Mangaphobia 01: Cowboy Bebop

Hello and welcome! This is the first episode of Mangaphobia, my new series chronicling the adventures of me, a seasoned anime-sceptic, as I dip my toes into the slightly frightening world of Japanese animation. Read the introduction to get up to speed, then join me as I try desperately to better myself.
First up is the cartoon that inspired me to begin this quest in the first place:


There's something decidedly western about Cowboy Bebop.
I mean, obviously, the word "cowboy" is right there in the title, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's hard to pin down, but I think it's a structural thing - something about the way the stories are built and told. Maybe it's a more recognisable three-act structure, or more pronounced character-building (anime often seems to just assume you'll accept blank characters). Whatever the reason, it just feels familiar, somehow, where a lot of anime seems detached and alien.
That's obviously my prejudice talking. Not a negative prejudice - not xenophobia or racism or anything - just that, culturally, I'm not equipped to understand the conventions of Japanese storytelling. That's probably one reason anime usually leaves me cold, and why Bebop makes such a good entry-point.

Another reason Bebop works for me is that it puts spaceships together with country music which, for some unknown reason, just feels right.
In fact, the whole show has a deep fascination with music. The episodes (which are even referred to as "sessions") have titles like Heavy Metal Queen and Black Dog Serenade, and the brilliantly integrated soundtrack is full of jazz, rock, blues, country and (of course) bebop. The show's musical leanings also result in, without a doubt, the single coolest intro-sequence of any programme ever. Oh yeah.

The "cowboy" of the title doesn't actually refer to the Western influences (though they are certainly there), rather it's a term this world uses for bounty-hunters. Our heroes are a ragtag band of such cowboys who live and travel on a rusty old ship called Bebop.
Spike Spiegal is the scrawny, sharp-suited scoundrel with big hair, massive clown feet, and a penchant for martial-arts. Jet Black (yes, really) is the rough, tough, gruff mechanic with a robotic arm and a heart of gold. Faye Valentine is the charming thief, who can weasel her way into anything but can't always weasel back out. Radical Edward (yes, really) is the prepubescent master-hacker who is probably crazy and, despite the name, definitely a girl. And Ein is the ship's pet corgi, who may or may not secretly be a super-genius.

Wow, that seems really silly written down. And it is silly, of course - when Edward's involved it often gets outright surreal - but it's weaved throughout the serious stuff in a way that makes it work. The moment that I officially fell in love with Bebop, in fact, was when I realised that the creepy, atmospheric episode I was watching had actually been an absurdist Alien homage all along.
A lot of anime seems oppressively over-serious; either with no humour at all, or with sudden, jarring shifts from crushing darkness to, "Look, a funny animal!" or, more often, "Look, he tripped and groped her boobs!" Cowboy Bebop is much more even and level - it sprinkles light humour throughout, but never really strays into stupid, obvious, or boob-centric jokes. Conversely it handles even its most serious episodes and moments with a gentle touch and a streak of fun (see: the last shot of the entire series). This is, again, something that feels unusually western to my prejudiced eyes.

You wouldn't know any of this from the beginning, though. The first episode, Asteroid Blues, had me groaning with disappointment and dreading watching the rest. It was exactly what I was afraid it would be, with an overly dour "edgy" plot about drugs and violence, endless slow pans and still-frames to save money, and several pervy boob closeups; the only levity was three random old blokes that seemed painfully out of place, and a lot of the voice-acting was terrible. It's probably my least favourite episode - it's a bloody awful place to start.

The second episode, Stray Dog Strut, is much less serious. There's a case of mistaken identity, a long slapstick dog chase, and a character who has a tortoise on their head. But, coming off the back of the po-faced Asteroid Blues, I had no idea how I was meant to process this. Going back to it, it's actually quite a fun episode but, at the time, I didn't realise it was trying to be fun, so I wrote it off as some bizarre misfire.

Episode three is where it finally clicked. Honky Tonk Woman opens with Spike and Jet kicking back in a casino - the music, the lights, Jet’s outfit, and the fact that they're bickering like an old married couple all make it feel like an Ocean’s Eleven-type caper. Then everyone’s plans go wrong - both theirs and the bad-guys’ - there’s double-crosses and ransoms and exchanges, and it ends in an inventive and spectacular shootout on the outside of the ship. It’s great and exciting and fun, and I suddenly understood what this cartoon was.

From there the show quickly finds better footing, and settles into a comfortable rhythm (fitting for a show so obsessed with music). At every scale and every level it is balancing itself - every serious beat is offset by a moment of levity, and every heavily serious episode is followed by a slightly offbeat one. It’s so well-calculated that you don’t even blink when Ed finally turns up, nine episodes in, and things start getting really whacky. Bebop is surprisingly versatile.
As a general rule, the lighter episodes tend to be standalone affairs, where the crew face a new challenge in a new location with new characters, and it all wraps up by the end of the session (like the aforementioned Alien homage, the magic mushrooms, or the time they meet an actual cowboy). That’s not to say that standalones never get serious and deep - there’s a couple that are absolutely horrifying (Pierrot Le Fou springs to mind) - but the more consistently serious ones are episodes that deal with our characters’ pasts.

Spike, Jet and Faye all have emotional damage and secrets that get slowly explored throughout the series. We do get a glance into Ed’s history, too, but since her experiences have left her either totally unphased or completely broken (it’s hard to tell which) we never really learn much.
The main arc of the series is Spike’s and, for me at least, it’s the least interesting and least engaging thing about the whole cartoon. His story is, at the risk of appearing even more biased, very very anime. It’s about his lost love, and his dark past with the triads, and the betrayal of the man he once viewed as a brother. That betrayer, a man called Vicious (bit of a giveaway, guys), is one of those patented tall, white-haired girly-men with a billowing coat and an improbably deep voice - I can picture some of my friends swooning even as I type that - and I just couldn’t take him seriously at all. I was rolling my eyes whenever he stalked effeminately onto the screen. This might have been ok if the show retained its sense of humour, but Spike’s past is treated with even more severity than the opening episode - his episodes are unrelentingly heavy and grim. Spike’s much more interesting in the episodes that aren’t about him, when he’s kicking arse and cracking wise and isn’t tied down by this rote, overplayed anime story.

I’m willing to overlook Spike and Vicious, though, because the other main stories are so much more interesting. Jet’s an ex-cop, and his episodes play out as gritty noir thrillers as we learn why he had to leave that life behind, and how he lost his arm. True to its noir stylings, while there is action, his stories burn slow and mostly deal with moral greys and difficult choices. Where Spike’s out for simple revenge and is otherwise a free spirit, Jet’s conflicts are more complex and difficult; his life and past rubbing up against his beliefs and ideologies. It paints a wonderful portrait of a man left behind by a changing world.
Faye’s story is the slowest to be revealed - with hints early on and then nothing for almost half the series - and it becomes a haunting tragedy. She’s actually suffering from amnesia, which sounds clichéd but works well when we learn that she was cryogenically frozen for fifty-four years after an accident. With not only no memory of her life, but also no way of returning to it even if she could remember, her journey is heartfelt and bittersweet.
Much fun as it is to watch the crew bounty-hunting, dealing with big, scary sci-fi concepts, and hunting for Betamax players (don’t ask), it’s the depth of the character exploration that really makes Cowboy Bebop stick. Thankfully, in most cases, it’s a damn sight more effective and affecting than anything we learn about Spike.

Bebop is the first anime series I can unreservedly say that I liked. In fact I kinda loved it. It still suffers from many of the juvenile and exploitative things that anime always seems to suffer from - as well as Spike’s self-serious melodrama there’s the ever-present fact that Faye dresses like a prostitute, the first episode’s boob-cam, a sequence involving suncream and, um, this guy - but it manages to tell stories that are interesting with characters who are engaging and themes that it actually sees through to the end. I called the storytelling "western" before, but I’m pretty sure that’s unfair - wherever you’re from, this is just good storytelling.
My main complaint, weirdly, is about the Bebop herself. If you ask me to draw the Starship Enterprise, I can. If you ask me to draw a Firefly, I can. If you name any ship from Star Wars, I can tell you what it looks like. Even the Planet Express ship! There are three smaller ships inside Bebop that are all iconic and memorable, but the actual Bebop? I have no idea what Bebop looks like and, considering how much time we spend with her, that’s a damned shame. But, when that’s the strongest complaint I can really muster - about an anime, of all things - then that just shows how much Cowboy Bebop gets right.


Thanks for reading, anime peoples!
I got loads of great comments and suggestions last week about where I should take Mangaphobia going forwards. Death Note and one of the Full Metals (Alchemist, I think?) seem the most popular choices, but I’d still appreciate any other suggestions you may have. Before I dive headlong into a time-eating TV series, for instance, what movies do people suggest? Ghibli, I’m guessing, but which ones?
I’m hopefully seeing The World’s End tonight (finally), so reviewing that will be my next mission, but after that I hope to return with the second episode of Mangaphobia: a retrospective on the various different versions of Evangelion. See you then!

Mangaphobia 00: Full Metal Introduction!

Since I've failed completely to see The World's End this week, meaning that I have nothing to review, now seems a pretty good time to launch my long-gestating new blog series:

I once asked a friend how Full Metal Alchemist and Full Metal Panic! were related. Her pitying look and condescending answer are forever burned onto my brain. Apparently they're not related at all (except for both stealing the same Kubrick title for some reason) and I'm a colossal idiot for ever assuming they were. That's just one of many times that I thought, yeah, this anime stuff just isn't for me.

Anyone who has ever known me will know that - barring a brief period of insanity where I, like everyone else, was obsessed with Pokémon (note: the G1 games still rule) - I have always disliked anime. I've tried, honestly, but it's just never clicked.
I've never understood what people see in it. This despite the fact that every point in my life has included someone telling me how great it is. Kids at school obsessed with Dragon Ball Z; tutors at uni obsessed with Studio Ghibli; housemates obsessed with pretty much all of it. A few of my friends are even that specific breed of Japanophile who devote themselves entirely to "cosplay" (formerly known as "dressing up"), pocky (the world's least exciting biscuit) and collecting unbelievably creepy, unbelievably expensive vinyl dolls.

Despite this, or possibly because of it, I've become increasingly dismissive of the whole affair. I now actively avoid the stuff, and get snarky whenever it comes up in conversation. I realise that I'm generalising - that I'm not giving it a chance - and that I'm likely depriving myself of some legitamately good films and shows. I also realise that I'm being an arsehole. But I can't help it! At a certain point, I'd just had enough.
Enough of seeing the same few generic faces, distinguished only by their hair. Enough of hearing the same few voices, usually so screechy and irritating. Enough of seeing the same few recycled plots, be they robots or harems or schools or all three. Enough of the meaningless titles that are just a mashup of random English words. Enough of the character-design choices, and all of the other choices, made simply to appeal to teenage perverts. Enough of the "mature" subject matter, somehow handled with even less maturity than Torchwood. Enough of the animation tricks and cheats to keep costs down. Enough of the jerky, ugly, 8fps framerates. And, seriously, enough of the smug assumption that it's somehow automatically better than western cartoons.

Do you see? Do you see how dismissive and judgemental I've become? I don't want to be this person, but it's already wormed its way into my self-identity!
But, recently, a funny thing happened: I watched Cowboy Bebop. And I liked it.
That show is a glowing beacon of hope for me. Proof that I actually can enjoy anime - that I don't automatically prejudge it. While my mind clearly isn't open, it's not fully closed! I can overcome my discrimination!
But I can't do it alone.

Mangaphobia is a series of blog posts, starting with this one, which will (hopefully) track my journey and (hopefully) growth as I give anime a second chance and explore what it has to offer. The plan is to look at one anime, either a film or part of a show, each episode. Some may be short breakdowns, others might warrent deeper investigations, but I promise to keep my prejudiced little mind as open as I can either way. There won't be a strict schedule - it won't be weekly or monthly - so these will just get posted whenever they're ready.
First up, some time in the coming weeks, will be the aforementioned Cowboy Bebop. Then I'm planning to revisit Evangelion, a series with which I have a long, bipolar history. Beyond that, though, I have no idea. My knowledge of anime is limited, small-minded, and out of date. I'm kind of flailing in the dark, here!

That's where you come in.
Lets make this baby interactive! In the comments of this post, and of other episodes of Mangaphobia, I would really appreciate any suggestions people have for me to watch next. Some (most) of my readers probably have much more experience with this stuff than I do, and any input would be really really helpful.

That's the end of this Full Metal Neon Introduction Complex, but Mangaphobia will return soon with a look at Cowboy Bebop.
Until then, please please please comment below. Let me know which Ghibli movie I should try first; which series really speaks to you; and what's your favourite hentai. Except not that last one.
Help me to expand my horizons and become a better human being!

The Bitesize Twilight Saga

The first time I wrote about a film on the internet (outside of comments sections and forums) was not last year's Film of the Year awards. It was actually four years ago, on DeviantArt of all places. And, believe it or not, it was about Twilight.

Twilight, and its four sequels, are almost entirely terrible (I say "almost" because the third one actually has some good bits). I genuinely could not believe how terrible the first one was when I saw it. I felt deeply insulted. Not as an audience-member or as a film-lover - I felt insulted as a human being. The fact that this unbelievably tedious, badly made, badly written, badly acted thing was being sold as entertainment was an insult to the intelligence of our species as a whole. The fact that it was phenomenally popular made me want to abandon and possibly murder that species.

But, instead of a killing-spree, I put my energy into warning others not to watch it. I made a comic-strip version of the movie, so that anyone who was curious could experience the plot and tone of the film without actually subjecting themselves to the torturous eternity it takes to watch. I called it "panart", because there isn't actually a word for fanart born of hatred.

For those unfamiliar with DeviantArt, it's a sort of online art-gallery, where you can post any and all kinds of art and it can be viewed and appraised by other users. In practice this means it's mostly horrifying porn, but that's true of the entire internet. What's important is that you can also write accompanying text to explain the art, and that writing the text for my Twilight comic was essentially the first time I tried to review a film. It wasn't much of a review - it's barely two-hundred words and it's mostly just insults - but I'm pretty sure that's where the seeds of this blog were planted. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Since then, I've also done comics for New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn (part 1), and I used the text to talk about those movies, too. Each review is longer and more reviewy than the last - they're still mostly just insults, though.

Happily, the nightmare is now over. Just last night I posted my final Twilight comic - Breaking Dawn (part 2) - to DeviantArt, and wrote a ridiculously excessive two-thousand words to go with it. Still mostly just insults.
To mark this final conclusion to the series that first got me reviewing movies, and to celebrate the fact that I will never have to watch this poison again, I'm posting the whole series on the blog that it eventually inspired. Here, in all its tedious glory, is the saga of Bitesize Twilight:

Bitesize Twilight
Bitesize New Moon
Bitesize Eclipse
Bitesize Breaking Dawn (part 1)
Bitesize Breaking Dawn (part 2)

Monsters University Review

Depending on when you ask me - the day of the week, the alignment of the planets, and just how romantic I'm feeling - Monsters Inc. is either my favourite or my second-favourite Pixar film. But, even on the days when Wall-E is my favourite, the world of Monsters Inc. is still the most creative, unusual, vibrant and fun of all the worlds they've created. It's wildly imaginative in a way that really hasn't been topped.
It also has the most story potential by far. The Toy Stories all had to be about things that really happen to toys, Cars 2 had to be about things that really happen to cars, Finding Dory will have to be about things that really happen to fish, an Incredibles sequel would have to be about superheroics, another Ratatouille would have to be about cooking - but a Monsters film can be about anything at all, just with tail-holes in the chairs. If we're going to return to one of those worlds, I'm glad it's this one.

The only trouble is Boo.
The original Monsters Inc. hinges entirely on Sully's relationship with that tiny human stowaway. Their bond is so heartfelt and affecting that the film once made me cry my eyes out in a bar full of strangers because I caught the last few seconds with no sound on a tiny TV on the other side of the room. The film was playing on a loop so this happened three times.
If there's any reason not to make another Monsters film, it's this. There is no way - no possible way - they could continue the story of Sully and Boo without tarnishing Monsters Inc.'s perfect ending. Yet a sequel without that relationship would be just as bad. There's no way to win.
Being a prequel, then, allows Monsters University to spend more time in this fertile world, without affecting the emotional legacy of the original.

Without Boo, the problem then becomes finding heart and emotion somewhere else. Pixar's solution is, as ever, ingenious. The emotion in University comes from love and nostalgia for Monsters Inc. itself - not our own love and nostalgia, but Mike's.
As a small green child we see Mike visit the Monsters Inc. scare factory where, in wide-single-eyed wonder, he falls in love with the place - as we did, twelve years ago - and decides then and there to become the world's greatest scarer. Mike's adoration of Monsters Inc. is real and heartfelt, and so is this film's. We go back there a few times and, every time, it's an emotional highpoint for us and for the characters. It's those emotions that tie the film together, and that eventually lead Sully and Mike to the great friendship we know.

Driven by his childhood experience, we follow nerdy Mike to the prestigious Monsters University, to learn from the scariest monsters in the world. He quickly develops a rivalry with arrogant jock Sully, and that rivalry quickly gets them both thrown out of school. Their only hope is to learn to work together and help their misfit fraternity (what the hell is a fraternity, anyway?) to win MU's annual Scare Games, so that the Dean will have to reinstate them.
Yes, this is a pretty standard college-movie plot, and it hits every single beat and plot-point you'd expect - but the monster angle keeps things interesting enough, big enough, and unrelentingly funny enough, that it never suffers because of it. It all wraps up with exactly the college-movie ending you expect and... then it keeps going.
I won't say where it goes, exactly, but it's thoroughly unexpected and brilliant, as it slowly reveals that the film is not about what, or even who, you thought it was. It's pretty amazing.

It's admittedly not as resonant as Monsters Inc., but what University lacks in tears of sadness and joy, it makes up for in tears of laughter. This might be Pixar's funniest film. Every frame is packed with sight-gags and in-jokes and references, the script is very funny, and the physical humour is second-to none. Returning character "Randy" Boggs (who only has an evil squint because he doesn't wear his glasses) has a motivational poster on his wall that just destroyed me.
This stuff comes thick and fast - in fact the whole film is surprisingly fast-paced. Monsters Inc. took a while to let us settle into the crazy world before barraging us with jokes and action, but MU hits us with these from the very first scene. It doesn't let up, and it's great.

The one thing that isn't played for laughs, interestingly, is humans. In Inc. the monsters' fear of children was basically a joke - watching huge scary beasts freak out about a little girl (or a sock) - but where children are concerned, this film gets scary. The human world sections are like a horror film, dark and creepy, and any sight of a human is treated as terrifying and dangerous. It's a great, atmospheric approach and it leads to some of the film's best sequences.

All in all it's just a really solid movie. It has great set-pieces, tons of heart, and near constant hilarity. But the real strength comes from wonderful characters that we learn to love all over again, and a deceptively deep story that goes to truly surprising places. The last act pushes Monsters University from a fun extension of the first film into an actual worthy successor.

It won't be making me cry in any strange bars, thankfully, but it's fantastic all the same.

Gipsy Danger's iPod

Do you know what’s awesome about Pacific Rim? I mean, besides the eighty-metre-tall robot battle-suits, the hundred-metre-long alien death-monsters, and the fact that one hits the other in the face with a freaking boat! Apart from all that, d’you know what’s awesome?
The music is awesome.

It's by Ramin Djawadi, the guy who does the equally awesome music for Game of Thrones, and it's just perfect for this movie. The main theme makes me smile the exact same way the film makes me smile: it’s exciting, over-the-top, and just a little bit cheesy. The whole soundtrack is the same - there's an operatic horror-theme for the Kaiju, and an overly melodramatic one for the overly melodramatic bits. It knows it’s kind of silly, and it’s running with it - which is Pacific Rim in a nutshell. It's larger than life.

I said before that the Iron Man 3 score didn’t really feel like an Iron Man film to me. It's brilliant, but it's too choral and orchestral, where I think Tony Stark needs a more mechanical sound. Why I'm writing this post is that the main Pacific Rim theme - the one I linked to above - is exactly what I had in mind!
This film's also about guys in power-armour, and it turns out that Djawadi actually is the guy who did Iron Man, so I shouldn't really be surprised that they synch up so well. I just wanted to mention it because I thought it was interesting, and because it gives me an excuse to listen to it again.

Because it's awesome.

Pacific Rim Review

I live my life according to a strict and ancient code. It is called the Creed of MEGAS and, though it has many complex and subtle rules, its central and most sacred tenet is that I dig giant robots.
I can't help it. Something about them just speaks directly to the pleasure-centres of my brain, bypassing all conscious thought. If you show me a giant mechanical creature, I'll be willing to forgive any number of sins (cough, Revenge of the Fallen, cough). Big robots, and their piloted mech cousins, make me very very happy.

What this means is that Pacific Rim feels like it was made specifically for me, and I'm therefore the last person on Earth you should trust the opinion of.

For years the world has been under attack from Kaiju (Japanese for "giant sodding monsters") and, somehow, the best solution has turned out to be fighting them with giant sodding mech-warriors called Jaegers (German for "hunters" as well as "deadly student booze"). For a while this worked but now, with attacks becoming more frequent and more ferocious, the Jaeger Program is failing - their robots getting destroyed, their pilots getting killed, and their funding getting cut. The film follows retired mech-pilot Raleigh Becket and rookie Mako Mori - who operate his outdated Jaeger, Gipsy Danger, through a Vulcan mind-meld - as they prepare for a last-ditch assault on the deep-sea interdimensional portal from which the Kaiju emerge.

On some level, I'm completely aware how stupid all this is. But on another level, it's pretty much what my dreams look like.
Happily, Pacific Rim is also completely aware how stupid all this is. After the reveal of Gipsy Danger's secret weapon, and a ludicrous moment with a desk-toy (to say nothing of Ron Pearlman's black-market Kaiju-part-dealer), we're under no illusion that it’s taking itself seriously. This is a film with a character named Hercules Hansen, a building called the Shatterdome, and a part where someone actually shouts "Elbow Rocket!" Gritty and realistic, it is not.
Which isn't to say it's a parody, or even tongue-in-cheek. While it is self-aware, and often pretty silly, it's also incredibly earnest - even when it’s poking fun at itself, it's always completely invested in its story, its world and its characters.

In truth, those characters only range from simple archetypes to basic stereotypes. They’re reductive and minimal and their stories aren’t always handled as well as they could be, but they're humanised enough that we still care about their struggles. It’s used as shorthand: we recognise most of these characters immediately, which means we understand them immediately, too. The ones we don't understand are explained through the pilots' mind-melding process - "the Drift" - which means we literally walk through their minds and memories. This is criminally underused, but the few times it does appear are brilliantly effective and powerful.
In spite of their simplicity, or maybe because of it, the characters make a strong impression quickly and we can't help but care - so much so that Marshal Stacker Pentecost (played to perfection by Idris Elba) might be my favourite character of the year.
What sounds like a weakness is used as a strength - Pacific Rim is painting with broad strokes on a huge canvas, so it helps to keep things basic. The plot is simple, the characters are simple, their relationships are simple, and it's all delivered to the audience as simply and efficiently as possible. The entire history of the Kaiju War, for example, is recounted in the first five minutes, and it contains more information and world-building than most entire films!

The world-building is phenomenal, by the way. It's a living, breathing place, so real you can smell it. Those first five minutes - the origin of the Kaiju and Jaegers, the early victories and the later defeats - are so dense with information that they could almost be the first two films in a trilogy. In a film-climate currently obsessed with origins and franchises, it's actually surprising that they're not. This film is willing to just throw us into its world, fully formed and expertly realised, and to end without setting up a sequel. It's confident enough to be self-contained, and that's worth celebrating.

Also worth celebrating is the action. It's why I'm here, it's why you're here, and it's why director Guillermo Del Toro is here (though I still can't pronounce his name). They sold this film on robots fighting monsters, and it delivers spectacularly.
All the action is excellent. Inventive, distinctive, gorgeous to look at - everything you could want from this kind of mayhem. Del Toro clearly loves this stuff, and as much thought and care is put into the fight-scenes as into the dialogue scenes; maybe more. Every Jaeger, and every Kaiju, moves and fights in a different way, giving each battle a unique personality. The only constant is the scale and weight of these things - their movements are big and slow, and collisions and impacts feel enormous. We've seen big movie action before, but it's never felt this big.
Yet, even while the scope is huge, it remains tightly character-driven. We’re made aware early on just how vulnerable Jaeger pilots are, and the battles cut to them throughout. The pilots may shout things like "Let’s do this!" a little much, and it’s a shame that the character drama never directly informs the action, but it’s more than enough that we always know and feel the human stakes.

My only complaint is that the action peaks too early. The movie’s highlight is undoubtedly a battle in Hong Kong - it’s an incredible sequence for a number of reasons, not least the diversity and changing nature of the fight, but the main reason it works is that we can really see the scale of the combatants. When the Kaiju or Jaegers stand beside buildings, their size is breathtaking. When they’re smashing each other’s heads into those buildings, so much the better! It also means they can make use of their environment - using cranes or shipping crates as weapons - to further show off their enormous size and weight.
The final battle abandons urban locations for a more natural landscape - which makes sense for the story, and is certainly better for the population (Superman could learn a lot from these guys), but it means we lose the sense of scale. The fight itself is still fantastic and creative and tense, but it just can’t replicate the sheer awe of seeing how big they are. Of course, we know they’re still huge, but without a visual reference to remind us, they don’t really feel it.
It doesn’t matter, though, because that last fight is more about the characters. Though the drama may be thinly sketched and, dare I say, even a little cheesy, it all pays off in that climax. The battle may seem smaller, but it has a massive heart.

Pacific Rim is, first and foremost, enormous fun - pun intended. It takes a ridiculous premise and simple characters, and works them into a surprisingly effective story. That story is very basic, but it’s a solid enough foundation to build an immersive, believable world with some of the biggest, most impressive, most downright enjoyable action you could hope for. It's big, loud, crazy, over-the-top and completely lovable - which is not surprising since that's basically a discription of Del Toro.
I was probably going to love this film whatever happened. Just the mere sight of Striker Eureka (the shiny, sexy, super-high-tech Australian Jaeger) is enough to get me grinning like an idiot. But if you’re willing to accept how daft Pacific Rim can get - if you’re willing to Drift into its mindset - I think you’ll be grinning too.

Avatar: The Glory of Aang

In my last post I said that Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the best animated series ever made; then I proceeded to rip it to pieces for its disappointing cop-out ending. I feel bad about that.
As I said, I love Avatar - but that's probably not the impression that last post gave. So, to restore balance to the Force (or possibly to the chakras), I'll be using this post to look at the things the show gets right.

If you were to ask me which is the best season of Avatar my default answer is, and always has been, Book Two: Earth. But now, watching it back for the umpteenth time, the second series seems to have a lot more fluff and filler than I remember. Stuff like that swamp episode, or the first three quarters of The Chase. Tales of Ba Sing Se is blatant filler of the most gratuitous order (though Sokka makes it work). Likewise Avatar Day (likewise Sokka). That's not even mentioning the entire subplot with Appa!

Book One has a lot less of this - or rather, if it does, it hides it better. There are filler episodes, but at that point we're still learning about Avatar's world, so even filler is interesting and new and educational. The only ones that really stand out as obvious fluff are The Great Divide and The Fortuneteller - but even those serve to teach us more about these characters we're still getting to know (and the latter gets a pass anyway on the strength of just one line).

Book Three is similar in that we've never visited the Fire Nation before that series. Again the filler episodes are teaching us about this new environment, and about the people living there. Up 'til now our only experience of the Fire Nation has been their military - faceless soldiers who do bad things. Episodes like The Painted Lady, or that weird Footloose one, show us that people in this land are just as oppressed as those in the Earth Kingdom - even while they're blatantly killing time before the real meat of the series begins.
Series three is also the first series to really embrace what Tales of Ba Sing Se tried to do, which is to just go crazy with it. The Play and the amazing anime beach episode (also, somehow, very important to the plot) are both half-an-hour of winking and nudging the audience - and Daydreams and Nightmares is just plain bonkers (did I mention that everybody loves chakras?).

So why do I prefer Book Two? As a series it's essentially treading water until Toph arrives in episode 6, and then it wastes even more time when we reach Ba Sing Se. Again, not even mentioning Appa's subplot. It has (discounting the finale) the deepest, and the longest, low-points of the entire show.
But it also has the highest high-points. Zuko Alone is one of the best episodes of the entire programme. The end of The Chase (after a pretty poor first half) is also brilliant. Zuko's entire second series arc, in fact, is one of the best things in the entire run - and it has that bit where Uncle sings.
Series two also introduces Toph, who is obviously amazing, and Azula, who is obviously terrifying. Azula's far more effective as both a character and a threat than either Ozai or Zhao (and infinitely better than Sparky-Sparky-Boom-Man) so this series has the best villain too.
But the real reason that Book Two is my favourite is how coherent it is as a complete series. The way that, from start to finish, it's always about the same few things, and how those same things all collide come the finale.

Think about the final battle of each series. In Book One, Team Avatar must save the North Pole from a Fire Nation attack - something that is only set up a few episodes earlier. There's also some business with two mystical koi fish and Sokka's new girlfriend, both of which are also introduced in the last few episodes. It ties in with a recurring theme of technology versus nature (and skepticism versus mysticism) that crops up throughout the first season, but that's about it. Don't misunderstand, though, this ending still works pretty damn well.
In Book Three, Team Avatar must stop the "Phoenix King"'s ridiculous plan to (literally) set the world on fire - something that's never ever mentioned before the finale itself! Also energybending and lion-turtles and Aang's unwillingness to kill (he's blown up a lot of ships and tanks at this point) are all clumsily introduced during the ending itself. It doesn't even have the thematic anchor of season one's ending. This ending does not work so well.
In Book Two, by contrast, Team Avatar must prevent the Fire Nation from conquering Ba Sing Se, capital city of the Earth Kingdom. This conflict is set up in the first episode of the series - maybe even before that, in season one. Everything else about that ending - the temptation of Zuko, Aang learning to let go, everything with the Dai Li - is set up and foreshadowed throughout the series. The only thing that feels out-of-nowhere is the sudden introduction of Guru Pathic - but we did already meet him briefly in Appa's Lost Days and, unlike energybending, the aid he provides is something Aang knew existed and has been searching for for some time.

Every episode (except, perhaps, that swamp one) pushes forwards these themes. Episodes I’ve already described as filler are nevertheless focused on the central concepts of the series. Both The Cave of Two Lovers and Return to Omashu, while not progressing the overall story very much, highlight Aang’s reliance on emotional attachments (to Katara and Bumi respectively) and the entire Appa plot, much as I keep joking about it, does the same thing. Almost losing Katara and actually losing Appa are the only things in the series that drive Aang into the uncontrolled Avatar State - and it’s no coincidence that they come at the beginning and exact midpoint of the series: the whole series is built around these ideas, so that the finale mirrors and contrasts what has come before.
Zuko’s arc is even more pronounced. The battle between what he wants and what he thinks he wants plays into every episode he appears in, and the string of choices and realisations he makes mean that his character is subtly different every time we see him - abandoning Uncle, accepting Uncle, dealing with Jet, dealing with Jin (his date), and finally helping Appa. Like Aang, this is underlined exactly half way through his arc by his screaming at the sky in Bitter Work. And, like Aang, the finale reflects and complements everything that has happened to him. It’s brilliantly done.
It’s not just those main two characters, either. Toph gets almost as much focus - her need to prove herself, and the insecurity it stems from, coming up again and again from her first episode to her last. The Chase and Tales of Ba Sing Se, again both mostly filler, highlight this, as do The Blind Bandit and The Serpent’s Pass. When she fails to save Appa in the desert (though not actually in The Desert) this gets hammered home to both us and her and, once again, it comes at the exact midpoint of the series.

Azula doesn’t have an arc the way the others do (though she does get the most interesting arc in Book Three) but her single-mindedness and skill at manipulation are emphasised from the minute we meet her, using Zuko’s desires against him. She does the same thing with Ty Lee, and later with the Dai Li, and, once again, the end of her story - the temptation of Zuko - mirrors where that story began.

This is all fantastically constructed, and perhaps the best thing the series then does with it is to split the characters up as the ending approaches - each character must deal with these issues alone before being thrown together to see how they affect one another. Even Katara and Sokka are separated to deal with her hatred of the Fire Nation and his desire to be a man - themes which, while not foreshadowed as overtly as Aang’s or Toph’s, have been bubbling under the surface for two whole series.
Then, after each character faces the conclusion of their individual theme and each seems to be heading towards a particular solution, the arcs suddenly come crashing together, veering off in new directions. Some get the catharsis they needed (“I am the greatest earthbender in the world!”) and others find it in a way they weren’t expecting (as with Sokka realising where he’s most needed), but it’s Aang and Zuko of course - their respective struggles reinforced so well throughout the season - who get the most interesting changes and turns in that ending. The whole thing eventually converges on Zuko - fitting, since his arc is the strongest in the entire programme - and comes together in unexpected, undesirable, but totally perfect ways.
Contrast this with series three, which splits up our characters, has them face their individual problems, then reunites them after the fact just to talk about what happened. It’s going for enormous scale, but the separate story threads feel quite small in the face of Book Two’s tightly interwoven character arcs.

The second series is just built so well, with every episode - filler, standalone or otherwise - driving towards an ending that must have been meticulously planned from the beginning. It escalates slowly and surely, focusing all the themes and character journeys towards that one unifying crescendo. It’s wonderful, honestly, and it’s one of the best seasons of television - certainly of a cartoon - I think I’ve ever seen. In terms of such an unblinking focus on the endgame, the only comparisons that come to mind are Babylon 5's fourth season, Doctor Who's fifth and, of course, the first series of Game of Thrones.
Book Two is the best example of this, but it’s a level of storytelling quality that’s consistent throughout the whole of all three seasons. The buildup and conclusion to Day of Black Sun in the third series, for example, is similarly great, and the worldbuilding in series one deserves a discussion all to itself. And that's all before we even mention the great dialogue, fantastic characters, stunning choreography, terrific animation (with hilarious inbetweens), and the way it can jump effortlessly from genuinely dark and serious stuff to ridiculous humour, doing justice to both!

It’s just an amazing show, basically, despite what I said last week. I love Avatar.