This week, we finally crack the top 20! BroEl could not have been more correct when he so eloquently stated in his comment on Part 6: "This is where the list starts getting dang epic." After this, there are just two more weeks until we reach the top 10 of the decade! How very exciting.
Kicking off Part 7 at #20 is Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit.
Plot Summary (from ANN): Balsa, the spear wielder and bodyguard, is visiting the New Yogo Empire. She is hired to protect the Second Prince, Chagum, who is endangered because he is possessed by a being despised by his father, the Emperor, who ordered his assassination. The two go on a perilous adventure for the survival of the prince. Throughout the story, Balsa's past will come to light and they will uncover mysteries about Chagum's condition while developing a family-like relationship with each other and others.
How very timely that Moribito makes the list now, as it should finally finish its run on [adult swim] in a couple of weeks. Even though I haven't seen the final two episodes yet, this series is making the list on the merit of its first 24 episodes. I also have no doubt that it will end just fine, given director Kenji Kamiyama's proven track record.
This series is just so fascinating to watch. Even during the drier middle portions or during the filler episodes early on, this series never fails to grab my attention when I sit down and watch an episode. The whole foundation of the world of Shin (New) Yogo and the supernatural elements that come with it are handled brilliantly by Kamiyama; and the pacing, though slow, is never so slow that things become boring. Not to mention the production values are among Production I.G's very best when it comes to their television anime. The backgrounds are lush; the action sequences are well-animated and also well-choreographed, making them and a blast to watch; and the character designs and costuming are to die for.
Plus, the story in and of itself is quite compelling. Watching Balsa's gradual change from a hardened, business-oriented bodyguard into a much more maternal figure in Chagum's life is just one of the many great elements. There is also Chagum's development, the subplot of the Emperor searching for Chagum, and also Chagum being the guardian of the water spirit's egg. So much is going on in this series, but it never feels overwhelming or convoluted. We even get Balsa's tragic backstory! All of this adds up to a series completely deserving of being named one of the top 20 anime of the decade.
At #19 is Satoshi Kon's television series: Paranoia Agent.
Plot Summmary (from ANN): An elementary school kid dubbed with the title "shounen bat" or "lil slugger" has been going around attacking people with his bent, golden bat. Now, two detectives are investigating so they can stop this kid from making any more attacks, but they will find out soon enough... that this case is much more than they expected.
This is one of those series that will be entirely too "weird" for some people, but that's Satoshi Kon for you. Almost everything he does has some element of strangeness to it, and Paranoia Agent is a prime example.
The storytelling of this series is rather haphazard, but what could be perceived as weakness actually ends up being its greatest strength. It being "messy" and it feeling almost as if Kon was making it up as he went along is what makes this series so fascinating. For example, things seems to be all well and good for the first four episodes, but then things go to hell when episode 5 reared its head. I am sure many people who were watching this when it originally aired on [adult swim] were left scratching their heads and may have even given up on the series after that. I know I was confused when I first watched this show. But if you keep watching, the series gets back on track, though things have changed dramatically.
There is the downturn during the middle portions in which Kon was forced to chain together several smaller ideas into a few filler-like episodes in order to fill out a full 13-episode series, but in all this is an excellent mystery/thriller series that keeps you guessing much of the way. The final resolution to the main plot is something that is made very obvious by all the foreshadowing early on, but the route it takes to get there is something else entirely. As BroEl likes to say: "It is not WHAT happens, it is HOW it happens." When that statement is applied to Paranoia Agent, he could not be more spot-on.
Coming in at #18 is Ghost Hound. This was one of my most-desired licenses until only recently, when the wonderful folks over at Sentai Filmworks finally brought it to the United States, albiet subtitled-only.
Plot Summary (from ANN): Production IG's 20th Anniversary Project, Ghost Hound is set in the modest town of Suiten, located in a desolate region in the island of Kyūshū. The story follows the experiences of three boys who have had traumatic experiences in childhood from which they have learned to transfer their souls to a parallel world known as the "Unseen World". The Unseen World is however undergoing a change, with its ghosts starting to appear in the real world, altering it in unpredictable ways.
Ghost Hound is another one of those "weird," "heady" anime. If you have not already noticed, I tend to really like anime like this. Especially those in which director Ryutaro Nakamura and/or writer Chiaki J. Konaka are involved, and they teamed up once again here.
Konaka loves to be arcane when it comes to his storytelling. He will give you little tiny bits of information to keep you hooked, and then he will show us something that does not make any sense at first before eventually going back and explain it later. I love it when writers are bold like Konaka. They are not afraid to throw the viewer for a loop and let them try to figure things out on their own before explaining everything. Sometimes such writers will even leave it entirely up to the viewer to figure things out and not explain anything (or explain it in a cryptic fashion). Not to mention Konaka's writing always gels wonderfully with Nakamura's methodical direction style.
Watching this series requires one's full attention. Not only does it bombard you with loads of science and pseudoscience (it even goes overboard on this front at times), but has quite the complex plot as well. It is a series that continuously keeps you guessing and goes through stretches in which not much makes complete sense before things are explained later. The ending suffers a little from a lack of an extra episode or two to help with the build-up to the climax; but overall it is an excellent, highly original series that breaks away from what is normally found in anime. Plus, the production values are superb, as it is arguably Production I.G's very best television series when it comes to technical merits. The animation is terrific, the CG blends almost seamlessly with the 2-D elements, and the sound design and production is among the best you will ever find in an anime. This is one of those series that you must watch with headphones in order to get the complete effect of its gloomy atmosphere.
I wish there were more anime like this. The latest Yoshitoshi ABe project Despera should have a similar melancholic and perspicacious feel though, since Nakamura and Konaka are teaming up yet again.
At #17 is the series that will unfortunately always be compared to Neon Genesis Evangelion: RahXephon
Plot Summary (from ANN): In a world where time passes at a crawl and the blood of your neighbor runs blue, 17 year old high school student Ayato Kamina goes about his daily life within Tokyo Jupiter oblivious to the world around him, having been educated with the fact that the all civilization but Tokyo has been destroyed. But all that changes when the mysterious civilization "MU" invades his home, raining destruction down from the sky in the form of strange monsters called Dolems. The events that occur next will lead Ayato to the mysterious woman named Reika Mishima, to the truth of their existence, the discovery of what and who he is, and to the powerful angelic robot RahXephon.
RahXephon really should not be compared with Evangelion so much. Sure, they are both futuristic science-fiction stories revolving around timid male protagonists who pilot giant, human-like mecha, but that is really where the similarities end. In reality, RahXephon and Evangelion are completely different series. RahXephon a grand homage to the genre that Evangelion deconstructed and revolutionized back in the 1990s. RahXephon not only follows a much more straightforward plot development than Evangelion, but RahXephon's message is on the other end of the spectrum too.
Think about it: RahXephon is much a more optimistic series than Evangelion is. With that in mind, the similarities between them are merely superficial. Both are series that stand completely apart from each other and they should remain as such. RahXephon is not a copycat that tried to "fix" everything that was "wrong" with Evangelion. More like a celebratory response that promotes a completely different, much more optimistic worldview.
Though I prefer Evangelion's perspective over RahXephon's, I am not saying that RahXephon is not a great series. I would not have it on this list if it were not, now would I? RahXephon's much more tightly-knit, convoluted, and mysterious story is right up there (though not quite as high up as Evangelion) amongst the greatest anime ever made. Once you get into it and stop trying to compare it to Evangelion (which was the problem I initally had), you will find that it is a very involving, touching story. One that is essentially about two lovers who have reunited after years of separation, albiet with a novel science-fiction twist of time dilation causing drastic age differences between the two of them.
Rounding out part 7 is Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers at #16.
Plot Summary (from ANN): On a Christmas Eve, three Tokyo homeless -- mid-aged alcoholic man Gin, high school runaway girl Miyuki, and former drag queen Hana -- were searching dumpsters and trash bags for possible Christmas gifts for themselves, when cries from a baby drew their attention. Believing this was a gift from God, Hana, who couldn't have a baby of "her" own, vowed to take care of the abandoned baby girl and together they began searching for baby's mother.
This movie is just so much fun! The characters are delightful, and the story has a great message to boot. It is certainly one of Satoshi Kon's finest films.
It does sadden my that some people criticize this film's writing for being based around far too many coincidences, making it ridiculous and unbelievable; but those people are missing the point of the film entirely. The message of the film could not be more obvious! Gin says it himself: "Fate works in strange ways." Indeed it does; and Satoshi Kon set out to show this to the world with this movie.
You really cannot say much more than that, as Tokyo Godfathers really is a very simple film. What makes it so remarkable is how Kon takes something so simple that turns it into a very entertaining and touching film. Not to mention all of the humor that comes with the main characters being homeless and one of them being a drag queen. This movie is filled with so many differentiating moods, that your own mood will probably fluctuate just as wildly while watching the film. This makes for a terrifically involving experience that you can watch again and again. If you have not seen this movie yet, you really need to.
Meryl Stryfe from Trigun is pretty stoked about the list reaching its final stages, and hopefully you are as well. I will see you all next week for part 8!
1 comments:
Heh heh, yes, I would have to say that that little saying of mine definitely applies to Paranoia Agent as well. I pretty much had the thing figured out way back when I tried to watch it for the first time on Adult Swim, which considering that I only watched the first epsidoe or so of it back then is kind of saying something. ;) But predictability is hardly a flaw of this series at all, because indeed HOW it all came together was what I found to be so unpredictable.
I personally actually never found this series at any point at all to be so messy, actually. It probably could have benifited from being more like 26 episodes so that it didn't seem too overdone too fast, not to mention it would've given Satoshi Kon more time to expand on those ideas you mentioned, but I never found it to be too messy. That part of the series is actually one of the things that kept me watching because of how interesting things got. It was like once you thought you had things figured out and thought that was the direction things were going to take, something drastically different happened every time that changed the whole perspective of the thing. I won't doubt that it definitely gave me a headache trying to follow it all and keep it straight (though honestly, watching the first 6 episodes in one go really didn't help with that at all..... ) but I really do believe that part of it was one of the series' greatest strenghts.
Once again a very solid list though. Like I said last time this is where the list starts to get epic, and this week certainly was no exception. That does remind me though I've really got to work on finishing Moribito one of these times.... ;_;
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