The Rest of the 10s

I've been doing a lot of list-oriented posts recently, discussing some of the anime series, OVAs and movies I've rated as perfect "10s." For the record, this is my complete list of anime 10s:

Anime Series
Bakuman
Death Note
Diamond Daydreams
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Gintama
Mirage of Blaze
Noir

OVAs
Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal
Voices of a Distant Star

Movies
Paprika
Sword of the Stranger

I've discussed most of these animes in recent and past posts, but I've never written much about three of them.



Diamond Daydreams (also known as Kita e - Diamond Dustdrops) is a gentle series about six women in present-day Hokkaido.

The title comes from "diamond dust," a far-north winter phenomenon where ice particles crystallize in the air and appear as a sparkling cloud. The myth is that a couple that meets under the diamond dust will have a long and happy life together.

Atsuko runs a fish shop in Hakodate with her mother. The shop is in debt and Atsuko is set for an arranged marriage with a wealthy young man from a good family, with whom she has nothing in common. She meets an older man, a local jazz musician, who becomes a platonic friend - but Atsuko soon finds herself attracted to him. Teenager Karin has a serious illness and languishes in a rural hospital, resisting the doctors' recommendation for surgery. A well-wisher reads her blog and begins to send her encouraging emails. Karin suspects it's her doctor, and develops a crush on him.

Suomi is a competitive ice skater who had a falling-out with her childhood friend Hanna, also an ice skater, and who now works to fulfill an early promise to Hanna. Kyouko is an ambitious filmmaker in Sapporo whose competitive and controlling nature drives everyone away from her, eventually even her easygoing boyfriend, leaving Kyouko to examine her life and what is truly important to her.



Shoko (pictured above) hosts a radio talk show on relationship issues. Unknown to her audience, Shoko is seeing a married man and placing her own life on hold in order to meet his schedule for their rare stolen moments together. And finally, Akari runs a sweets shop and supports her father, who has been drinking and unable to work since his wife died. Akari learns from the doctor that her father was diagnosed with brain cancer months ago and chose not to have an operation, and now it is too late. Together with a boy from the shop, Akari accompanies her father one last time to pan for gold, an obsession of his.

Each woman's story is told in two episodes, with a 13th episode that ties up all the loose ends. And in the middle of each episode, between the "A" and "B" parts, facts about Hokkaido are presented against a background of Hokkaido scenery.

I like the unspoken assumption of Diamond Daydreams, that women have lives worth living and stories worth telling even if the fate of the earth isn't involved (lol). I love anime series about mechas saving the universe as much as the next person - actually probably more than the next person - but somehow the Diamond Daydreams stories found their way into my heart years ago and never left.



Noir was a surprise to me when I first watched it. Featuring two female assassins - one European, one Japanese - operating in a world of political and ultimately historical intrigue, Noir takes itself and its main characters seriously from the opening moment.

Kirika, the Japanese assassin, is unable to remember her past while Mireille is from a Corsican crime family that was largely wiped out in an attack. The two women eventually encounter "Les Soldats," a secret society, to which they are more connected than they realize.

The primacy of women in Noir extends to the antagonists - both female - Altena, the priestess of Les Soldats, and her henchwoman Chloe.



The music in Noir (Canta Per Me), composed by Yuki Kajiura, captivates you immediately and haunts you throughout the series.




Men in the Noir universe exist only to be killed, evaded, outwitted, left behind. Noir is a world where women rule the day, the night and everything in between. Noir rocks.



If there was only one anime series I could take with me to that mythical desert isle, it would be Mirage of Blaze, the series that introduced me to anime in general and yaoi/boys love anime in particular.

Mirage of Blaze begins in modern-day Matsumoto, Japan, where semi-juvenile delinquent Takaya Ougi discovers that his best friend Yuzuru is being plagued by the ghosts of ancient samurai.

Enter Nobutsuna Naoe, a man in his late twenties, who claims to be a "possessor," or the soul of one who lived long ago that survives now by possessing the bodies of others and casting out the original owners. Naoe's soul dates from Japan's Warring States era. What's more - Naoe claims that Takaya is possessed by the soul of warlord Kenshin Uesugi's son, Kagetora Uesugi, and that together he and Naoe have been possessing bodies and casting lingering samurai spirits who refuse to leave the world into the afterlife for the past four hundred years.

Naoe conveniently forgets to mention that he's been in love with - and obsessed with - Kagetora for each one of those four hundred years.



Yuzuru has been possessed by the soul of warlord Shingen Takeda, and it's up to Naoe and Takaya/Kagetora to stop him and gain Yuzuru's soul back.

Mirage of Blaze has everything I like in an anime series (yaoi/boys love, samurai, supernatural elements, bishonen), and when I first saw it I was in my most impressionable moment as an anime fan - I was a complete newbie. Even so, after all these years, it remains at the top of the list. I rewatch it frequently and never tire of it.

It has an unforgettable music theme by Koichiro Kameyama (Harukanaru Zanshou - Sengoku Zanei Yori):




The final moments of Mirage of Blaze still give me chills when I watch them. After the battle is over, Naoe gives his report to Takaya and starts to leave, but returns to tell Takaya that he loves him.




... That he didn't save him just for Kagetora, but for Takaya himself.




And after Naoe leaves, Takaya is left to ponder...



"If I become Kagetora completely..."



The story, the art, the music and most of all, the relationship between Naoe and Takaya/Kagetora all combine to make Mirage of Blaze my favorite anime of all time.

Supporting the Industry

I purchased the Noir DVD box set recently. My decision to buy the DVDs was part of an ongoing inner process that I think most anime fans engage in to some extent. How do I support the industry that creates and produces the anime and manga that I love?

I haven't always been conscious of the need to support the industry. When I first became a fan some six years ago, I just bought things that I liked without thinking about whether the money I spent was being returned to the creators or not.

I've bought a lot of anime "stuff" over the years; merchandise like posters, playing cards (I have Gundam 00 and Hikaru no Go decks), wall scrolls, little art cards, pencil boards, keychains, T-shirts and other such items.

What I haven't bought too many of are DVDs. We've all heard that DVDs are what the Japanese producers want us to buy the most, as they represent the most profit. But DVDs are on their way out as the dominant method of viewing anime (or films or TV series - all entertainment in general). It's digital and streaming that is the standard now.

I know this is a touchy subject, but I have to talk about legal streaming/DVDs vs. fansubs and torrents.

My two novels Kaminishi and Portola Bay are both available as torrents. I know that when my novella Time Gone By is published next spring, that it will also wind up as a torrent. For each person that reads my books as torrents, that represents a loss of income for myself and for my publisher Dreamspinner Press.

I don't do torrents - that's my personal decision. However, I do watch fansubs for the anime that isn't available on licensed streaming channels such as Crunchyroll, Hulu, Viz, Funimation and the like. I recognize that that may make me a hypocrite in some people's eyes. The distinction I draw is that my books are available for purchase, while some of the anime series I want to watch aren't available on licensed streaming channels. If they were, I would watch them on those channels.

And even that situation is changing. A year ago, I was watching maybe a third of my anime on Crunchyroll and Hulu, and the rest of it was fansubs. Today, virtually all of the anime I am watching is available through licensed channels. I'm watching Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi, Gintama, Bleach and Naruto Shippuuden on Crunchyroll, Nura 2 and Persona 4 on Hulu, Guilty Crown on Funimation, etc. (There is one exception - which I'll discuss below.)

So how does one best "support the industry" these days? If the industry is going to digital/streaming not only for anime but for manga (Viz's manga site, JManga, Digital Manga Publishing's emanga site and others), will paid subscriptions be enough to keep the industry afloat here in North America?

I don't have any answers, but I think it's important to keep asking the questions. I know I'm more aware now of my obligation as a fan to support the industry. I've been a paid Crunchyroll subscriber from day one, and I'm considering paying to read manga on the Viz, JManga and emanga sites as well. I'm also buying more DVDs, like Noir.

Oh - and that exception? Bakuman is currently not available on any of the licensed channels. Here's my most recent DVD purchase:




It's Volume I of the first season of Bakuman. It was $18.74, some of which will go to support the Japanese creators as well as Right Stuf the distributor.

I am going to buy all of the Bakuman DVDs, both first season and second season. It will be several hundred dollars when all is said and done - and none of which would be supporting the industry had I not watched the series as a fansub first.

In whatever way you can - please support the industry. The worst outcome would be that anime and manga fades out from the North American scene because enough of us didn't do what we could, when we were able to do so.

The Girl of Prophecy

In recent Naruto Shippuuden episodes, the fact that Naruto is Konoha's "Child of Prophecy" has been a topic of discussion again.

Obviously, Naruto is the main character of Naruto Shippuuden and it makes sense that if anyone is going to be the "Child of Prophecy" in the series, it's him. Add to that the fact that this is a shonen series, and it really couldn't be anyone but Naruto who would be the chosen one. So I don't begrudge our favorite orange-jumpsuited ninja for this: but it did start a train of thought in my head.

A few years ago, I bought one of those calendars where you rip off a page each day. This one happened to be a Star Wars calendar. One of the daily pages caught my imagination, and I ended up taping it to my refrigerator (excuse the poor-quality scan):




That's Padme in the foreground and center, with Anakin behind her on the right, and Mace and Obi-Wan behind her on the left. It's just one of those publicity-shot type photographs of the lead characters in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, one in which someone probably said, hey, let's mix it up a little, put Padme in the front. It's only a picture: but the image, if you really look at it for a moment, brings to mind a startling question.

What if Padme had been the main character of Star Wars? Or her daughter Leia, for that matter?

Why is the "child of prophecy" always male?

And oddly, this is where a strange dichotomy arises between American and Japanese entertainment. Because many American genre and science fiction stories like Star Wars and Iron Man and the like actually do female characters a greater disservice than Japanese anime - where you will get a few kunoichi, some tough tsundere mecha pilots, or other strong female characters with super powers in most of the shonen stories. Just where you think American entertainment would come through with strong female characters, it often... doesn't.

I say that Star Wars did female characters a disservice, and perhaps that's a bit harsh. I'm old enough to have seen Star Wars in the theaters when it first came out, and I'll never forget the audience's reaction when Leia blew open the wall in the holding cells with a laser gun while Luke and Han just stared at her. She was a female character with spunk, and that was new. But Star Wars - I mean the whole thing, the two film trilogies - could have done more with its female characters. (Interestingly, the strongest female character in the entire Star Wars universe was created for the novel series, which still continues - Mara Jade, the Jedi Knight who becomes Luke Skywalker's wife.)

And I mention Iron Man because it hired an Academy Award-winning A-list actress like Gwyneth Paltrow... just to use her as arm candy for Robert Downey, Jr. Again, women as lust or beauty objects, or as support for the male characters in the telling of their stories.

In terms of being an anime fan: is it my own fault for loving shonen and action stories? I like watching stories where things actually happen. Slice-of-life stories put me to sleep. To encourage more female characters being featured in anime, am I supposed to watch series where there are 13 episodes of four high school girls doing... not very much? I think I'd rather see Ichigo throwing a Hollow into a distant mountainside - in fact - I know I would.

The Japanese have a terrible saying: "Men do, women watch." In four words, you have the reason for why the main characters and the interesting characters in anime (to me, anyway) usually turn out to be boys and men. They're the ones doing things; the girls and women usually just watch them do things. I don't prefer it this way - I want to see strong female characters doing things, too. But there don't seem to be many manga and anime series that offer this.

On Yumeka's recommendation, I've recently started watching Noir:




Though I've only just started watching this series, this is already what I see about Noir:

A. The two main characters are female.
B. They are both professional assassins, who make no apologies for their line of work.
C. The story is clearly focused on the two women; the male characters are secondary.

This much alone already places Noir in highly exclusive company. Most anime series I watch place female characters in the usual roles: love/sex interest, girlfriend, friend, mother, or other supporting roles. Noir starts from the premise that women are interesting and substantial enough to be the main characters; that their lives matter enough to be center stage. I can't wait to see where it goes from here.