Gin no Saji

Gin no Saji, or Silver Spoon, is a story about a fish out of water.  Well, actually it's about a city kid who attends an agricultural school.  Hachiken  is a high school student who is quite obviously totally out of his element from the first day of school.  All  of his fellow classmates are farm kids who have plans to take over their family farm business in the future or otherwise have agriculturally-related careers, like becoming a veterinarian.  They are all totally dedicated to their goals and have a lot of basic farming knowledge. Hachiken by contrast, has no motivation and no goals in life, and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s only at this agricultural high school because he’s running away from something.

 

Surprisingly, Hachiken begins to learn the various aspects of agriculture, and even more surprisingly, he fits in with his fellow classmates.  He has a lot to learn, some of it fairly painfully, but he also has some natural leadership ability, and is smart.   In addition, he has no qualms about rolling his sleeves up and pitching in, whatever the task may be.  His willingness to do all the jobs alongside everyone else, and sometimes his unique perspective on the job, helps him become easily accepted by his peers.  And his ability to come up with schemes and to help his classmates out, helps them all become friends.  He quickly falls for one of his fellow students a girl named Aki, and he joins the equestrian club to be near her since she loves horses.

   

Hachiken struggles with the usual farming conundrums, including how do you stop seeing a cute little piglet and realize that this animal is bacon and pork chops?  How do you butcher and eat an animal you’ve helped raise? He names one small piglet Pork Bowl (ButaDon) and helps this runt of the litter reach market size during the series.  Along the way he also begins to come to terms with his lack of a goal in life.

They never clearly explain exactly what it is that Hachiken is running from.    He obviously has problems with his family since he's very unhappy when his older brother shows up.  He also apparently had problems with being picked on and isolated in school.  One of his former counselors/teachers who was concerned for him follows him to the agriculture school and witnesses how he's changed and his camaraderie with his classmates and instructors. 

Silver Spoon is another series of a type that I call “educational”.  The story is interesting enough to keep you watching, but they use the series along the way to teach you about the topic.  Examples of this type of anime include Moyashimon, which teaches you about microbiology and fermentation, Spice and Wolf, which teaches you about merchandising and trade, Ghost Hound, which teaches you about neuroscience, and even Nodame Cantabile, which teaches you about classical music.  Series are better or worse at how they handle this.  Sometime the teaching interferes with the story, and that’s unfortunate, but sometimes it’s all pretty well done.   I would say Gin no Saji does a good job at it.  The characters are likable, and you can certainly empathize with Hachiken’s struggles.  The story is entertaining enough to keep you watching, and along the way, you may pick up some information about agricultural science.    It's a good series, which I suspect will have another season coming.

PandoraHearts

It’s always hard to decide what series to post about next, unless I have one that’s really making (or has made) an impression on me.  I’m getting close to finishing up some short series so I’ll probably post about them in the near future.  In the meantime I’m falling back on older series again.  Today I thought I’d post about PandoraHearts.

PandoraHearts is about a rich kid named Oz Bessarius (or Vessalius).  Oz has it all, a huge mansion and servants, a boy his age named Gilbert who is his best friend as well as his servant, and a younger sister who worships him.  In the first episode, during the rite celebrating his coming of age ceremony at 15 years old, everything goes wrong.  For no known reason, weird people in robes show up, and attack him.  In trying to defend himself, he accidentally kills Gilbert, and Oz himself is thrown into Hell, which is known as the Abyss. 

Oz wanders around the Abyss for a bit and finds other entities, including a young girl named Alice who is a “chain”.  Chains are entities from the Abyss that try to make pacts with humans in order to access the human world.  They also have powerful abilities when attached to a human, but the bad news is that the chain uses up the human’s life force each time it acts.  

Oz discovers that he can leave the Abyss if he makes a pact with a “Chain” and he decides to go for it and makes a pact with Alice.  In their pact, Oz and Alice agree to find out why Oz was thrown into the Abyss and to find Alice’s past, which she has no recollection of.  Although Alice is a young girl in appearance, she becomes a frigging huge, powerful, black rabbit in her chain form.  She and Oz together return to the human world.

Oz discovers that a lot of time has passed in the real world.  He did not actually manage to kill Gilbert, and Gilbert has become a man who goes by the name of Raven.  Raven has been working with an organization named Pandora, and especially a man named Break, and they were about to venture into the Abyss to retrieve Oz when Oz and Alice manage to return on their own.

The rest of the series is basically Oz, Alice and Raven trying to find Alice’s past and the reason for Oz’s banishment to the Abyss.  They are helped or hindered along the way by various members of Pandora, by Break and his chain, by Raven’s seriously insane brother Vincent and Vincent’s servant Echo, and by Oz’s disappeared ancestor, Jack Bessarius.

The things I loved about this anime series:  It’s pretty.  It has a unique plot which is unique enough to occasionally be hard to figure out where it’s going.  The music is waaaaaaaay beyond awesome.  The two soundtracks from it are high up on my all time favorite music list.

The thing I hated about it, and that caused it to not be anywhere near the running for one of my favorite series:  No ending!  Not even a suggestion of an ending.  They spend the whole series working up to the fact that everything that’s happening is related to a massive Tragedy of Sabrié, which occurred 100 years ago (and yet which somehow Vincent and Gilbert lived through).  And then they end the series without ever saying what happened in the Tragedy of Sabrié.  You get hints of Alice’s past, in which she knew and interacted with Jack Bessarius, and hints about the Tragedy, but no explanations.  In addition, very late in the series Oz discovers that not only does his father despise him and consider him “filthy”, it was probably his father who threw him into the Abyss.  Again, no background, no explanation of what’s going on there. 

This is a series where the ending really did ruin the series.  It’s near the top of my all time worst non-ending endings.  If they had done a second season and explained more, it would have been worth watching.  As it is, I don’t recommend it, unless you just like pretty. The story is interesting, the characters are interesting, but they totally leave you hanging with nowhere to go but to buy the manga.   Get the soundtracks though.  They’re wonderful.

NANA

NANA is a slice of life anime, covering ordinary events and ordinary people.  And by that I mean, no magic, no transforming, no futuristic society or feudalistic society.  Just normal, everyday life.

The story line of Nana follows two young women, both of whom are named Nana.  Nana Komatsu is a normal, everyday girl who has a tendency to jump into romantic relationships without much thought.  Nana Osaki is a guitarist/singer, who is very independent and has few friends, let alone relationships.  The two Nana’s meet on the train on the way to Tokyo, as each is setting out to start a new life.  Nana Komatsu is going to Tokyo to join her boyfriend; Nana Osaki is going to find her friends with plans to start a new Rock ‘n Roll band.    The Nana's interact on the train because it is delayed by snow.  Once it arrives in Tokyo, they go their separate ways.

Coincidentally, when separately searching for a place to live, they both end up looking at the same apartment.  They decide that they are fated to share it, since the number on it is 707, nana-maru-nana.  And the adventures begin as the Nana's become best friends.  Nana Osaki refers to Nana Komatsu as Hachi or Hachiko, because Nana K. is so much like a little puppy at times.  For the rest of this post, I’ll refer to her as Hachiko also to make things less confusing.

The Nana's come to like each other very much as best friends and become embroiled in each other’s lives and loves.  This anime is very much about their lives and loves.   Nana’s original four-member band back home broke up when the lead guitarist, Ren, (who was also Nana’s lover), left them to join a band called Trapnest.  Trapnest is a famous band that has made it in the big time world of Rock ‘n Roll.  Nana comes to Tokyo and meets with her 3 friends.  Together they find another guitarist and form a band called the Black Stones, or BLAST for short.  Hachiko becomes their number one fan and supporter. 

Hachiko, for her part, continues to jump between relationships, especially after she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her.  She has an affair with a member of Trapnest, Takumi, who she has had a crush on since the band was formed.  Because he's gone so much with the band, after their one night affair Hachiko dumps him when she feels herself falling in love with a member of Black Stones, Nobu.   Hachiko is just a fling for Takumi, but he doesn’t take well to being dumped and comes back around, just when Hachiko discovers that she’s pregnant, and doesn’t know whether Takumi or Nobu is the father.  

Takumi, who is established in his career, steps up and offers to marry Nana, and Nobu, who is just beginning and doesn’t yet have a career, steps back.  Through a group of emotionally charged series episodes, Hachiko decides to keep the baby and marry Takumi.  This series of events splits the Nana’s apart, since Nana dislikes Takumi immensely and feels like he’s stolen Hachiko from her and the Black Stones.   

While the Hachiko/Takumi story is unfolding, Nana and the Black Stones are struggling to start their career.  Nana and Ren have gotten back together secretly, but Nana is having blackout episodes, depression episodes and hyperventilation episodes.   Basically she’s emotionally pretty unstable, but Ren and her band and Hachiko all love her and do their best to help her.

As usual, I’ve skipped all the side characters and their individual stories, and unlike a lot of anime series, they develop these side characters personalities and stories without killing them off in the next episode.   The whole story here is much more involved than I’ve included in this post.

Although in general “slice of life” series are among my least favorite genres, I did enjoy this series.  For one thing the music is waaaaaaaaaay beyond AWESOME.   As you can imagine, with two bands and two female lead singers, there is just not enough good I can say about the music.  The singles are sooooooo amazing.

The series ending was a little cryptic for me.  I suppose they meant to give hints about things they didn’t have time to cover in the series, but they never do explain what happened with Nana O., and why she isn’t at the final episode meeting.  I like my endings a little more straight forward.  Other than that, it’s a very watchable series.   I was amused to find when I bought the American version that it was sold in the adult section rather than the anime section, I suppose because of the sex.   A lot of prime time TV has more sex than this series though, so that’s just silly.       

D. Gray-man

Another series I watched some time ago is D. Gray-man.  This is an anime series developed from a manga.  It’s also a long series.  Season one was 51 episodes and season two was 52.  This post is a synopsis of all 103 episodes.

The premise for this series is a world where a very powerful bad guy, the Millennium Earl, is working to destroy humanity.  He is aided in this endeavor by his top minions known as the Noah, and by akuma (demons) he creates.  The Earl’s akuma are machines with the ability to evolve, that are created from the souls of people who have died and are called back from death by their loved ones who have fallen into despair.   Arrayed against the Earl and his forces are the Black Order, a group of Exorcists.  The Order’s exorcist members are individuals who can use the power of a substance they call Innocence to destroy and defeat akuma.  The Order’s most powerful members are the Generals or Marshals, depending on your translation.

The story follows a 15-year old boy named Allen Walker.  Allen is “trained” (alternately brow-beaten, tortured and/or ignored) by one of the generals, Marian Cross, and sent to the Black Order.  He becomes an exorcist and is joined in his travels by other exorcists, including the three other main characters, Lenalee, Kanda and Lavi.   Unlike most of the other exorcists whose Innocence takes the form of a tool (katana, hammer) or apparel (boots), Allen’s Innocence is embedded in his left hand which becomes a huge claw which he uses to destroy akuma.  Allen also has the ability to see disguised akuma with his left eye, which contains some element of evil in it.  Allen’s left eye was a curse from his “father”, Mana, the man who raised him.  When Mana died, Allen (who was about 6 years old at the time) called him back from death which turned him into an akuma, and Allen then had to destroy him.

Most of the story is about the continuing battles between the forces of the Earl and the Black Order.  It also entails a lot of the individual exorcist’s battles with overcoming their own handicaps and growing stronger.   The Exorcists are sent out by the Black Order to find more Innocence, as well as to locate the generals, Cross in particular, and to battle the ever-present akuma.  As the story evolves, the Earl calls together the Noah, and both the Earl-tachi and the Black Order work to find the “Heart” of Innocence, which will allow whoever possesses it to win the overall battles.   

Throughout much of the story, the Earl and his Noah have the upper hand.  At one point in the story Allen is killed by a Noah named Tyki.  Allen’s Innocence saves his life but then he spends many episodes coming to an accommodation with his Innocence and re-learning to use it. He finally realizes that something about him makes him a balance point between good and evil, having elements of both sides in his make-up.  This realization allows him to fight on with his Innocence, at significantly increased strength, although some people in the Black Order struggle with his evil side.  Lenalee goes through a similar accommodation process with her Innocence, and at times both Allen and Lenalee are considered as the person who can hold the Heart of Innocence.

The Earl and his forces come very close to winning it all.  They gain the Heart, kill a boatload of the Exorcists and almost destroy all of current existence.  At the last second, Allen rebuilds all of existence, including his friend’s lives, by playing a piano and thwarting the Earl’s plans.  This is one of the more climatic moments of the series but even winning this particular battle does not give the exorcists much breathing room.  It’s quickly followed by the last battle of the series, a direct attack on the Black Order headquarters. 

D. Gray-man has a non-ending ending.  Allen-tachi survive the last battle at the Order, but nothing is really resolved.  They haven’t defeated the Earl or stopped his plans for humanity’s destruction and so still have on-going battles against the Earl’s forces to look forward to.  Plus these late battles and Allen’s abilities create more questions than the series answers.  Somehow Allen is the successor to a Noah position, the “Fourteenth” or the Musician.  So very obviously the series could have just kept going.  It wasn’t a very satisfying ‘ending’ to get to after 103 episodes.  

Still, the series is pretty, the music is good and the characters and character development is interesting to watch.  Overall it was definitely entertaining and interesting enough to keep me watching and enjoying it for 103 episodes, so I'd have to say that it's worth watching.  I just wish it had had a little more closure at the end. And I never did know where the series title comes from.  Maybe it's explained in the manga.

Shingeki no Kyoujin

I’m going to talk about Shingeki no Kyoujin today.  This is a little unusual for me since I usually only post about series that are finished.  That’s because I never know if I’m going to like a series or not until I see the ending.  The notable exception to that rule was Bleach.  I ended up doing about 6 posts on Bleach, 5 of them while it was ongoing.

At any rate, I’m going to post about Shingeki because it’s the first series I’ve watched in a long time that I find myself waiting impatiently each week for the next episode to come out.  So needless to say, I really like this series.

Okay, background:  Shingeki (English version of title: ‘Attack on Titan’) is about the human race fighting for its survival.  The setting is a mostly feudal society of humans that live behind three massive, 20+ foot high walls that protect them from the giant, human-looking species bent on wiping them out.  These giants are called “Titans” or “Eotenas” or “Kyoujin”, depending on the subbing group and translations.  These kyoujin prey on humans, eating them whenever they can.  The kyoujin come in a multitude of forms, from the not very tall 5 meter form up to about a 20+ meter form.  “Normal” kyoujin are basically brainless, mostly slow-to-move, eating machines that chow down on humans as often as they can catch them.  Along with these “normal” kyoujin are the “abnormal” or “aberrant” ones.  Abnormals include brainless ones who can move quickly and also include intelligent ones.

The main characters in this series are Eren Jaeger, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlart, who are young kids at the start of the series when a massive, intelligent kyoujin breaks the outer wall, allowing the brainless kyoujin in to attack and eat the humans.  Eren-tachi are rescued but get to watch a kyoujin eat Eren’s mother.   Humans retreat to inside the second wall, and Eren-tachi grow up and train to be soldiers.  For Eren it’s a quest – to kill as many kyoujin as he can, but also to free humans from the restrictions of living behind walls.  The soldiers wear battle gear called multi-axial maneuver gear that allows them to move acrobatically and aerobatically to defeat the kyoujin by slicing a section out of the nape of their necks – essentially the only way they can be killed effectively.  There are three groups of soldiers, the regular city guard type called the Garrison, the soldiers called the Gendarmerie who guard the elite citizens who live in safety behind the third wall, and the group that Eren wishes to join, the Reconnaissance or Survey Legion.  This third group makes raids and forays outside the walls, and has the logo of a crossed white and black wing, which Eren sees as wings of freedom.

At episode 5, Eren-tachi have just completed training when the massive, intelligent kyoujin who broke the outer wall shows up again and breaks the second wall.  Brainless kyoujin flood in and attack the humans and Eren is eaten by one.  Mikasa, who is probably the best fighter in the group and also happens to love Eren, almost loses it but is rescued at the last minute by a massive kyoujin who begins killing all the kyoujin around him.

It takes about 4 episodes from the time Eren's eaten to find out, but the kyoujin-killing, massive kyoujin turns out to be Eren!  Eren has the ability to transform into a kyoujin.  This ability polarizes the humans, some of whom want to kill him immediately and some of whom want to use his abilities to fight the kyoujin.  In the end, Eren shows he can be useful by using his kyoujin form to lift a boulder and move it to block the breach in the second wall.  Humans win a battle with the kyoujin for the first time ever, thanks to Eren.  So after a trial, Eren is taken into the Survey Legion under the direct control of Captain Levi, and they begin to work with him and try plans to extend human’s range and re-take the area inside the outer wall.  This is currently where I am in the series, having just watched their unsuccessful attempt to capture the human inside a massive, intelligent female kyoujin.

There are multiple on-going questions rising up as the series progresses, which is one of the things I really like about it.  Like:  If Eren has the ability to become an intelligent kyoujin, who are the humans inside the other intelligent kyoujins?   Eren’s father injected Eren with substances as a child which probably gave him the abilities he has.  Where is Eren’s father now and what is this kyoujin-creation all about?  Where do the kyoujin come from in the first place?  When the research arm of the Survey Legion gets too close to answers, they are sabotaged by someone, probably among the humans.  Who among the humans is working with the kyoujin to destroy humanity and why?   And who’s the spy/traitor among the Survey Legion?

So many questions.  And if you have read ahead in the manga, don’t tell me the answers!  As I said, it’s been a while since I’ve waited so impatiently for next episodes of a series  to be released.  I’m enjoying it.

At any rate, I’m sure I’ll be posting about this series again.  The story line is totally unique and the music is awesome, especially the first ED.   If you aren’t watching it, I will warn you that there’s a lot of blood, and lots and lots of death in this series.  But the story and characters are worth it.   

Cardcaptor Sakura

Cardcaptor Sakura (CCS) is another series I watched very early in my anime-watching career, and I still sometimes get the urge to go back and watch it again.  Of course, downloaded files when I watched this series were tiny little things you almost had to squint to see.  Sometimes I watch parts of this series just to fully appreciate how far video graphics have come.

 

CCS follows the exploits of a young, grade-school girl named Sakura and her friends.  Sakura is living a normal life until she comes across a box of magic cards, the Clow Cards, which she opens.  The cards flee, scattering to the four winds, and the quest of the entire 70-episode series is essentially Sakura’s battles to recapture the magic cards.

Sakura’s best friend is Tomoyo, who happens to sew and likes to make costumes for Sakura and then film her wearing them during her battles.  Other people in her life when the series starts include her older brother, Toya, and Toya’s best friend, Yuki.  Sakura has a huge crush on Yuki.

The series is basically fun to watch.  Sakura is helped in her quest by Tomoyo and by a small magic plushie named Kero (short for Cereberus).  Kero is the guardian of the Clow cards ad the plushie is one of his forms.  Along the way Sakura gains friends and enemies and begins to grow up. 

The cards become increasingly difficult to find and catch as the series progresses, forcing Sakura to gain strength and grow.  Along the way a boy her age arrives from China.  This is Shaoran, a relative of the Card’s creator, Clow.  Shaoran is originally Sakura’s enemy as he wants to capture the cards himself.  He gains respect for Sakura though and becomes her friend and ally, eventually falling in love with her.

  

When Sakura captures all the cards, the card’s second guardian, Yue, shows up in order to determine if Sakura deserves to be able to own them.  Yue and Kero were originally Clow’s companions and Yue loved Clow, so he makes the test hard for Sakura.  Yue does determine that she deserves the cards though and things are fine until the appearance from England of the mysterious Eriol.  Eriol secretly causes Sakura to be unable to use the Clow cards and she finds she must gain new powers and transform the cards to Sakura cards.   Yue is particularly unhelpful in this, but you discover that he needs magic to survive and Sakura doesn‘t  have enough magical energy to sustain him.  Yue normally exists in the form of Toya’s friend Yuki most of the time.  In order to continue the existence of both his forms, Yuki and Yue, he leeches mega-energy from Toya, who loves him and gives it willingly.

In the end of course Sakura converts the cards, gets over her crush on Yuki and discovers that she returns Shaoran’s love. 

Despite all the struggles along the way, this series is so basically light and happy and fun that I’m often amazed that it was developed by the same group (CLAMP) who developed the ultra-tragic X, and Tokyo Babylon.  Still both those series are very much worth watching also.  

 

The plot of CCS is definitely typically CLAMP twisty.  The characters are gorgeous, the music is good and overall it’s just fun to watch.  It’s a happily-ever-after series so nobody dies and things all work out in the end.  Besides being fun to watch, the plot is quite twisty enough to keep you guessing and watching.  I liked it. 

Glass Fleet

Glass Fleet is another older series.  It’s a space opera that occurs within a weird “space” that has an atmosphere.    People can stand outside their spaceships with no protective gear and people live on asteroids that are not possibly big enough to hold an atmosphere if they needed to.  So the premise takes a little getting used to.

The story follows a young nobleman named Michel Volban who believes the ruling class of Nobles have too much power and fights with a group of rebels for the rights of the commoners.  Michel’s chief opponent is another young nobleman named Vetti Sforza, who is a megalomaniac determined to rule everything in existence and is well on his way to doing so.  Michel is also up against a pirate named Cleo who owns a glass spaceship that bears the seal of the Royal family, and who doesn’t care about politics.  Cleo only cares about living his life the way he wants to live it.  His glass spaceship is crewed by a gang of his pirate friends and they go around taking what they need from other ships.  In the process they run across Michel’s disabled ship and get saddled with Michel.

Like most anime, nobody in this series is quite who they seem.  Michel is actually a girl named Racine who has taken her brother’s place when he was lost in battle.   Cleo is actually the son of the previous ruler who was raised in exile by the ruler’s friend when his family was over-thrown and killed.   Vetti was abused and tormented as a homeless child, causing him to wish for some payback.

During the series, Vetti’s forces roll over pretty much everyone in their way, making him ruler of pretty much everything.  To solidify his position, he woos, wins and marries the daughter of the powerful head of the religion, even though Vetti actually prefers males and is doing everything in his power to possess Michel.   Vetti and Cleo resonate to each other and try to kill each other whenever they come into contact, but both are hampered by having some of the universe’s elemental power source embedded in their bodies.   That power source in their bodies reacts badly under certain circumstances, and causes them immense pain and loss of consciousness.

The basic plot underneath all the surface plots is that the asteroids that everyone lives on and the universe they live in are all spiraling toward a massive black hole-type formation.  The very powerful religion maintains that they will pass through the blackness and arrive essentially in paradise.   In reality, they will all die if they reach the black hole.  The asteroids that everyone lives on turn out to be all part of a massive spaceship designed to get them away from the black hole.  The catch is that all this information was lost over the years or covered up by the church, and no one knows that they should be trying to escape.   A lot happens before they figure it all out.

At the eleventh hour, Vetti and Cleo discover that they were a single entity before birth and were split into two babies, each containing some of the elemental power source.   Thus they are at least brothers, if not closer.  They discover that by working together they can save the universe.  To that end, Cleo essentially donates his life force to Vetti to accomplish this.  So in the end a combined Vetti-Cleo (who looks like Vetti, not Cleo) lives and Michel lives and they rule the universe together.

As usual, there's a lot I've left out of this synopsis, including the love story between Michel and Cleo. The series kept me interested all the way through despite the weirdness of space with an atmosphere.  Enough was going on, and keeping me guessing about what was going on, to make it worth watching.  Also, the music from the series is outstanding and the characters are pretty.  I enjoyed it overall, although I could have wished Vetti-Cleo had ended up looking like Cleo and not Vetti.