As we head toward the fall anime season, there were a few surprises this summer.
Sword Art Online (which has been extended to 25 episodes, so it will be continuing into fall) was one of those surprises. Kirito and other teenage video game players are trapped inside a new video game, where to die in the game means dying in real life. (Apparently. We haven’t actually seen what’s been happening in the real world since the series began, so I have my suspicions as to this.)
Kirito—a loner—begins tackling each level and trying to advance like everyone else. There hasn’t been a lot of overt character development, and yet the series has achieved a kind of depth in that regard anyway. We’ve seen Kirito grow through his experiences, particularly in the most recent episodes with his romance with Asuna.
The main surprise with Sword Art Online is the ratings it gets, at least from the Crunchyroll crowd. Every episode receives between five hundred and six hundred 5-star ratings, which is basically unheard of. That’s the number of 5-star ratings you’d see for the episodes where Naruto meets his mother and father in the afterlife, or the episode where Ichigo finally defeats Aizen after two years in Bleach. Sword Art Online has either really hit the teenage fans right in their sweet spot or something else is going on here that I can’t figure out. I mean, it’s good but is it that good…? ;)
Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse has been another surprise.
The first two episodes were chilling, showing an alien invasion sweeping across Asia and graphic death scenes of female mecha pilots. Then the tone shifted completely and the series became about Yuuya Bridges, a male Japanese-American mecha pilot who struggles with being just a cog in the wheel of a multi-national mecha army and particularly with the bane of his existence, his haughty commanding officer, the Japanese and very female Lt. Takamura.
Total Eclipse has been uneven, but what’s kept my interest are two things. First, the sparks between Bridges and Lt. Takamura are great—lots of repressed desire there (not a lot of fun for them, but much fun for the audience ;0). Second, Bridges’ inner conflict over being an American of half-Japanese ancestry.
In flashback, we see Bridges’ Caucasian-American mother being confronted by her father about the “Jap bastard” who abandoned her. The mother counters that Japanese people are “humble and polite,” not at all like he describes, as little Yuuya watches fearfully from behind a doorway.
The producers didn’t have to make Bridges half-Japanese; they could have just made him an American who had issues with the Japanese, but Bridges’ ethnicity adds complexity to his character. It’s something that he has to overcome, but by accepting it—not by rejecting it.
Bridges has a problem with Lt. Takamura, who in turn has a problem with him. Calling him on his American attitude of going it alone and trying to be the hero instead of factoring in the group, she antagonizes Yuuya from the start. Yuuya reacts defensively at first, until he begins to see some wisdom in what Takamura is saying. And Takamura eventually has her own crisis, as her unconscious attraction to Yuuya causes her to make decisions on the battlefield that protect him—to the detriment of overall battle strategy.
Like Sword Art Online, Total Eclipse has been extended and will continue into the fall season.
Finally in the surprise category, there’s Humanity Has Declined, which had an absolutely brilliant opening few episodes that satirized Japanese politics and society. Alas, that didn’t last, and the series turned into an absurdist post-apocalypse romp with strange fairies who love sweets instead.
But I’ve kept watching because, as an absurdist story, you never know what might happen next. And the protagonist is funny and charming in a weird way.
Watashi, as her name implies, is a sort of Everywoman or Everygirl character. A UN mediator between the remaining humans and the fairies, Watashi faces every crisis with a kind of surreal genki spirit that shows she’s either incredibly brave or mentally unhinged. Whether she’s trapped inside a manga panel or on a deserted island, where she becomes queen of the fairies, Watashi soldiers on regardless.
Maybe Humanity Has Declined actually did continue with the theme of the spirit of Japan, in its own way. ;)
As to the other summer series, I’m still enjoying Polar Bear’s Café and I don’t want to see it end. It’s one of those series you can rewatch often and just relax with. Hakuouki Reimeiroku will also end soon. True to form, the softer, slice-of-life series I was watching (Natsuyuki Rendevous, Utakoi) fell to the wayside and are now on my on-hold list. If it didn’t have action scenes, sexual tension or an animal who runs a café, I guess it didn’t hold my interest too well this summer. ;)
And soon—it’s on to the fall season.
