Middle Of The Week Pleasantness

It’s not like anything particularly good happened today, it just played as most days have since we arrived in Toronto; quiet, relaxed and generally enjoyable. Living in Toronto–especially now, with the tree lined streets actually being lined with green, leafy trees–feels almost like a permanent vacation in some respects. The culture also has something to do with that, I suspect, since walking out into the Annex on any given day shows people sitting at benches in parks, reading books, neighbors sitting on the porch talking to each other, and cafes lined with students and other non-rich people, animatedly having conversations and laughing and smiling a lot. It’s quite a contrast from Singapore were neighbors do not interact, parks are hothouses thanks to the equatorial heat, and cafes are where people go to preen and laugh amongst each other in a cruel, arrogant manner as they wonder what the poor people are doing, and hate or pity anyone that doesn’t have at least a six figure income.

Or it could simply be that the Wife and I spend far too much time at home writing and drawing, or wandering the Annex, which is a haven for student/scholarly life anyway.

I am also, at some point going to owe a huge debt of thanks to Suspect Video for finally allowing me to do the one thing I couldn’t do in Singapore; reasonably keep up with the anime scene. When I first discovered anime, it was the same way most kids did who were born in the 70′s and grew up in the 80′s. I saw a few Japanese animated shows which had been redubbed for English consumption. It started in fits and starts with things like Battle of the Planets and then finally really took off with Robotech, and by then I was hooked, but I wanted REAL anime, not the watered down stuff we were getting as dubbed episodes. In that pre-internet era, that really meant only one thing; watching VHS bootlegs of Japanese anime that were horrible in image quality because they were usually 8th or 9th generation copies with no subtitling.

It was in this way that I first got a taste of “pure anime” in the form of titles like Gunbuster, Fight! Iczer One!, Megazone 23 and, of course, giants like Akira. Eventually, these titles would start being released on VHS, and it was just as I left Canada that I was starting to see North America begin to embrace in the mainstream what I had been forced to hunt down and watch–usually without understanding the plot at all–back in the 80′s.

Now, I’m back home, and what a change has been wrought in the geek landscape. Manga on sale in bookstores, anime freely available in every comic store, video store and available for rent even in places like Blockbuster.

All of which is to say that when I make my weekly pilgrimage down to Bloor & Bathurst to bathe in the geek sunshine that is Suspect Video and The Beguiling next door to each other, I’m a happy, happy little boy. Suspect may look like an obsessive/compulsive’s bedroom, with DVDs stored in the front and their box-art stuck in filecases that you must rifle through–comic book hunting style, yo…–but this merely reinforces the idea that you are in a place where they understand what a sick, deprived schmuck you are and reinforce these unhealthy tendencies.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Now that I have regular access to anime, I am now raving with unabashed love, about these two shows:

Excel Saga

Pure, unadulterated, nonlinear, random, utterly hilarious insanity. ESPECIALLY if you’re familiar with the tropes and conventions of anime, manga and Japanese culture.

The simplest, shortest way to describe this 26 episode television series is, “This is what would have happened if the Monty Python crew had grown up in Japan and been given an animation studio.”

The plot–such as it is–centers on a super-secret conspiracy group named ACROSS, run by a stereotypical tall, dark, mysterious, deep voiced, effeminate anime pretty boy by the name of Ilpalazzo. He spends most of his time in a subterranean lair giving orders and playing girlfriend/dating video games. ACROSS is bent on world domination, but is deciding to start with the one city the underground HQ occupies first. The principle executor of Ilpalazzo’s orders is the girl Excel Saga. Cheerful to psychotic levels and dumb as a sack of hammers, her adoration for Ilpalazzo sends her off on missions which are half designed to bring the world to its knees and half designed to kill her since her chief actually finds her supremely annoying. Her subordinate is a beautiful, anemic girl by the name of Hyatt who has a tendency to fall over dead as a result of the tuberculosis that makes her so pale, ethereal and delicate. They are frequently aided in their hopeless endeavors by the Great Will of the Macrocosm, which presents itself as a collection of spinning galaxies in the Great Void, and has women’s arms attached to this. The Great Will frequently resets the universe to more convenient points, such as just before Excel blows herself up, gets hit by a truck, or brings an entire building tumbling down on herself an Hyatt.

There are so many moments of random insanity in the series that you’re bound to keel over laughing at something. What’s really great about the series is how each episode seeks to subvert certain conventions or cliches, such as the 80′s Jungle Action picture, or the Japanese Dating Simulation genre of games. Not since the lunacy of Project A-Ko in 1986 has an anime production made my stomach hurt so badly from the laughter.

And on a completely different tack, I bring you:

Paranoia Agent

I knew I was in for a weird trip as soon as I heard the name Satoshi Kon, and his involvement with this series. The man is probably one of the single most interesting, exciting and “critically” accessible storytellers in the animation industry of Japan, and not in that warm, friendly Hayao Miyazaki way either. If Miyazaki is the Walt Disney of Japan, Kon is its Frederico Fellini. His films are beautiful to look at, wonderfully composed, full of characterization and frequently swerves into layers of dream and surreality without so much as a wink at the audience. His first feature, Perfect Blue, was an exercise in almost Hitchcock style psychological torture of its main character, but with a dose of Dali thrown in at the most unexpected moments. His next feature, Millennium Actress was a bittersweet reminiscence of love, growing older, and the march of both culture and film. After that came Tokyo Godfathers about a trio of Japanese homeless who find a baby and attempt to raise it. In each case, Satoshi has shown an enormous amount of care in building his characters, a fairly scathing amount of social commentary on the ills of Japanese society, and that dreamlike quality of playing with time, space, reality and imagination.

It was only because of Suspect Video that I finally realized he’d done a 13 episode series, I HAD to watch it.

And so far, I am not disappointed. Kon opens this series with a story about seemingly random attacks on diverse people in Tokyo, sweeping through streets with his inline skates and his bent aluminum baseball bat. But what starts as a case of trying to track down a violent delinquent quickly becomes far more mysterious as the show looks at the social ills of urban life; everything from jealousy at the office to a precocious (and unhealthy) drive to succeed and be popular in elementary school, seemingly cured through an good, swift, whack with a baseball bat to the head.

This is one of the few times where I’ve watched something, regardless of it being a live action or animated work, and simply did not know what was going to happen next. It’s a show that’s almost impossible to predict, and I’m enjoying the ride to no end. This is making me even more excited about the fact that Kon’s next film, Paprika, is actually going to be screening here next month.

It is good to have anime back in my life on a regular basis. Especially since the subtitling is of high caliber and is grammatically correct, as opposed to the bizarrely random choices made by Singapore translation houses, who would regularly substitute what should have been an obvious “God DAMN you!” moment with… “THIS FELLOW!”

Yeah, I know. I don’t get that either…

Oh, and more Guitar Hero news, new info has been released about Guitar Hero III, which will be going on sale in “Fall of 2007″ for all the usual systems. One of the things that raised my eyebrow is that the new developers, Neversoft, will be including Boss Battles. I have no idea how this will work in practice, and my gut tells me that this may simply be a way of making change just to say “We’re in charge, so screw you, Harmonix, we own this franchise now and we’ll piss on it somehow to mark it as our territory.” However, to their credit, the newly released playlist is definitely more mainstream friendly than the increasingly more technical selections of GHII and the upcoming Rocks The 80′s, so I can see a lot of happy Guitar Heroes getting a big smile on their face from these more “radio” selections:

• Paint It Black (by The Rolling Stones)
• Cherub Rock (by Smashing Pumpkins)
• Sabotage (by Beastie Boys)
• The Metal (by Tenacious D)
• My Name is Jonas (by Weezer)
• Knights of Cydonia (by Muse)
• Rock And Roll All Nite (as made famous by Kiss)
• School’s Out (as made famous by Alice Cooper)
• Slow Ride (as made famous by Fog Hat)
• Cult of Personality (by Living Colour)
• Barracuda (as made famous by Heart)

I gotta’ admit… Tenacious D? LIVING COLOR?! FREAKIN’ PAINT IT BLACK?!? YOWZA!