Another

Another (アナザー) is a 12 episode psychological horror series based on the novel of the same name by Ayatsuji Akito.  It was originally broadcast in Japan in 2012.

    Sakakibara Koichi moves from Tokyo to a small rural town called Yomiyama.  He will be attending his final year of middle school in this remote town and living with his maternal grandparents while his father is working in India.  A collapsed lung causes him to miss the first month of school and when he is able to begin class he discovers something isn't right.  The entire class and faculty is ignoring the existence of one of the students, a moody and dark girl named Misaki Mei.  Bothered by the atmosphere of his classmates, Koichi decides to talk with Mei to find out whats going on.
 
  Their class has been cursed following an accidental death of a classmate 27 years earlier.  After the students death the classmates and teacher acted as if the student was still alive and part of the group.  The following year the class that occupied the room was struck with a series of accidental deaths.  Since then a number of rituals have been established in an attempt to ward off any such tragedy, with varying results.  Koichi's arrival coupled with his interactions with Mei cause everyone in the class to be on edge as they fearfully await the curse to strike their class.

    I am going to be really blunt with this one, it's not that good.  The character animation was pretty bad and the twists and plot hang ups were worn out and unoriginal.  The gotcha moments were partially due to muddled clues and work-around's more than deep and thoughtful puzzles and plot.  There was really only one shocking death and afterwards the show continued to set up scenario's where a character might die a la the horrible teen thriller series Final Destination.  The climax of the series was poorly executed and included elements that seemed out of place and were explained rather loosely and conveniently in the epilogue.

   Disappointingly, this series fell rather flat and did not really entertain as much as it could have.  It seemed the author decided to phone in some of the major plot points and what you end up with is a mix of Sixth Sense and Final Destination paired with galge moe aesthetics.  This was not my cup of tea and really dissapointed me.  It had the potential to be something deep and interesting, like Nijigahara Holograph, but ended up being fluff that relied to heavy on worn out idea's.

    The series is available commercially in North America, I streamed it on Crunchyroll.  The novel and manga adaptation are available from Yen Press.

Gants manga - Phase 3 - Katastrophy Phase

This is the third and final installment in the review of the long running sci-fi manga Gantz (ガンツ) by Oku Hiroya.  If you have not read Phase 1 or Phase 2 please go to them first before continuing.  Keep in mind that in order to properly review the series there are some plot spoilers.

    Phase 3, or Katastrophy, is the final installment of the Gantz manga.  It takes place between chapters 304 and 383.  Gantz is malfunctioning and it appears the game is over, but before anyone can celebrate their freedom huge ships appear around the world and begin reeking unparalleled devastation where ever they are.  First America is almost obliterated and before anyone can determine if it is real or not Tokyo is attacked by enormous mechs.  No place is safe as the entire city is a battleground.

    What at first appear to be mechs are battle suits as the alien invaders are gigantic humanoids.  The humans that are not killed are captured and flown to the aliens landing ship.  The attack begins while Kurano is in school and his primary concern is with Tae's safety.  He defeats two aliens that arrive at the school and flees, with a number of students and teachers following.  The refugees from school hide overnight in an abandoned hotel.  The alien attack resumes and as they flee Kurano is teleported away from Tae.

    This time he finds himself and many other black ball soldiers in a park.  A group of men have taken control of functioning balls and are forcing the people they summoned to invade the alien ship in order to do as much damage as possible.  Kurano and others find themselves in what looks like the aliens home world, surrounded by alien civilians, on a city street.

    Security forces arrive to suppress the human invaders and the teams face impossible odds.  The teams are transported out of the ship to prevent everyone from dying and then randomly teleported into various cities to await another round of attacks.  Kurano searches for Tae, but before he can reach her she is captured and sent off to the alien ship.  The entire thing driving Kurano forward is to save Tae.  He has little concern for the eraditcation of the invaders and takes every opportunity he has to find the only thing he cares for.  At the same time she works as hard as she can, against all odds, to survive in order to be reunited with him.

    Various battles are fought against the aliens by the teams who are the only ones that posses the firepower and experience to do anything against them.  As they struggle to prevent mankind's extinction they begin to understand the true nature of the black spheres.

    This final Phase really ties everything together and ratchets up the doom and destruction to incredible levels.  There is no safety and no time to rest.  In order to survive everyone must continue to struggle, hoping that their efforts will amount to something positive.  Reading it keeps you on the edge as the horrors of the invasion unfold, from the rampant destruction of the city to the harvesting of people for food.  The aliens see humans as nothing more than insects and pests.  There are some interesting moments when background powers come into play regarding the black balls.  Shadow groups have taken the chaos as an opportunity to vie for control of Earth once the victory they see possible takes hold.  In a strange portion the characters are summoned and directly explained the entire reason for the black spheres existences.  Honestly, it wasn't a bad secret either.  Its hard to tell is Oku-sensei had that idea in mind from the very beginning, but it worked out well.

    The artwork remains highly detailed and unfortunately some of that detail becomes muddied in the more action packed sequences.  There are a few portions where some was done via CG and it didn't mesh well with the hand drawn stuff, part of this may be due to the black and white format.  There are a few full color pages and those really make you want to see the entire thing in vivid color.  If the manga was in color it would be an incredible experience.  Oku's artwork is fantastic but so much is lost in the lack of color.  Regardless the mechanical designs in this Phase are excellent and really create a cyberpunk feel.  This Phase would make a fantastic movie, one Michael Bay would really enjoy making.

    It was hard to tell how the series would end and what type of answers would be given for the stories core mysteries.  The way it was executed was rather abrupt but worked.  The finale though seemed a bit rushed, there were segments of the time progression that were glossed over, import things.  You go from one extreme to the next with no real explanation for the shift.  The final issue as well was choppy in how the characters get from point a to point b.  Despite these plot inconsistencies the series wrapped up in a satisfying manner.  What was interesting was the direction Kurano's personality takes again.  His altruism recedes as he only cares about his own future with Tae and that drive propels him to fantastical survival mode.

    This was a long but quick series, quick due to much of the artwork being devoted to the battles.  There is not a lot of dialogue in the manga, considering its something like 3500 pages long.  It was worth the time and at the same point makes the anime unneeded.  The anime, which came out in 2004, only covers events for the first 8 tankoubon...thats 8 out of 37.  So really, once you read the manga watching the anime is rather pointless.  If you started with the anime, pick up the manga and have your need's satisfied, otherwise skip it.

    The series is licensed by Dark Horse comics in North America and all of the tankoubon are finally available in English.  A new Gantz series is set to begin at the end of 2015 with Oku writing and another person doing the artwork.  It will be hard to tell if it's good, as Oku's strong point really is his art.

Gantz manga - Phase 2 - Osaka Phase

This is the second part of the 3 part review of the sci-fi manga series Gantz (ガンツ) by Oku Hiroya.  The manga is divided into three parts, Phases, to read the review of Phase 1 go here.  Keep in mind that in order to properly review the series there are some plot spoilers.

    Phase 2, also known as the Osaka Phase, occurs between chapters 238 and 303.  It takes place with the team having failed to keep Kurano alive.  To their surprise two of the vampires end up in the room with Gantz, by hanging on to a team member during transfer.  Before they can deal with the uninvited guest's they find themselves on the streets of Osaka.  The reason they have been summoned as a sort of back up for the Osaka team is due to the alien targets immense power.  The local team looks at the new arrivals with disdain and exhibits an air of indifference unparalleled by anyone they have dealt with before.

   Un-phased by the mass of enemies and the quickly rising civilian death toll, the seasoned team takes their time with the mission.  Smoking joints, shooting heroin/amphetamines and getting on with what ever they can stick their dicks into in the process of eliminating the mass of targets.  Their cockiness seems to be earned as their weapons cause unparalleled damage.  Yet despite the amount of damage they do, the horde of aliens, who take after various yokai, soon prove to be more than a match for them.  The Tokyo team stands by in horror at the lackadaisical actions of the Osaka team, even as some of them begin to fall.  Kato particularly impresses one of the women on the Osaka team with his selflessness, something lacking with her compatriots.  Through her they learn that many of the Osaka players have reached 100 points many times, always opting for more powerful weapons, continuing to play the game.

    Yet even their experience and technical superiority begins to fall flat as the leaders of the horde enter the fray.  They begin to cut down the Osaka team one by one, as they foolishly approach them without caution.  Enough of the Osaka team die without doing much damage to the boss to convince the other members that they can't approach this battle in the way they normally do.  As things become desperate and the boss seems immortal the Tokyo and Osaka teams have to try and work together to survive.  The game no longer has a time limit and survival seems to be far from reality.

    When the mission finally ends the remaining members of the Tokyo team decide to revive Kurano, who does not remember anything after he chose to leave the game.  At this point they learn that everything they have been fighting for is coming to a close.  A counter on Gantz informs them that something known as the Katastrophe will take place in a matter of days.  Speculations about the timer is that it refers to the end of the human race, possibly through a nuclear war.

    Before the team can wait it out they are sent on another mission, this time as a taste for the impossible battle ahead.  They find themselves in Italy, fighting along a number of foreign teams against impossibly powerful aliens, who kill easily and can not be defeated.  Before the team suffers catastrophic loses Gantz returns them to the room to inform them the mission is over, with out any level of success.  The Phase ends with unknown black ships appearing all over the world, beginning with America.

    This Phase was interesting in that is expanded the characters and readers knowledge about the black balls.  Aside from the Tokyo teams' battle in Osaka, a side character, a reporter, digs into the people responsible for creating the black balls and learns some of their secrets.  Another thing that is explicitly shown in this Phase is the extreme personalities and attitudes of some of the people involved in the game.  There have always been people that arrive in the room with Gantz that are degenerates.  Plenty of times the buxom female team mates have had to protect themselves from inappropriate comments to down right rape attempts.  Many of the people chosen seem to be unscrupulous.  Yet nothing like the vile nature of many of the Osaka team.  In some ways its taken to comically extreme levels, like one who can't control his libido and fucks anything he can, including aliens.  The Osaka team makes the actions and motives of the Tokyo team stand out.  It makes them seem more honorable than they are.  This is especially key for them as attitudes have become slightly nihilistic following Kurano's death.

    The Osaka portion of the Phase occupies almost all of the story and drags on for longer than it should have.  The battle in Italy is over before you even know what is going on, but adds in interesting dichotomy.  For the first time they are pulled out of a mission before anything can really happen.  You get the feeling that Gantz is concerned for the teams safety.  But nothing can prepare them or the reader for whats about to happen in Phase 3.

Gantz manga - Phase 1

Gantz (ガンツ) is a sci-fi manga by Oku Hiroya.  The manga originally published in Japan between 2000 and 2013 in Weekly Young Jump.  The manga has been licensed and released in North America by Dark Horse.

    Gantz has been collected into 37 tankoubon, spanning 383 chapters.  It is broken into 3 story arcs, Phases, and for the purpose of reviewing it each phase will get its own review.  Phase 1 covers the majority of the manga as it goes from chapter 1 to chapter 237.

Beware: There are some broad spoilers in the review.

    Moody high school student Kurano Kei finds himself helping a childhood friend, Kato Masaru, rescue a drunk that fell onto train tracks.  Against his own selfish ideals he jumps down to help out to end up being killed by an oncoming express train.  Both boys find themselves suddenly in a room with a group of other people.  No one can leave the room, no one can contact the outside world, even though they can see Tokyo Tower from windows in the room.  An ominous black sphere occupies a portion of the space.  The sphere, dubbed Gantz, begins to play music and on the surface informs everyone in the room that they are dead and their new found lives are now the spheres property.  They are to hunt down an alien using weapons and equipment inside of the sphere.  Before everyone can comprehend what is happening they are teleported to a quiet suburban neighborhood, presumably to hunt down the target.

    Through a series of trials and errors they learn a few things; the are stuck in a small area of the city, if they leave it, a bomb in their heads explodes.  The weapons are more powerful and difficult to control than they appear and the fitted body suits they receive from Gantz will protect them for almost any attack.  They have a time limit in which to kill the target...sometimes there are dozens or hundreds of targets.  Once the targets are eliminated or the time is up, all surviving members will be transported back to Gantz with any damage taken being healed.  Once the mission is over they are free to leave the room and attempt to assume a normal life...until Gantz once again brings them into the room to kill more aliens.

    Kurano and Kato learn pretty quickly that the missions have high attrition rates.  Only a few people survive the first mission and the grim reality of their second chance on life sets in.  The only one from the group who knows whats going on is the dismissive and secretive middle school student Nishi Joichiro.  What they do learn is that they are given a set of three choices once they have achieved a score of 100.  At the end of each mission Gantz dispenses points based upon each persons actions and successes.  The survivors now have the 100 point goal a head of them and what ever it means.

    Kurano, being a sulky teenager has other things occupying his mind beyond his new role as forced soldier.  His sexual drive runs rampant and opportunities begin to present themselves to him amid the despair and desperation to live.  His life soon enough becomes consumed with fighting, fucking/wanting to fuck and the occasional stint at school dealing with being an outcast.  Again and again he is dragged into battles for his life, with people dying all around him.  He continues to survive, even when people he begins to form bonds with do not.  After one particularly brutal mission he finds himself all alone, surviving by a fluke.

    In life away from battles and lust a new transfer student, Izumi Shion, takes an interest in Kurano.  Much to his horror, the transfer seems to know a few things about Gantz.  Nishi had been stealthily running a blog talking about the missions.  Fearing that the bomb in his head would explode, he dodges the inquiry as much as possible.  At the same time he is being grilled by the impressive Izumi, Kurano is forced to date a quiet otaku in his class named Tae.

    Kurano fails a solo mission and has hits points wiped to zero.  To make things worse the alien he failed to kill tracks him down and fights him at school, outside of a Gantz mission.  Everyone in his class aside from Tae and Izumi end up dead and Kurano has to fight the alien in front of a large gathering of police.  Luckily he gets away with his actions and the government ends up wiping the unusual circumstances under the rug.  The attack though starts to build a bond between him and Tae.  Izumi shows his hand though as things start to calm down.

    Izumi had once been a part of Gantz and his wiped memories are trickling through, driving him to yearn for a return to the brutal killing game.  In a bid to return he stages a terrorist attack in Shinjuku, killing countless people before being killed himself.  The plan works and he, along with many of his victims, find themselves in the room with Gantz.  After many survive the first mission Kurano is unwittingly made the leader of the new group.  All the people he has lost in the previous month have been affecting his world view.  He know strives to prevent as many casualties in the missions as possible, further convincing some of the group that he is the leader of the Gantz team.

 

    As the team begins to coalesce, with few casualties, a new threat arrives.  Strange people who are able to see the Gantz team and are hunting them down.  This new threat is somewhat vampire in attitude and nature and they begin to cause problems for the team outside of missions.  The new threat makes the internal struggles, instigated by Izumi, more dangerous as well.  After unintentionally photographing one of the team mates while during a mission, Tae finds herself the next target by Gantz.  Izumi takes this as his cue and forces the rift he has been building wide open, telling those who support him the real target is Kurano and to kill both of them.

    Kurano fails to save Tae.  They learn that you can choose 3 things once you hit 100 points.  To leave the game, memories erased.  Gain a powerful new weapons or restore someone to life.  Kurano is driven more to hit 100 points to bring Tae back as well as continuing to fight in order to bring the other people lost over the months back.  The following mission is the most dangerous yet and the survivors are rewarded handsomely.  To show their respect for Kurano they each choose to revive people closest to Kurano.  They then force him to choose to leave the game.

    With Kurano now a 'civilian' with his mind wiped of the past months he spend fighting for Gantz, the team chooses the resurrected Kato as their leader and they continue to work as a well oiled machine, battling stronger and stronger aliens.  Their actions become visible as everyone around them can now see what is going on, much for the worse, as more normal people are being caught in the crossfire.  The battles become more severe and destructive.  This extremely long Phase ends with Kurano, still a civilian, being murdered by the vampires and the team in a strange battle field.

    OK, that's a lot to unpack and a lot of story and character development has been glossed over, as well as a few spoilers unleashed.  So lets dig in and critique this manga.

    The artwork and character designs are highly detailed and well done.  Mechanical designs are interesting and they used base layers of CG in the creation to help with some repeated effects in the panels.  The problem though is much is lost in scenes of high action, partially due to the lack of color and partially due to the denseness of the line work.  Many panels throughout the battles can become muddy and confusing.  But, the artwork is very detailed and ever without color there is a plethora of gore and visceral death with in it's pages.  There is also a very healthy dose of fan service and outright porn.  The women are large breasted and small framed and most of the men are small framed and free of bulky musculature.

    Story wise, its hard even at the end of Phase 1 to really get a feel for what is actually going on.  Little to no answers are given for the variety of questions and many of the semi-main characters die off sooner or later.  The purpose of Phase 1 seems to get the reader familiar with Gantz and what it means for the people that are trapped by it, continuously forced into these highly dangerous missions.  The aliens are unexplained as is Gantz it's self.  Instead there is focus on the bumpy and rather shallow psychological progression of Kurano.  He takes a rocky journey from nihilistic teenager to gaining a bit of compassion and humanity, but still being a moody bitch.

    In all the manga is engaging.  You keep coming back to see more and more as the characters continue to be thrown into impossible battles.  The story hits a snag though when it shifts to focus more than it probably should on normal Kurano and all of his self inflicted head games.  You eagerly await the next Gantz mission and a return to what this manga excels at...ultra violence.  And boobs...lots of boobs.

    This isn't for everyone, its definitely aimed at the teenage boy market.  It gives a 16 year old everything he could ever want from a manga.  An identifiable character who is alone and against the world.  Forced to fight fantastical monsters with alien weaponry in ultra horrific ways while big breasted naked/nubile women fling themselves at him.  It's the ultimate wet dream.  With it's flaws and its rampant fan service I was drawn to it as well and eagerly poured through each issue with reckless abandon.  I'm not sure there is any real re-readability with the story though as you really push through to see who survives and to find out the answers to the mysteries.  There are no answers in Phase 1...only death and sex, lots of both, but mostly death.

So there is a look at Phase 1, click here to move on to Phase 2.

Princess Jellyfish - anime

Princess Jellyfish (海月姫) is an 11 episode comedic romance based on the manga of the same name by Higashimura Akiko.  The anime originally aired in Japan in the Fall of 2010.

    Tsukimi is a frumpy nerd girl who moved to Tokyo after graduating high school and has been trying to work as an illustrator.  She lives in a boarding house called Amamizu-kan which is occupied by other otaku girls.  The 'nun's of Amamizu-kan have strict rules about their convent and shun popular things, freezing up when confronted by their natural fashion enemies and forbid men from entering.  Tsukimi is a jellyfish otaku.  One night while visiting a favorite jelly at a pet store she realizes its life is in danger.  The employee of the shop is a trendy man which trips Tsukimi's self defense mode and she has a hard time trying to convey the danger.  As her attempts fail a beautiful and fashionable woman steps in to help.  In the end the jellyfish named Clara and the strong willed beauty end up back at Amamizu-kan.

    Tsukimi's trouble begins when the fashionable woman turns out to be a cross dressing young man who just happens to take an interest in her.  The man, Kuranosuke, is the illegitimate younger son of a prominent politician.  Raised for the first few years of his life by his mother, a foreign performer, Kuronosuke is very effeminate.  He wishes that he was a woman even though he is heterosexual.  Fashionable, loved by all girls around him, he is confident and used to getting his way.  His inexplicable attraction to the otaku girl brings him to Amamizu-kan in regular intervals.  He see's a beautiful creature hidden in a nerd cocoon that is Tsukimi.  The problem is, he has to hide the fact he's a man from the other residents.

    His entertainment is in danger of disappearing due to a plan to renovate the entire neighborhood, including demolishing all of the current buildings.  He whips up the nerd girls into a frenzy to fight for the continuation of the convent.  As he spends more time with Tsukimi he begins to fall in love with her, which confesses her.  Instead she has unmistakably fallen for his older brother Shu, who is involved in a sticky blackmail situation with a predatory woman from the neighborhoods redevelopment company.  Kuronosuke hatches a scheme with Tsukimi to make high fashion dresses made to look like various jelly fish as a way to raise the money to try and save Amamizu-kan.

   This is a ugly duckling shojo story with heavy otaku comedy elements to it.  Its the story of a fashionable member of the upper echelon becoming entranced with someone living in the gutter of society.  Changing the frumpy duckling into yamato nadeshiko, the ideal woman.  Along the way though the person making the change falls in love with their subject, confusing them. 

    I got into the manga recently and fell in love with it pretty quickly, so once I got caught up with it, as it is slowly ongoing I turned to the anime.  The anime does the manga well, but ends rather poorly, given the incomplete state of the manga its self.  The animation does justice to the feeling and styles of the manga and the voice acting is some of the best I have heard in a long time, matching the characters rather well all around.  In short, the anime is a well done piece, but probably leaves a bad taste in your mouth if you don't read the manga.  The last episode goes off course at an attempt to 'wrap' up the story to some extent prior to the real ending actually existing.  It touches on some aspects that appear later in the manga but just flips in the last two minutes for a hasty ending.  An ending which reminded me of the dangers Shirobako warned about when it comes to making an anime for an incomplete manga.

   Either way, fantastically enjoyable shoujo comedy anime and an even better manga.  The pace of the anime was petty good and made some parts of the manga more bareable.  I really dislike the side character Mayaya and her antics seemed a bit toned down in the anime.  Plus, the opening theme is one of the best I have heard in a long time.

    The anime was licensed by FUNimation in North America and the DVD's for it are easy to come by.

   

Fallacy Friday no.01

Starting Friday November 6th, The Otaku Network will begin doing semi regular post's devoted to debunking false news and clarifying other items that pop up from time to time in the world of anime fandom.

Netflix making anime:

    This week an interview of Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, lead to a flurry of speculation about his very brief comment about producing quality anime in the future.  This was a statement at the very end of the half hour interview by Andrew Ross Sorkin discussing the financial state of the internet streaming company and some of their policies when compared with other major international companies.  In a response to a question from the CEO of Showtime, Mr. Hastings glibly detailed plans for Netflix to expand their range of original productions to take on a more global tone.  The success of the series Narcos in Germany opened their eyes to Netflix Original content being applicable in other markets than the United States.  He alluded to the idea of making Bollywood epics among other things.  Then very briefly said they would like to make quality anime among other ideas floating around.

    So a few things; Netflix is not a studio, they don't personally create things.  What they do is provide financial and broadcast support for productions that they then sign exclusivity agreements with.  So really shortly, this would mean that any anime they produce would mean its exclusively streamed on Netflix.  Netflix won't actually set up an animation studio, write their own story, make it, call it anime and sell it as such.  What this means is that Netflix is willing to, sometime in the future, to join production committee's for anime that are being produced.

    Production committee's are what get anime made these days.  An idea is spawned to make something into an anime, a number of companies agree to work together on the project, applying various things to it, spreading around the financial liability.  Typically a production committee is made of; original content rights holder, distribution company, music licensing company, broadcaster, advertising agencies, etc.  In some cases an animation studio isn't a core member of the production committee and are hired as a contractor.

    But what about Knights of Sidonia, which Netflix attached the confusing label of 'Netflix Original' to?  Well, here, according to Anime News Network, is who made up the production committee.

  Kodansha: Publisher, owns the rights for the original manga.
  Mainichi Broadcast System: TV and radio broadcasting company.
  Polygon Pictures: CG animation studio.
  Starchild Records: Record company.
  The Klockwerx Co., Ltd: Distribution company.
  KOS Production Committee: Unspecified entities, could just be the original creator.

    So, no, Netflix will not be making their own brand of anime, nor should we expect anything in the near future from them.  He was speculating about directions in the future the company is looking at doing to expand its original content, with a target of having 400 original programs a year, which is staggering.  So don't worry that Netflix is going to start making its own brand of anime that will 'poison' the well.


This weeks anime series that will NOT get a new season.

    Your Lie in April: This moody anime that ended on a depressing note WILL NOT have a new season.  The anime almost panel for panel covered the entire manga...to the point of making the manga useless.  There is a live action movie adaption of the story slated for release in Japan in 2016.  No matter how much everyone wishes, there really isn't any more story to be told.

    Elfen Leid: The bloody and mutilation filled cable anime series from early in the 21st century has no chance in hell coming back for a second season.  The anime was made before the manga was completed, leading as usual, to a divergence of how the two ended.  The closest you can get to a return would be to watch the anime version of another author by the same artists, Brynhilder in the Darkness.