So, yeah… pretty awesome. I’d let Pirate Asuka handle my Jolly Roger, if you know what I mean. (I MEANT MY PENIS.) (Wait, she’s how old again?) (So yeah, definitely would let her.)
Why was this not here earlier? I have to return and do this? For shame, other ORers. Forcing me to actually do something.
(My top 10 favorite Bond movies list is in the works.)
Tanegashi Accel Impact!
Robotics;Notes is the third anime adaptation of one of the Science Adventure series of Visual Novels by 5pb. and Nitroplus, following Chaos;Head (produced by Madhouse) and Steins;Gate (produced by White Fox). This time they handed the keys to Production I.G, and FUNimation has already licensed it to stream on their website.
Robotics;Notes takes place in 2019, presumably in the same universe as Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate (a bit more on that later), and ostensibly centers on a high school robotics club in danger of losing its club status. Its only two members are the terribly disinterested gamer Kaito and the overenthusiastic club president and mecha freak Akiho, who is obsessed with completing a giant robot that the club has been working on for years. I say "ostensibly" because clearly there is more to this story. All signs point to it being more than just a show about a high school club building a giant robot together. Kaito and Akiho are linked by a mysterious incident in their past and something awfully weird is going on with the world…
(Caution: Contains some Eureka Seven spoilers and very mild Astral Ocean spoilers. I’ll just assume the target audience for this is people who watched E7 and are curious about AO.)
This might be a weird statement to see on OR, but I never considered myself a huge mecha fan (meaning a huge fan of mecha, not a fan of huge mecha… Never mind). I mean, it’s not that I don’t like the mecha genre, it was just never on the list of things I would actively seek out and I am woefully uneducated in the field (I know more about Gungrave than I do about Gundam). Consequently, I didn’t really have any expectations coming into Eureka Seven – a show that now ranks very high on my must watch list. I’m sure you already know all the superlatives – the mecha, the animation and design, the world, the characters, pacing, story – it all works extremely well, and it certainly left room for a sequel. So imagine my horror when I discovered that they decided to change everything for Astral Ocean. All of a sudden it’s 2050. All of a sudden we are just on good old near-future Earth with Americans and Japanese and… No Eureka or Renton. What the fuck?
I hate the word "fate"…
I am a firm believer that a lot of anime (especially the good kind) can appeal to non-anime fans if they just give it a try. Thus, I find myself talking about it a lot with the non-anime crowd, and by "talking" I mostly mean "defending." One of the most common charges I hear is that anime is just too weird. And it isn’t like these people are talking out of their asses. To say that anime isn’t weird would be disingenuous, but is weird really a bad thing? Would you rather have yet another generic product full of the same tired narrative and visual conventions, or do you want something new and interesting that resists classification and cannot easily be put into a mold?
As expected, I had an enormously interesting time at Otakon over the weekend. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the merchandise I spent a fortune on, these were things I will forever hold dear in the treasure chest that is my beating heart, along with the memory of all the people I shared it with. It is a place full of wonderous, hopeful joy and unbridled passion for Japanese animation, video games, and other things tangently related at best that people thought would fit in. In my dreams I still see that citidel of merriment, the Baltimore Convention Center, whose halls and doors filled with the best and brightest of anime fandom, and were sheparded by the utmost professional staffers to panels of most magnificent bounty. Few days have passed, but I already long for next year’s congress. Oh, Otakon, how I will miss thee.
Episode 11, "The Feast of Fools"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: Oscar remembers when he was young and Zenigata saved him from drowning. In the present, Zenigata discusses with Oscar a rash of new thefts pulled off by Fujiko, and says he won’t be allowed to pursue Lupin until he arrests her. Fujiko, meanwhile, is in the care of Goemon. When Goemon hears about the thefts from the radio, he decides to investigate. Zenigata sets up a trap at the Musee de Marsene to get Fujiko, but a valuable tiara is stolen, regardless. Both Zenigata and Lupin come to the conclusion that Fujiko isn’t the one stealing the artifacts, that it’s the work of a dirty cop. Zenigata leaves catching Fujiko to Oscar, who it turns out has been framing Fujiko. Exasperated that the inspector refuses to show interest in Fujiko’s crimes, Oscar decides to frame her for an officer’s murder. The owl group approach him and tell him he has their support. Oscar sends another fake warning from Fujiko, saying that she will steal the jeweled wedding dress of the "bride of the year" at the Fete Nationale. Meanwhile, Count Almeida continues observation of Fujiko. A bomb threat is called into the police. Zenigata appears and tells Oscar he doubts Fujiko is behind it. Oscar is angered by this and is then approached again by the owl group. They plan a bomb explosion as a distraction so that Oscar can take the dress. At the parade, Oscar waits for the plan to go into action. Goemon blocks the path of the parade with his sword. Lupin finds the bomb under the bridge and decides to disable it. The owl men surround Goemon. After hearing from Zenigata about protecting one’s pride, Oscar runs off. Under the bridge, Lupin tries to disconnect the bomb, but Oscar interrupts and grabs it, jumping into the water below. The bomb explodes underwater. Comments: Now, I have to admit, I haven’t commented on the character of Oscar all that much (save for a bit in the last review), because I’m not that interested in him. I can understand where they were trying to go with this character, showing how obsessing over somebody could twist you and make you act irrational. But he seemed kind of annoying most of the time and I wondered where they were going with him, if anywhere. Until now, Oscar has been an unstable, but fairly innocent, if not overzealous. But in this episode, he’s gone as far as murder and theft to satisfy his desire to see Fujiko brought to justice and therefore Inspector Zenigata pleased. He has gone completely overboard and has even conspired with the Glaucus owl people. It may even have been that the owls weren’t planning on blowing up the bridge until there were people on it (a possibility I can’t ignore given the nature of Almeida). I mean, framing Fujiko for thefts is one thing, stupid, but not nearly as bad as killing a fellow police officer to frame Fujiko. Clearly his hatred for Fujiko and desire for Zenigata pushed him over the edge. It was interesting then to see where they actually went with this, and I think it paid off, when Zenigata gives a speech about how saving Oscar when he was young taught him to always protect the "one thing", your personal pride. We not only get to see some of Zenigata’s ideals, closely guarded in this show where he seems dogged, but distant, but Oscar realizes the horror of what he’d been doing, and makes the decision to stop the scheme with the owl men his way. He realizes that even if he’s too corrupt, he has to protect Zenigata’s honor. Another noteworthy aspect of the episode is Goemon’s treatment of Fujiko. Goemon knows that Fujiko is not the innocent soul he thought she was when he first met her. She has a difficult personality, and is not as pure as he would like her to be. However, we see him taking care of her in her time of need, when she is at her lowest. We always knew Goemon was a noble, but I really admire him for helping her. And hey, Goemon almost met Lupin in this episode! Pity they missed each other, since they were both working towards the same goal. Lupin himself seemed pretty dedicated in trying to clear Fujiko’s name, too, but it was more like a hobby to him than anything else. Anyway, a good episode. Not great, but good. I found myself feeling sorry for a character I didn’t care that much for previously, so that says something about it. Overall Score:4 out of 5
Episode 10, "Ghost Town"
*****SPOILERS***** Synopsis: Lupin awakes from a dream only to see an owl-headed man in his room, telling him to "steal" Fujiko Mine. Zenigata and Oscar arrive by plane to meet with Count Almeida of Glaucus Pharmaceuticals. Months earlier, the owl headed men hired Lupin to go to where the Frauline Eule cult is and "steal" Fujiko. In the present, Lupin sneaks around Almeida’s house as Zenigata and Oscar arrive, demanding to see Almeida about Lupin. Zenigata reveals that he knows that the drug cult was a cover for Almeida’s drug company, which was performing human experimentation. Lupin later confronts Almeida, but is knocked out with a drug. When he awakens, he finds himself in the old Glaucus Pharmaceuticals facility the company of Dr. Fritz Kaiser, who explains that Frauline Eule drug has euphoria as it’s short-term effect, but longtime use produces bodies that look like owls. Thirteen years earlier, Dr. Kaiser was working at the lab when there was a chemical spill. In present day, he shows a picture of his daughter to Lupin. The girl in the picture is a young Fujiko. When Lupin looks up, Kaiser has disappeared. Lupin encounters Zenigata, who thinks Lupin wants Fujiko as evidence of the company’s wrongdoing. The two are ambushed by gun-wielding lab technicians and split up. Lupin encounters several bizarre visions, revealing that Fujiko was part of the company’s experiments. At the end, Lupin isn’t sure whether he experienced what he experienced, or it was a dream. Comments: Wow. This was one bizarre episode. Sort of straddling the line between "artsy representations" and "weirdness for weirdness sake". But while it wasn’t one of the best episodes of the show, it was pretty enlightening. The pieces are finally beginning to fit together here. The first meeting between Lupin and Fujiko was actually arranged by Count Luis Yu Almeida, making the revelation of the fake prophet from episode 8 not a surprise at all to Lupin, who already knew. The whole first episode of the show, then, was Lupin scoping out Fujiko more than attempting to steal the drug statue (though he probably intended to do that as well). He already knew who Fujiko was and expected her to show up to steal it, too. It may even be that Fujiko showed up in that case because she knew of the connection between the drug cult and Glaucus Pharmaceuticals, who had experimented on her. It appears now that Fujiko is the daughter of Dr. Fritz Kaiser, though whether it’s biological or he was simply put in charge of her by Glaucus, is still up in the air. Apparently he was working with the Frauline Eule drug, which causes euphoria, but can also cause aggression and body changes that make people look like owls. How, exactly, does that work? I guess it’s just a funny coincidence that the company links itself with the Owl of Minerva (Glaucus), the goddess of medicine. Or perhaps we’re not meant to take the owl transformations as literal events but figurative ones. It’s hard to when the guy says outright that the drug causes people to start looking like owls. Nobody seems to treat the owl-men that work for LYA as being something that abnormal. Perhaps, though, people just assume those are costumes. Zenigata actually gets off his ass and does something in this episode, though to what degree is questionable if you take it that Lupin dreamed all of this, or at least some of it. Zenigata made the connection between the drug cult, Glaucus, and Almeida, which even surprises Oscar, who gets shamed by him later on when he’s told to keep quiet. I said it’s about time that Zenigata take some action. I think it’s even possible he had his eye out for this well before he teamed up with Fujiko in episode 4. I hope we get to see him in action some more before the show ends. I want to point out that the town Glaucus’ old laboratory was in was called "Eulenspiegel". A trickster figure called "Till Eluenspigel" comes from German folklore. In English he’s come to be known as "Owlglass". In the tales told of him he plays practical jokes that expose the vices of his contemperories, such as greed and hypocrisy. Now who, in this story, sounds a bit like that, huh? A pretty clever show. Overall Score:4 out of 5
