. Mayoi was less so, mainly because she teased Koyomi nearly as much as Hitagi did.

Then came the masterful twelfth episode. Sometimes the best moments are those that portray the chemistry between the characters; not the most obvious thing to get all enthused over when you consider how Shinbo’s (in)famous for his imagery but remember that in Hidamari Sketch so much of the magic comes from scenes of dialogue where very little happens events-wise. This instalment of Bakemonogatari works in the same way. If it wasn’t for the final outing of Eve no Jikan I’d call it the most all-round enjoyable anime episode of recent months. It was just two people interacting…but I loved it.

One inescapable fact about their dynamic is that it’s wholly unconventional. Granted, I love romance stories that are unconventional or just plain messed-up but the way that theirs has progressed is an especially refreshing change. Right from the moment where Hitagi takes the initiative and plans everything, we see her work around her insecurities to open her heart for the first time. There’s more going on here than the dere-dere breakdown and thoughtful pauses, and I don’t mean just the quirky visuals either.

What I found interesting was the place Hitagi chose for the time they spent together: a private and precious memory from a time before her mother’s illness and her father’s work-induced absence. I found it so poignant that she identified an impressive number of stars and constellations then modestly declared that this number was all she could do – highlighting, ironically, that she’s an intelligent and perceptive individual who does in fact know a lot and has a lot to give. The fact that she helped Koyomi with his studying meant something to her too, as much as her tsunderisms tried to play it down.

It was a bit frustrating to see Koyomi stumbling through, not delivering even his usual retorts to her put-downs or giving an answer to the “what do you like about me?” question that was as open and honest as hers. Still, his short conversation with her father was great. I suppose it’s natural to assume he didn’t do anything outwardly significant but this scene proves that it isn’t the case at all: he did just about enough, and that alone is worth congratulating him for.

Yes, those are twintails. Just saying

I guess Koyomi was just there for her, and the reasons why she first caught his eye way back then won’t alter the special and precious nature of the present moment. She’s just grateful that it happened at all; equally Koyomi is glad he put up with her eccentricities, again past caring how he did it. He’s just happy that it happened the way it did.

The way they went from that trippy first encounter to their hand-in-hand evening under the night sky is a well-paced piece of storytelling in that it didn’t follow the hackneyed old tropes like blushed confessions and montages of days and evenings out that the animated romance genre is so often tied to; the cementing of the mutual attraction crept up gradually, taking both they and the viewer by surprise. It felt so natural and lifelike I couldn’t not feel happy for them and hopeful that things will somehow work out.

We were shown an intimate and private moment between two human beings, yet it didn’t feel voyeuristic or intrusive. I thought it was a wise move to leave the consummation out of the equation too, because Hitagi’s problems left emotional damage that will take time to heal. Any attempt to ignore this in order to move the story along would never have sat right with me, so I was absolutely overjoyed that it ended how it did. As for the three episodes that follow? It’s weird; I don’t expect to be disappointed, but if the series were left as it is here I’d say it was as perfect an ending as you could wish for.

I would hardly dare to argue

Granted, she doesn’t appear much in the middle portion of the series, but trying to make sense of the Senjougahara Fascination phenomenon became a bit more important when I found myself a part of it. What the hell is this? Am I developing a 2D complex? Well, yes. And no. Idle thoughts coming up.

I don’t think less of someone for being a hardcore gamer, a yaoi fan, a furry, a figure collector or lolicon (apart from the last one. Those guys really are weird). I just don’t really get any of it. I don’t understand them because I don’t share their interest; conversely, I doubt everyone can relate to going weak at the knees over the Shinkai and Kon movies, vintage guitar gear or anything Type Moon or Macross-related. I raise a defiant Brofist to those who share my weaknesses for them though.

I certainly thought I was immune to the 2D complex: after all, I’d sooner seek real-life interaction with a female human being than a fictional representation of one, right? We all exhibit an attachment to certain shows and characters to some degree or other though. Rest assured I won’t condemn you for sitting alone in your basement fapping to the product of some overseas comic artist’s pencil and I don’t want those who do to take offence, but I don’t share your penchant for it.

I don’t experience the same empathy and affection for anime characters as I do for real people but I can’t escape the fact that I can still be on the edge of my seat or the verge of Manly Tears when a really emotional moment happens. Some characters stick in my memory: Nausicäa (from the Miyazaki manga), Shiki Ryougi and Saber (from Kara no Kyoukai and Fate/Stay Night respectively) share a special place in my mind, as do Noriko in Battle Royale, Lee Geum-ja in Lady Vengeance or Vivian Sternwood in The Big Sleep. Hitagi Senjougahara is another memorable female lead for me.

Hitagi’s appeal ought to be obvious: her personality is both a knowing take on the tsundere archetype and a source of entertaining one-liners. Placing her character alonside others that are represented by real, flesh-and-blood people rather than animated pictures in their respective stories might be an unfair comparison, but attachment to anime characters and those from live-action movies and books isn’t so different, to me at least.

You do have to think about what makes them appealing though: in my case I happen to consider Aki Maeda to be cute and Lauren Bacall was quite a knockout back in 1946. Personally however it’s not the fact that the image of an anime character is physically attractive: the resulting image of a real person in my imagination is memorable and appealing. This is easier for me to explain in, for example, Vivian Sternwood’s portrayal in Chandler’s novel, or other written, rather than drawn or filmed, characters.

Just as alluring in print? I can’t wait to find out

The circumstances are different but I found myself fascinated by Senjougahara in the same way that I was by Haruki Murakami’s character Sumire in his Sputnik Sweetheart novel. It’s not his best work in my view for reasons I don’t have time to set out here but one thing that stuck in my head was Sumire’s character. Being a novel with no televised or cinematic adaptation I don’t even have a screencap to explain why she’s awesome. A mere description of her is however enough to bring her character to life:

“I can’t cook or clean the house. My room’s a mess and I’m always losing things. I love music, but can’t sing a note. I’m clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and can’t tell right from left half the time…I’m bashful for no reason, and have hardly any friends to speak of.”

Sputnik Sweeheart, © Haruki Murakami, 1999, 2001

What the reader or viewer experiences when they encounter a memorable character is build up a profile, visual or otherwise, and find themselves thinking, how cool would it be if this person really existed? This is Sumire describing herself early on in the novel, and aside from the narrator’s own description of her that’s probably the best indicator of her character. The thing was that after reading this, a vivid and affecting image of a complex and fascinating individual popped into my head and I had a new favourite literary heroine.

Elsewhere Sumire is painted in an unflattering light as far as looks are concerned: even the narrator, who is deeply in love with her, admits she’s skinny, clumsy and not attractive in the conventional sense. She’s just a really unpredictable person, a departure from the usual type of fictional heroine or romantic lead, who shows her unique attractiveness in an unusual way, just like Hitagi does.

So then, if it’s possible to get sentimentally attached to a character who amounts to little more than words on a page, am I really playing devil’s advocate in defending otakus who go misty-eyed over 2D girls? A 2D complex in which the hapless fan dismisses the appeal of real humans in favour of pictures, animated or otherwise, isn’t something I’d call healthy but it’s an extension of the very commonplace experience of empathising with fictional characters. The degree to which this affects their interaction with real people should be the real cause for concern.

Writers do after all intend to create fictional characters that stick in readers’ and viewers’ minds, and more often than not we can identify with them to some degree and muse over how fun and rewarding it would be if we met someone like them. If I were in my local coffee bar or bookshop I’d certainly find it tempting to say hi to the young lady in an ill-fitting coat eyeing up the Kafka paperbacks, even if I was risking getting a stapler shoved in my face. I’m sure it’s a familiar feeling, so if you have some personal not-at-all-real heroines or heroes of your own, ‘fess up in the reply form below.

The whole catching of a floating girl reminded me of the beginning of Miyazaki’s Laputa for some reason. Oh yeah, the staircase looked like DNA or something

I was a little sceptical about the Nisio Isin connection since he was the author of that Death Note spin-off I had mixed feelings about. This is I think completely his own work however, and fortunately has plenty of potential too. After I’d sat through both halves of the first arc my confusion gave way to a sense of respect for how the visuals and themes worked together. I now have a really good feeling about this one.

David was right about the fact that Bakemonogatari is all about words. This emphasis surprised me since I’ve always considered Shinbo’s forte to be imagery: be it abstract geometrical shapes, colours or scene compositions, the stand-out features of his direction have mostly been visual rather than narrative ones. That said, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei used a lot of puns and on-screen text to convey its comedy, and the underlying concepts behind this show work in the same way.

I’m still at beginner’s level in terms of kana and as for kanji…forget it. No surprise then that I was very reliant on the translation captions, which is better in a show like this than the gag-driven SZS; after all, a joke loses its impact when you need the punchline explained to you. Here it’s not such a problem: when you’ve worked out the connections you appreciate it more rather than less. The first arc dealt with what English speakers refer to as the weight of a burden on one’s shoulders, and after putting the pieces of the verbal jigsaw together I realised how clever it was.

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It reminds me a bit of Natsume Yuujinchou in that it uses a connection with the supernatural to present, then solve, a personal problem. Spirits of folklore, and the effects they have on mortals, are tied to the meaning of words and inevitably offer plenty of insight into the characters’ personalities and motives. After Hitagi is introduced to us as a borderline-psychopath with a peculiar affliction we learn one hell of a lot about her backstory in a short space of time.

Another reason why I warmed to her character was the dialogue. Honestly, I’ve not seen such entertaining character dynamics this side of Spice and Wolf in ages…apart from Haruhi Suzumiya perhaps (just for the record, the dry humour in the dialogue of that show is one thing I loved about it). Koyomi’s and Hitagi’s verbal sparring really brought the affair to life, preventing it from descending into a dizzying montage of meaningless colours and shapes.

The nature of their relationship is one of those not-quite romances which could go either way at any time but its open-endedness maintains an air of unpredicatability that I really appreciate. This is suited to a pair of characters who are themselves unpredictable: Koyomi is no longer a vampire but has retained some of the traits – one of which is very useful when you get a staple gun to the face, apparently. Hitagi’s arsenal of office supplies took me by surprise too: it’s exaggerated for artistic effect but the absurdity of what she carries around cracked me up.

Nuff said?

What also lingers long in the memory is the trauma in Hitagi’s background. It’s all well and good building a character on tsunderisms but without a convincing explanation her character would just be another over-used trope that gets on the viewer’s nerves. In admitting to being a tsundere fanboy I’m admitting a weakness for the well-written examples of the personality type that has hidden depths of tenderness behind a façade of amusing stand-offishness. In Hitagi’s case it’s the broken home and the curse that, interestingly, she herself wished for.

This is pretty heavy stuff. The quirkiness of Hitagi and the exchanges between her and Koyomi are pretty important in lightening the mood, although I’m seeing quite a bit of Shinbo’s own personal input creeping in too. Cosette was a dark work and even SZS‘s humour was of the morbid variety so I think his sense of humour is drier, darker and possibly more subtle than the comedy anime fans are familiar with.

Although the staplers were a bit overdone I still love the use of live-action images in this show

It’s almost along the same lines as Hideaki Anno at times, only perhaps without such distaste for the otaku-dom. The fanservice isn’t cheeky on the usual level but the very inclusion of it feels like a knowing wink over a knowing wink, as if the inclusion of cleavage and pantie shots is making fun of its over-use elsewhere. To my mind, the fanservice in these two episodes was too overt, too damned obvious, to be anything but Shinbo finding yet another way to shamelessly play mind games with the viewer and mess with their expectations.

If the gratuitous camera angles were no more than just that I wouldn’t feel the need to comment on them but everything else about this series is trying to do things a little differently; I’d be selling it short by accusing the studio of exploiting Hitagi. That’s just the point though, isn’t it? Given what she’s been through, is it intentional that she’s painted in this light – one in which an apparent shamelessness is a symptom of a loss of self-worth? Is it reiterating how she was perceived by certain people as a sex object, and how that painful experience has skewed her own self-image?

I get the feeling that Shinbo is testing the viewers’ integrity in the same way that Hitagi is testing Koyomi

In two short episodes I found myself fascinated by Hitagi. Aside from the fact that it’s hilarious to watch her verbally beating Koyomi to the ground, the painful memories she tried to shake off have resurfaced in an interesting fashion. Maybe we’re seeing a more purposeful use of ecchi here, or perhaps it’s another case of the Shinbo-isms addressing unsettling topics without unsettling the viewer to an excessive degree. Either way, it still seems that tsunderes still get all the best lines.