The Anime Vid Show That Wasn't

[thuviaptarth]

First of all, there was an excellent anime vid show at Vividcon. I loved it. I will be writing it up later. This is not about that show. This is about the anime vid show that wasn't.

Caveat #1: In one of the vids in flummery's show, there's a clip that says, "Right now someone thinks they're a Japanese animation expert even though they've only seen 'Akira' and a few 'Dragonball Z' episodes and they just won't stop talking about how Goku can kick everyone's butt." That's pretty much me, except replace Akira and Dragonball Z with X and Yami no Matsuei, and Goku kicking everyone's butt with "gender issues in anime/manga and non-Western methods of visual storytelling." I am made even more dangerous by the extensive ignorance created by Wikipedia articles, a few academic papers, and half a book on contemporary Japanese sexual mores by an author whose perspective I don't trust. So I could be getting a lot of things wrong -- and if you see something wrong, please feel free to correct me.

Caveat #2: In case it wasn't clear from the previous entry, this is in NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM an official Vividcon playlist. It would be, in fact, a resounding failure as a Vividcon playlist, because of the lack of variety of vidders and fandoms represented. My primary purpose here was to pimp shows I like; getting people interested in anime vidding was an important goal, but a secondary one. And since I only started looking at anime three months ago and anime vids a month and a half ago, my selection is very limited--I've listed 15 vids, but only nine vidders and five fandoms. I mean, of course I picked vids I thought were good, because lousy vids are not going to convince anyone of anything but the selector's bad taste--but I wasn't trying to showcase anime vidding or anime techniques.

On anime & anime vidding

Some things to keep in mind when watching anime:

Most of the series represented here are TV series; as with live action TV, this means they're on a tight budget and a tight schedule, and unless the art direction is very creative, they're going to be less visually innovative than films. There are exceptions to this (X--which was the first anime series I watched, and remains one of the most gorgeous--is one of them), but it works as a general rule. Some of the elements of anime that look strangest to new watchers are actually creative ways of dealing with the time and budget crunches.

In anime, action is expensive. It requires a lot of drawing, and a lot of redrawing if something goes wrong. This is why, instead of internal movement in frame, you get the following to indicate mood or movement instead:

• stationary establishing shots of architecture or objects;
  
• an emphasis on external movement (it's cheaper to move a camera than to animate a figure);
  
• color washes or other digitized effects on a single image.

Even when there is internal movement, frequently there are only one or two things moving in a frame, or the movement will be a cascade of objects (flower petals, feathers, leaves, moving cogs, etc.)--though I believe that last often also owes something to Japanese traditions of symbolic representation. For example, in manga [print comics], the object of love or desire will often be shown surrounded by cascade of flowers, the way in a Western film, the object of desire might be shot in soft focus with glowing background light.

The vid list

1. X OVA/TV
   
   Ermac Studios, Lord's Prayer (X OVA/TV)
   
   This is in many ways what I think of as a typical anime vid -- techno music, fast cutting, focused on style rather than character -- but it's a very well-done typical vid, and it represents the visual style of the TV series well.
   
   Katherine Montgomery, Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (X TV)
   
   This song choice just should not work at all for this series, and yet it does.
   
   I have more extensive comments on both vids here. And if you can recommend me decent X vids or fic, I will love you forever. Or write you an X vignette, if that's more to your taste.
   
   
2. Read or Die OVA
   
   WickedAmp, One Million Miles
   
   I saw this on last year's Vividcon DVD set without having any idea of what Read or Die was about. After the vid, I still had no idea what Read or Die was about -- but goddamn did it look cool. Slightly more extensive comments here.
   
   starherd & kasra_c, Read or Die Another Day
   
   See, this one makes it clear -- it's about the kick-ass James Bond spygirls. I'm not sure the uninitiated watcher would get the thing about the secret society of librarians dedicated to saving the world, though.
   
   
3. Gravitation
   
   Croik, Can't Make It
   
   The pink-haired kid is a boy. No, really. And he's not 12, he's 19. No, really.
   
   At some point, I'll do a real review of this and I'll probably dwell on the smart combination of shipper vid with dual character study and the neat transition from Shuichi-as-subject to Shuichi-as-object via the clip of the boy on TV, but for now I'll just say it's all about the umbrellas and the cigarette lighter.
   
   Croik, Shuichi Came Back
   
   One of the aspects of anime that is startling for new American watchers is the tendency for characters to turn into animals at random moments--to lighten the dramatic tension or express some sort of emotional reaction. I find it alternately bewildering and aggravating, so it was nice to find a vid that made excellent use of this for comedy.
   
   
4. Revolutionary Girl Utena
   
   I watched all of these before watching Utena. They're here because, by that measure, I know they can appeal to someone unfamiliar with the source; and also because I wanted to show that not all anime is about the pretty boys. Sometimes it's about the oddly drawn girls with very sharp noses and severe overbites.
   
   Also, in this one, in case the breasts didn't tip you off, renenet, the pink-haired person is a girl. So is the purple-haired person.
   
   Sephiroth, Gravity of Love
   
   Girls, swords, rose gardens, and world-save-age. And lots of neat architecture. Slightly more extensive comments here.
   
   WickedAmp, Real Enough
   
   This would have been a great entry for last year's Vividcon challenge. Dreamy, surreal, enigmatic. Slightly more extensive comments here.
   
   kusoyaro, Bachelorette
   
   More girls, swords, rose gardens, and world-save-age. Maybe less epic and more playful; technically astonishing.
   
   
5. Descendants of Darkness/Yami no Matsuei
   
   starherd & kasra_c, Sleep Now
   
   Fast action teaser, and (rare?) noncomic use of lip-synching to great effect. One of the reasons I like this is that you wouldn't think this was the same show or the same vidders as Possession (see below); it's got a completely different style and effect.
   
   boniblithe, The Shape of My Heart (temporarily down)
   Character study of Muraki, the series villain; neat shift from literal to metaphorical interpretations of the chorus lyrics. Slightly more extensive comments here.
   
   KendappahOh & VampireYui (Istiv Studio), Who Will Love Me Now?
   
   I got this from a friend who got it from a friend who got it from a filesharing network. If you know of a place to download, I'd love to know about it.
   
   This would be notable for the ethereally beautiful and very atypical PJ Harvey song alone--but it also makes use of the song in ways fairly common for shows, but relatively rare for vids, at least in my experience. It is probably the slowest and most meditative of the anime vids I've seen.
   
   starherd & kasra_c, Possession
   
   flummery said, "The pain, the pretty, the gay. Now with added bad touching." Or possibly that was nestra. Much more extensive analysis here.
   
   
   
6. Hellsing
   
   Croik, Midnight
   
   I know nothing about Hellsing. Well, okay, now that I've seen this vid, I'm pretty sure it's about vampires, what with the fangs and blood and bats and all. An effectively creepy and pulse-pounding action-horror vid.
   
   
7. Multifandom
   
   WickedAmp, Butterfly
   
   I didn't want to end with a vid that would give people nightmares (okay, with a vid that would give me nightmares), so this seemed like a good choice -- because it's energetic and fierce and full of women kicking ass. If I'd seen it in time, I would have recommended it for Club Vivid; as it is, I settled for keeping the music on my mp3 player for a few weeks as my pick-me-up-gotta-move song. Slightly more extensive comments here.
   
   
8. Bonus tracks
   
   Witch Hunter Robin credit sequence
   
   If I or any of my minions companions in crime had had the equipment to rip DVD tracks, I would have used the text-less credits sequence for Witch Hunter Robin included on the series' first DVD. WHR's style is striking and unusual: sort of Gothic and sort of noir and very different from the big-eyed, chubby-cheeked style typical of anime; for those of you familiar with the other comics tradition, it reminds me a bit of Michael Lark's work on Gotham Central, only prettier and with more distinguishable characters. Slightly more extensive comments here.
   
   Rinny, Forbidden Glory and Tenjou, I Wish (Angel Sanctuary)
   
   Okay, first, I am going to beg you: Don't watch the Angel Sanctuary anime. Please. Just don't. It's awful. It flattens out and uglifies the character designs, the animation is cheap-ass, and many of the adaptation choices made in the script are profoundly stupid. It also only covers the first storyline of the manga, which means it ends on a cliffhanger. The manga is a thousand times better.
   
   But the power of fannish creativity to redeem lousy source material will never cease to amaze me, because I actually found two Angel Sanctuary vids I liked.
   
   "Unstoppable" is a fairly straightforward retelling of Sara and Setsuna's relationship. It's much less ambitious than "I Wish," and it could stand to have at least one verse cut out of it, so I was surprised to find that most of the people I showed both vids liked "Unstoppable" better. I suspect because it's retelling a simpler story it's easier for people unfamiliar with the manga/anime to understand. There's hardly a clip that shows a character besides Sara or Setsuna. "I Wish" is darker and more complex and it conveys an idea of the unsettling universe of Angel Sanctuary, while managing to touch on most of the major character relationships.
   

Additional series information

1. X/1999
   
   • rachelmanija on X manga v.1-2, DVD 1, DVD 2, DVD 3-4, DVD conclusion, manga v.1-14
     
   • coffee_and_ink on Tokyo Babylon manga & X TV and manga & rewatching X Eps. 1-4; reading vol. 14-15
     
   • oyceter on X eps. 0-3 (with some discussion of the meaning of characters' names), eps. 4-5, & ep. 9
   • sisabet on X TV
   
   
   
2. Read or Die
   
   • rachelmanija on Read or Die
   • coffee_and_ink on Read or Die
     
   
   
   
3. Gravitation
   
   • animerecs on Gravitation TV (katrimae & movies_michelle)
     
   • coffee_and_ink on Gravitation TV and manga
   
   
   
4. Yami no Matsuei/Descendants of Darkness
   boniblithe did an extensive overview of Yami no Matsuei for crack_van