Old to the new and something about anime stories

Coming out of the festive period this year feels a bit like coming out of a bunker and returning to cold, harsh reality. For the first time in ages I’ve actually seriously unplugged for a good 10 days, and as a result I’m finding it really hard to get back into things, not helped by being in between jobs for another week and about to move back to London. Ah well.

Those of you who come round these rambling parts regularly might have noticed a slight change to the site’s visual identity. It’s been about a year or so since the last change but this time I’ve actually kept the theme but changed the background. I’m still looking for a new WP theme if anyone has any good recommendations, everything I’ve looked at or tried has left me feeling a little ‘meh’ or requires too much customisation which I can’t quite do right now. But yeah suggestions are welcome as are any problems with the new background. I’ve tested on IE7 and FF3 on a windows XP laptop, but can’t quite account for everyone.

Formalities out of the way, I finished watching Samurai Champloo last night, roughly a year after I started. Which considering it’s an anime series with 26 episodes of about 20 mins each must be some sort of new record. My travelling and relocating across the globe didn’t help, but this is by far the longest I’ve ever taken to watch an entire series of anything, without giving up.

I’m glad I didn’t give up because it’s fair to say that Samurai Champloo is quite possibly one of the best anime series I’ve ever seen, and easily one of the best ever made. Unsurprisingly it was created and directed by the same man responsible for Cowboy Bepop, another outstanding anime series and one of the best ever. What makes both these series stand out so much for me, especially compared to the onslaught of cheaply produced, non-Japanese produced/drawn anime of recent years, is a simple combination: great soundtrack/music + ingenious writing as part of a finite story.

Music is central to both series: Cowboy Bepop twists the space opera/sci-fi anime with jazz and rock, while Samurai Champloo basically flips samurai anime on its head with hip hop. In both cases the result is that fairly ‘classic’ anime genres are made a lot ‘cooler’ and more enjoyable thanks to clever and tasteful soundtracking. When you also consider just how bad anime music has also got in recent years (not that it was ever ‘that good’ but it has got worse), then both series are even more of a breath of fresh air, and not just for anime either. The music also works in making the series a lot more appealing to non-Japanese viewers, as in both cases the success of the series abroad was in great part due to the soundtrack, which also helped make it appealing to non-traditional anime fans.

While the music definitely contributes to making each series a really great piece of animation and TV, it also plays a big part in the storyline, storylines that in both cases have a beginning, middle and end without a cliffhanger or anything even remotely resembling the possibility of cashing in on the success (which both series found during their original broadcasts). I first mentioned this in 07 after I’d watched Cowboy Bepop again, and around the same time I was put onto Samurai Champloo, but the whole idea of having a series with a finite storyline is something I really miss.

Whether it’s American or European TV drama or Japanese animation, I really think that a return to finite storylines is needed as we’ve now descended fully into the whole ‘let’s make it run for as long as we can without any regards for story, continuity or the public’s interest.’ Granted the element of an ongoing story can be part of the appeal, as it was for me with American comics and TV series for many years, but too often now it’s taken to the extreme and the stories and my interest end up suffering.

In the case of anime, the tendency in recent years has been to turn ongoing manga series into finite anime incarnations, generally clocking at around 50 or episodes. This works nicely, see Full Metal Alchemist or the current Soul Eater for good examples, but Cowboy Bepop’s and Samurai Champloo’s shorter run of 26 episodes works even better, with less filler episodes and more focus on the central story.

Even though Japan has become an exporter of cool in the last ten years and it’s become a lot more acceptable to be on the nerdy end of Japanese cultural consumption in the West (in Japan it’s still seen as weird, though foreigners are excused most of the time as with most things), it seems to me that anime still has a bit of an overly nerdy association especially in anglo-saxon countries. That’s even more the case if you stray away from the more mainstream anime that have received cultural acceptance in the West in the last 20 years or so, like Akira, Ghost in the Shell or the Studio Ghibli output.

Anime like Cowboy Bepop and Samurai Champloo though are the perfect entry point for those who haven’t really got into anime before, away from the more popular exports. The series combine all the necessary elements of what makes a good, or even great, TV series and what’s more they offer a really great insight into how anime has evolved in the last 20 years and how it can be a mature, adult medium just like comics or manga. In both cases this isn’t just thanks to the story or characters, which are both a lot stronger and involving than most TV today, but also thanks to the way the series blend in Japanese cultural references with Western ones, history with post-modernism (in the case of Samurai Champloo) or even space opera and sci-fi with elements of noir and detective stories (in the case of Cowboy Bepop). The series are in a way just as ’serious’ as any strong TV series or film, yet still contain a certain degree of guilty pleasure that can come from watching animation as an adult. On top of that they also both play on this fact, with a fair amount of ‘irreverance’ for the story’s more serious subject matter and tongue in cheek self-references.

Visually the series are engrossing, with an animation style that is aesthetically pleasing and doesn’t go for the ‘unrealistic’ aspect a lot of manga and anime can have (whether in its depiction of the characters or the environment), they are addictive audio-wise, from the actual opening and closing themes to the sound effects and soundtracking of specific scenes, and they have captivating stories that leave you wanting more and more until it’s over. At which point rather than feeling like you still need more, you find yourself satiated, happy in the knowledge that what you just experienced was a complete piece of art, something which you can go back and enjoy again without needing to wait for another series, another cliffhanger or hoping that it doesn’t get canned by the networks.

If you’re unsure about anime, or enjoy it but don’t know what to check out then I can’t recommend these series enough. They’re both getting on a bit too now, yet they don’t feel dated and if anything are actually even more enjoyable with the years that have passed, especially compared to some of the crap that’s been pumped out on TV recently. Also the soundtrack to both series are well worth hunting down.

I’ve got Death Note next as well as a few Gundam series. I ain’t holding my breath too much for Gundam, but Death Note is supposed to be well worth it. We’ll see.