I don’t usually reflect on my own history as an anime fan, but something occurred to me the other day. What is the significance of a gateway anime? What kind of impact does a person’s first experience with a medium have on their enjoyment and preferences of that medium? Most fans who choose to pursue anime seriously become more well-rounded over time, but I think that the early experiences are given less credit than they deserve.
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There’s a certain topic within moe fandom that is rarely broached. Considering the amount of fuss people make over events like Sal9000’s wedding, you’d think it would have come up, but most conversations skirt around what I have always considered to be the heart of the matter. In essence, it boils down to the following questions:
These points beat around the bush as well, but I think you get the idea. I believe that the often-overlooked “secret” behind moe and 2D complex lies within the exact opposite of what ero-ge is traditionally supposed to be about.
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[96]
As you might know, I’ve been reading through Kanon, the famed visual novel that sparked many a moe enthusiast’s fandom. All things considered, it’s not a bad game – it shows its age, and I think Itaru Hinoue’s skill has increased significantly over the past decade, but it’s definitely not bad. I could say a bit more about it, but since I’m only now finishing the trunk, I’d rather keep the rest of my opinion for the final post.
More importantly, amidst the chaos of Umineko and the distinct lack of Key over the last few seasons, Kanon is a breath of fresh air. It’s my first “normal” visual novel in a while, a reminder of why I enjoyed the medium in the first place. The endearingly generic characters, the forcefully surreal dream sequences, the cheesy synths of Last Regrets – everything that you could say to insult it, I could spin to defend it. That’s always been the law of visual novels. On top of that, its familiar galge tropes got me thinking about something I haven’t thought about in a while: the art of making 2D characters feel 3D.
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[arsenixc]
Fiction would be in a sad state if jargon did not exist. In this case, I’m not referring to the fan-made terminology used in reference to various bodies of fiction: I’m talking about the jargon used within fiction, the internal laws that most fantasy and sci-fi stories rely on.
lelangir’s recent post on the matter makes for an enlightening read, exploring the role of mechanics in a story’s narrative structure. There’s no doubt that the internal mechanics of fictional worlds can be more than just feigned depth – speculative fiction would have a hard time speculating if it couldn’t act independently of the laws of common sense. As lelangir notes, consistency is more important than plausibility: it’s foolish to expect realism from Lord of the Rings, but a story that is consistent with itself lends the structure and framework needed to build whatever needs to be built around it.
Having said that, there are more than a few pitfalls to the elaborate universes created by writers of fiction, and they extend far beyond the issue of plot holes. The creation of a universe is not only a challenge in terms of maintaining consistency, but it also requires enough context within the plot for the viewer to see the relationship between the mechanics and the story’s intention.
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From the moment Digitalboy announced his Diary of an Anime Lived project, I was interested. True, it’s usually not a good idea for an anime blogger to talk more about themselves than about anime, but there are times when personal posts add an extra level of realism to an invisible writer and their opinions. It’s also intriguing to see how fiction can impact lives, intentionally or not.
However, when the project was announced and posts started surfacing, I quickly realized that anime hasn’t impacted me as much as I thought it had. Sure, my life is different today because of anime – but it’s the fandom that changed me, not any particular work of fiction. I could have rambled on about Honey and Clover and shoujo manga and unrequited love, but that’s not quite what the project is about. H&C might be my favourite anime, but it didn’t make me rethink anything. It’s my Bible, and it made me want to cry for every Takemoto and Morita and Hagu, every Ayumi and Rika and Mayama, but it didn’t make me rethink anything.
My prospects were looking bleak for a while: I’m from an ordinary, functional family, I attended reasonably safe and healthy schools, and I don’t suffer from any psychological problems. There isn’t much in my life that I can ramble on about, no tear-jerking awakenings spawned by a heroic struggle in anime.
Towards the end of the year, though, I realized something. I found a connection in a character who couldn’t be more different from me: Emiya Shirou.
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The Two Faces of Ghost in the Shell
by ETERNAL on January 29, 2010
Ghost in the Shell is the kind of show that doesn’t need to be written about, partly because it speaks for itself and partly because it’s an obligatory gateway anime that must be watched to earn one’s Aniblogger Badge. Still, as I was watching the Laughing Man OVA the other day to refresh my memory of the franchise, my brain started spinning all over again. What is it about the show that makes it so good? In a nutshell, it’s everything – the technical details of animation and music are top notch, the characters are solid, and the story treads on the shades of gray within social and philosophical issues.
I’m sure most people who have seen the summary OVA would condemn it for cutting out important character and world-building details, but the opportunity to view the entire series compressed into a couple hours lends a broader perspective. For me, it brought to light the two sides of the story that make Ghost in the Shell what it is.
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