I love doing these seasonal awards but I have to admit to feeling a weight falling off my shoulders now that I’m about to finish. But let’s not terry, it’s time to countdown anime.

4 – Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

At the beginning of FMA:B there was no mention of it animating the whole manga (or that the manga was ending) so I kept wondering how Bones would finish the show without repeating the debacle that was the first Full Metal Alchemist. I figured there was a good chance at another poor ending since so many of their otherwise great shows end so terribly. Prior to the Spring season this wondering became worrying and started to intrude upon how much I enjoyed the show. I was relieved when it became known that the manga was ending and Bones was on-track to animate the ending.

I breathed a big sigh of relief; not only did I not have to worry about the ending, getting the manga ending promised to see Full Metal Alchemist go out with a bang.

Which ended up happening, gloriously so. And I even loved how they managed to make the ending completely satisfying while leaving themselves with an angle for a sequel (which I really, really hope they do).

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3 – The Tatami Galaxy

When I found out about The Tatami Galaxy, I was giddy because it was being directed by Masaaki Yuasa who’s last series was Kaiba, my pick for the top anime of 2008. I tried to keep the giddiness in check since sky high expectations often only result in disappointment but I was only partially successfully. Good thing for me that The Tatami Galaxy was able to beat my high expectations. It had the interesting animation style that hid how well-animated it was animation that I expected. It had the intellectually interesting premise while not forgetting to have good characters, solid character development and an entertaining story that I expected as well. It had that unique quality to it that set it apart from everything else even while reminding me of so many other books and shows vibe that I expected from an accomplished master of storytelling like Masaaki Yuasa.

I also expected that The Tatami Galaxy would be largely unwatched by people like Kaiba was but that turned out not to be the case. It was shown (as many people know) on the TV block Noitamina in Japan which has earned a fan following around the globe for it’s consist high-quality anime programing. This pushed many people to give the show a shot and, in a not very shocking to me turn-of-events, they liked it. Now, I hope the popularity of The Tatami Galaxy will spill over to Masaaki Yuasa’s other works and get people watching them as well (hint, hint go watch Kaiba ).

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2 – Rainbow – Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin

In the rush of trying to catch all the new shows at the start of a new season, invariably, there’s a few that I miss. During the spring season one of those shows that I intended to catch was Rainbow because Madhouse was animating but it somehow slipped through the cracks. Several weeks later, after the dust had settled some, I looked around at the various blogs to see which shows I missed and if t
hey were worth sampling. There wasn’t much coverage of Rainbow and most of what there was considered the show way too melodramatic to be any good. Star-Crossed had a more positive outlook about the show so I decided to give it a shot.

And I’m glad I did, Rainbow is an awesome show.

I had a moment of cognitive dissonance when I started watching Rainbow; I kept waiting for the absurd, over-the-top drama and waiting and thinking that surely I was watching some other show then everyone else. The moment passed and I realized that I was watching the same show but I got it. Granted, I was maybe more ready to watch Rainbow then some. I had just finished reading Samurai! and it touched on the brutal hardships faced by many after the war and how the war disrupted the basic fabric of Japanese society. Which fit well with what I learned of the time period from reading and from anime like Millennium Actress, Magical Arcade Abenobashi and Natsu no Arashi. I think the portrayal of the time period is accurate and anything less would be a fanciful fantasy that would paint over the despair and grittiness of the time period.

If I had to pick an anime to compare Rainbow to, I’d pick Gurren Lagann. The two share many of the same qualities that made Gurren Lagann more then just a dumb movie with giant robots. For starters there’s the single-mindedness of our main characters to overcome the perceived wrongs of their world with hard work and self-determination and the help of their friends. And let’s not forget that society is often a poor judge of people as both anime remind us as well as the hardships of trying to be a hero. Rainbow and Gurren Lagann also show the power, beauty, and majesty of a courageous person which always warms my heart to see.

It’s comes juuusst a bit short of the top spot but if it can continue on this same level over the summer season, it might just be snagging the top spot. Before moving on there’s another similarity the two anime shared that I want to mention. It was how both far surpassed what I imagined the end point of the anime to be. For Gurren Lagann, I thought it was going to end with the defeat of the Spiral King and for Rainbow, I thought it was going to end with the kids getting out of prison. I know I wasn’t the only person who thought this of Rainbow and it sounded like it might have kept some from giving Rainbow a chance which is why I wanted to mention it.

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1 – Arakawa Under the Bridge

Inching ever so slightly ahead of everyone else this season is Arakawa Under the Bridge. When Shinbou and Shaft get it right, they really get it right; not only was this my top show of the season, it was the one I would most look forward to between episodes.

It’s perfect. That’s the only word that feels right when describing why this show deserves to place in front of so many other fine shows but it’s not terribly descriptive. It’s perfect in the same way that the perfect way to end the day is eating your favorite ice-cream, on the beach, listening to the waves lap at your feet, as you watch a spectacular sunset with family and friends. Which is still not very descriptive but will have to do.

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So there it is. I finished the spring awards just in time to start considering the summer seasonal awards . I’d like to thank all the people that read my 5000+ word review of the Spring 2010 season; I hope you enjoyed it and maybe discovered an anime or two that you want to watch now.

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Spring 2010 Awards Part 1: Cast and Character Awards
Spring 2010 Awards Part 2: Genre and Misfit Awards
Spring 2010 Awards Part 3: VMA Awards
Spring 2010 Awards: Top 8 Anime – #8 – #5

Filed under: anime, awards

It’s that time again – the voice, music, and animation awards – or as I like to think of them: the set of awards that are completely subjective and some of the most difficult awards to pick as a result. And this season was no different.

Best Male Seiyuu

Winner: Hiroshi Kamiya as Izaya Orihara from  Durarara!!, Hiroomi Souma from Working!!, Otonashi Yuzuru from Angel Beats, Kou Ichinomiya from Arakawa Under the Bridge and I think I missed some

The Overall 2008 Best Male Seiyuu and Summer 2009 Seasonal Best Male Seiyuu makes it a hat trick. Then again, it was essentially impossible for any other guy to win this time since so many shows featured Hiroshi Kamiya in leading roles and he continues to do a great job.

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Best Female Seiyuu

Winner: Maaya Sakamoto as Nino from Arakawa Under the Bridge and Akashi from The Tatami Galaxy

Runner-up: Yukari Tamura as Yamada from B Gata H Kei and Togame from Katanagatari, Aki Toyosaki as Yui from K-ON!! and Kena Soga from Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou and Satsuki Hyoudou from Kaichou wa Maid-sama!

Picking the best female seiyuu was a much different experience with a bevy of strong performances from many different women. In the end I had to decide on a tie-breaking criteria so I chose to pick the seiyuu with the best characters to win. And that was, Maaya Sakamoto, for voicing two female characters that came off as slightly odd at times but were really deep, interesting characters.

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Best OP

Winner: Working!!

Runner-up: Rainbow, House of Five Leaves, Durarara, B Gata H Kei, Arakawa Under the Bridge

There were a lot of openings I liked this season but no one single opening was able to break from the pack to be the easy pick, at least initially, because I remembered the old argument about picking the MVP in a sport. Do you pick the best player in the league or the person that contributed the most to a team even if the team didn’t do well? In this case, I’m picking the opening to Working!! because I loved it and it was the sole reason that I didn’t drop the show. Working!! eventually got watchable, barely, in the last 3-4 episodes but before then, it was the desire to see the opening one more time that kept me watching.

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Best ED

Winner: B Gata H Kei

Runner-up: The Tatami Galaxy, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

And I’m picking the ending to B Gata H Kei because it was by-far-and-away the best ending and it was always like the cherry that one leaves to eat last from a piece of awesome cake.

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Best Background Music

Winner: K-On!!

This award is one of the awards that I almost never feel real comfortable picking the winner because I often don’t remember the background music to most of the shows I watch. There are exceptions, in the case of K-On, the BGM is light and airy and it perfectly compliments the show which is what the BGM is supposed to do.

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Best Dressed Characters

Winner: K-On!!

Much like the award for best action going to Full Metal Alchemist:Brotherhood was completely apparent and needed no justification, this award going to K-On is also completely apparent and needs no justification.

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Best Animation Style

Winner: The Tatami Galaxy

Runner-up: House of Five Leaves, Katanagatari

I fell in love with the animation style of Masaaki Yuasa in Kaiba so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that I’m picking The Tatami Galaxy with it’s similar style to Kaiba. What kinda surprised me was the number shows that were more stylized in nature this season. When I see animators willing to experiment and these shows actually given air time, I relax when thinking about the future of anime.

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Best Animation

Winner: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Runner-up: Angel Beats, K-On!!, Durarara

There were several very well animated shows this season but Full Metal had this award in-the-bag when it took it’s already great animation and bumped it up even higher this season for the final arc of episodes. Durarara was it’s closest competitor and might have pulled it out if there had been more cool action scenes.

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Top Animation Studio

Winner: Madhouse

The Fall 2008 Seasonal Top Animation Studio and Overall 2008 Top Animation Studio makes it a hat trick this season as well by producing two of the best anime of the season – The Tatami Galaxy and Rainbow. Both were very original works that showcased the best anime has to offer viewers. Both works also turned out to be, surprisingly, heart-warming series that always left me impatiently waiting for the next episode. And it’s possible that Madhouse could win this award again in the summer season because Rainbow continues on which puts them in a strong position.

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That’s it for part 3 of my spring 2010 anime awards. Stay tuned for my top overall picks of the season.

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Spring 2010 Awards Part 1: Cast and Character Awards
Spring 2010 Awards Part 2: Genre and Misfit Awards
Spring 2010 Awards: Top 8 Anime – #8 – #5
Spring 2010 Awards: Top 8 Anime – #4 – #1

Filed under: anime, awards

Before we get to part 2, I wanted to mention that I’m going on vacation in a couple of days but I plan on getting all sections of my picks for the spring season written and queued up before leaving. If you know me, it’ll take only one guess to figure out where I’m going. Which was what I wrote assuming I’d get this up before leaving on vacation but I couldn’t finish enough of the parts so it had to wait till after the vacation.

This time around I’m adding two categories that probably should have been included earlier in my seasonal awards and the inaugural winners are very well deserving.

Best Action

Winner: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Easiest.Decision.This.Season.

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Best Fight

Winner: Shichika vs Kanara from ep.5 of Katanagatari

And yet when I started thinking about specific fights, I kept going back to this fight and not one from Full Metal (an example of not being able to see a single tree in a forest). The fight in Katanagatari wasn’t the most flashy, complex, or intricate fight but it was unique, unexpected and felt very important in terms of developing the main characters and the story.

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Best Comedy

Winner: B Gata H Kei

Like many awards I give out, this one is very subjective. For example, some people thought Working!! was funny; whereas, I found it to be probably the least funniest show of the season – the awesome yet very serious anime Rainbow made me laugh more often. And some people disliked B Gata H Kei when I thought it to be, easily, the funniest show of the season.

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Most Entertaining

Winner: Arakawa Under the Bridge

Runner-up: B Gata H Kei, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

A comedy entertains but not all entertaining shows are comedies; thus, the need for two separate awards. And once again, a different show wins each category. Arakawa Under the Bridge wins for it’s superior ability to mix it’s comedic side with it’s heartwarming and surprisingly poignant side while always maintaining it’s high entertainment level.

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Most Interesting Setting

Winner: The Tatami Galaxy

Runner-up: Durarara

Durarara gave The Tatami Galaxy a strong run but it’s near impossible to beat a show that involves dozens (if not many more) parallel worlds connected by a 4.5 tatami mat dorm room with the only constants being a castella cake, a hidden 100 yen bill and a stress toy.

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Best Plot

Winner: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Runner-up: Rainbow – Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin

Full Metal has been working for a year to build up to this final climax and boy was it an awesome ride, topped only by events of this season. Those that followed the manga probably had a good idea about where the story was going but, after the debacle that was the first Full Metal series, I stopped following the manga and got to be surprised as a result. (The type of surprises that I like. )

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Best Story

Winner: The Tatami Galaxy

Runner-up: Durarara, Arakawa Under the Bridge

The story of Watashi’s quest to find his rose-colored college life and subsequent enlightenment in The Tatami Galaxy could have been a SF story I read. That probably sounds like weak-sounding praise but, being a life-long fan of print SF, I’ve come to accept that in America (at least) television or movie SF will, 99.9% of the time, lack the depth found in print SF. Which is fine, sometimes, but I love it when somebody makes a TV series that equals the quality of the best print SF. Incidentally, if you liked The Tatami Galaxy, I’d suggest reading The Walls of the Universe from Paul Melko; it lacks the cool animation style (obviously) but it was a good read and the theme was similar to The Tatami Galaxy.

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Best Villain

Winner: Izaya from Durarara

Runner-up: Father from FMA: Brotherhood

Izaya falls into the conniving, intelligent villain category. It doesn’t seem like he’s out to cause the same level of villainy that Father from FMA:B was planning to do but, on the smaller scale, Izaya’s ability to manipulate everyone around him to his messed-up whims earns a great deal of respect from me, even if I’d wish he got more of a comeuppance at the end of the series.

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Best Final Episode

Winner: The Tatami Galaxy

I wasn’t sure The Tatami Galaxy was going to be able to pull itself together by the end but I shouldn’t have worried. The final episode showed exactly how in control of the story the director was even when each episode felt completely disjointed and the final episode was also just plain epic. If I could, I’d lock the people behind Angel Beats into a room and force them to watch this show a few dozen times and hope they learn the right way to do a final episode.

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Best Ending

Winner: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

The ending to FMA:B took up the entire spring season so for the same reasons why it won Best Plot, it’s also winning Best Ending.

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Most in Need of a Sequel

Winner: B Gata H Kei

Runner-up: Durarara

I liked Durarara a lot and it would have won this award easily (since it seems like there is so much more that could be done) but I’m not convinced that the sequel could surpass the first season in “awesomeness” and I want a Durarara that was just a bit more “awesome” then the first season. (If that makes sense .) Therefore, my desire to see a second season of B Gata H Kei was able to pull ahead to win this award. In the case of B Gata H Kei, I think the next season has to include Yamada finally getting what she and Kosuda desires to be a successful show. (Which then kinda ends the point of the series but the creators could then go off in a new direction and have the luckless couple make a mistake and Yamada get pregnant. They’d probably never do something like that but it would be hilarious and completely different.)

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That’s it for part 2, the next part is the VMA awards.

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Spring 2010 Awards Part 1: Cast and Character Awards
Spring 2010 Awards Part 3: VMA Awards
Spring 2010 Awards: Top 8 Anime – #8 – #5
Spring 2010 Awards: Top 8 Anime – #4 – #1

Filed under: anime, awards

After one of the weakest anime seasons in recent memory (Winter 2010) and the accompanying apathy nixing it last time, the seasonal top anime awards returns to The Null Set for one of the most diverse and interesting season of anime in a very long time. We had alchemy, parallel worlds, demon kings, train wrecks, socially-inept samurai, pretty boy samurai, surprisingly deep commentary on what’s truly important in life disguised as a comedy about homeless people living under a bridge, a cute and sweet love story disguised as a comedy about one girl’s quest to bed 100 boys before graduating high school, an uplifting story of heroism set in post-war Japan, a neighborhood full of bizarre people in Japan, and a high school band known as much for the cake they serve in their clubroom as for their music, to name just a few anime.

Before starting, below is a listing of the shows that I watched this season and are the pool from which the picks for all the awards are coming from. Also a reminder, I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum but there’ll be some because of how they’ll relate to specific awards and for the continuing shows, only the part of the series that ran during this season is under consideration for this season’s awards.

Carry-over shows watched this season (3): Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Katanagatari, Durarara

New shows watched this season (12): B Gata H Kei, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Angel Beats, K-On!! Season 2, The Tatami Galaxy, Kaichou wa Maid-sama, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, House of Five Leaves, Working!!, Mayoi Neko Overrun, Rainbow – Nisha Rokubou no Shichijin, Hakuouki – Shinsengumi Kitan

Shows that got dropped (1): Heroman

Best Female Main Character

Winner: Nino from Arakawa Under the Bridge

Runner-up: Yamada from B Gata H Kei, Yui from K-On!!

There was tough competition in this category but the self-proclaimed Venusian won out by being awesome enough that Ko still looks like he hit the jackpot by becoming her boyfriend even if it meant having to live under a bridge with a bunch of very weird people.

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Best Male Main Character

Winner: Sakuragi Rokurouta aka Bro from Rainbow

Runner-up: Kosuda from B Gata H Kei

I love heroes with their ability to act contrary to self-interest for a greater good so I was unsurprised when I developed such a quick liking of Sakuragi from Rainbow. Alphone Elric almost made runner-up for the same reason but the large cast to Full Metal lessened his time onscreen too much. Sakuragi, much like Kamina from Gurren Lagann, also oozed awesomeness and had the gravitas to make being a hero look really cool.

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Best Supporting Character(s)

Winner: Celty from Durarara

Runner-up: Ozu from The Tatami Galaxy

A headless mythical creature from Ireland, Celty rides a black motorcycle, wields a scythe, communicates by writing messages on a cellphone and somehow isn’t the oddest person inhabiting the Japanese neighborhood where Durarara takes place. She’s loyal and handy to have around in a fight and the only thing that really scares her is a tough-as-nails traffic cop. She was one of my favorites from Durarara (obviously) and pretty much had this award locked early on.

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Best Screen-grabber

Winner: TK from Angel Beats

Runner-up: Misato from B Gata H Kei, Shizuo from Durarara

Screen-grabbers are characters that don’t have much screen time but make the little time they are onscreen very memorable. This season seemed to have an abundance of great screen-grabbers but TK from Angel Beats won this one pretty easily. Just goes to show you how far speaking nonsensical English phrases in a Japanese anime and just randomly dancing can take a character.

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Best Couple

Winner: Ko and Nino from Arakawa Under the Bridge

Runner-up: Kosuda and Yamada from B Gata H Kei

This was a super tough pick and I debated it back and forth for a long time. One could argue that Kosuda and Yamada should have won because they’ve done more couply things together but there’s just something about how Recruit and Nino interact with each other that’s so nice to see.

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Best Character Ability/Power

Winner: Fortune Teller’s ability to send people to parallel worlds from The Tatami Galaxy

The animators never come right out and say it specifically but they show her living inside the clock that always runs backwards when Watashi jumps universes and she is aware of his parallel world jumping so I’m pretty sure she does have this ability. And it’s a very cool power, useful in gaining enlightenment or making a fortune by taking a popular invention from one world to another that never invented it.

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Best Cast of Characters

Winner: Durarara

Runner-up: Rainbow, Arakawa Under the Bridge, B Gata H Kei

There was a plethora of shows with great casts this season but Durarara pulled ahead by having a large cast of very eclectic characters that somehow meshed well together and were truly awesome by themselves as well. At times I thought Durarara wasn’t trying it’s hardest but it was always the fault of the plot and not the characters.

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Best Character Development for Cast

Winner: Rainbow

Runner-up: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I did not expect Rainbow would be as strongly character driven and focused on character development as it turned out to be though I should realize, by this point, that it’s often the most unexpected show that turns out to be. Just look at the past winners of this award – Railgun, Umi Monogatari, Cross Game, Asu no Yoichi, Toradora, Bamboo Blade. And I can’t wait to see where the characters go as Rainbow continues into the summer season.

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Best Character Development of a Single Character

Winner: Watashi from The Tatami Galaxy

A look at the past winners of this award – Kemono no Souja Erin, Phantom, Toradora, Clannad ~After Story~, Natsume Yuujinchou, Ga-Rei: Zero – showcase some of the best anime that have aired in the past 2 years and The Tatami Galaxy is no exception. A common thread connecting these shows is the director and animation company excelled at telling a story that focused on a few main characters and allowing the characters to grow naturally. In the middle of The Tatami Galaxy, I was a little worried that all the reboots were not doing anything to help the show along but I should have had more faith in Masaaki Yuasa and Madhouse because the final episodes show just how in control of the story they really were.

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That’s the end of part 1; I hope to have the second part up within a day. Comments and feedback are always appreciated – I’d love to see what others would pick.

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Spring 2010 Awards Part 2: Genre and Misfit Awards
Spring 2010 Awards Part 3: VMA Awards
Spring 2010 Awards: Top 8 Anime – #8 – #5
Spring 2010 Awards: Top 8 Anime – #4 – #1

Filed under: anime, awards

*sigh* So, I think everyone and their mother has criticized Rainbow at some point for acting a bit lax in the storytelling department.  It looks like today is my turn to jump on the bandwagon.  Episode 4 explores Sakuragi, his past, and his current motivation to protect the boys in his cell.  Unfortunately, the way they present it, it falls flat on its face.

We get a flashback in the second half of the episode.  Sakuragi’s father goes off to war.  When the war ends, he doesn’t return.  Eight years later, he finally shows up at the house, and it turns out the Russians had held him for the past eight years in a Siberian internment camp.  The experience changed him completely.  He’s become a drunkard, abusive, and lost his motivation for living.  Sakuragi decides to stay out of the house more often to avoid him, but runs across his father in the pouring rain one night.  They quarrel, and son essentially tells father to go to hell.  The father actually complies, and the experience leaves Sakuragi emotionally scarred.

So, what’s the problem?  Well, it generates no sympathy for Sakuragi’s father.  His son correctly surmises he suffers from survivor’s guilt, but this is something we’re told matter-of-factly, rather than shown.  Think about how much more impact this flashback could have had if we had even a glimpse into the father’s life.

Imagine the life of a middle-aged soldier having to fight in the Second World War while missing the family he holds dear.  Imagine his reaction as his superiors hand him report after report of his children dying on the battlefield, likely without him ever having the chance to say goodbye.  Imagine the despair he feels as the Russians corner him.  Imagine the trip to Siberia, in an overloaded train car, as he realizes he may never see the wife and child he loves dearly ever again.  Imagine him slowly breaking under the strain of the harsh and unforgiving environment in his “new home.”  Imagine the disillusionment he feels when they finally release him eight years later.

Yet, we get none of this.  Survivor’s guilt and its ilk can make for powerful storytelling, but you actually have to work with it correctly.  You never feel immediate sympathy for a character who shows up on the doorstep in a psychologically defeated state.  We need an emotional attachment to the character involved.  This means we also have to experience the events that lead to the gradual breakdown.  I know everything that happened, I just told you all of it, but Rainbow didn’t show it to me itself.  All we see is the result: a man who has broken in several ways and then takes his own life.  It presents us with fact instead of emotion.  I feel no sympathy.

When Sakuragi says his motivation is to prevent such a tragedy from ever occurring again, I feel nothing as well.  Yes, it is fact, and the conclusion derives from the premise, but that’s all it does.  I don’t think it helps any when the whole fire scene is needlessly overwritten and dramatized.  The amount of time they spend in the blaze, the Inspector beating up Uncovered, debris pinning Bro down, it’s all meant to pull at the heart-strings.  They simply do too much with it though, thus it feels overdone.  Perhaps I’m harsh in my assessment.  However, presenting a dark drama doesn’t give you a free card from criticism.  You also must have the writing to back it up.  I’ve read a few comments on MAL that say the manga picks up at this point.  I certainly hope it does.

Trust is something many of us give with great reluctance.  We have to know a person for some time before we feel like we can open up to them.  However, trust is a double-edged sword.  When we reveal these aspects of our lives, we open ourselves to attack.  It’s so easy to betray someone.  It is fitting that this episode, entitled Distrust, revolves around a person who cannot trust anyone.  His name?  Baremoto.

After the events of the last episode, Joe wants to become a singer.  I think this is a career choice right up his alley.  You can tell he is more prone to emotional outbursts than the rest of his companions in the cell, but it isn’t necessarily bad.  You must put emotion into your singing to make it real.  A person who sings about something he doesn’t believe in himself comes off as fake.  In addition, Joe wants his fame to catch his sister’s attention.  However, I think he can do more.  A popular singer can become a strong voice for social change.  He already has a wealth of experience to draw from in his song writing from both positive and negative experiences.  He can use music to convey the problems facing the young, the abandoned, and the impoverished.  Perhaps this is a bit big and idealistic, but sometimes all it takes is one person in the right place to start a change.

Baremoto trusts no one and believes only in himself.  This stems from his childhood, where he saw vile men taking advantage of his mother.  In one way, he is correct in his appraisal.  Truly terrible people exist in this world who are capable of equally terrible actions.  You wouldn’t want to be mixed up with someone of that nature.  At the same time, Baremoto misses the point of his mother’s sacrifice.  She derives no pride from living a life of prostitution.  However, you have a strange sense of admiration for his mother, who literally did everything she could to ensure her son’s safety and survival.  If she believed only in herself as Baremoto does, he would have died long ago.  In addition, you can draw a striking parallel between his mother and himself.  He knows the cigarettes are his and he knows he started the fire.  Baremoto essentially sells himself to Ishihara to escape punishment in a form of mental prostitution.

I think you can define Inspector Ishihara as a control freak with a superiority complex.  He craves power and he gets it by holding control over the kids in the detention facility.  You can see where a guy like Bro would pose a problem.  When Ishihara beats him, Bro simply looks at him with defiance in his eyes.  It is a silent look saying, “You can batter me, but you can never break my spirit.”  It drives him straight into a rage.  His terrible traits make us hate him as a character, perhaps even think of him as a monster.  Yet, just like the boys, I wonder how he got this way.  No one is simply born this way, so what happened in his youth to make him flip out when he loses control?  It runs counter-intuitive to a series about character who have to deal with someone like him, but I hope they resolve it just the same.

Finally, we have Bro.  He acts like a big brother now, but if Ishihara’s words are true, he killed his parents.  It surprised me to see them put this plot into motion so early.  Whatever the circumstances of the crime, we can see Bro wants to become a better person.  He’s acted as a pillar of strength to the boys, to the extent that Mario still believes in him despite the claims.  When Bro runs into the fire, it really drives home his character.  Generally, a person running into a fire embarks on a suicide mission.  So many things can go wrong.  You can receive heavy burns, suffocate, or even the building itself might crush you with its quickly diminishing structural integrity.  He knows it and volunteers to sacrifice himself anyway, even if his inmates hate him and even if they already died.  I really don’t care what he did in the past right now, I look at him as a hero.  Next week, we’ll see if his heroics bear any fruit.

I’ve been putting off this episode, partly because I’ve had something to write about every day so far, and partly because I hoped FroZen could save me from ridiculously huge files.  Well, I ran out of episodes.  I cleared some space on my hard disk and sat back with a nice refreshment while I waited for it to finish.  Okay, enough silliness.  After all, prison is serious business.

The boys arrived at the detention center in January, and some time has passed.  Today, Joe has a visitor, the woman who runs the orphanage where he was raised.  He arrived with a girl he treated like a sister, named Megu, and someone has adopted her.  This prompts flashbacks to his childhood, where the two were all each other had.  Unfortunately, the director sexually abused him.  You can understand his concern for his sister given the orphanage’s record.  When supplies arrive, an opportunity to escape presents itself, and his fellow inmates help him.  He runs straight for the orphanage.  This is actually a very bad move.  A little forethought would tell you the officers would have the grounds under surveillance.  Joe simply cannot think clearly under the conditions.  Despite his normal mild manner, he’s filled with rage and sadness and wants nothing more than to protect his little sister.  I imagine most of us would make the same crucial error.  The officers capture him easily and he receives a severe beating for his escape.

On the other end of this equation, we have Megu.  The orphanage director has just sold her off to a… rather unsavory fellow.  You can tell she doesn’t like the arrangement just from looking at her body language.  Yet, she still tells Joe off rather tersely.  Why would she do such a thing to her brother?  It’s quite simple.  We do not like seeing our loved ones in pain, and we hate it even more when we cause the pain ourselves.  Joe has put himself in danger by escaping the prison to search for her.  Guards have roughly subdued him, and he’s even sustained a head injury.  She can probably guess he will try to escape again at the next opportunity, and he might suffer even more.  When Megu tells him to leave her alone and to think about himself, it crushes Joe.  It crushes her as well, and she bursts into tears in the temporary safety of her room as she quietly thanks her brother for his concern.  However, at least he will stay in the detention center and not suffer for her sake.  I hope they will meet again someday, so she can tell him why she did this.

Finally, we have a very brief look at Spoon.  He lost his family in the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  He didn’t have any lost love for his abusive, alcoholic father, but he lost his sister.  He still blames himself for leaving his sister behind when he went for a walk that day.  I’m not going to cover anything about the nuclear attack for now, and I instead defer to the book Hiroshima by John Hersey.  I know it’s required reading in some schools, and if you haven’t read it, you should.  However, people seem to hold a misconception that anyone even near the blast zone died in short order.  Shouldn’t Spoon have died already?  Hersey’s book relates the stories of six people, five of whom were within a mile of ground zero.  He followed up on them forty years later.  Four of the six survived.  The bomb caused a great deal of psychological and physical trauma to people, but it did not guarantee death.  On that note, radiation exposure has probably shaped Spoon’s physical appearance.  Next week, we should to learn a little about Baremoto.

Rainbow is the story of seven teenagers who are thrown into a juvenile detention center in 1950s Japan.  The series is decidedly dark and gritty.  If you are looking for an anime with rainbows and butterflies, find another series, like K-ON.  If you cannot handle explicit images, turn back now.  For everyone remaining, welcome to Hell.

In the aftermath of the bombings, World War II, and the reparations demanded of them, Japan has become a crapsack country.  In such conditions, those with power thrive, and those who lack power constantly draw the short straw.  On the one side of this equation, we have Inspector Ishihara, who presides over his center with an iron fist.  He prefers to issue punishment personally through beatings, viewing the teenagers as less than human.  You can see he enjoys the work with the twisted smile on his face as he inflicts blow after blow.  He also hates having his authority challenged in any way.  If the Doctor hadn’t come to the cell to stop him during one of his tirades, we would probably be out one main character in the first episode.

Speaking of Bro, he embodies the other usage of power.  Ishihara’s power has corrupted him and he rules through fear.  By comparison, Bro leads by example and commands respect from the new additions to his cell.  He has an air of maturity and a great deal of control over his actions.  When the teens attack him to assert their superiority, he defends himself, but not to an extreme extent.  He dodges and counters each one with simple blows meant to show them who leads, and not to inflict great injury.  While he berates them when they question him, he also reaches out to them in friendship by passing the cigarette around the cell.  Where all the other characters get brief introductions by the narrator, Bro doesn’t introduce himself until the end and he still doesn’t tell us why he’s here.  It’ll be interesting to learn the source of his maturity, as well as the crime he committed.

Then we have the other six delinquents who have freshly joined the detention center.  The narrator introduces each with the crime they committed.  Some of the descriptions are straightforward, while I assume others will have a bit of fleshing out as the series progresses.  Turtle and Uncovered are both con artists and thieves, while Cabbage’s imprisonment is due to alcohol consumption and assault.  These three illustrate the squalor plaguing the country as the poor and unfortunate resort to crime to support themselves, or fall into the wrong crowd.  On the other hand, Mario, Soldier, and Joe all have sentences relating to assault, where they defended themselves or another.  Their crimes represent the failings of the penal system to mete out true justice.

The people running this institution drive home that the teens have no power.  The first thing they have to deal with is riding on a bus filled with people while they stand in chains with their faces covered.  Then when they arrive at the facility, the doctor subjects them to a cavity search using a long glass shaft.  They use both of these experiences to degrade them.  Deprived of any power, they try their luck at harvesting some level of superiority by taking on Bro, but to no avail.  When offered the opportunity to strike him by the Inspector, they refuse.  They know they have no right to strike him when a downed man when they couldn’t even touch him while he stood.  It illustrates both a capacity for humility and morality I am interested to see develop.  In the next episode, Joe tries his hand at escaping to see his sister.  I don’t imagine his plan going too well.