What I watched in July: Digest Version

TRSI licensed Rose of Versailles.  Sentai licensed Mawaru Penguindrum.  Signs of the Apocalypse?  Excellent!

b Best Student Council:  My initial thought was, "What is with the puppet?"  I was having puppet flashbacks to Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.  Eventually, I realized, "This is just the kind of show where someone walks around with a puppet all the time; just deal with it or stop watching.  "You're with the Best Student Council now.  You shouldn't be hanging around with a no-good puppet like me."  The puppet does end up being more than just a gag, but you have to put up with all the general wacky hijinks until then.  Your call.  This one was a lot of fun to watch/listen to in the background while doing other things.  I don't know if I would have liked it as much if I had to concentrate hard on every minute of it.

b Cosmo Warrior Zero: Oh, Leiji Matsumoto and your MANime.  It's ridiculous, and I really like it.  Lest you think I'm talking about a comedy, Zero is actually supposed to be a manly space drama, I think, and it does take itself pretty seriously most of the time.  There are some moments where you'll have to just abandon your brain, but it's a fun ride.  Except for the bits about genocide, which aren't fun at all.

What about the survivors?  There's a whole world that needs you out there.. . . You're not the only one who lost a family.
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We have to do this.  That's the only way to mourn for the people who have died in the war.
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Poor fool.  Why do you have to blame it all on yourself?

b Mariaholic: Your mileage will very wildly.  If you can't stand bullying, especially when it seems completely misogynistic, then you shouldn't even try this one.  If you have a fairly thick skin about these things where your comedy is concerned, and you are a longtime anime fan who is knowledgeable about jpop culture, you might have an enjoyable time.  You will, of course, be offended sometimes because that's part of what this show is all about, but you might also be amused.

b Tatami Galaxy: How good are you with crazy?  If you don't mind the out-there art, the bonkers premise, and the wild execution, you might appreciate this one.  By the last episode, you feel like the ending is earned, gosh darn it, even if it doesn't, you know, totally make perfect sense.  This is the story of a loser guy who goes to college and keeps falling in with the wrong crowd and then calling do-over and trying different choices to see if his life turns out more the way he wanted it to be.

b Windy Tales: If you can deal with the sketchy animation and you don't hate slice of life and aren't completely against a bit of magical realism, you might enjoy this odd-looking little show that peripherally deals with some people and cats who can control the wind but mostly just deals with life and growing up.

b Young Animator Training Project: This series of shorts by different young creators is kind of fascinating, especially if you like random things and short stories and variety in your anime viewing.  The result vary in quality, but that sort of adds to its charm for me.

Hope and Rainbows

In January, I watched Rainbow episodes 9-26.  It was kind of stunning.  Still no DVD release, but I bit the bullet and watched this all from Funimation.com (which was more than a little awkward) but the show was amazing and brilliant and powerful and sometimes very much like falling on the ice and hitting your head or getting punched in the gut.  I cried frequently.  I thought about episodes for weeks after I watched them, arguing with myself about whether this or that was going overboard and being melodramatic or just being harsh and realistic or whether something was supposed to be a happy ending or not (the fate of a certain female character in particular).  What a soul-crushing and gloriously inspiring show.

It's almost relentlessly dark.  It goes places nothing else I've read or seen has gone.  Somehow, it's also still hopeful (with a few exceptions), and it manages to be so without being the least bit saccharine about it.  All (relatively) happy endings are EARNED, and none of them feels fake.  Thank you, again, Milo, for bringing this show to my attention.  I liked this interview for explaining that the author named it Rainbow because he wanted people to be focused on the hope, the beauty after the rain storm.

Funimation, I want to give you money for taking a chance on this show.  I want to own it and watch it every few years like some of the other gut-punch anime I've seen (like Grave of the Fireflies and Now & Then, Here & There).  I want to tell other people to watch it, and I want to re-watch it at the same time, so we can talk about it.  I want it to remind me that other times and other places are different from my comfortable life and that people have and have had hard, hard lives, and I need to meet people where they are and not pass judgment before I get to know them, and I want to rejoice in the fact that people can still have hope if someone shows them how.

In short, I liked it.  :)

Possibly the funniest review ever

No, I didn't write it.  A professional author did.  It is long, kept me up way later than I should have stayed up, and resulted in my nose still hurting a day later.  It's about a K-drama called You're Beautiful that I am pretty sure I will have to watch on Hulu probably alone because I will be laughing so hard no one else would be able to pay attention to the show.  I will have my inhaler handy, so don't worry.

Why Salaryman Kintaro Is Awesome

I've read some very unfavorable reviews about Salaryman Kintaro, so I thought I'd balance things out by talking about why this show is outstanding for a certain audience.  Sure, it's not nearly as fun as Dai-Guard, but it's not trying to be.  It's an earnest, sincere, heartfelt drama about a former biker gang leader becoming a white-collar office worker and kind of gathering a harem/flock of admirers of all genders all while learning to navigate the jungles of office politics and being a single parent and helping people all the time.

Things that make Salaryman Kintaro a challenging show to enjoy:

• It has no dub.  I do not think this is a problem (ever, really), but I know it can throw some people off their stride.  However, I think the decision not to dub this was the right one because we really don't have an equivalent for the biker-gang thug/tough guy speak that Kintaro sometimes lapses into.  I've seen some not-quite-successful attempts in other dubs, and, overall, there's just something that makes it work in Japanese.
• It's about a guy working at the office of a construction company.  Can't get around that.  There are corporate politics and policies and procedures.  It would be deadly dull if not for the sociological fun of observing another culture and having my expectations slapped back and forth.  Well, and all the action livens it up, too, what with the bike and car chases, disasters, sabotage, and saving families before their cars fall off a cliff, and stuff.
• It is SO Japanese.  There are assumptions made (I would like to state that grown men ogling nekkid photos of 14-year-olds is NOT OKAY EVER).  Values are after-school specially emphasized.  There are Lessons Learned.  Something these lessons make No Sense to Americans, but are obviously Completely Understood by Japanese.  There is a lot of foreign culture incoming (foreign because it's Japanese but also because office culture is its own culture, and Japanese office culture is just exponentially strange.)  There are no helpful footnotes.  You kind of have to know your Japanese culture, or this will be even stranger (and possibly more offensive and/or impenetrable) for you.
• It has not-so-great animation.  It's very dated.  Purposefully so in some ways, but, well, it's not lavish or amazing.  I think that just adds to the overall cheesy synergy of the whole, but your mileage will vary.

So, if those things are deal-breakers for you, I feel bad that you'll be missing out on the following

Things that make it an awesome show to enjoy:

• It's MANime.  But not nearly as bad as it could be.  GTO was gleefully offensive (this is more YuYu Hakusho than GTO anyway).  Moonlight Mile was kind of gratuitously masculine.  Yugo the Negotiator got pretty psychological and brutal.  Area 88 . . . was actually shonen, wasn't it?  Anyway, we don't get much seinen drama here in the States, and while some of the adult content might bother people who'd be too bored to watch it anyway, it's not hentai.
• It's roMANticized.  And the romance makes sense.  It's very male dreamworld, like Westerns for American men.  No milquetoast lead here, folks, no flavorless, easy-to-identify-with-loser everyman.  Kintaro is a MAN, not a macho poser, not someone who throws his strength around to control or browbeat the weak, not an over-sexualized mass of testosterone, just a very Japanese Manly Man.  People admire him, fear him, respect him, look up to him, even love him in a variety of ways.  The harem gets a tad out of hand, but it's still within the realm of believability, and the show gets major points from me for that.  He's a single father, but he's not even looking for any kind of relationship.  He actively resists them, in fact, politely and without angst or martyrdom.  The fact that so many different people are so drawn to him--and the reasons why--are shown in such a way that you will not have to deplete your willing suspension of disbelief or want to claw your eyes out when you see them following him.
• It has outstanding extras that offer unique insights on what goes on in the anime director's and producer's chairs.  Each volume has part of a longer interview with the producer and the director, and they get honest and in depth about stuff you will probably never hear anywhere else.  This is great stuff. 
• It will feed your inner armchair sociologist.  (Translation: It will teach you about Japan.)  Are you interested in Japanese culture, not just anime?  Did you read Tokyo Vice and love its insight into American perceptions of Japanese culture?  Did you think (one of) the best parts of Nerima Daikon Brothers was those awesome commentaries/interviews where the same director talked to very different people, giving a really clear and completely unintended lesson on interaction between Japanese people?  Kintaro is equally informative but also more baffling.  You may think you know where the afterschool special is leading, but then Japan will step out and beat you with a crutch. 
• It makes you dream/wish/long/hope for a moment that maybe your corporate culture could be changed, too, by someone willing and able to stand up like Kintaro and tell it like it is (with or without that great, rolled-r, guttural, gangster-y cadence).  Or maybe you just wish he'd come in and tell off your boss.  Anyway, that spark of hope that rises in you is a beautiful, beautiful lie, but the hope that flares for a time makes you feel all warm inside your frozen, corporate drone heart.  If you (still) have one.

Anyway.  Here are some other voices on Salaryman Kintaro.

Needless to say, I got a huge, huge kick out of this show for its quirky and offbeat oddness.  If it sounds like a show you'll love, it probably is.  If it sounds like something you'd rather live through that first Asian arc of Yugo the Negotiator than go through, it probably is.  You know where your tastes lie; I just figured I'd give you some additional info to find out if Salaryman Kintaro is where your tastes lie.  I hope it is.  If so, please let me know how you liked it.

Rumbling Hearts (or, the consequences of finally being honest with yourself and others)

Takayuki is an insensitive clod.   NOTE TO TAKAYUKI: Dude, what she wants is for you to say you love her (because you mean it).   Also, you're right: this is all your fault.   First time in anime history that the milksop hero actually realizes this in a realistic manner and sort of tries to do something about it.   Way to go.

Akane is a brat who doesn't know what's going on, but it's not all her fault because nobody told her what was going on.

The world would be a better place less full of needless drama if these people would just talk to each other and explain what's going on.   Sheesh.

I also wish they would have eased up on the cheesy music.   It would have been more drama than melodrama that way.

Did I mention I really like this show?  Bust out the tissue boxes and angst!   You were right all those years ago, JB.   :)

Have you seen this show?  Any thoughts?  Any comments on how intervention could have prevented a bunch of the problems the characters caused each other?