The Rolling Girls Debut Episode Opinions

The Rolling Girls is set in a post-apocalyptic future of sorts, and it starts with the best introduction to an anime I've seen in a while. To summarize the opening summary of events: Stuff happened and now Japan is split into their old prefectures again, which develop into individual nations.This promotes a sense of individuality and freedom of expression , and the new nations grow to be exclusive. They begin to war with each other, like a future Sengoku Jidai. Instead of large-scale wars like those during that era, future Japan's split nations fight with Super-powered vigilantes.

Honestly, I'm far more interested in seeing the anime about those years of change rather than the aftermath, which is where the actual story picks up.

Enter the main character: A normal girl who is just old enough to join the military/police/civil servants of this world, a ragtag group of people who help their defending super-hero through civil duties. She joins out of admiration for Matcha Green, the hero of her prefecture's nation. She is supposed to stay in town to help with the running of the city, but she is drawn to the battlefield to be closer to her hero. Upon the insistence of the protagonist being normal throughout the episode, I began to think of many protagonists from many mech anime who are introduced with the same insistence.Through one superficial watch of the first episode I have crafted a baseless theory about the entire show: This is a mech anime, just without the mechs.
Directed by the virtually unknown Kotomi Deai, this anime has a unique style. The animation flows very well, the girls are drawn cute, the backgrounds and effects are full of vibrant colors, and each character seems alive with a unique disposition.

Both Matcha Green, and the invading nation's super hero are seen wearing similar-looking stones, each conspicuously saying that it's their "good luck charm". If this is the key to their powers, I could realistically see the protagonist obtaining her own heart crystal at some point, giving her super-powers. This would conform to my idea of this anime being a mech anime in disguise, the heart crystal being parallel to the mech.
The online description of the anime seems to reveal that Matcha Green eventually sends the protagonist with other girls to travel Japan to mediate battles between rivaling clans. The way I see it, the anime could go one of two ways from here. Either the protagonist and the girls she travels with each obtains their own heart crystal somehow, to stop battles and fight on their own as a sort of Japan-traveling Sentai, or the girls just enter into normal, fun hijinks on their travels that eventually leads them to save the world. The latter scenario seems much more plausible because all the promotions for the anime are intent on suggesting that the main characters are entirely normal girls. I will be extremely let down if my trust is betrayed with a super-powered protagonist, or if the show falls into mech anime conventions.

In any case, I have high hopes for this series. The music is charming, the animation's interesting, and the plot seems fun. It's lighthearted and fast-paced, and I'm happy to be watching it. Mech anime or not, I'm excited for episode 2.

It's a dummy.

Yuri Kuma Arashi Debut Episode Opinions

A few days ago, I began to dive into the bounties of the new anime season, and I had the pleasure of viewing the first episode of YuriKuma. Directed by the illustrious Kunihiko Ikuhara, this anime looks like it's going to grow into something big.
There's an interesting wordplay going on with the constant use of the word "Yuri". This translates directly to "Lily", and the flower appears throughout the show as a symbol of purity. Girls are introduced as "Yuri" themselves, which denotes a sense of purity among them, while also pointing at the fact that these girls seem to be lesbian. The director, Ikuhara, has stated that he likes to make yuri relationships in his anime because it's fairly unassuming, and a relationship between male and female always seem to overpower and over-complicate other aspects of the show.

The only instance of characters with a male-like appearance show up in a dream-like court session towards the end of the episode.

Unless it's something I'm really excited about, I usually go into the new season's anime without looking them up, save for short descriptions. So, when I first turned on Yuri Kuma Arashi, I had not known anything about the show, and I marveled at the cute girls and interesting direction. The romantic imagery coupled with a constant focus on yuri made Ikuhara's previous anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997), spring into my mind.
At first, I had thought it was this season's SHAFT anime because of the minimalistic but romantic art direction. The director seemed to me to be trying to make this anime into a moe Utena, and I didn't mind it at all. When I discovered that Ikuhara himself was behind YuriKuma, I was not in the least bit surprised, but I was infinitely excited.
Somehow, I had not known that Ikuhara would be directing something this season, which is a momentous occasion: After he finished Utena, he stopped directing anime until Mawaru-Penguindrum (2011), 14 years later. As a fan of his work, I'm relieved he decided to continue.

After Junichi Sato left the project, Kunihiko Ikuhara  became the series director for Sailor Moon. Later, he also left the position to pursue a career with more creative freedom, which is when he put together Utena.

The story is silly fun. It opens on a high school filled with seemingly lesbian girls, and we meet the love interests of the show. Bears are then suddenly introduced as a species from another plane of existence who eat girls because "That's just what they do." Two bears appear to pose as High School transfer students in order to get close to the girls and eat them. At least one of the bears seem very interested in the main girl, who was shown to be in love with another girl in a previous scene.

It's not clear as of yet if the bears actually eat girls, or just eat them out. Here, they lick the honey off a main character's lily. I assume they eat out the ones they care about, and actually consume the others.

Something called the "The Invisible Storm" is exposited by the characters to "Destroy pure and gentle things", and it starts with the character's favorite bed of lilies. It seems the bears are a part of this Storm, who eat girls in order to theoretically destroy the purity of their yuri love. I have no idea what all this is building up to, but I'm very excited to experience what Ikuhara has lying in wait for episode 2. The second episode aired last night on Tokyo MX, just after midnight, so I'm eagerly waiting for [Asenshi]'s subtitles.

Lynn Minmay: A soldier's life

Spoilers 

Immediately upon witnessing the battle in episode 27, when Minmay is singing to the destruction of an entire species, I suddenly became drawn to a theme. It's not really addressed in the series itself, and the show barely does anything with the idea, but it is an existing aspect to the story that I personally find fascinating. That is, while Minmay is singing on her stage at the front of the battle, culture becomes a weapon; Minmay's mech is the entire fleet, and heartstrings are her controls.

Space war makes for a really great laser and pyrotechnics show.

Humanity's culture became Earth's most powerful weapon. When Minmay first debuted with "Watashi no Kare wa Pilot" during the battle between Macross and the Zentradi in episode 10, it was the first attack by humanity's ultimate weapon. The final battle's "Love Drifts Away" was the final charge, culminated from 27 episodes of building and charging it up. Minmay's songs could then be considered the military's ammunition for mass genocide, which ultimately discredits Kaifun's preaching of an entirely peaceful society in place of any militarization.

It was, in fact, culture that tore these people from their world, caused mass death and betrayal, and forced the survivors to adapt to an entirely new way of life. War simply kept that culture at bay.

The show, however, did not decide to go this route with Minmay, and instead invented the true theme to Minmay's character arc: The hard life of a performer, and how it relates to and parallels a soldier's life.
Minamy was an obnoxious little girl. She was a troublemaker, too young to understand how she affected people, and too young to understand how important she was. The entire series, including after the time-skip, had Minmay in a constant hustle as she fought for people's hearts on stage, all the while dreaming of simpler, less busy times.
During her assault on the Zentradi main fleet in episode 27, she might have realized her all-important role as general of humanity's culture. She may have then understood the terrible reality of her career: She had been unknowingly drafted into the front lines of humanity's war against non-existence.
Whether she glimpsed this truth or not, after the time-skip, she had become distraught about her career, which had become depressingly difficult to maintain. Her life as a singer took her to emotionally dark places. Kaifun is her only manager left, and, since the time-skip, he's developed a drinking habit with his growing hate for the military. He decidedly never gives her a concert in Macross City, the heart of the military's influence, and he never accepts any aid from them. Minmay's songs support the two, but they barely get by: Her venues get smaller, and people can only spare so much in terms of payment on the post-apocalyptic world. Kaifun's stress as her manager builds, and his subsequent bursts of anger and lashing out at the military has Minmay question why she is even singing anymore. The lonely girl thinks of Hikaru and those childhood times of innocence, before either of them became soldiers in adulthood.

In the final episode, "Farewell to Tenderness", A threat to the remainder of humanity appears in Quamzin's army. Macross flies in front of it's civilians and fires it's canon with the very last of it's energy. This final lurching of the giant who stood as the protector of mankind and the symbol of humanity's culture and cooperation inspired the people watching, among them, Minmay. On that stage in the sky, the military expressed it's necessity, and perhaps this is when Minmay understood the significance of Hikaru in his Vakyrie fighting for humanity, and similarly her own significance as a singer. In the next scene, she resolves to leave Hikaru and Misa because she now understands that, as an artist, she cannot be part of the military's world, who destroy themselves to protect artists.With hope that she'll find the songs she really wants to sing, Minmay sets off for an unknown city for an unscheduled performance, giving up on her dreams of innocent love and a life with Hikaru as a civilian.

They fight to protect humanity, so Minmay had to realize that she must sing to do the same.

When I first saw the ED, "Runner", I assumed the photo album next to the helmet on the desk to be Hikaru's, or at least I knew it belonged to the image of a battle-worn soldier, for him to look back onto more innocent times in his life. I wasn't wrong, as evidenced in the episodes after the time-skip, where that album made an appearance, property of Hikaru. When the final episode completed Minmay's arc and resolved the end of the series, we hear Mari Iijima, the voice of Lynn Minmay, come in with the vocals instead of the usual Makoto Fujiwara. This was a beautifully-done book end to how Minmay's career made her feel battle-worn just as heavily as Hikaru, who had also accepted the life of a soldier.

The episodes after the time-skip has Minmay have to accept the burden and separation of a soldier's life, mirroring how Hikaru had done the same at the end of the first portion of the series.

In the film, "Do you Remember Love?", Minmay's arc and character was shafted in comparison. Most of the focus of the film is dedicated to Misa's arc, and in the film version of events, Minmay was portrayed as almost an entirely different person. Here, Minmay began as a singer, with no small city girl backstory to give her character an arc. She was never really friends with Hikaru, and only met him after he saves her during a Zentradi attack. She's more like an unwilling performer, tired of the celebrity life, and she wanted to escape that life with the relationship she found in Hikaru. When he chooses Misa over her, however, she is forced to give up the relationship and the hope of the escape she sought with it.

The final shot of the movie; A portrait of Minmay's hard work, heartbreak and separation a part of it.

Minmay, as the face of humanity's culture, represents the life of an artist and civilian in a wisened society. Her life is by nature separated from those in the military, and more life might be separated from her because of the military's wars. However, Hikaru gave up his life as a civilian so he can protect Minmay and culture as a soldier. In return, her duty is to go war with him by fulfilling her role as a performer and fighting through the fields of love, sorrow, romance, and pain for the good of mankind. This is the same sense of duty all artists should have in a society intent on survival, because without the arts at the front line of humanity's endeavor against death, we might realistically destroy ourselves with the impulse to war. Minmay carries the weight of an entire species' future with her when she steps onto the greatest battlefield against humanity's end: the stage of culture.

The duty of a performer is equal to the duty of a soldier.

War and Culture: The Thematics of SDF Macross

 Spoilers

When I first began to watch through Super Dimension Fortress Macross, I didn't enjoy what I was watching as much as I'd hoped. Previously, I had watched through the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and had become a fan of Yoshiyuki Tomino's work. I really liked how he animated his fights with so much consistant detail to motion that you could realistically imagine each movement of each mech. The younger, Gundam-inspired Macross, on the other hand, always focused more on the large-scale battle as a whole instead of individual fights. They were a fast-paced, energetic flurry of movements that were over in an instant. This stylistic difference isn't bad, and it eventually becomes the show's strength, but it also forcibly denies individual connection with the mechs. New to the series, I didn't then realize the intention: To connect you with not the individual fighters, but to the Macross, a modified alien battleship large enough to house an entire city within. The thematic focus was on humanity's efforts as a whole instead of individual accomplishments.

A show about the adventures of a battleship-full of civilians who got caught in an impossible war? Sure. That's Mecha for you.

The animation was very good at the start, and I particularly liked the explosions and destruction. I liked the romantic representation of flying fighter jets, and their cool, slick maneuvers. The large-scale battles created an atmosphere like the military put on a show while fighting. However, the first few episodes always get a lot more attention than anything else in a series, and after they were over, the quality of animation took a huge nosedive. I began to hate sitting through the show, and it became a chore to continue. Yet, perhaps consequentially, this is also where the show began it's invasion of my imagination.

This show had some of the worst, most inconsistent animation I've seen. Apparently, because the show was a surprise hit, and there were many delays, animation for some episodes was outsourced to inferior studios, AnimeFriend and Star Pro.

"Why spend so much time on relationship drama, and silly squabbling between characters?" "Why is Focker so concerned with Hikaru having a woman?" It was these questions that consumed my attention and kept me from focusing on the horrendous animation. These questions brought me to the first theme I spotted within the show: How culture is just as important to the human condition as any war. It was these moments of teenage romance, love triangles, and the rise of a pop idol that were the important parts, where it seems the battles are just there to keep the enemy at bay long enough to hear another of Miss Minmay's songs.
This idea fascinated me, and I began to really enjoy what I was watching. The time spent on the doubts and worries of the main characters was completely justified with it. Soon, the anime's enemy alien race that threatens mankind is revealed. They are the Zentradi, a race of giants with no concept of culture, who dedicate their lives to war. Here, a theme seems to lie within the concepts of war and culture.
In the beginning, I really had only cared for the war, but while this theme was emerging, the civilians caught onboard the Macross began to live their lives, creating their own city within the giant ship. Desperate for reconnection to Earth's culture in times of war and suffering, they decided to pull together the Miss Macross event, the first big instance of culture on the ship after people had become a little accustomed to living there. It was a simple popularity contest like Miss America, and a young girl with dreams of being a singer won. She was Lynn Minmay, close friend to Hikaru, and here she began her carreer as a pop idol.
Hikaru, the main protagonist, had an aversion to joining the military. He was content with his civilian life and wanted nothing to do with wars. His only abnormality was a passion for flight and jets. It was this passion, and an admiration for Focker that eventually pushed him into the life of a soldier and the hardships of becoming a man. With the immediate danger to the Macross, and the advice of Focker, Hikaru reluctantly agrees to join the military and fight, for the sole reason of protecting Minmay, whom he grew to love.
Hikaru, a genius pilot, began to prove his skill in battle, winning many acknowledgements from his superiors. Soon, he became leader of his own squad, and he altogether excelled in his military life. However, as an unwilling warrior, drafted from the Earth into an inter-stellar war, his aversion to being in the military stayed with Hikaru throughout the beginning of his career. Coupled with his attraction to Minmay and his military life stripping the time spent with her away, this division of Hikaru's life became the center of the character's struggles.
I consider Kaifun, second cousin to Lynn Minmay and love rival to Hikaru, as more as a character foil and a source of conflict than anything else. He's introduced to deepen the thematic division between war and culture. To Hikaru, he represents the life of a man who has abandoned war; Kaifun is Hikaru's foil. He hates violence and war, and blames all problems on the military, while preaching the abolishment of it. While Hikaru is having his doubts about his military life, Kaifun boards the Macross to stay with Minmay, whom he was childhood friends with.

It seems he is not disinclined to date his second cousin.

His life, not being chained with a soldier's duty, is spent alongside his cousin. Soon, they become a celebrity couple, Kaifun the boyfriend who helps with her career, and escorts her to all her performances and appearances. Together with Hikaru's military service tearing him away from his time with Minmay, this creates a bigger gap between Hikaru and Minmay's separate lives. 
When Macross becomes lively with talk of a film starring Minmay and Kaifun, Hikaru is excited to watch the premiere for Minmay, who he hasn't seen in a long while. However, a stage kiss the celebrity couple shares in the film cripples Hikaru's hope, and finally erodes any future relations between the two. Having now discarded his dream of a peaceful life with Minmay, Hikaru resolves to continue to remain in the military to protect her. In episode 27, this resolution takes the form of a confession of love and a salute goodbye.

Hikaru separates from his dream of being a civilian pilot and boyfriend to Lynn Minmay.

Since the Miss Macross contest, Minmay had become a celebrity. She was the idol who gave people comfort, and gave their culture motion. The civilians began to feel as if they were almost native to the ship, and Minmay was the voice and face that gave them that sense of home. To the enemy Zentradi who had never known culture, Minmay became an idol, too, and eventually, a figurehead of culture in general.
In episode 27, when she stood on the bridge and sang to the war effort, she became an icon of culture for which both the Macross and some Zentradi could unite. They banded together for her song, and destroyed almost an entire species together; culture had become more powerful and much more important than any war.

This scene is the culmination of everything in the series prior to it.

After the time-skip between episodes 27 and 28, Global discovers that humans and Zentradi may have decended from the same origin: an ancient now-dead species called Protoculture. This ancient civilization became so technologically powerful with genetic manipulation to be able to create the giant warriors to do battle for them. These giants were the Zentradi, a manufactured species who were denied culture, leaving them with only the desire for war. Eventually, they became so zealous in their warfare that they destroyed the entirety of the Protoculture civilization. If Man came from the same origin, this indicates that we have the same potential to become, or create a savage, warlike species like the Zentradi, and ultimately destroy ourselves.
With this realization, episode 27's war and culture collaboration becomes increasingly more pivotal. It wasn't only the last ditch effort of the military of humanity, it was also the battlecry of culture. Lynn Minmay sang the powerful, "Love Drifts Away", a wartime ballad about separation and loss, for the soldiers who war to protect mankind. As they fought the death of our species, Minmay, as the voice of humanity, cried against the death of our culture. She fought on stage alongside Hikaru, and together they battled the threats of non-existence.
In the period after the time-skip, humans and cultured Zentradi had the entire planet as a tabula rasa. War, however, still could not be avoided, as if it were simply part of our nature. Quamzin (pronounced Ka-mu-ji-n), an old Zentradi commander, is unable to accept a culture-based society in place of his previous life of a soldier. He launches an assault against Macross City, which has been built around the ruins of the Macross since the events of episode 27, and he fires his main cannon at the war-battered ship. In a blaze of anger at their sudden attack, Hikaru and his fighters take the enemy down rapidly. Quamzin, in the last moments of the battle, rams his ship into the Macross, as if a bold statement to humanity, reminding us of our own inherent warlike nature: Not only is he causing war in a world of post-war peace, but he is willing die for it.

It was a very effective use of this hot-headed type of character. He died characteristically, unable to slow his warlike impulses long enough for culture.

In hopes of defending mankind against any more threats, Global captures a leftover Zentradi automated battleship factory. Afraid of humanity's future, though, he elects to not use this factory for warfare, but to protect culture. He creates another ship as large as Macross, the SDF-2 Megaroad and suggests that Misa captain it, tasked with protecting it's civilians and spreading their culture among the stars.

Through heavy loss, mankind gained wisdom enough to finally unite and reach for the stars.

I've heard people claim the theme of the show lies in Kaifun's words. That what he preached was ultimately right; peace could be found through culture, and the military is thoroughly unnecessary. I disagree. For one thing, if it weren't for the military effort, Man could've been destroyed by the Zentradi several times over. It was the combined effort of Minmay and the military that destroyed the main fleet. However, because it was military interest that brought the danger to Earth in the first place, Kaifun might have been right regardless, that is, until you consider the material after the time-skip. The first 27 episodes described how culture is just as important for mankind as war and survival, and peace could be had with the Zentradi because of culture. The remaining nine developed the theme in broader directions by introducing war as the foreign element in a newly-made society built on peace and culture.
I elect, then, that the true theme of Macross, and the projected totality of humanity's condition is not Kaifun's "War is evil  and violence is never the solution", but rather a much more optimistic message: That to avoid the death of mankind, the military must protect culture, and culture must exist to subvert humanity's warlike militarism. Like Hikaru and Minmay, this system pushes people apart, and it causes all the ailments of war. However this system is unavoidable in order to ensure the safety, peace, and prosperity of all of mankind as a whole.

Soaring through the Macro Sky, the spirit of humanity and cooperation, SDF-1 Macross

Aldnoah Zero Season 1: Thoughts on Urobuchi's Mecha

It's been a few weeks since I saw the end of the first season of Aldnoah Zero, and I decided that it's an anime worth talking about. At least, it's an anime people should be talking about, regardless of how they feel about it. Personally, I find it's characters bland and altogether non-unique. The romance is not cared for, there are story elements that fall flat, and the characters even make uncharacteristic choices. The mechs are 3DCGI, something that is happening more and more frequently much to the disdain of many, and it falls apart toward the end into a silly, obvious set-up for season 2. However, at the same time, I feel like Aldnoah Zero is almost everything a modern mecha anime should be.
The setup is simple. It's classic, and fits perfectly in the genre it represents. Martian seperatists who feel as if they are a class above normal Earthlings start to war with Earth. It really feels like Zeon vs Federation a la Gundam all over again - and the similarities don't stop there, of course. We have two main heroes to this story, which the show divides a majority of it's time between: The teenage Earthling student, Inaho Kaizuka, who is a genius at piloting mechs at a level far above anyone else, including all of Earth's military, for no explicable reason. And the blonde short-haired teenager from Earth, Slaine "Not Char" Troyard, who resides with the Martians. Both are the main focus in the midst of opposite sides, and they both fawn over the same girl. However, these are all things that have been presented in uninspiring ways in most mecha anime made after Yoshiyuki Tomino's original masterpiece; This is all nothing new. What elevates what should be just another amorphous blob of everything that has been done several times before is the work of Gen Urobuchi added to the Mecha formula.
Some call Urobuchi a hack, others praise him. Personally, I hold that he is a talented writer who unfortunately holds tightly to his own tired cliches and stylizations. Play Butcher Bingo sometime to see what I mean, it's a hoot.

Though, in all honesty, I find his Mecha to be a fascinating remodel of the genre that feels like it was made to work. You see, in most Mecha, our heroes fight overwhelming odds with the super-secret Mech project weapon that is, for one reason or another, extremely powerful. However, in true Urobuchi fashion, Aldnoah Zero cranks the "suffering" lever to maximum and portrays the invading Martian faction as supremely powerful beings, able to wipe out the entirety of Earth's population without losing a single unit. Earth has no reserved alien technology, no super robot project of any kind, and simply no hope of survival. Yet, a select ragtag group of civilian earthlings fight back (Another hearken back to Mobile Suit Gundam) - with logical deduction and tactics.
Every Martian robot has it's invulnerability and destructive capabilities far beyond anything present in Earth's arsenal, and the teenager hero's mech is only his school's training robot. The thrill of watching the battles between these two opposing forces is amazing, and I'd recommend the show for only that - and still there is more to it: Politics, death, betrayal, conspiracy, peacemongering, warmongering, tragedy, and all things to which a Mecha fan is no stranger fills the stage, and in ways any Urobuchi fan would be proud of.
This is the first time since the acclaimed Fate/Zero that Gen Urobuchi worked with director Ei Aoki, and although I have yet to experience their first collaboration, I wasn't disappointed with the pairing. Urobuchi stated in an interview that he likes working with Aoki on storyboard because with him, "The vision of these animations will be perfect." and I've got to agree with the sentiment.  They really put together an engaging show that holds tight to it's vision, until the aforementioned set-up at the end.
Aldnoah Zero is far from the best of anything, however. Urobuchi is, of course, exempted from my gripe with the characters, as he didn't write them, but that doesn't excuse anything: Inaho is a Gary Stu. Yuki "Not Misato" Kaizuka, Inaho's onee-chan, is a boring mush of a cliche, and does nothing of use except to draw attention to Inaho's character - something that he is thoroughly incapable of showing himself. Inaho's school friends are completely useless, unless you think taking space and drawing contrast to Inaho's Gary Stu powers is a a major part of storytelling. There are only a few characters written with any amount of intrigue, but they are given comparatively little screen time, and their arcs go nowhere by the end of the season with the exception of Rayet's and Slaine's.
But I'm done complaining: Aldnoah Zero was a fun ride, and it proves that there is still more left to tap in the genre. I'm glad it exists, and we even got a Season 2 out of it, airing next year, which will hopefully bring satisfaction to the character arcs left unfinished, or at least make use of some people. In any case, I'd like to end this article with the aside: Kalafina always works great with Urobuchi anime. Keep it up.